#there's so many more articles this is just scratching the surface

[feddy-34]

[throwing-roses-into-the-abyss]

so today I found out that 1) emo style (for men) and tumblr girls fashion are in the FIT's online fashion timeline, and 2) they're very, very wrong about both of these styles.

for emo style, they wrote:

"On the other end of the spectrum, the indie rock look saw the rise of skinny jeans for men, band t-shirts with blazers, black fingernails, skinny ties, and side-swept bangs covering part of the face. This was initially inspired in the early part of the decade by bands such as The Strokes and The Libertines whose style was intertwined with fashion through Dior Homme designer Hedi Slimane (Gallagher). Slimane, inspired himself by indie music, favored slim-fit trousers with blazers, skinny ties, and bedraggled hair (Fig. 5). In the middle part of the decade, this also included Hussar jackets inspired by The Libertines and worn with jeans by both men and women in Britain especially (Fig. 6). By 2007, Slimane’s stylistic preferences were being adopted by high street stores such as Zara and H&M (Gallagher)."

Aside from them only writing about emo in the mens fashion section (which is also very confusing), this whole bit is baffling to me, because how do you not even mention emo essentially being a new version of punk (with more depression). How do you not even mention the biggest band names involved in the scene like My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Fall Out Boy. How do you not even mention it was about expressing how you felt different, like an outsider.

And then there's their bit about Tumblr girls:

Tumblr Girls, so named for the blogging site and who reached their peak in 2014, followed closely on the indie sleaze of the late 2000s. Their style incorporated elements of grunge like Dr Martens and dark colors, along with logo t-shirts (Fig. 7). Refinery29’s Maggie Zhou described their wardrobe:

“Skinny black jeans with knee rips, a pair of Doc Martens, faded band tees, fishnet stockings, chokers, and denim jackets could be found in her wardrobe rotation.”

As a sign of how quickly trends moved during the decade, while Tumblr Girls faded in the middle part of the decade, the e-girls of the late 2010s adopted elements of Tumblr Girl style, updating it with tennis skirts and striped shirts.

To me, Tumblr style at the time was a mixture of emo, hipster, and nerd (so, for example, having Doctor Who shirts with skinny black jeans and the glasses with big black rims like the hipsters).

In fairness, my main source for my thoughts on this can be summed up as "I WAS THERE", I have 0 actual sources backing this up beyond my memory, but still. I'm well aware that my own personal experience is not representative of the whole style, but these articles don't describe my experiences in emo style and on tumblr at the time at all.

[wickedusername]

Apple Red

Curse!Reader x Mahito || 18+ MDNI

Synopsis:

In which our favorite shape shifting psychopath discovers the wonders of sex with someone equally fucked up in the head, all under a philosophical motif of the Knowledge Argument/Mary's Room, a thought experiment posing that certain mental states can't be known unless you experience them yourself.

A/n: Bringing this over from AO3! It was brought about in my annoyance at every Mahito fic being non-con and others yet thinking the man is illiterate. Listen, he may have been born yesterday but he's read more philosophy than you and me. This has an overarching Mary's room motif, skim it over, your enjoyment will be increased threefold. Just like your cl- Wikipedia article if you can't watch.

Tw: dead dove: do not eat, body horror, sadomaso, asphyxiation/choking, blood kink, double penetration, p in v, anal, murder kink, necrophilia mention, shapeshifting. However!! praise kink, body worship, dirty talk, consensual sex, size kink, no actual murder takes place.

Word count: 6,1k words

Epigraph:

He lowered his abs over your back again and got close to your ear. Licks, pecks and bites peppered your back, popping up in places you know mouths shouldn't be. “The pleasure of your wet, gorgeous pussy, deep and clenching for me… No dead or unwilling thing has it. You'll come for me again, won't you, dearie?

"Absolutely feral” is not enough to describe what was going on between you and Mahito. He groped every part of you, your ass, your thighs, your breasts, the fat on your hips. Arms scratched and pinched at the muscle and fat on every part of your torso with his fingers. All while his tongue licked all over your mouth and lips, swirled around yours, elongated down to your throat. His jaw took in more and more like he would gobble you up. You had your hands way up under his poncho, scratching his back to raw flesh.

This had started as a conversation. You were barely a sketch of a curse, not rivaling the strength of the other ones you knew, but shapely enough to pass as human to those who could see you. You tried your best to mind your own business and stay in hiding, fully aware the persecution of sorcerers could end you in one fell swoop. The unfinished subway station you liked to call home was where you spent most of your time. Nestled between the decaying scaffolding, the staff room was where you sat with him, the only furnished room among the many half-finished nooks of the construction site. The bare surfaces didn't bother you, and the room had remained thankfully untouched in the two or so years since construction was halted and abandoned.

You, however, neglected none of the room. Whenever you had the chance to be around humanoid curses, you made a point to invite them over. You loved to banter and befriend, but just as much as you loved to occasionally hit the jackpot for one that you could sleep with. You didn't care to investigate your origins, but you weren’t born of anything family-friendly, you knew that much.

You'd known Mahito for a while. He was introduced to you by Kenjaku, an annoying body-hijacker who'd seeked to recruit you for his revolutionary cause. You wanted none of it, especially keen on self-preservation, but the two of you had hit it off. Two curses of the psyche had plenty to commiserate about, so you often hung around each other. And you'd just now managed to have him in your nest. Of course it wasn't every time you dragged someone to your staff room that you wanted to fuck them, and you certainly wouldn't mind if it led nowhere. But he was the most human of all curses – maybe of all there were – so of course you wanted to ask him about sex. To your surprise, his opinions were less than satisfactory.

“It's not as good as murder, to be honest.” He tapped the arm of the couch he was slouched on, staring you down with conflicting feelings. It was definitely not what he was here to talk about, but it did leave him curious.

“Are you serious? You've been doing it on things that don't move, haven't you?” It was the explanation you could conoct for why he would think that.

“I can make them move, you know? I've put the parts together, it's just not all that.” He retorted.

“It's about more than the parts. It's the entirety of the person you're with.”

“I've tried full, intact humans. The first one I, uh… killed them by accident. Another one I killed beforehand and they start going cold and don't feel as nice. I kinda gave up after that, I really don't see how it's so hyped.”

“Yeah, that's not the fun way to do it. You're trying to get on the level of fragile, puny humans.” You looked to the side in pure contempt.

The disgust for human weakness nearly seeped out of you. You'd tried humans, and as good as sex was with anyone, you also boasted similar results. You had no need to kill or force, like he likely did. They flocked to you. It was easy, it was your nature. But it always ended in a body to discard. You did wonder, partly, if it was in the inherent fact of being a curse that your drive to fulfill your desire ended in human death. But killing wasn't the drive you yearned for, and you were more than happy to have something that would live to fuck another day. It was the whole reason you enjoyed other curses much more, anyway.

“Alright, I'll bite.” Mahito smiled. “What's the fun way?”

Your lips curled into a smile worth a hundred bucks. Now here you were, gripping his hair, licking his teeth and waiting eagerly for what came next.

Mahito lifted you up into his lap with what seemed like two arms wrapping around your thighs like thick belts. Two others squished and pulled on your asscheeks, torturing them, digits slipping forward to tease your clothed entrance from below. You wrapped your legs and arms around him, even though you didn't need to make much strength to be carried around. Against your belly, his hard-on pushed a tent on his leather pants. He pulled away from you with a laugh.

“This really isn't bad!”

“We haven't even started.” you leaned into his ear, scraping your lips against it before biting hard at his earlobe. “The fun part is that you can fuck me up”.

His eyes gleamed with fun and desire.

“How?” He pinned you against one of the walls. His smile was unnaturally wide, tugging at the muscles of his cheeks, pushing them up against his lower eyelids that squeezed against his fiery wide glare.

“However you want.” Your own stare burned with passion, knowing the idea of destroying you would fuel his fire to the maximum.

His dick twitched in his pants, achingly hard. A fifth arm stretched out of his stitched, toned right shoulder. His hand caressed the side of your face, combing your hair slowly back, tucking it behind your ear, before gripping your face roughly and pushing your head against the wall. He deformed it, veins and muscles bulging and pulsing in waves through your face and down your neck, while you healed up, undoing his damage and rolling your eyes back into your head. You savored his torture. His mismatched eyes burned with glee and he laughed, near maniacally, at your enjoyment.

“You-! You are too much fun!” He licked his lips and continued to cackle, like he had a front seat in the world's best joyride.

“More from the inside.” You teased. You lowered your hand to his pants and wrapped your fingers around the outline of his dick. He hissed as you stroked him, making you bite your lip at the sound.

The hand that was deforming your face stopped its transfiguring and moved to the top of your head, where it pulled your hair. He pressed your body further against the wall, giving you enough stability to bring both your hands to his pants, unzip them and allow his cock to spring free from the leather. You wrapped your hand around it and stroked him. Starting at the base, where it sprouted through the patch of brown fur that framed it, all the way to its pink round head. Your other hand caressed his abdomen, circling and clawing at the stitches in his cum gutters.

Mahito moaned and bucked his hips into your touch, squeezing your ass and thighs harder, pulling on your hair tighter. His eyes fluttered and his mouth hung open, before his sight landed on your chest, rising and falling under your tight fit shirt.

You encouraged him with a hum and the hand that was pulling your hair moved downwards, where its forearm split into halves. They promptly scrunched the cloth at the neck seam, one on each side, and ripped it apart, turning it to a cluster of circular tatters hanging from your waist and arms. His lips let out a long loud breath with the aftersound of a suppressed moan, almost like he was trying not to drool at the sight. He buried his face in your chest with nothing but nirvana in his mind.

You held the back of his head and nuzzled his hair as you kept stroking him, his pleasure-filled expression hidden between your breasts. Your breaths were heavy, and he would not stop letting out quiet grunts at your handjob. His hands roughly massaged your ass and the flesh belts around your thighs cut circulation to your feet, making them tingle. The arm that had split in two reunified, being joined by a sixth on the left side, and they both fondled your breasts. Mahito squeezed his face between the mounds and placed unrestrained bites and licks on them. When he felt himself getting close, he placed his lips against your ribs and muttered into them.

“You were right. I need the rest of it. I need to get in you.”

Mahito gripped your shoulders and slammed you against the wall once again, making you fumble the stroking rhythm you had. With the other pair of arms he gripped your asscheeks like rough dough and pulled you against him, rubbing his dick over your crotch. His nails dug in to the point of piercing cloth.

He brought his arms down from your breasts to fumble with the string of your pants. Unable to pull them or rip them away because of your legs around him, he turned around and let go of your ass, making you fall head-first into the floor. An unpleasant cracking was heard and blood splattered in a beautiful halo around your head, and you just healed the concussion shut. The only thing off the floor were your legs, still held at the sides of his hips. He stepped back and pulled your pants off with two hands at the rim and the two belts at the thighs, now sliding down to your knees and shins. When the pants were off, he tossed them to the side and recoiled the belts back into his body.

With now four arms, he crawled over you and pressed your legs apart. Mahito ripped the underwear you had like it was made of paper, throwing the pieces to the side. He held his dick in one hand, gently rubbing the head against your labia.

“God, I'm going to ruin you.” He grinned with a sing-sing tune of pure glee.

You grabbed him by the poncho and pulled him down to your level so you could talk.

“Think I'm not already rotten?” You whispered into his ear and licked your bottom lip, awaiting his response.

Instead of a witty remark, he just buried himself into you until bottoming out. He bit his lip and swallowed a big gulp, and you salivated with lascivious anticipation watching the stitches on his neck rise and fall from the movement.

“Fuck… This is good.” He muttered almost resentfully.

