#these are so easy to make i think i will just make a bunch of whatsapp stickers with this texture

[dio-icarticaae]

Being an active participant in democracy is not something you do every 4 years when there's a presidential election - and that attitude is a significant factor in how we ended up here. The Republican party made an effort to get its voter base to turn out and vote straight R for Every. Single. Election. for about 40 years - we need to do the same.

Also: voting is in no way the be-all end all of democracy. It's merely choosing, out of the options you have, who will get you closer to your goals. Democracy requires participation, you have to show up. Look into what your city council and local officials are doing, and when meetings are - and show up! Make noise at school board meetings against book banners. Support your local library board! Contact your local officials and tell them what you think about what they're doing!

And that last part is especially important - it can be easy sometimes to think that because elected officials have power they're the "boss" but it's the exact opposite. We The People hired them for the job by voting, and We The People can fire them by voting them out. THEY work for YOU. They are where there are to represent YOU. So make noise! If you like what they're doing, tell them that! It gives them the courage to keep doing so. If you don't like what they're doing, DEFINITELY tell them that - politicians get nervous when their constituents are angry at them. Make them nervous!! (but do be polite to the staffer taking the call, they don't necessarily agree with your elected official). This is helpful even with the most stubborn legislators - pressure works, and even if it doesn't flip their vote that time, it helps for the future.

If you're overwhelmed by this, I get it - it's hard and I've been doing this for a little under a decade and I still get tongue tied sometimes. I recommend having a script for you to follow - it doesn't need to be long, just an introduction of you as a constituent and a couple of sentences on what you're calling about and why, before finishing up. I also recommend connecting with activist groups for issues you're invested in - they often have lists of legislation they're supporting or opposing and are happy to send you an email when one of those bills comes up with a script and who to contact. It's best to change the script a little so that your legislator doesn't get a bunch of identical calls/emails, but it's a very good basis for your script AND you'll be advocating precisely and relevantly on that issue for specific legislation.

Anyway, back to the topic of elections and showing up for them; there are quite a few in 2025 and they are important:

I highly recommend Bolts Magazine for election reporting, especially on local elections and how they related to criminal justice reform - each year they have a breakdown of local elections and what the implications are. Bolts hasn't made their 2025 elections page yet, but they do have a list of prosecutor and sheriff elections in 2025:

All of these are important for a variety of reasons, but the incredibly important ones here:

WI has a supreme court election! This is CRUCIAL - it'll determine the political makeup of the Wisconsin Supreme court for at least the next year, and whoever is elected will be on the court for 10 years. The Wisconsin Supreme Court decides a lot of things and making sure Republicans don't gain control is critically important to dismantle the extreme gerrymandering in WI as well as who decides what is and is not constitutional in Wisconsin. I don't need to tell you how crucial that is.

NJ and VA both have Governor races. In NJ, the goal is to keep the governorship to maintain a Dem trifecta - controlling the state house, senate, and governorship. In VA, the goal is to gain a Dem trifecta with a Dem governor.

Americans, I know we're going through it, but why do I keep seeing stuff like "I'm sorry world, we'll fix this in 4 years"? But like... what do you mean "4 years"?

We have midterm in 2026, yearly local elections, special elections, primaries, etc.

We have the right (dare I say responsibility) to contact our representatives and the right to organize and protest if/when they don't listen.

We need to find a meaningful way to educate people about propaganda and media literacy. We need to convince people to be willing to educate themselves. The habit of only checking in to politics on presidential election years needs broken.

I understand how defeating today feels, but we, especially those of us who could conceivably make it through these four years unscathed, need to stop this proactive surrender.

[rosedustdreams]

Hey! I’ve been reading your Walker works and I need more from you lovely!

Would it be alright if I asked for a Walker x Reader where they do an interview together and he keeps being so obvious about his feelings for her? And like after the interview goes live, a bunch of fans make ship edits, and basically they’re just never beating the dating allegations?

If not it’s quite alright!! Just keep up the amazing work lovely!!

Not So Subtle

You weren’t nervous, not exactly. It was just a press interview, something you’d done countless times before. Still, being paired with Walker for this particular one had your pulse doing somersaults. Not because of the cameras or the audience, but because Walker couldn’t help himself when it came to you.