He threw his head back and enjoyed the feeling of your warm cunt. It was slicker than whatever he had before. Deeper. Warmer. Everything about the real thing, with the wetness and interaction of a willing participant, didn't compare to what he had done to transfigured humans, or to corpses, or to himself. Snapping back to reality, he started moving, and without much buildup he went right to pumping into you repeatedly. He was not at all mindful of still having his clothes on, of being on the cold floor, or even recalled being able to transfigure you while he was at it. All he could enjoy was the feeling.

You gripped the cloth falling over his back and started bunching it over his stitched shoulders, tucking his hair out of the way. When you got to the rim, you pulled the poncho over his head and he carelessly shoved it aside, shaking it off of the single arm that was stuck in its segmented sleeve. His hair fell forward with the movement and it now hung over you, grazing and tickling your chest. The view of his abs over you as he pounded was significantly better than a damn windowpane poncho.

Your own hands were busy as you tugged forcefully on a strand of his hair and decided to touch yourself, bringing about the familiar buildup of heat and electricity in the pit of your stomach. He noticed your hand and soon had it joined by an extra mouth, sprouting comically forward from his lower abdomen, right through his treasure trail. The mouth licked right with and over your fingers, and soon you were holding your pussy open for him, pressing down on your labia with your fingers. Their occasional twitching, your body's way to dispel some of the tension it was building.

“Do you want to feel what it's like when something comes around you? When they squeeze with you inside?” You teased, coaxing dirty talk out of him.

“I do… Come and scream my name. Fuck, I want to watch your face while you do it.”

“Then fuck me harder…” You mewled. His thrusts got stronger and he brought one of the arms sustaining his torso to grip your shoulder and push you harder against him with every pound. Your back chafed against the concrete, ripping at the skin of your scapulas. The mouth on your clit latched on and flicked its tongue around, catching the bud repeatedly.

Mahito lifted the last arm that sustained his torso from the floor, putting his weight on your thighs with the other pair. It forced them higher. It made your muscles sting. You unfolded your knees and placed your calves on his shoulders, and the position was riveting. He placed that hand on your mouth, where he pulled your lips, pinched your tongue, enjoyed the drool. Mahito straightened his back, lifting his torso away from your face. He ended up gripping your lower jaw like a handle, his knuckles under your tongue and thumb pressing into the soft spot under your chin. His nails cut the bottom of your mouth and he probably dislocated your jaw a couple of times with his thrusting, but fuck if you cared.

Your eyes rolled over as the heat built up higher and your toes curled around nothing. You thrashed your feet about in restlessness and the hands holding your thighs apart just tightened their grip, wavering with the movement of the muscles underneath them. You called out to him as promised and came around him. The pressure washed away in waves, rolling over you one by one in electric spasms. The tongue in the abdominal mouth flattened against your clit and you let it lick a trail slowly upwards. He could barely process his thoughts when the first spasm jolted your lower region.

“Ma- a- Ah!!” you fumbled your attempt to utter his name a second time.

“Ah...! Shit!” His eyes shot open and his mouth hung agape as you clenched around his dick.

He lost the regularity in his thrusting and let his sight glaze over, twitching at the feeling of your slick. The pulse brought him over the edge, and before your orgasm had fully waived he was moaning and pumping sloppily into you, spurting warm cum through your insides. His moans were even louder than yours, and his arms shook from the pleasure. Your half-lidded eyes framed by sweat met his and he had to shut them and turn his head away so he wouldn't be distracted. He moaned with the shivers that ran down his legs, his abdomen spasming and clenching. The abdominal mouth hung and drooled against your crotch, devoid of mind.

“Shit… you got so tight.” Mahito sighed, catching his breath, still coming down from his high.

“Isn't it so nice? You'll have to make me come again if you want more of that.” you giggled, partly trying to convince him to please you harder.

“Oh, I'll do so much more than make you come.” The man shook his head softly and looked down on you with a grin.

He didn't have such an issue as a refractory period. As soon as his dick went soft, he just made himself a new one and pushed that within you instead.

“Ah… More…” you cooed after his first few thrusts and it gave him a brand new idea.

Without ever pulling out, he made his cock a full double its volume. It shifted with delicious waves to the length of his foot and the thickness of a wrist. You bit your lips feeling its growth inside you, expanding your walls tighter. He pulled it out just to tease and even pushing it back took a little effort. The member stretched you open, the friction helped by all the wet and seed already inside. You felt a tinge of pride in your own pussy for taking it. He went right back to fucking. The pounding of this new dick made you feel so delightfully full, and the mild pain of his tip hitting your cervix was nothing but seasoning to your masochism. He wouldn't slide all the way in, instead he just pushed against the spongy back of your pussy until he felt too much resistance and slid back out, again and again.

The hand he once had in your mouth slithered down to your neck, where it was soon joined by the one that held your shoulder. He now had two hands on your thighs and two on your neck. He put his full weight on your trachea, and he seemed to love the feeling of wrapping his fingers around your small chunk of spine and muscle and grip it tight, with full suffocating intent. You couldn't breathe, but you didn't need to. His rhythmic slams against your cunt translated to his fingers digging harder and harder into your flesh, unrelenting as tugs on a zip tie. Pump after pump after pump, the pressure on your neck and on your cervix mixed in your head. They fought for your attention in turns with whichever felt strongest at any given second.

“Ah… I want to kill you so bad. I wanna blow you up into pieces.” Both arms pressed into your neck hard enough to scrunch it thin, folding the skin into rolls. He admired it as its color transitioned in a spotty gradient from pale to pink to red, to near grape under his fingers.

You couldn't talk, but you ran your finger under his chin and up his cheek, up to the stitches near his ear. You gripped the hair at the back of his head with both hands and held the blue-gray strands tight while he rolled repeatedly into you. He hissed in contentment at the feeling of you around him, at the sight of him around you, at the collapsing of your trachea under his hands. It made him way too aroused.

His gaze dropped slowly to your abdomen again and, with an intrusive thought, he decided to push into you until the base of his shaft. The pain stole your attention fully to your nether region. He pushed past any point of comfort into your cervix and gawked at the sight of your abdomen bulging ever so slightly to accommodate him. The sight made his dick twitch with the will to release. The feeling of pushing into your cervix past its intended size put wonderful pressure against his head. He pumped again and immediately had to stop himself because his stomach was coiling in pleasure against his will.

“Shit… I don't wanna come again already.” He let go of your neck and pulled out of you with haste, leaving with a loud sigh.

The curse panted loudly and stood up with laborious effort. He used this break to get his pants fully off. Both gasped for air, though you had much more of a reason. He wormed his legs out one after the other like boneless noodles and threw the pants in roughly the same direction where his poncho sat on the floor.

“You've made yourself such a gorgeous body.” you sat up and reached forward to grip the stitches in his thighs with admiration. You ran your digits over the raised clamps along the scar lines and resisted the urge to lean forward to kiss them. Mahito had kept human legs, even if the hairy patch around his base was still more like fur than pubes. Everything about his body was perfect to you. He snorted.

“You like it?” His smile widened. “How about this?”

With that, he split the dick mercilessly in half and reshaped both semicircles to the same girth as the first. He now had two wonderful shafts of exquisite size hanging from the soft brown fuzziness of his crotch.

“Fuck…” You whined, wordless except for the blushing in your cheeks and the glistening in your eyes. You scooted closer to him and sat up on your knees to get your mouth to the height where it could ghost over the shafts. You held them and fidgeted with their shapes, occasionally running your tongue along them, kissing their sides and cupping his balls. You looked up at him as you placed a hard lick over one of the tips and then the other in succession, tasting the precum that seeped from both. He could swear his balls ached at the sight.

“Get up and turn around for me?” Mahito grabbed both shafts and stepped back to keep you from worshiping them any longer. You bemoaned the loss, but got up and turned your back to him.

He embraced you with care and placed pecks on your neck. Mahito stretched an arm to the side and pushed the small wooden table that sat in the middle of the room against a wall. He walked forward with you until he had your legs pushing against the table’s edge and both of you faced the wall. You watched with wonder and a tinge of horror as a bramble of independent limbs split from his own and wrapped around the table.

Mahito placed a long, breathy kiss on your nape before putting his palm on your back and bending you over. You let him hold your wrists delicately and put them together above your head. He guided your forearms to lean against the wall, where he gripped them tight, making sure your hands wouldn't go anywhere. Two hands stretched from the table only to hold you by the lats, steadying you. Still carefully, the curse rubbed your shoulders and bent over you. He kissed your back and ran his other three hands down your sides, squeezing your anatomy and rubbing gentle scratches on the fats he could grip.

“You are being so wonderful, sweetheart.” Mahito placed kisses all over your back, his hair dragging ticklish paths along your sides. You looked back at him. The mood seemed to shift to something more loving than you ever expected.

“So caring all of a sudden? What's the matter, are you insecure about the b-- ahh?” He immediately shoved the top shaft inside your pussy until the base, shutting up any cocky comments coming out of you. The pain devolved your words into incoherence.

“You don't think I'm some kid, do you? I enjoy your teasing, but I'm inexperienced, not stupid. I'm being nice because I need you to relax if I want them both in.” He patted your butt and rubbed it in circles with both hands. “So you'll just enjoy it for me, yes?”

“I will… Mahito.” The line left you breathless. He was suddenly so much hotter than you'd thought. So far you thought you'd been commanding him, but it hadn't crossed your mind that he knew what he was doing. He knew what he was doing.

As he was standing behind you, he had a perfect view of your entrance dripping for him and he gripped your asscheeks and hummed while looking down at it. The way your back arched so nicely against him when he rolled his hips into you was almost as riveting and the feeling of the bottom dick rubbing against your clit with his back and forth. He pushed a few times, letting his cockhead rub on the hood of your clit, before he reached one hand around your thigh to your crotch. The man felt for your clitoris and then gave his palm a mouth to eat you out with. His fingers sprawled under your entrance, where he kept slowly rocking against you.

“Not that you don't have something I didn't know, but the missing piece was feeling it. I know plenty. It's… a Mary's room situation.” He kept talking, earnest and lost in thought while his hand sucked and licked your clit, mindlessly rubbing and patting your curves in admiration. The second shaft twitched and smeared precum on the back of his hand. “I guess it's just that… I can be too rough for humans to have any of the good stuff, I assumed I just couldn't get it.”

He placed one palm on your back and you felt the most sensitive spot of your clit peek out and expand, becoming bigger, more sensitive. Within your muscles, nerve endings branched and reached, making the pleasure increase threefold. If before you were casually enjoying his eating out, now you spasmed and lost breath as the feeling moved you dangerously up the drop of a roller-coaster. You whined incoherent.

“But you… You've shown me the pleasure in them.” He lowered his abs over your back again and got close to your ear. Licks, pecks and bites peppered your back, popping up in places you know mouths shouldn't be. “The pleasure of your wet, gorgeous pussy, deep and clenching for me… No dead or unwilling thing has it. You'll come for me again, won't you, dearie?”

“Mahito- I'm- Ah, I'm-!” Your breath hitched with the building electricity.

“That's just what I wanted to hear!” He chuckled with a genuineness that felt out of place.

The roller-coaster stopped for only a second at the peak of chilling anticipation before dropping you into a storm of pleasure, washing away. You moaned without thought, the sound echoing against the walls and bringing heat to your cheeks with the embarrassment of your pathetic noises. Your legs shook and threatened to give in, but he had more than two arms holding you tight. As you came off it your heartbeat thumped in your ears, in your chest, in your clit.

He praised you as you came, closing his eyes to enjoy your spasming velvet walls around his dick. You felt like heaven, tight, swollen to all hell, plush, malleable as a squishy toy. He couldn't believe he'd willingly discarded it as literary hyperbole. It could be as good as he'd imagined, and it was breaking him. The red of Mary's apple, sitting right in front of his eyes.

Before your mind was back to the present, he pulled out his cock dripping with slick and pressed the tip softly against your ass. With the hand that ate you out, he gathered as much wetness and he could on his fingers by rubbing them between your folds and brought that hand to your anus, where his fingers entered you to spread it all around.

He now had one hand holding your arms and one in the small of your back angling your ass up at him, another one that thrusted softly into your anus and a final one held his top shaft, preparing it to enter. You had just come off your orgasm when he pushed the shaft inside, slowly against the resistance of your ring. The burn reminded you, what you'd almost forgotten by now, that his dicks were still unpleasantly too big.

You whined and he reassured you with shushes and pats until he was in to the hilt. “You said I can fuck you up and you can't take this much? You're disappointing me…”

“It's not- a complaint.” You clarified. It really wasn't, the noises you produced were entirely reflexive.

Mahito hummed in agreement and held the bottom shaft that peeked between your thighs. He pumped it with his fist to spread the excessive precum that seeped from the tip. It had been dripping, neglected since you last licked it. He curved it towards your pussy and pushed in. You felt stuffed, entirely full, with no space left for yearning, no matter how much arousal had deepened your canal. Especially with both their sizes, it was entirely too much.

“This… is so crazy good. Even when I'm not doing anything else…” Mahito sighed as he slid leisurely back and forth into the holes, fully devoted to feeling. The pleasure of a slick recipient was doubled, occupying more of his mind than anything else had. He gripped the back of your head without looking and felt the sticky matted dirt of blood on your hair.

“Hm? What's this from?” He removed his hand in surprise.

“You… when you got my pants off.” You murmured.

“I like it.” He brought the hand to his mouth and licked the blood off it. “I think I know what I want to do…”

“I don't care what you do, just fuck me… please…” you whimpered, growing desperate at his stalling. You tried remove your hands from his grip, but they were well secured above your head. He ran that thumb over your knuckles in consolation.

“Hm, like this?” He pulled back and slammed into you in mockery.

“Yes! Please…!” you nodded vigorously.

“Is that so? I think I would rather…” He vexed and extended two of his arms forward, where they wrapped around your neck and forehead to pull your head back as far as it could bend. Your neck ached and your mouth opened wide in an effort to relieve his grip on your neck. “Even like that?”

“Anything… please-!” You begged, filling up his sadistic ego.

“Aye aye then…” he cheerfully agreed.

He held your hip with his only free hand and pounded you, over and over, without restraint. The arms that held you stretched unnaturally long to allow him to straighten his posture and pound with his full body. Grunts left his lips that sounded entirely too hot to be caused just by effort.

Mahito kept a steady rhythm and pulled your head back with his hands, forcing every muscle in the front of your neck to stretch taut. Your sight was confined to your forearms rubbing against the unpainted cement wall. His grip on your wrists turned your skin white, outlined by a flurry of red streaks. You spread your pinkies apart, trying to place your fingers on the wall, but barely achieved it, still restrained by his fist.

The hand on your neck twisted your anatomy, sending bulges of vein and muscle through you like shivers, pulsing your entire body with gross transfiguration. Not only that, but it sharpened, the web of this thumb thinning into a blade's edge and piercing into skin with his grip. You gasped in desperation as it started to dig into muscle and tried to heal the cut shut against his hand. He tightened his grip and shook your neck, back and forth, to dispel your effort.

“No.” His hand pierced further. “Let it run.”

Blood dripped down your torso, tickling your chest in its path and leaving sticky ruby trails in its wake. Drips ran down his arm and over your collarbones, contouring the mounds of your breasts, until they could reach your belly and fall to the ground, heavy with accumulated volume, unable to reach any further down and losing their grip on skin from the shaking of his pounds.

The cut burned like fire, stealing your attention from anything else. To get your focus back down, Mahito slammed into you hard and started sliding the shafts in alternating paces. He didn't need to thrust his hips: they pumped autonomously. The feeling was like nothing you'd ever had, either. You attempted to force words out of the hyperstimulating cacophony of sensations he was putting you through, shaking your attention away just to call his name. You bucked your hips backward into his thrusts, helping his movement in the only way you could.

He wrapped two more arms around your waist, gluing his body to yours again, and gripped the softness right below your ribs. You lost count of how many he had. He curved his fingers inward into the middle of your abdomen, sharpening his fingertips into precise blades, piercing at the skin and gripping as if he were going to pull out chunks with his bare hands. He gripped your fat and rammed his hips deliciously as blood ran piping hot down his forearms. The curse moaned and let his mouth hang agape, eyes half-lidded in pleasure, as the inherent eroticism of entering flesh turned him on so bad he thought he might come immediately. The pained cry that left your mouth went from his ears straight to his dick.

“Fuuuuck.” He leaned down and breathed hard against your back. The shaft in your ass twitched, bringing too much tension to his lower belly, relaying the message that with another second his balls would turn blue. You clenched your hole around it, milking it for release, and he couldn’t hold anything back. It pumped your ass full of seed, spewing jets of white inside you. Mahito placed his forehead against your spine and whined, his mouth ghosting over you with a small string of drool below. His fringe caught on beaded sweat and stuck to your back, but still he never stopped pumping. It was all only from the dick on top, the one that had been in you the longest. The one in your pussy still hurt for release, winding a fiery coil in his stomach.

His palms distorted you, shifting your insides so your flesh would compress and release against him. He was using you, making you a flesh toy, providing squeeze in his own terms. It peeved him for being too little effort from you, too close to what he already knew, but just the puffiness of your cunt against him was novelty enough. He didn't care now that he was in despair, pining for a second orgasm that didn't delay much further.

He came for the second time with cries that seemed almost painful and whipped his spine straight, carelessly forgetting himself and pulling on your head enough to snap it backwards. He moaned pathetically with the shakes of every muscle and attempted to rock his hips with faltering success. He let go of the grip in every hand and dropped his sweat-covered frame over you, pushing your body down into the table.

“Ah… ah… are you- alive?” He asked meekly at your limp, unmoving frame. He'd done things that would kill a human a few times, but he wondered if this had been too much.

“I told you I would be.” You replied with equally breathless lilt from underneath.

Happiness painted his perspective in pink and he recoiled all but two arms back while the main pair slithered underneath to hug you tenderly. The sticky layer of blood made his hug that much warmer in the literal sense, giving tangibility to the figurative warmth of his thanks. He pulled you tight into his embrace, and you folded your arms over your shoulders to pat his head on your nape, both waiting for their breaths to settle.

“I know it's been dragging out for long, but still… I don't want it to stop.” Mahito turned to nuzzle the side of your head. “I still wish I had more… more of the things only you can give.”

You pushed yourself off the table, forcing him to slip out of your holes and lift himself off as well. You turned to him and cuffed his chin to bring his lips down on yours, kissing him with sloppy nods, which one could almost mistake for a loving trade of affection. He wrapped his bloodied hands on your back, dragging trails that mixed with sweat to smear more than they should. Your lips separated and your eyes met his mismatched pair, half-lidded and full of wonder.

“Tell me…” you whispered into his lips with confidence he had expected to have snuffed out after all this.

“I want to experience your body more…” He licked his bottom lip, unable to divert his eyes from yours. “Let me find out how much I can dismantle you before you break”.

“If you still have the vigor, I'll give you something that you really never had from your attempts.”

You pushed him backwards, making him stumble with crooked steps and fall on his ass. His smile spread further than humanly possible when you got down and crawled over him, dressed in a stained scarf of blood that licked your entire torso in red.

You kneeled at the sides of his hips and reached down to ride him.

[turtlesandfrogs]

Putting the rant here instead of on the forum where it wouldn't probably do any good:

Actually, honeybees *do* compete with native bees.*

Actually, bumblebees and other native bee species can be *more* effective pollinators for some crops than honey bees.** Particularly the ones they evolved with. Funny that.

Actually, not all bumblebees are solitary. Many species have colonies, though admittedly much smaller than honeybee colonies.

Actually, bumblebees and other native bee species are used commercially, and that's a mixed bag as far as conservation goes. A simple search will show you this, if you aren't being intentionally obtuse.

There is so much to learn about native bees. Learning about honeybees does not actually make you knowledgeable about all bees. Native bees are crucial to our ecosystems and biodiversity, and are worth supporting.

*https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-honey-bees/ & https://www.xerces.org/blog/want-to-save-bees-focus-on-habitat-not-honey-bees & https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2656.13973 and that's just scratching the surface

**https://nwdistrict.ifas.ufl.edu/phag/2022/02/25/the-pollinating-power-of-bumble-bees/ There's more but I'm tired and don't have the references on hand.

[deluweil]

I feel like the characters of Buck and Eddie's specifically are so underdeveloped it borders on crime at this point.

Because Buck has traveled all over the world, he was a so called sex addict, and sought (still seeks) attention from every breathing relatively human form he comes across.

He was a bartender and his communication skills are limited to flirting mode (see 911 LS hold the line) - It's like right there where TK from LS felt the need to tell Buck that he has a boyfriend - and you're telling me he never experimented?? Never been kissed by a drunken man?

He has gay friends, has he never been to a gay club??

And Eddie! The man was in the army, he was never in love with Shannon, he loved her - sure - she was the mother of his child, they had sexual chemistry but there was nothing there emotion wise.

Also often they'd have sex after they were reunited to avoid actually talking to each other.

Eddie went and reenlisted to a job he knew there was a fair chance he may not return home alive from, to avoid actually having to deal with the realization of Christopher's diagnosis and not being able to adjust and not wanting to be a husband to Shannon.

He didn't want to get married, he did that because he knocked her up not because he wanted to get married - his way of running was enlisting. - It was his personal suicide mission. - Like he said in 5X14 - his friends are gone and he's still here - "not sure why." - it wasn't just survivor's guilt, he never planned to live in the first place.

And you're telling me that with all his time spent with soldiers most of them men, not thinking about his wife, just his son - because when he was in a dire situation it wasn't a picture of Shannon and Christopher, it was just Christopher.

And in 3X15, He does see Christopher but he also sees BUCK! ALOT!

Are you telling me that in this very intimate connection he has with Buck, that he seems so comfortable in - there was nothing similar that preceded that? Eddie broke down when he found out all his friends from the army were dead, was there something more there? Other than failing to save them from themselves and bad luck?

I feel like 7 seasons later and all I know of Buck and Eddie from before can be summarized in one paragraph each and nothing more - I can write articles about what I deduced watching them with each other the past 7 seasons, but nothing that explains that intense, intimate, tension underneath the surface between them.

I want to know where it's buried. Give me less LIs and chemistry-less relationships - And give me a history that can connect me to the here and now, that explains what made Buck and Eddie, almost instantly, BuckandEddie - buddie.

I want them to be developed characters, and not just the scratch the surface we got so far.

I have so many questions!!!

[the-witchy-housewife]

｡+*✧ The Basics of Spiritual Safety & Wellbeing✧*+｡

This is an article from my website, The Witchy Housewife. You can read it at the source here or look under the cut to read it here on Tumblr. If you enjoy my work, please consider subscribing (at the bottom of this page) to receive articles as they're posted via e-mail, exploring the shop, leaving a tip, or reblogging this post. I run this all myself, so all support is greatly appreciated. 💜🔮✨

When asked the most important place to begin as a newcomer to the craft, to energy work, or even to simply walking a more spiritual path, more experienced practitioners will often share the basics of their magickal tool cabinet, suggest a bouquet of book titles and YouTube channels, or state plainly that the only correct answer is to let your heart and soul guide you. Only occasionally do I see or hear these types of questions answered with the recommendation to familiarize oneself with spiritual safety and wellbeing prior to diving head-first. But matters of protection, I feel, are one of the most important things to study up on when starting out, and today, I’d like to share my own thoughts and advice on the topic.