As the two of you settled into the studio chairs, the host greeted the audience with her signature enthusiasm, introducing you both and hyping up the upcoming season of the Percy Jackson show.

“So,” the host began, her grin playful, “you two have been spending a lot of time together on set. How’s that been?”

Walker immediately leaned forward, his elbow resting casually on his knee. “It’s been amazing,” he said, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye. “I mean, how could it not be? She’s kind of the best.”

Your face heated up, and you laughed nervously, trying to brush it off. “We have a great cast dynamic,” you said, keeping your tone light.

The host raised an eyebrow, clearly catching the subtle tension. “I see,” she said, drawing out the words. “And Walker, I have to ask—there’s a lot of buzz about how much you hype her up in interviews. Care to explain?”

Walker grinned, completely unbothered. “What can I say? She’s insanely talented. And hilarious. And, you know, just… easy to be around.”

You shot him a look, but he just shrugged, his grin turning slightly mischievous.

The host smirked, clearly loving every second of it. “Interesting. And what about you?” she asked, turning to you. “What’s it like working with Walker?”

“Oh, he’s great,” you said, doing your best to stay professional. “Super dedicated, really supportive. Definitely keeps things fun on set.”

“Fun how?” the host pressed, her tone teasing.

Walker jumped in before you could answer. “She’s laughing at me half the time,” he said, his tone playful. “I’m basically just a walking joke to her.”

“That’s not true!” you protested, laughing despite yourself.

“Oh, so you don’t think I’m funny?” he teased, leaning a little closer.

“I think you’re plenty funny,” you said, rolling your eyes.

The host looked between the two of you, her smile widening. “Okay, okay. I think I’m starting to see why fans love you two so much. The chemistry is very real.”

You both froze for half a second before laughing it off, though you could feel your cheeks heating up.

The rest of the interview passed in a blur, with Walker continuing to find small ways to tease you, compliment you, and generally make it impossible for you to escape the growing attention. By the time it ended, you were both smiling, though for very different reasons.

When the interview went live, it didn’t take long for the internet to explode. Within hours, TikTok was flooded with clips of the two of you, complete with dramatic zoom-ins, captions like "Walker is DOWN BAD," and edits set to romantic songs.

One particular video caught your attention: a slowed-down clip of Walker staring at you while you spoke, set to the lyrics of “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” The caption read, “The way he looks at her 😭 they’re not beating the dating allegations fr.”

You groaned, burying your face in your hands. “This is bad.”

Walker, who was sitting across from you in the trailer, leaned over to peek at your phone. When he saw the video, he just laughed.

“I mean,” he said, grinning, “it’s not that bad.”

You shot him a look. “Walker, they think we’re dating.”

He shrugged, utterly unfazed. “So?”

“So?” you repeated, incredulous. “You don’t care?”

“Not really,” he said, his tone casual. Then, after a beat, he added, “Unless… you do?”

Your breath hitched, and you looked away, suddenly very interested in the floor. “I just don’t want things to get weird.”

Walker tilted his head, his grin softening into something gentler. “It wouldn’t be weird. At least, not for me.”

You looked up, meeting his gaze. There was something in his eyes—something warm and steady and entirely too honest.

“Walker,” you began, but he cut you off with a small smile.

“Hey, relax,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “We don’t have to figure it out right now. But just so you know…” His smile turned playful again. “I’m not in a hurry to beat those allegations.”

Your cheeks burned, and you groaned again, but this time, there was a smile tugging at your lips.

Because maybe, just maybe, you weren’t in a hurry either.