Cleansing, Purification, & Banishing

As I define them in my practice: To cleanse is to rid a person, place, or thing of stagnant, unwanted, draining, counterproductive, or otherwise negative energies or entities (though positive energies will often accompany them), to purify is to return a person, place, or thing to its original energetic state, and to banish is to cleanse by authoritative expulsion or removal using an outward-pushing energy. You may find others who define these terms differently or use these words interchangeably, but this is how I have come to define them, each offering their own unique function in my workings. If you are looking at correspondences in my digital grimoire, these energetic properties can be found in items marked as cleansing, restoration, and banishment respectively.

A cleansing may be performed when you find that energies are stagnant, stuffy, or negative. Unpleasant energies like these can be responsible for inviting in equally unpleasant entities, hindering the results of energetic workings, creating a state of mental or emotional discomfort, brewing a heavy tension in the air, or even causing feelings of sickness in those who are particularly sensitive. As such, it is usually recommended that cleansings be performed on a regular basis – especially if you live in a space that is regularly exposed to more negative energies. Some common methods of cleansing utilize the smoke of cleansing herbs (alternatively, a spray), water infused with cleansing herbs, or simply a visualization of brilliant white light – and this is just barely scratching the surface. As with many rituals, there are hundreds of methods of cleansing out there for you to explore, and it is paramount to choose one – or even create one – that works for you. Let your intention – your goal – be your guiding force. As a general rule, if you are putting your intention into it and you are going about it in a way that feels intuitively compatible, you will more than likely see the results you are looking for.

Often, cleansing – similarly to banishing – will result in a feeling of emptiness. You are essentially scrubbing the present energies “clean”, including energies that may be more positive. On the other hand, you may wish to perform a purification, or restoration, of a person, place, or thing if the goal is to reverse any energetic damage that may have been done while still retaining those unique individual energies. For this, you would utilize restorative herbs instead of cleansing ones and focus your intention accordingly. It seems it is common for practitioners to opt for cleansing over purification – and even more common for the terms to be defined as one and the same – but I enjoy having this as a separate option when it is needed. In my practice, this process typically comes into play when I want to remove any absorbed energies from a crystal, charm, or tool but would like to preserve its core energies as much as possible.

Finally, banishment is used when you want to push an energy or entity out of a particular space, and in this case, the original energies seem to remain wholly unchanged. For this reason, some practitioners choose to also perform a cleansing beforehand. Like cleansing, there are many methods of banishment out there that you can give a try, though the most commonly passed-around is the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (or LBRP) of ceremonial magick, sometimes given different flavors for different systems.

Enchanting & Blessing

The emptiness of a cleansing or banishing can feel pleasant enough, but I find that this sometimes allows unwanted energies to creep back in more easily. A blank slate becomes anyone’s game, so to speak. To mitigate this, you may choose to preemptively imbue the space with more intentionally – and typically positive – energies. For this, we use enchantment or blessings. To enchant is to fill a person, place, or thing with intentional (but not necessarily positive) energies, and to bless is to enchant with fresh, positive, and often divine energies.

Enchantment is one of those foundational things that is pretty crucial to get the hang of when first starting out in a magickal practice, and all it entails is focusing on an intention and willing the energy of that intention to fill the person, place, or thing being enchanted. To a beginner, this can be more difficult, which is why it is also important to learn what these subtle energies can feel like to you. Skipping this step can sometimes deter people away from magick altogether. Lady Gravedancer, one of my favorite witches on YouTube, has an excellent video on learning to work with and sense these subtle energies. If this is all new to you, I highly recommend it.

Typically, though, a blessing is more what we’re looking for post-cleansing – positive, even divine, energies that inspire a sense of wellbeing. If you work with deities, you may also like to ask them to bestow their own blessings in your stead or beside you. Otherwise, it’s just enchantment with a wholly positive intention, but if the idea of a blessing feels too religious for your comfort, stick with “enchantment” and don’t let semantics bog you down.

Warding, Shielding, & Cloaking

In all cases, I tend to feel that the energies we’re working through are not being totally destroyed, but are rather either transmuted, deterred, or even just fragmented. In my opinion, it is usually a good idea to follow up your cleansings or banishments with the re-energizing of your wards. To ward is to create an energetic protective barrier around a person, place, or thing as a semi-passive and long-term protective measure, to shield is to create a more short-term ward that surrounds a personal, place, or thing entirely and is envisioned as a bubble, and to cloak is to make a person, place, or thing energetically “invisible” or “irrelevant” to wandering energies or entities so that interests are directed elsewhere. You can find relevant correspondences in my digital grimoire marked as protection, security, and invisibility.

Warding can be thought of as the closing and locking of your spiritual entryway, though it is often done with the intention to protect from more than just matters of the spiritual. I’ve known people to create physical barriers around properties using salt and/or eggshells with protective herbs as a base and visualizing their wards rising from that barrier. You might also like to bury protective crystals at the four corners of the property for that additional kick. But once again, there are so many methods out there that it really comes down to personal preference.

I tend to think of shielding – or bubbling, as some call it – as a more short-term and active form of warding. Shielding is especially useful as an emergency layer of protection when out and about or as an additional layer over your personal wards in outings that you suspect will be energetically taxing. Where wards are thought of as great and powerful walls, shields are typically thought of as entire bubbles surrounding a person, place, or thing on all sides. If you’re an empath like me – which is a sometimes-misrepresented term I’ll get into in a future article – shielding is a good practice to have in your pocket for going out into crowded environments, whether that crowd is physical, as in a theme park, or spiritual, as in a hospital. Whatever visualization you choose to use for warding, your shielding process can tend to be similar, and much of it, again, comes down to the intention. It is often the case, though, that this process takes more energy to conduct, and thus, if you choose to keep up a more permanent shield, it may require more care and more frequent energetic charging than your wards do.

Cloaking is something I don’t see discussed very often, but it can be very useful to consider when you are trying to be energetically off the radar. And obviously, I am not suggesting you go about doing sneaky, unsavory things. Instead, cloaking may be more beneficial for avoiding unnecessary conflict with nosy neighbors, finding peace to work in a coffee shop, or subduing the attention that can come from large-scale energetic workings. And as always, you may choose to hand-pick some herbs, crystals, or other mystical tools for this purpose, but the recommended visualization varies a bit from that typical bright light you may be used to working with. In the case of invisibility, you may choose to envision the person, place, or thing fading out of view or to mentally play the situation at hand out exactly as you wish it to transpire.

Safety Tips for Spirit Work

Certainly, if you plan to do spirit work – a line of spiritual work in which will regularly involve energies and entities completely independent of you – these concepts may be more important to familiarize yourself with than with someone whose only spiritual endeavor is manifesting a little extra spending money every once in a while. Aspiring spirit worker, the following tips are for you:

• As per the point of this article, it’s a good idea to have your preferred protective methods at the ready prior to actively working with spirits. This, of course, does not mean that your methods cannot change over time – but when starting out, you should find a method that is compatible with you and gets you the results you need. Once chosen, try to become familiar enough with it that you can cast it off-book in the event of some sort of spiritual emergency.

• As a spirit worker, you’ll want to cleanse your tools, your space, and yourself very regularly. My preference in my practice is at least once a month and more frequently if I feel it is necessary. Even if you aren’t involved with spirit work, regular cleansings are a good habit to get into, but it is especially important for those inviting a large number of outside influences into their home.

• Get to know your spirit guide(s), and keep them close during any sort of spirit work. I’ve heard from many people who feel that the connection you have with your guide(s) has a sort of solidity to it that can override other communications the moment you ask for it, and I myself have not yet seen evidence to the contrary. If you ever feel uneasy about a communication and are in need of a second opinion on who or what you may be speaking to, ask your guide(s) to come through and communicate with you. Still, as we communicate between realms, discernment is a necessary skill to develop, and having protections in place is always a good idea, regardless of whether you choose to involve your guide(s) or work on your own. If you are completely new to the idea of spirit guides, I do plan to write an article on the topic in the future – but in the meantime, if you’re interested in meeting yours, Lady Gravedancer also has a wonderful video featuring a ritual for communicating with your guides for the first time.

• You may also want to look into the idea of casting a circle (another topic I’ll likely be discussing here in the future). While an entire ritual may not be in the cards for your practice, it may help you to develop some alternative ideas for shielding the space around you during active spirit work. In doing so, you maintain greater control over what is permitted to enter. Afterwards, be sure to say your goodbyes and to close up your circle and any portals you may have opened to avoid uninvited visitors outside of working hours. If you are someone who chooses to always leave your space open to visitation – and some people do – be aware that anything can enter and be prepared for the circumstances that could stem from this.

• If you are someone who allows certain spirits to reside in your home – what I refer to as my “spirit family” – I think it is a hospitable gesture to let those spirits know when you are going to be performing a cleansing or banishing. I can’t imagine that having your energy forcefully transmuted or shoved out the door would be a terribly comfortable thing to experience, so I think of it as a sort of courtesy that exhibits the respect I have for them. This will give them a chance to temporarily leave the space of their own volition while you go through your routine. Alternatively, if you have a special space set up for your spirit family like I do, you may choose to shield that space with the intention for their energies to remain unaffected by the cleansing. I’m not sure that it’s the most perfect method, but it’s one that I’ve found to work well for my spirit family thus far. In both cases, there are those who would argue that this gives unwanted entities a chance to temporarily leave or take shelter within the shield, as well, but I tend to feel that my spirit family would act accordingly to keep our home safe. It is their home, too, after all.

Despite popular Hollywood tropes, working with spirits doesn’t necessarily equate to “terrifying and dangerous” – but this does not mean it is without its risks. And just as you wouldn’t find your way into a dark alley in the middle of the night without some pepper spray, it’s likely not a good idea to invite spirits into your home without compatible defense measures in place.

Safety Tips for Energy Work

Energy work, in general, tends to have the odd side effect of making you a sort of beacon in the realm of the spiritual – and the more you do, the more your energy builds, the more your awareness expands, and the brighter your whole being shines. No matter the level you find yourself at spiritually, the following tips are for you (though feel absolutely free to read through the previous section, as well; the additional knowledge can only benefit you):

• Whether it be through tarot, runes, pendulums, spirit boards, prayer, or some other form of divination you find useful, it is wonderfully wise to seek guidance regarding any workings you do. This practice can help you to avoid unwanted outcomes, to avoid manifesting something you may not truly want, and to uncover exactly what it is you need to add or take away from your workings to bring you the results that you are looking for.

• Keep a journal of what works and what doesn’t in your practice and of any intuitive insights you receive that you feel may be important. Your spiritual path is a deeply personal one, and one person’s experience will likely never be perfectly identical to another’s. There is an abundance of wonderful advice out there. There are many methods out there that work very well for many as-is. But at the end of the day, you must discover what works best for you, even if that is different from the teachings of the majority. Be sure to keep track of it.

• Be mindful of loopholes, especially in manifestation workings. Being too specific can sometimes be ineffective, but not being specific enough has the potential to cause even bigger issues. Manifestation, I find, tends to take the path of least resistance, so when putting your energies out there, you want to be sure your intentions don’t put anyone in harm’s way. Again, divination can be a wonderful source of guidance prior to your workings.

• If you are going to be working with negative intentions of any kind – which is something I don’t advise for a number of reasons, and especially not for beginners – be sure to deep-cleanse yourself and the space the spell or ritual took place in. In addition, it’s generally a good idea to not keep any items used in the working on or near your property. Also know that there are other options, like justice workings, that can be done in place of this. Sometimes when we feel very upset or very angry, we speak or act irrationally and come to regret it later. This can also be true for spellwork, but the results can sometimes be a lot more devastating. Ultimately, I cannot stop you from doing what you feel you must, but at the very least, I hope you’ll think things through.

• Finally, this may seem like common-sense, but don’t let your spiritual practice throw off balance in your life. The realm of the physical has its own value and importance, and that certainly includes your health and wellbeing. If you find yourself neglecting your health, your hygiene, your friends and family, your responsibilities, or your other hobbies, it may be necessary to take a break or dial it back until you’re able to find a good balance.