A/N:i love this request so much thank u for requesting

Tags: @izzystylinson, @sophand4n4, @kaiwrites092, @shellsarepretty, @cheoriemoawa, @prettiesteyess,  @vintagewntr10, @hecallmebigpurrr420, @killualovbot, 

[girlwithbloodyfangs]

how consciousness is connected with manifestation

So I watched this youtube video called "Strange Experiences Of Consciousness That I Have No Scientific Explanation Or Proof For But That's OK" by goobie and dobbie.

listening to him, he shared his strange magical experience in his life, how everything is connected ,how everything is just a consciousness, how we all can feel the truth / existence / each other....because we all are somehow somewhere is connected with each other , might we are all one or maybe everything is just me/you and experiencing my/our imagination...i mean it could get a lot much deeper but one thing is for sure that everything is just an consciousness. i also recently discovered an instagram profile where this guy talks about after death experience shared by people while they were hypnothiest , he talks about some experiment which would have been done on people, like kids sharing their past life experience..they still remember their past life, talking about how we all souls have free will to experience things , we all have multiple soulmates....a lot of bunch things, overall focusing on the after death experience....i think everything is depend on your belief system, only if you allow things to be true, i think every possible thing that you can imagine it exist. things you have never imagined could also exist, in simple words possibility is infinite, as creation is already done all the possibilities already exists. This world is full of magic, creativity and art..we make things beautiful and strange at the same time. I find it cool to be honest. As that guy shared his dream experience in his video, how his dream was connected with strange things happening around him and somehow guiding him for good and giving him clarity in terms of his life choice...which is strange and cool at the same time..in conclusion everything is connected. I don't know, I just find this fact so mesmerizing.

So I would like to connect this information with manifestation :)

About manifestation, i think it's really just the easiest thing ever to experience your desire in 3D, cause everything is connected. right ? If I want something, I can just decide that I have it and for sure will experience it because it is meant for me ( not in future terms that I will but with faith and knowing that yeah, it's guaranteed ). because I know everything is connected so if i would focus on that one thought it would influence that thing and i would attract that thing in my reality. one thing i know for sure that everything happens in your favour and by your choice. If you have negative/positive beliefs (which most probably shapes your 3D reality) , if you want something different from your beliefs that you have built overtime, you can just take a break and think from a relaxed mind and decide what you want, instead of worrying and having fear or doubts. just give it a try, don't force it and imagine it. imagine things to be more easy and things always go with a flow as you favour it. manifestation is just deciding what you want and trust that it is meant to happen, well happy news for you because everything is connected (consciousness) it meant to happen. Another reason why persistence and repetition have been called the key to manifestation. Do yourself a favour trust that it's done, visualize as much as you can, affirm as you remember about your desire, think as "what would you think if you already have your desire", try to be in wish fulfilled, at the end of the day it is meant to happen so keep up with the faith and ignore those opposing thoughts.

Final talk about time!!!! well, it depends on your belief, if you think you can manifest instantly then you do otherwise you don't. As for a fact time is just an illusion/ imagination, it doesn't exist not even for your subconscious mind. So what you do to manifest things faster is by persisting, repetition ,being in the knowing state that it's done and keeping up with your faith. if something doesn't align perfectly in your 3D, please don't torture yourself by questioning, why? instead reaffirm with confidence and faith.

btw this is my first own blog, i hope it will be helpful to those of you who are new to manifestation and want to gain some clarity.

so, I would call this my today's epiphany or a journal. if it helps you, i am glad...have a nice day and happy manifesting.

~keep slaying ;) #girlwithbloodyfangs

[revelboo]

I can't remember how I found you but I am so glad I did, I read a bunch of TFP and DJD stories and then started reading everything I could get my hands on

I had no idea who Sunder was but I am completely and utterly infatuated with that absolute psycho, I can't WAIT to see more

Sunder is very not okay

Whipped Cream Pt 4

Sunder x Reader

• There’s no way out, but you can’t stop circling over and over. While he’d finally stopped crooning at you in that eerily comforting voice, his blue optics track you. And he’s still grinning whenever you glance at him. That stare of his predatory and focused. Making you painfully aware that you’re trapped in an unknown place with an insane monster. A murderer. He’d admitted as much.

• Head turning to track you as you explore his prison looking for a way out. Wearing yourself down. Getting distracted so it’s easier for him to snoop in your mind. Happy memories so achingly sweet and disappointments so bitter. The sharpness of fear going straight through him. Wishes he could get his hands free and reach his spike. Stroke himself to those lovely little jagged shards of fear inside you. “I hate to see you fret, little love,” he whispers, servos tapping against the sides of the berth he’s bound to. “Come sit with me.”