A Regular Cleansing Practice

You may have already seen this in my article on making the home more magickal, but I thought it would be good to include, here as well. The following are my two most often-used cleansing rituals – one which I perform monthly, and the other as-needed:

My Monthly Cleansing Ritual: I perform this ritual on the first of each month. Any cleansing tools to be charged on the altar should be set at least a day before performing the cleansing. The morning of, weather permitting, open windows and play uplifting music or cleansing affirmations, frequencies, or subliminals of choice. Take a cleansing shower. Clean the home as you normally would. When physical cleaning is complete, use a smoke or spray cleansing blend of choice, walking with intention from room-to-room. Pay special mind to corners and doorways. I like to use sound cleansing – bells, drums, or even snapping your fingers will do – in these spaces to really ensure the breaking up of any “stuck” energies. If you are someone who performs banishing rituals, you may choose to do so now. At this point, I also take a moment to cleanse myself, particularly as an empath. I then tend to my wards by first taking a blessed salt blend around the perimeter of the property, followed by sitting at the center of the property and funneling my own energy into the ward. If you would prefer to instead bless first and ward after, feel free to do so. It is your ritual, after all. Regardless of which order you perform the ritual in, the blessing process may be a deeply personal one, so this is a step I suggest thinking on a bit rather than following to the letter. In my ritual, I use a spray with positive energy-promoting herbs (as well as herbs that may promote the intention I wish to set for the month) and follow up with prayer to my deities. If you’re interested in a more in-depth look at my Monthly Cleansing Ritual, I do have detailed instructions available on my Monthly Blessings Patreon.

My As-Needed Cleansing Ritual: This is essentially a truncated version of my monthly ritual. If the energies are something I’ve tracked in or absorbed too much of, I will take a cleansing shower first. Following this, perform your usual smoke or spray cleansing, focusing especially on any room(s) that may be the most abundant in the energy that brought about this need for an emergency cleanse. You may also like to perform a shorter version of your regular blessing ritual. Unless the situation is really dire, I will generally stick to my spray in this case.

Just to reiterate, all of the information, including these rituals, are from my own practice and my own experience. You must do what works for you if you want to get the absolute best results and the most fulfilling experience. Take what serves you, and leave the rest. Much love and many blessings to you on your journey. Take care of yourself.

[bestanimatedmovie]

i dont think putting pocahontis on the bracket was a good idea. i actually unironically think its on song of the south's level of racism. it falls into many harmful tropes and romanticizes pocahontis' (who was a real person) relationship with her literal colonizer. thats not even scratching the surface its so incredibly racist even at the time people were calling out how offensive it was. its way more racist than the road to el dorado, which i dont think youre wrong for not allowing in the bracket i just wanted you to see how to terrible this movie is

Yes, indeed Pocahontas is probably the worst movie in the bracket in terms of racism. There's a lot of information about it, but here I leave a short article to read.

[felassan]

Illuminating tweet series by a former Anthem developer [source].

They mention elsewhere in the thread that Anthem was developed in 15 months. Per the tweets, before this period, it spent 5-6 years in pre-production, lacking a clear vision and with an ever-changing vision; in game development this causes a lot of working and reworking. The devs were talented and all passionate about the game, but they were building "a new IP from nothing on an engine that was meant for an FPS with half a team that had never created live service games".

They further elaborate in more tweets that:

EA had their reasons to release it early but were stupid and the devs' team "had to pay the price". EA learned a lot from the development of Anthem but whether they applied those learnings is unknown

Jason Schreier's article (How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong) was all 100% true at one point in development or other, and only scratches the surface

How did they manage to ship it in 15 months? The dev mentions working about 90 hours a week for 15 months. Many other devs on the team were also doing so and they think that others were doing 90 hours a week prior to the 15 month mark. "It wasn't sustainable and not even a position we should have been in." "I'm fine now, but not without damage. Contributed to the cost of my marriage and I needed therapy for a while after that endeavor." "It was a lot of morale hits on a personal level and a team level. Everyone had their own way of dealing with it." "There was a lot of pissed, stressed, rinse, repeat. It was a vicious cycle." "I guarantee we could have put something out in Unreal. Working in Frostbite was rough." After launch the team got death threats because of drop rates

Anthem was delayed as it had missing features, lack of polish and bugs that needed fixing. Another big problem that it faced was that it had lots of scope creep. "There were really high expectations for this game and the team felt it. We always were trying to push for cool features, etc.. So I think we could have done it if we kept our scope creep in check."

The main team was focused on getting the game out in a functional state. "We really needed another 1-2 studios to make endgame content while we were finishing up the game."

After launch it was all hands on deck to stabilize the game. Content and features that they wanted to do consequently kept getting deprioritized. A major focus they were trying to address at launch was all the server issues. "I think the shittiest part about this, besides no endgame and replay ability, was that during development, management was putting in gating mechanics to 'lengthen' the time it took to complete the story. IIRC it was removed from the final version after backlash from devs."

"It was a great team effort to get the controls how we shipped. We went through many iterations and it was super rough in the beginning. I know the team was really happy where the controls landed too. We actually took in a lot of feedback from the EA game changers."

A Twitter user asked "When you say it wasn’t ready, was that always communicated with other members of the team i.e. publishers?". The dev replied "I think it was ignored/denied from leadership. There is a story there, but I will refrain."

A transparent retrospective on Anthem/its development will likely never come to light because of both current and former devs still being under NDA

The dev has an assumption that if they didn't release Anthem, BioWare would have been dissolved. They also observe that BioWare just wasn't good at multi-project development, which is hard. Most people at BioWare didn't believe in "BioWare Magic". There was and maybe still is a lot of stress and politics surrounding Anthem from the development and publishing side (a problem not specific to Anthem). The dev mentioned that it was both an EA failure and a BioWare upper management failure. "I actually don't think it was all EA's fault. A developer and publisher is supposed to be a healthy relationship of trust and transparency. It's a 2 way street which i don't think was satisfied on either side."

Re: who made the decision to release the game in the state it was, some of them left and some remain at BioWare

On Anthem 2.0/Anthem Next, the game was really fun and was going in the right direction. The team had hit a really great milestone, when EA canned it. It was a different development team driving Anthem 2.0. The team were gutted when it was cancelled

(please note it's always best to read tweets and the like in full and in context, from the original source)

[source]

[firespirited]

Quick primer on the business side of the Barbie movie as part of Mattel films. Specifically that it's not so much a toy commercial but a brand opportunity.

Not that the film itself is wrong or bad - no doubt real creative love was poured into all the aspects of creating it - however once it got Mattel approved and blitz marketed, it's different. Even a wonderful piece of art can have its meaning changed. What you experience in the cinema and your personal relationship to your childhood toys is a separate phenomenon from Barbie and Toy Story being turned into merch and theme parks, and more importantly, trust in the Mattel or Pixar brands.

What he doesn't mention is the Mattel films have been in production (and getting investor hype) since 2013. The reason there are bits of the He Man ad is because Master of the Universe was due to be the next Mattel film to be released.

So it's important to remember that reviews of the Barbie movie and articles about it will not specify which aspect they're commenting on. We will have to sift through what has been deliberately blurred marketing and art: for many of us, watching the film will have been a 'multiple lens' viewing: it's aware it's both personal, a message about a type of womanhood, a story and a product. Many picked up on queer/ND subtext which is another lens. The racial lens was there and also not there which was another thing people picked up on.

And then there's the capitalist lenses: some people are just seeing the doll characters and tie-in doll toys/merch and saying that's a commercial; that's legit but also applies to Star Wars and Top Gun while also just scratching the surface of something much bigger.

Videos like the one above are not about whether you enjoyed the Barbie movie or whether it was good, it's about larger patterns of brand monopolies: No-one is here to tell you that the birthday cake you made is bad, just that it's disturbing that all the ingredients available to you were owned by Nestlé and Kraft-Heinz.

So the folks saying I hate the birthday cake and I loved the birthday cake can be both right so long as we figure out the lens they're using (or utterly wrong in the case of the 'ew girly' idiots and hardcore Barbie stans LOL). I will be reblogging* both love and vitriol because there are layers to the film, to the hobby and to people.

*I'm waiting for it to hit pirate streaming in decent quality for all the folks who can't do 2 hours of bright lights, loud noises, crowded room.

[halfbit]

Im struggling to find ur lore amongst the chaos could u tag me in it please??

I wanted to read what u got since u seem to like mine a lot, i wanna show u the same support u gave me ^^

ahh LMAO ofc!! i have a complicated relationship with organization but i'm trying :'D i'll send it your way

in the mean time, here's part of something that i haven't publicly shared anywhere yet? it's a work in progress since i want the final version to include illustrations (which aren't done yet) but this segment is more or less ready. ＿＿＿＿

the information in this paper is based on the works of kanohen haeto, often dubbed "the father of modern folklore", whose books such as heas komin living legends and yaga senka night secrets have shared the stories of our past with a new generation. his academic works are also some of the most comprehensive collections of written folklore of our era. we would also like to thank ayaten omiwa[1] for her wonderful and striking illustrations accompanying this article. the goal of this project is to examine the roles and characteristics of animals and animal figures in the traditional folk culture of the southern continent, we will not be going into (most of) the world myths and tales of the gods, instead, these are the first stories we told, and some still tell, to our children. they are our fables and our warnings, our answers and our bedtime stories. at the end of this, the reader will have just scratched the surface of these tales, but that will still be a success. tens of thousands of history, lessons, and memories of tens of thousands of our ancestors cannot be held in the hands of a single work. even kanohen haeto cannot write down what has been forgotten before he could hear it. this is just a small catalyst, but perhaps it will serve to make a new generation ask what has been forgotten, and to preserve what is still remembered before it is lost all the same.

.............

countless species of birds have called saonkaya and our neighboring nations home throughout history, but some have left more of a mark than others on our tales. the most significant may be the seika, the name of a sea bird that centers many of our fables. the exact bird being spoken of has been forgotten, but common assumption is that the folklore seika is likely an aralik or naeseika based on the limited physical descriptions we have. the seika of folklore though is not so much a species as it is an individual, with a history and relationships of its own which makes it a bit of an unusual starting point. however the seika still shares some common characteristics with other birds in folk tales, for instance, often acting as the troublemaker, or in more charitable representations, the stubborn youth. that may be why the seika and other birds are so popular in children's stories, they are quite relatable to the rambunctious children they serve as lessons for. in one of the seika and betkai folktales, seika's red tail, the story centres on the seika's stubborn and impulsive nature, and the consequences of its lack of caution or preparation. when seika gets speared by a iseluba while diving into its hunting waters, the seika is so blind to its mistake that it does not even realize it has been injured until it lands on the betkai. seeing how seika's tail has turned red, it is only betkai who asks, "have you been hurt?" and the seika gives the quintessential seika answer, "if i am, it is not enough to matter." other birds, in folklore often cousins or family of seika, are usually not as extreme in their temper, but they are still reliably reckless. in the tale of taipha and the silver pond, she is so taken with her reflection that she does not warn the other creatures of the pond's danger. instead she lashes out when they plummet down for disturbing her, but does not stop them from drowning. in another variation of the tale, she becomes so incensed by the continuous interruptions that she kills every fish in the pond so that it will only have value to her.

when not contributing to destruction, in some instances birds may serve as guides, as in the black desert and the songbird, a saonkayan folktale in which a tallo guides a fisherman's daughter to a desert where each grain of sand is a precious gem. this has likely given various songbirds in saonkaya their unique association as good omens of fortune or wealth. this is less common though in pre-saonkayan stories, in the case of the little bird that turns lakes red, the titular bird is instead an omen of plague and other illness. when birds are part of a pair or ensemble of animals, they tend to be selfish and cruel instigators that often cause their own downfall, such as in the chain of betkai, where seika steals betkai's shining chain, refusing to give it back even when betkai loses his fur and claws. they are usually not particularly bright though, betkai is able to get his chain back by telling the humans where seika nests, and seika is unable to fly away fast enough with the heavy chain in its claws. still, they refuse to drop it, and it makes them easy prey. in a similar role, a baral poisons the tree it nests in so that other birds won't make it their home, and then wails to all who fly past when the poison takes their own hatchlings. however, birds are not the only creatures that fly the southern skies, and the distinctions are significant in folklore especially. the henmao has shared several stories with its brothers in flight, usually acting as an opposing force, though often not a benevolent one. in the story of the feather banquet the henmao, irritated at the incessant noise of a kakaun wedding procession, descends upon it in a feast of anger. they also show up in the henmao and the keman, where the henmao has to face a creature with even more explosive anger than it, the henmao does not seem to be a creature of pure anger though. in fact, unlike the seika, it is often risk-aware, it simply does not care as long as it thinks it can survive the retaliation. in this story the henmao ends up bringing in a third party, a young mouse, to negotiate between it and the keman. they reach a mutual agreement, and eat the mouse to seal the deal.

a more agreeable flying beast would be the untaolo, which was said to aid the hero tasuma as her wings in her battle against a wyrm, and even in less intense stories the untaolo is often a symbol of loyalty. it can fly away freely, and yet it will always return to those who have good will. there is even an old proverb, "if an untaolo turns tail to the king, you best follow." in some stories, untaolo may be associated with death, although not as a bringer. in the traditional funeral rites of some communities, especially in saira and ramoon, there is often a verse that asks for an untaolo to guide the deceased across the river of the gods.[2] another that shares the untaolo's associations with death, but not its reverence, would be the cuural, in greater myths cuural have been servants of the spirits of death, and it was bad luck to see one, especially during travels. cuural were said to steal away the health and life of people who had been unharmed or well, because they were always in competition with eachother to bring more people to their lords. since cuural travel in packs and are opportunistic feeders, including scavenging on corpses, they also got a reputation for making a feast out of the fallen in battlefields. their fiercesome faces likely aided their poor reputations, and in recent times, there have been some attempts at legislation to criminalize the excessive and ecologically unnecessary culling of their population, but none have come to fruition, and sightings get rarer by the year. perhaps one day we will only remember them by their roles in these old stories. most people would rejoice. ending this segment on an interesting example, there is a particular story that has recently had a wave of retellings, but the original is the bakotamu's daughter. the bakotamu was said to be a close relative of betkai, and shared betkai's ability to shapeshift into a person, but was often much more willing to do so, and there are many stories of it changing into a person for many years to live among humans. because of its close association with human affairs, the bakotamu has been characterized with many different traits throughout history. it is sometimes benevolent, but it can be equally vindictive, there are just as many ways to beckon a bakotamu as there are to expel it. the bakotamu in the bakotamu's daughter is an anxious and stubborn example, and they are famously very concerned by the matters and opinions of gods. they cause a great deal of suffering for their daughter due to their inability to accept her existence, and are ultimately left to anguish on their actions for time eternal. this story is often said to be why the bakotamu's face is forever streaked with tears. whenever wrong is being done, the bakotamu finds reason to cry for it, even if they have done it to themselves. because of this, they are often a comedic victim and villain in their own folktales, and children will be told not to cry unless they're a bakotamu at times. this has been a brief but broad sample of birds and other beasts of flight in folklore and fable. in the next segment, we will cover land beasts, from above and below ground. they are often the other half of a pair in a story, alongside the prior introduced birds, so we will now begin to be able to compare a more complete picture of animal dynamics as characters in our traditional stories.

footnotes 1. art created by me, damnit↩︎ 2. if someone is not particularly well-liked, the untaolo may still be invoked, but may be asked to leave them to drown instead↩︎

[misskattylashes]

The Dichotomy of Being a Teenage Alex Turner Fan

In this article I look at why I think so many teenage fans direct so much hate towards Miles.

Look at this image search I did on Alex’s name. First person whose name comes up ‘Miles Kane’, first other person he is in another picture with, Miles...before a puff piece about Louise or Taylor. It’s Miles. There are more results with Miles than anyone else. Whether people like it or not, Miles and Alex are intrinsically linked.

In the words of the big man himself ‘stop and wait a sec’...... imagine Miles was Mila, a constant female companion of Alex’s who he had been close to for nearly twenty years. Had been at his side more than any other woman, had done two duets with him and whilst touring the second one, their performances were so sexually charged you thought any moment soon they were actually going to have sex on stage. What would you think? You would think they were or had been in a romantic relationship. And even though you haven’t seen much of them together over the past few years, Mila constantly talks lovingly about Alex in her interviews, and Alex invites Mila to be the support act for the final days of a very long world tour, and on one of the dates he lets Mila stand side-stage (something his official girlfriend doesn’t get to do) and throughout the set he sings to Mila and can’t stop glancing at her. People would be enamoured with their love story and desperate for them to be together.

So why is it different just because Miles is a guy?

Of course there is the obvious. If Alex is gay, then the teenage fans stand no chance with him, which would be upsetting. But even me, as a creaky old Gen X-er, had gay pop stars who were attractive and sexy – Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford from Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Andy Bell from Erasure, even Boy George got screamed at, but we accepted they were gay and we didn’t stand a chance and that was it.

Of course, there was no social media then, but did we write hateful letters to them or their partners, or put up posters on street corners saying how disgusting they were? (the 80s equivalent to posting all over Twitter) No.

So why the anger towards Miles?

Unfortunately when I was growing up, homophobia was acceptable. Gay people were constantly the butt of jokes, straight comedians would pretend to be effette just for laughs. At school we even had the reprehensible Section 28, imposed by Thatcher’s government where any mention of homosexuality was banned, even books featuring gay characters, to apparently help prevent us from experimenting and catching AIDS (yes I grew up in the Dark Ages)

But there comes the rub. Because homophobia was acceptable, any negative feelings we had towards our gay pop stars or their partners wasn’t something we felt bad about so we felt no need to pick on anyone as a way of dealing with our own conflicted emotions

Fast forward to 2023. Gay people have rights, can marry, have children, are positively represented in the media, we have Pride, which is on the point of becoming too commercialised, and to be homophobic is to most young people not cool or acceptable.

Those same girls who spew hate towards Miles probably paint rainbows on their pencil cases during Pride, have male gay friends at school and would have a go at anyone who doesn’t support trans rights.

But then there is the fact that the celebrity they desire has a constant male companion, who he has been more publicly intimate with then any of the girlfriends he has had. Scratch beneath the surface and you can spot the differences in them when they fell out after EYCTE -both a shell of their former self. When there was a brief break in Lockdown in the UK, who did Alex choose to meet? Miles. Whether the fangirls consciously or subconsciously think there is something going on, it makes them feel uncomfortable with themselves. The presence of Miles Kane makes them realise they’re not necessarily that right-on girl who is into gay rights, because when they actually think about it, and think about what men do, they don’t like it.

But instead of realising that this is just part of being a grown up – we all have things about ourselves we don’t like, they direct their anger and frustration at Miles, as if he didn’t exist then they wouldn’t be confronted by these unpleasant feelings they have.

So, what I am trying to say is whilst I find the comments about Miles disgusting and cruel, just remember with these girls the person they really hate is themselves, while Miles lives his lovely life with his career and his friends and Alex and Maxie.

I think we know who is the winner here.

[lift-heavy-be-gay]

Let's talk about transgender athletes

this is gonna be a long rant so I'm just gonna put a cut down below. dni if you're a terf or just wanna cause problems.

So, recently in class we were discussing different drugs used illegally and legally in sports and eventually the topic of transgender athletes came up (because of course). However, my professor handled it really well and as a trans athlete (pre transition), I just wanna talk about my feelings on the matter.

Keep in mind that this is my opinion, but I have been studying this in uni and may have more of an insight on how testosterone and estrogen actually affect the body. Anyway, there are two main points I wanna make.

As an afab athlete myself, I compete in a mostly strength based sport (though some technique and skill is necessary). However, I could not even begin to think about competing with my amab counterparts. It would put me at an unfair disadvantage and them an unfair advantage.

The first being that—depending on the time you began taking hormones/how long you've been taking hormones—you most likely won't be able to compete in high level competitions like the olympics. I know that people are going to be upset at this, but please listen. If you began taking hormones around the age you would begin puberty, then by the time you're an adult still presumably taking said hormones, then your levels would most likely be that of a cis person. However, if you're taking hormones after puberty, then the testosterone difference between amab and afab people is *staggering*. This article states that amab people generate 15x more testosterone than afab people. Even if they begin taking hrt, it takes YEARS to even begin to see a significant difference.

But

(and this leads to my second point)

There are numerous advantages and disadvantages for cis people in sports. Whether it be financial status, family history, access to training, facilities, or injury prevention/rehabilitation. If kid A is from a long line of well-off basketball players and has the resources to compete, then he definitely has an advantage over kid B who is from the middle of nowhere with no support and even worse facilities. Fact of the matter is, cis people are unevenly matched up against each other all the time. There are a hundred and one different ways that they may have an advantage or disadvantage over each other. Why is it different for transgender athletes? Scratch that. Why is it different between genders at all?

What I'm trying to say is that, I've met plenty afab people who are stronger than amab guys. I really don't think gender matters that much in a lot of sports. I believe we should start separating athletes based on weight rather than gender. (Of course, that's just my opinion.)

It's just that whenever I hear the topic about transgender athletes in sports, it's always about trans women. It's about how it's "not fair" and they are "doing it on purpose to get an easy win" and a bunch of other excuses to try and justify not letting them play. Surprisingly, I don't often (if at all) hear the same argument about trans men. On the surface, a lot of these debates about trans athletes is good ole' transphobia. But if you look deeper, it's really just misogyny. Most people don't even care about the sport, they just want another avenue to oppress a group of people.

Basically, the situation is not as black and white as most would like to believe, and there's a lot of nuance involved when trying to understand this topic. It's unfortunate that many trans athletes have to even deal with this extra bs in order to compete.

anyway, end of rant. thanks for reading if you made it this far. there's definitely more I could say on this, but these are the main points I wanted to make.

tldr: while there are inherent biological differences between amab and afab people, that doesn't excuse excluding trans athletes from being able to compete

[20dollarlolita]

Hey Pink,

so I went to a flea market today and scored a old singer machine for 10€! Now I'd like to know when it was made and probably where but I'm completely lost, maybe you could shed a little light on it?

I cleaned the serial number plate as best I could. I suppose it reads: G67875 (2 or Z, I cannot tell)

Thank you so much!

It's a Model 15!

Here's some more information on the Model 15. Note that they're calling theirs the "15K", but the K just indicates that it was made in Scotland. Yours is likely a 15 and not a 15k, unless it says it was made in Great Brittan in the text along the top.

If you're ever unsure about the date on a Singer machine, I recommend this taxonomic key, and the Ismacs serial number database.

We can tell from the bobbin threading path on the front that this is a very early Model 15. According to the serial number, it's likely one of a lot of 50,000 made in January of 1910.

I believe the decal style on that is called Tiffany or Gingerbread. The first thing that I noticed about that is the absolutely exceptional state of those decals. Usually, machines of this age have a lot of the decal work worn off. If you want to clean them, be careful about damaging them.

The best advice I've found for cleaning and restoring old machines is from Doug at treadleon.net. Here's an excerpt from one of his articles:

Now let's talk about appearance. Some folks like to see an old machine shine like new. If the basic decoration, paint and decals, is good enough, that can be done. Most machines we find in sales aren't quite that good, or may actually be very bad. I like to let old machines show their age and usefulness. To clean a machine's surface, I use first a gentle mix of diluted dish soap and water, rubbing small areas at a time with a soft cloth. Often there is old dried oil or shellac on the surface. The earlier cleaning with kerosene may have loosened a lot of that up and it will rub off, too. Often it can be scraped off with a fingernail. Don't use hard scrapers, you'll scratch the enamel. Once I have the plain dirt off, I wipe with sewing machine oil several times over a period of days, then wipe off all the oil and wax. I use Turtle Wax. Other folks have had good luck with ArmorAll.