• You’re taking a step toward him before remembering that you don’t actually want to get anywhere near him and stopping short. And his grin stretches even wider. “Stop that.” He’s chained. Can’t touch you. Honestly, he’s a bit sad almost. Baring his teeth and desperate to bite. Broken. “It must be lonely.” He’d admitted to what he’d done, but part of you wants to help him.

• Smile faltering slightly, he swallows a laugh. Oh. Do you pity him? He can use that. “You have no idea,” he purrs, voice dipping and hurt. “How alone I’ve been. They don’t even try to help me, just lock me away.” And there it is. You hesitate. Are you thinking that you can fix him? How delicious. “No one’s ever given me a chance, but why would they?” Surely it can’t be this easy? “I regret so much.” Not killing more before they’d caught him for one. Not reveling in the delightful fear of death more.

• “Do you want to change?” Don’t know why you’re asking him, trying to understand him. It’s a sort of horrified fascination and pity motivating you. And a part of you wants to reach out to him. Stretching up to touch your fingers to his servos, belatedly remembering those awful needles he has. Breath catching when his servos slide against your fingertips. Gently. Those pretty blue optics hopeful as they stare at you, and you can’t look away. Can’t break that contact with his warm servos as that uncanny feeling that everything’s okay whispers in your mind. Him. Something he’s doing. “Someone should help you.”

Previous

[365emotionlessfaces]

This is going to be a 10 part fic 🙃 I wrote it for entirely selfish reasons, but if you guys enjoy it, even better.

Melissa meets a girl at The Aspiring Teachers Program, but she’s just a kid. Many years later, she meets you and wonders if she should let go of the past.

The Aspiring Teachers Program

Part 1 WC~1.5k

Melissa was thirty-five and going through a nasty divorce from a nasty man. She had been in the teaching game for a decade now, and the last thing she wanted to do was volunteer for some Aspiring Teachers Program. Well, second to last. The redhead supposed that the only thing worse would be to be spending the week in the same house as Joe.

When she had told her friend, Barbara from work, the woman had just laughed and said that she had quit going to those things years ago. Too much hullabaloo for her liking. But Melissa needed out of the house, so she decided this would be the first and the last time she signed up for this stupid program.

The end of the school year came faster than Melissa would have liked, and by the second day of summer break, her suitcase was packed and she was on a flight to Chicago, of all places. The stupid program chose a new city and a different mix of teachers every year, so there was no guarantee you’d get an invite. To Melissa, that didn’t sound like too bad a deal. Yeah, sure, she’d have to be around a bunch of eighteen to twenty year olds, answer their questions, try to get them interested in teaching, and she was definitely not thrilled about that, but it beat what was waiting at home. Plus, it was all expenses paid.

When Melissa’s taxi pulled up to the camp, the literal camp, she started to think maybe she shouldn’t have come. It was very… rustic. Looking around, she realized that this thing was a lot bigger than she had anticipated. There must be at least a hundred people walking around. She noted the woman with the bullhorn seemed to have a sense of calm in the chaos that looked to be surrounding her. As Melissa exited the taxi, the bullhorn lady could be heard calling out names and assigning them to cabins. She rolled her eyes. This was going to be a long week.

As she stood amongst the crowd, but far enough back that she had a healthy amount of personal space, she listened for her name. A girl hollering off to her left made her turn her head to see the hubbub.

“Yo, Tie-Dye Girl. A little help here!” A young girl of probably twenty or so, stood in front of a giant pile of duffel bags and suitcases and waved to a woman in her forties wearing a campy tie-dyed shirt, who promptly turned on her heel and came to the girl's rescue. Melissa rolled her eyes.

“It’s giving Parent Trap,” a voice from Melissa’s right jolted her away from the tie-dye scene and to the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed teenager that stood beside her. The shock of the girl being so close startled Melissa so much, she let out a small yelp.

“What the hell are ya doin’, kid?” Melissa snapped. “I coulda killed ya.” The girl was not affected by Melissa’s harshness, or if she was, she certainly didn’t show it. In fact, Melissa was sure she saw the girl’s grin grow wider before she replied.

“Sorry,” the girl was radiating happiness and cheer, and it was almost enough to make Melissa sick. “You were standing here all alone, so I thought I’d make a friend.” The girl’s smile was so bright and strong, Melissa wondered if the girl ever stopped smiling. “It just reminds me of a movie from when I was a little girl.”

“You’re still a little girl.”

“I’m young, sure, but I’m almost twenty,” Melissa huffed at the girl’s response. Her smile still hadn’t faltered.

“Listen, I’m not a good friend, okay? So why don’t ya go make friends with those guys over there?” The redhead pointed randomly in the crowd, hoping the young girl would get the hint and leave her the hell alone. She wanted to enjoy this week as much as she could, and having a thorn in her side would not make that task easy.

After the young girl kept trying to make conversation, and had gone so far as to introduce herself, Melissa felt obligated to at least give the kid a name.

“Em,” she had told her. When the girl asked for her full name, or even her last name, Melissa joked with her. “What are you? The cops? If you’re the cops, you gotta tell me!” The young girl laughed and seemed to leave the matter alone after that.

Melissa had gone to the restroom, and when she returned to her bags, the young girl and her bags had gone. She took that as a small blessing and continued to listen for her name. Once given her cabin, she trudged her way to it, bags trailing along with her. She pushed through the cabin door, looked around the room, and thanked her lucky stars that the remaining bed free of luggage was the bottom of one of the two bunk beds. She’d be damned if she had to climb a freakin’ ladder to get to bed!

She unpacked the clothes and most of things she brought, and headed to the mess hall where the first meeting would be held. This would be where Teacher Buddies would be assigned and Melissa got to find out who she’d be spending the next two weeks with. Melissa was considered a Veteran Teacher, despite the fact that she was only in her mid thirties. She supposed it was due to the fact that the older teachers knew better than to come to these things. Since she was of the higher rank, she would be assigned to an Aspiring Teacher. One of these fresh-faced little things that had their whole lives ahead of them, and they wanted to teach. Poor things.

When she entered the hall, it was all abuzz. It was worse than the cafeteria at her elementary school the day after Halloween. There were grown adults and young adults laughing and yelling happily alike. Despite all the noise, Melissa thought it was kinda nice to see a room full of happy faces. Even if she knew most of them wouldn’t last. She looked around and found a few faces that looked like they wouldn’t be too much trouble for the next week. She hoped that she got one of them.

She was approached by the bullhorn lady, only this time she didn’t have the bullhorn, and was told that as a Veteran Teacher, she would go up on the stage with the other Veterans and draw the name of their Aspiring Teacher. This idea was not as thrilling to Melissa as Bullhorn Lady was trying to make it seem, but she did it anyway. When it was her turn, and she pulled out the name that young girl from earlier had given her, she considered making up a fake name, and pretending that her Aspiring Teacher hadn’t shown up. Unfortunately, before she could enact that plan, Bullhorn Lady took the paper and read the young girl’s name out loud. There was clapping and hooting, and then there the girl was again.

She and Melissa made their way to a table in the back and sat down. Melissa looked at the girl as she made some comments about not believing in fate or destiny and some bullcrap about coincidences, and the redhead wondered why the girl would tell her something like that. The girl had that damn smile, still, and her eyes were… kinda shiny. Melissa wondered if she had been that beautiful when she was younger. Surely not, or she wouldn’t currently be going through a divorce.

“So, whattaya think?” The young girl asked, making Melissa snap back to reality.

“Sorry, Parent Trap. I wasn’t listenin’. Whadja say?” This time when the girl smiled, there was something else to it. The redhead noticed the difference, but couldn’t quite tell what it meant. Melissa had to work to focus on what she was saying instead of getting lost in her thoughts again.

“I was thinking that you could hit me with the worst of it first. Tell me all the horror stories about teaching, so I can steel myself for them now, ya know? And then if I can make it through those, maybe you can tell me why it’s worth it?”

Those plans were foiled before Melissa could be the one to break the girl’s heart. Bullhorn Lady announced that the week would be a series of competitions and games for the Buddies, and the free time at the end of the nights would be dedicated to asking and answering all the questions the Aspiring Teachers had. Melissa groaned. This is not what she thought this week would look like.