There are folks who favor various cleaning compounds, such as Simple Green, 409, Windex, etc. Great care must be exercised here. Many of the chemicals in these compounds, especially ammonia, will destroy the gold in the decals, leaving you with silver decals, or no decals. Since the decal content and manufacturing varied over the years and between manufacturers, the fact that a product did a great job on one machine does not mean it will not damage another. Always start by cleaning a small area in back of the pillar to see what is going to happen.

I've also found that liquid wrench spray penetrating oil can get through some really nasty dirt on the machines and it pretty decal-safe. It's become my main "clean now or else" tool for when dish soap is not doing the job fast enough.

One really cool fact about the Model 15 is that any time you're looking at sewing machine parts and you see the number 15, it's likely because it was a part first used in this machine. They use our standard needle, which is the needle family 15x1. If you go out and buy a standard sewing machine needle today, it will be a 15x1. When you go buy the standard bobbin for most Singer/Janome/Baby Lock/Brother/Bernette machines (plus some Pfaffs and Vikings), it's called the Class 15 bobbin. That's because the first machine to use these needles and these bobbins was the Singer Model 15. It's that influential.

The Model 15 sits flat on a table even without a bottom case, though you can buy some really nice bottom case reproductions on etsy or get a generic flatbed machine case from SewingPartsOnline if you do want a base for it. Note that if you use a generic case, you'll have to take the hand crank off when you store it with the lid on it. That said, I have my hand crank machine in a cheap generic flat bed case and it's always quite an enjoyment when someone opens it up and expects a mid-1990's machine and SURPRISE! It's an antique!!

Anyway, excellent find! The Model 15 was hugely influential. Pretty much any time that you find a modern sewing machine thing with the number 15 on it, it's because the item was first used on the Model 15. The needle family that all non-industrial sewing machines use today is the 15x1 needle family. That needle was first used on the Model 15. If you buy bobbins for almost any Janome/Brother/Baby Lock/Bernette and many Pfaffs and Vikings, it's called the Class 15 bobbin. That bobbin style was made for the Model 15 machine. I just think it's so cool that this machine became the standard so effectively that you can just go down to your local big box craft store and buy needles and bobbins for it!

PS if anyone wants a sewing-related rabbit hole to go down, Japanese Model 15 clones that are actually improvements on the Model 15 is a good one to check out. It was cloned long after Singer discontinued the Model 15.

[teeth--thief]

i’d love to hear your opinion on Akimov as well! i tried to get all the info i can get online, but for some reason i feel like i’m only scratching the surface and there’s more to him! if you’d like i wouldn’t mind an info dump on Akimov from you

I consider it absolutely criminal that the day I got this ask That Chernobyl Guy released a video on him... like, girl... now I'm gonna look like I'm repeating you 🙄 No, but, in all seriousness, his video is really good! Even if he didn't, unfortunately, say anything we (or at least I) hadn't already known.

No wonder you feel this way - I'm sure everyone trying to learn anything about him does. There's just so so little on him out there. I understand that it is probably because his immediate family wanted to protect themselves - after all, the public's opinion wasn't exactly favourable of the operators for quite some time. You gotta give your kids a chance to grow up in as normal of an environment as possible, right? Anyhow, this is written without all that "ah yes, he was born in May and died in--" bs, I'll try to include mostly lesser known facts, I'm under the assumption that you already know all that and there's really no need for you to read it all over again just to learn absolutely nothing new.

There aren't many sources on him at all, all the books, except for (oh the horrors) Medvedev's book, which includes a statement from his wife, spare his person just a few words, usually more or less always the same. Smart, professional, near-sighted, dedicated party man (with a mustache!) is always the jest of it, you'll see.

We have about... what? Three and a half confirmed pictures of him? The rest is oh yeah, someone said that random guy with glasses is him so it must be true! And because we have so few pictures that are for sure him, it's that much harder to determine whether these really are him or not.

From this little piece of official documentation we find out... nothing revolutionary:

parents: Zinaida Timofeevna (1929) and Fyodor Vasilyevich (1930)

wife: Lyubov Nikolayevna

sons: Aleksey (1977) and Konstantin (1982)

started working in the ChNPP on 12.09.79

> Ultra useless information from here include:

his address (before moving to Prypiat, obviously): Moscow, Frunzenskiy district, Khoroshevskoye highway, house 68 apt 72

address of his parents: Arkhangelsk region, Severodvinsk, Lenina street, house 7, apt 8 (?)

From this interview- one of the... well, the only one, as far as I know - we also learn that his grandparents (from his father's side, judging by the patronymic alone) were Vasily and Nyura. His younger brothers' names were Konstantin and Fyodor (which would make him Fyodor Fyodorovich... y'all really went off with this one).

We know what became of his two kids or wife - not even his childhood friend, the author of the article above, does. The last name Akimov is not at all an uncommon one and, besides, if either of them ever felt like speaking with anyone, I'd assume they would have done that by now. Hell, even their kids, if they have any, are probably either teens or in their twenties by now, they could have said something... shared a picture, whatever. But nobody has done that, so they probably value their privacy and want to be left alone.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, he was a member of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and a member of Pripyat Gorkom from 1977. Gorkom is a city level of Party Committee.

I've tried to compile all the bits describing him from any book I could think of that has something, anything, on him:

G. Medvedev (eugh) describes him as follows in Chernobyl Notebook:

Aleksandr Akimov, a strapping and strong 35-year-old lad with a broad rosy-cheeked face, wearing glasses, with a dark wavy head of hair, powdered now with radioactive dust, rushed around without knowing what to do (...)

First of all, he was most definitely not 35. Second of all... he was balding. Like balding-balding. Who exactly were you looking at when writing that, huh, Medvedev? Because it was not Akimov, that's for sure.

In Midnight in Chernobyl he's described as follows:

Akimov, a gangling thirty-two-year-old with thick glasses, a receding hairline, and a small mustache, was a committed Communist and one of the most knowledgeable technicians at the plant. He and his wife, Luba, were the parents of two young boys, and he spent his spare time reading historical biographies or hunting hare and duck with his Winchester rifle on the Pripyat marshes. Akimov was clever, competent, and well liked, but his colleagues agreed that he was easily pushed around by those above him.

God damnit, you guys figure it out finally - was he strapping and strong or was he gangling? I'm no expert on words but those seem to not work together too well. Also... small mustache? I'd say it's pretty average sized, actually... Have you seen it? It looks like the propellers of a helicopter...

From Chernobyl 01:23:40 we get:

Akimov was Russian, like most senior staff at the plant. Born on May 6th 1953, in the country’s third-largest city, Novosibirsk, he graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1976 with a degree in thermal power automation processes, before moving to the Chernobyl plant in 1979 as a turbine engineer.

Go girl, give us nothing! Nothing new, how wonderful.

S. Plokhy's Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy:

(...) Aleksandr Akimov, a thirty-three-year-old engineer with ten years of experience at the Chernobyl plant. Bespectacled and sporting a fashionable moustache, Akimov was regarded as competent, friendly, and susceptible to pressure from the higher-ups. A member of Prypiat’s Communist Party committee, he was clearly on his way up—he had been appointed head of shift only four months earlier.

Paul Read's Ablaze contains a much longer description than other books - we even get a bit more information on Lyubov:

(...) Among Inze’s closest friends was Luba, the wife of Alexander Akimov, whom Razim had known at the Institute in Moscow. Akimov had gone on to study at Zukh-Hydroprojekt, with the designers of the power station, and it was here that he had met Luba, also the daughter of an army officer and a student in the same department. Akimov had a gangling figure, thick glasses, a high forehead, receding hair and a small moustache. Luba was a tall, skinny girl with a delicate constitution, short dark hair and a sophisticated sense of humour. She loathed pretentiousness of a bourgeois kind, and was choosy about her friends.

Upon graduating, Akimov was sent to work for Zukh-Hydroprojekt in Chernobyl, and Luba went with him as his wife. They moved straight into a flat in Pripyat, where Luba gave birth to their first child. They, too, embarked upon the life at Chernobyl with the greatest enthusiasm. Akimov worked hard to establish his professional reputation; he also joined the party. In his free time, he read historical biographies, subscribed to magazines on military technology, and went after duck and hare with his Winchester rifle. The Akimovs’ life was not without trouble. Their second child was born with a twisted hip: every two weeks Luba had to make the five-hour journey on the hydrofoil to take her baby to see a specialist in Kiev.

(...)

Akimov, (...) , served as Communist party secretary for the unit – a chore that reflected his commitment to communism and also helped his career.

This book is also where the almost iconic now bit comes from:

When given the task of drawing up a programme for such a hypothetical accident, Alexander Akimov calculated a probability factor of one in ten million per year.

In From Chernobyl to Fukushima by N. Karpan we learn that he's remembered as such:

"Sasha Akimov was an intelligent, educated guy. He graduated from Moscow Energy Institute. His interests were not limited to his work only, he had many different hobbies, read a lot, loved his children and cared for them affectionately... He was very proud of his children, they started to read at five, he regularly spent a lot of his time with his children and liked to tell us about them. He was very fond of his car and maintained it in a perfect order" - (Igor Kazachkov, the reactor unit shift manager).

"He was naturally inclined to follow rules" - (Aleksandr Orlenko, the Electric Section shift manager).

"Akimov was a very orderly person, it was impossible to force him to violate a rule. He was very experienced" - (Boris Rogozhkin, the NPP shift manager).

[ruruas]

Why Are Modern Games So Easy?

Featuring Persona 3: Reload in the spotlight.

Anyone who has been a long-term fan of video games can sense the difference in difficulty in recent releases in comparison to ‘old school’ games. There are more difficulty modes players can choose from, autosave has become a staple, and many video game franchises have made their own personal changes to essential features to make games less ‘punishing’. For example, the Fire Emblem series used to be known for having a perma-death system, in which if a character died in battle, they could not be revived again. In recent entries, the player can now choose whether or not they want to play “Classic Mode” (perma-death on) or “Casual Mode” (perma-death off). However most of these features don't necessarily remove the difficulty from the game, rather, they are quality of life changes.

The title of this article can be answered quite simply: It is because game developers wish to reach a wider audience and have mass market appeal. Many newer instalments to beloved franchises have the developers citing that they wished to make the games accessible to newer players. Indeed, this is the reason, but it is only scratching the surface. Why is it that when developers wish to make games more accessible, that they make the games easier? And why is it that when games are easier (especially instalments of a franchise in comparison to the original), many fans are disappointed, wishing to ‘go back to the good old days’?

I wish to explain the importance of the synergy between gameplay and how the player interprets the game they are interacting with. It's important to realise that games are a unique form of media. They are the only form that allow the audience to directly interact with it. This aspect of video games must not be ignored in building a convincing atmosphere for the player. Just as how a game taking place in a dark forest conveys a fearful atmosphere, a game being difficult can achieve the same thing. If it doesn't, then the atmosphere is ruined. The game isn’t scary anymore; it has lost that aspect because of its ease. 

In my eyes, there are two types of video games: forgiving games and punishing games. Forgiving games are nice to the player–they are designed with their comfort in mind. These games allow the player to, for example, save anywhere, revive characters easily, change difficulty anytime, etc. The forgiving game model can go beyond this, and have the aspect of ‘the player must win’ woven into the very code of the game. This forum post has fans of shoot-em-up games explaining their thoughts on recent releases in the genre, evidence that the public craves for challenges. In our initial example of Fire Emblem, the feature of Casual Mode would be an example of the game itself forgiving the player for allowing a character to die.

Punishing games are games that wish to bring the enjoyment of the player from overcoming their frustrations. They are designed to purposefully enrage the player, so that when the player succeeds, that is when the ‘thrill’ of the game hits. An even better example than Fire Emblem would be the rogue-like game Hades, in which the design of the game revolves around dying over and over again before you can beat the game. Sure, the frustration the player might feel could turn them away from the game, but when that frustration is overcomed (especially by the player’s own knowledge or skill), the satisfaction that arises is so significant that it allows the player to keep coming back for more. 

There is no objectively ‘better’ form of game design from these two (admittedly oversimplified for brevity’s sake) types. It all depends on one’s personal preferences and opinion. What I have noticed, however, is that the forgiving model has seen more prevalence in the modern day in order to (mainly) garner mass market appeal and, as we mentioned before, become more accessible. Indeed, making games easier can make them more convenient for a modern audience. But it comes with sacrificing other aspects of the game, such as the atmosphere or tone. This is what happened in the recent remake of cult-classic JRPG Persona 3, named Persona 3: Reload, in which from my point of view, certain aspects of the ‘energy’ of the gameplay were sacrificed in order to both appeal to a wider audience and offer quality of life convenience to returning fans. Note that I will be speaking about the game with the assumption that whoever is reading this has played the game. If you have not, I advise you take a quick look at the game’s wiki page to get a general understanding.

In the original, aspects of the gameplay made it inherently harder and inconvenient. For example, the player could not control any party member other than the protagonist, the player’s party would become ‘fatigued’ if they were fighting for too long, the party did not have the ability to guard attacks, and when switching Personas in battle, the player could not switch to another in the same turn. All of what I have said is highly inconvenient and were all changed in Reload. There were many features also added to the remake, such as Theurgy attacks (a powerful, flashy attack that would be charged up during battle), the Rewind feature (allowing you to go back in time) and the Great Clock, which allows inactive party members to be given enough experience points to match the protagonist’s level. 

I completely understand changing the inconvenient parts of the original in order to match the taste of a modern audience. Even if they were intentional design choices in order to convey a thematic message (see: uncontrollable party members show how each character has a personality of their own) I also understand how aspects such as Theurgy add more ‘depth’ to the combat for some. I do not understand how allowing party members to skip ten levels is not the equivalent of handing the player a golden key. One of the aspects of strategy in Persona 3 is choosing your party members carefully, because experience is not shared. This feature simply removes that. Furthermore, I appreciate the Rewind system, especially for people who are attempting to 100% complete the game. However, it is simply ironic how in a game that beats the theme of “time does not stop for anyone, death is constant” into the audience’s heads, the player can now rewind time. 

These added features may be a win for convenience, but a loss for video game storytelling. Of course, Atlus (the developers) have masterfully conveyed the depth of Persona 3’s story and reimagined the impact it had on middle school-me, allowing myself and many others to relive a masterpiece with a new lens. But as we’ve said, video games are not movies. They are not television. They are an entirely different form of media that requires its own attention and care. That is why video game story-telling exists in the gameplay as well, and why when there is a disconnect between the new forgiving and passive gameplay of Reload and the emotional, hard-hitting themes of the story, we fans can tell. How does the game expect me to be terrified of Tartarus (the game’s main dungeon) just like the characters if they allow me to scan the layout of each floor with the click of a button? The game design of Reload does not match the story that it is conveying. An effective story in a video game must be able to be conveyed through both cutscenes and battle. If it is not, I feel as though the story itself crumbles and loses all weight. I can’t sympathise with these characters fighting for their lives if I, the player, am not fighting for my life. I found myself scoffing at certain scenes in Reload that I would have otherwise grown emotional towards in the original because I did not feel any weight or gravity towards the plot that I was supposedly the hero of. 

It does not take a critic or a media fanatic like myself to sense that there is something wrong with Reload. That the original portrayed the feeling of true dread much better than the remake. Of course not everyone is looking to be punished by their games, and really do appreciate the forgiveness of Reload. No one said games had to be hard in order to be enjoyable or good. But would people really be turned off by the inconvenient features of the original if they were present in the remake? Or would a whole new era of gamers appreciate the thematic choices in Persona 3’s gameplay? A game doesn't have to be made easier to be more accessible. Sometimes, simply improving graphics and availability on modern consoles is accessible enough. Whether or not that is true for Persona 3’s case is dependent on your preference in game design. Do you wish to be punished or forgiven for your mistakes? Whichever one strikes your fancy, I hope you are able to find a game that speaks to you, just as how the original Persona 3 spoke to me all those years ago.

[doorbloggr]

The Pikmin Series

Thursday 23/2/23

Media Recommendations #45

I've been in a really compulsive mood lately. I'm pretty sure I have some form of mild ADHD, but lack the initiative to actual go and confirm this. To me, this means joy in the completion of small tasks, and a low attention span. And although I've been waiting almost a decade for the next game, I feel the series that best scratches this itch is Pikmin.

Pikmin is one of my favourite series of all time, and lately, news of Pikmin 4 has me more hyped than news of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. So in today's article, I wanna discuss what I love about Pikmin, and also just compare the different games in the series.

The Pitch

The Pikmin Games are classified as Real Time Strategy Games, but comparing them to other RTS's like Age of Empires is folly. Instead of large scale conflict on a huge scale, the Pikmin Games have you follow one guy with an army behind him, and while you can have several groups doing tasks at a time, you must physically approach each soldier to interact with them.

You control a space Captain of a tiny alien species who has landed on PNF-404, a planet of lush greens, and strange monsters. Each game has different reasons for your protagonist to be there, but essentially you are tasked with collecting things and bringing them back to your ship in order to leave the planet and go home. But you cannot do this alone. Amongst the various scary creatures that dwarf the player character, there are the Pikmin, small plant/animal hybrids that follow your every command. It is up to you to direct the Pikmin into defeating enemies and carrying your quarry home, while avoiding all the obstacles that get in your way.

The Gameplay Loop

Your Pikmin army is a fragile, but determined species that can easily die but also easily multiply. Defeated enemies or resources called Pellets can be carried by the Pikmin to their mothership, a structure called the onion, and when it absorbs nutrients, it spits out new Pikmin. Having more Pikmin is crucial because bigger items require more Pikmin to carry.

As an example, Pellets have numbers on their top that indicate how many Pikmin require to carry them. A "1" Pellet can be carried by 1 Pikmin, but a 5 Pellet requires 5 Pikmin. Small enemies might require 3 Pikmin, most larger intimidating enemies require at least 10, and if you defeat a boss, that could require at least 20. But the more Pikmin you have, the more they can carry, and this will produce more Pikmin. It is a positive feedback loop. But there is a cap. All Pikmin games allow no more than 100 Pikmin in the field at a time, but spare Pikmin can rest in the Onion, and be summoned to strengthen your ranks if others die.

In Pikmin, there is only so much you can do in a day, and this is typically between 13 and 18 minutes depending on the game and difficulty. At the start of each day, you will have to summon Pikmin from their onion to start work, and at the end of the day, you must bring them back to home base. Any Pikmin idle in the field when the day ends are left to die. Due to the ferocity of nocturnal life, the protagonist and the Pikmin's Onion leave the Earth's surface during night and take refuge in low orbit. So you must make sure you finish any tasks well before the final countdown, or risk losing tens of Pikmin who are not accounted for.

Each game has a different limit to the number of days you have to finish the game, but I will get into these differences later in this post. Depending on the state of your Pikmin army, some days may be more productive in terms of working on your main objective, while others might be spend just building up your army after a major loss. It is a balancing act.

The World

As a lover of Scifi, particularly Speculative Biology, the Pikmin series really tickles my fancy. The game's setting, PNF-404, is in fact planet Earth in the far off future. The continents have changed positions, and the climate is overall more lush and moist. But we only ever see the world at a micro-scale. This provides a unique take on speculative evolution.

When we think of how animals will evolve into the future, most popular culture focuses on megafauna, but when your player character is 2 centimetres tall, the most common type of threat will be creepycrawlies. There's quite a deep taxonomic web of genetic families with high biodiversity and adaptation radiation. The Bulborb or "Grubdog" family has about 10 unique subspecies in Pikmin 2 alone.

Starting in Pikmin 2, the Captains document each species of enemy in the Piklopedia, giving each a binomial scientific name and a general description. I've spent many hours just reading through these entries and observing the critters.

Beyond what has become of the world, we can also explore what used to be of the world. Leftovers from human civilisation, such as bricks, garden beds, and ceramic tiles form obstacles to exploration. Recognisable earthly fruit such as cherries, strawberries, and watermelons litter the forest floor. Knick knacks and junk such as AAA batteries, bottle caps, and NES cartridges can be dug up and collected. This is a world that was once lived in by humans, and like fossils, their impact is left to be found by future explorers.

Comparison of Games in the Series

At the time of writing, there are 3 main Pikmin games, with a fourth coming out later this year (thank goodness, it's been sooo long). Despite the same world and gameplay loop; grow pikmin, defeat enemies to grow more pikmin, collect thing to get to new areas and get new pikmin; each game tasks the player with a vastly different objective and restrictions on game time. Therefore, there can arise disagreements in which game provides the best experience.

In Pikmin 1, Olimar's ship accidentally crashes down to Earth and smashes to pieces. He cannot breath Earth's atmosphere, and his suit will only keep him alive for 30 days. He must spend these 30 days collecting as many parts of his ship as he can, so he has the capacity to leave Earth's orbit and warp back home. There are 30 ship parts to collect, but careful planning means you can easily get multiple pieces a day, and only 25 pieces are required. This game can feel very stressful with this looming time limit, but it is very unachievable to complete the game a few days early.

Pikmin 2 has Olimar and coworker Louie returning to PNF-404 on a treasure hunting mission. Their freight company is almost bankrupt, but junk from Earth can be sold on their home planet, Hocotate, for a fortune. There is no limit on how many days you need to spend on the distant planet, and you reach the first ending when you pay off the 10'000 poko debt. In addition, this is the only game in the series to feature Caves, underground sublevels of exploration. No time passes between entering and exiting a dungeon, but you can not go back to recruit more pikmin until you leave. Most of the game's treasure is found in dungeons.

In Pikmin 3, you take control of three spacemen from the planet Koppai, Alph, Brittany, and Charlie. Their planet is running out of food, and in their journey to find food on other planets, the three land on Earth. The three are tasked with collecting fruit, taking the seeds to grow back on Koppai, and the juice from the fruit are converted into rations for the three to continue their stay. There are 66 fruit to collect, and a few different endings depending on how many are collected.

In my opinion, Pikmin 3 achieves the best balance of time limit to challenge. Unlike Pikmin 1, there is not a hard deadline. 1 jar of juice means one day's rations. Different fruit will fill different amounts of juice; 20 grapes are needed to fill a jar, a cherry might only fill half a jar, while a watermelon can fill 3 jars on its own. Since there is a limited amount of fruit in the game, you can run out of new ones to find, but this gives the player upward of 50 days to beat the game. So unlike Pikmin 2, the time limit is not infinite, but actively pursuing the objective gives you more time.

Caves are an interesting way to pump extra challenge and content into a limited overworld, but since each floor is randomly generated, they are less deliberately complex and interesting than they could be. Pikmin 2 does offer the most main story content, and although I would like Dungeons in the next Pikmin game, I would like them better designed.

Conclusion

I am carefully optimistic for the next Pikmin game. These games scratch a mental itch no other series I've played can, and although I'm not a fan of games blatantly ripping unique concepts, it really sucks there's no "Pikmin-likes", because I would really love more of this type of game.

If you read this far, thankyou so much, this was really long. If you know any games that come close to replicating Pikmin's gameplay loop, please let me know in the notes. Also tell me what you want from Pikmin 4, I'm pretty damn excited for it.