When she returned to her cabin after everyone was released from the mess hall, Melissa was surprised to see that not only was the young girl her Buddy, she was also one of her three roommates. ‘Oh, boy. This just keeps getting better.’ She decided that it was in her best interest to mind her business, and only talk to the girl when necessary. So she grabbed her pajamas, and changed in the tiny bathroom provided in the corner of the only slightly larger cabin. The air was warm for Chicago, which made Melissa very glad that she chose the outfits she did. When she returned to her bed in her light pink silk tank top and matching shorts, she was too focused on minding her own business that she didn’t notice the young girl’s eyes glued to her frame or how flushed the girl’s face had become.

Part Two

[pillowprince-playroom]

You said if I wanted a short story to just hit you up. Sooooo, I'm hitting you!

Prince being spanked. With a sprinkle of forcemasc maybe? Please and thank you, your highness :)

Oh yesss! This is an invitation to anyone btw. I'm a writer at heart so I looove to be given ideas for snippets!

Easy Access

Prince x Knight, contains: spanking, (implied) dysphoria, forcemasc, fingering, skirts, could be read as dubcon in the beginning

The throne room is already mostly empty when the Knight comes to pick up his Prince. It is late in the evening, the courtiers have left and only servants are still milling about. When he steps around the collumn blocking his view of the throne, his jaw clenches.

Sitting on the throne, his face buried in his hands, is the Prince. He doesn't look like himself. The hair under his crown is artfully coiled instead of brushed back like usual. Long, white gloves cover his hands and up past his elbows.

"What is this, then, your Highness," the Knight asks as he steps up.

The Prince twitches in surprise.

"I was under the impression you didn't enjoy wearing dresses, my Prince."

He sighs. "Princess, dear Knight."

"No," the Knight growls.

A moment of silence follows. Then, the Prince stands up, his skirts cascading down his legs. "Yes. It has to be."

Blinding rage bubbles inside of the Knight. He reaches out, barely thinking and grasps the Prince's arms. "I would not care if you had simply found a love for dresses, but this is ridiculous. I think you need to be taught that a Prince doesn't debase himself, doesn't make himself small for the benefit of others."

The Prince stares at him. His eyes are wide.

"Come here," the Knight commands as he pull his Prince around to the side of the throne and gives him a shove over the arm rest. "I'll teach you, little Prince." With that, he grasped the hem of the skirts and unceremoniously lifted them up, exposing the Prince's bare ass.

"What are you-" The Prince's question is cut off by a sharp slap landing on his cheek.

In quick succession, five more slaps land. "I told you I am teaching you. I'll do this until you promise never to pretend to be a girl again."

"You can't do that," the Prince shrieks. "I'm a Prince! Fuck, a Princess I mean! Spanking my bare ass is-"

"Exactly what you asked for," the Knight replies. "Skirts and no small clothes, that is called easy access, my Prince. If you wish to prevent this in the future, I suggest wearing your trousers instead."

The Prince whines. "What if someone sees?"

"They will see a silly boy disciplined. I suggest you apologise quickly."

Another whine as two hard slaps land on his thighs. "Ow, stop! Please, it hurts!"

He doesn't let up. "Say you are a Prince."

"But I have-"

A light tap lands between the Prince's flailing thighs. It shuts him up. "A dripping boycunt and a hard cock. Yes, I noticed." The Knight runs his fingers between his legs, finding the cock at the top. "See? Princesses don't have hard dicks like this."

"It's not a-"

Another tap lands on the slick entrance. "Don't think I won't spank you here too."

The Prince struggles against the strong hand holding him down. "No! Not there! Not on my cock, please!"

Above him, the Knight smiles. "Whatever you wish, your Highness. See? It's not so hard to admit. Are you ready to promise not to play Princess again?"

For a moment, the Prince is silent. His hole is leaking steadily. Then, with a quiet, almost shy voice, he says "I think I have not learned my lesson quite yet. Maybe you should put me over your knee instead."

He doesn't answer, instead just pulling the Prince up by the back of his dress, stepping around the throne to sit down, and throwing the Prince over his knee unceremoniously. His skirts get bunched up again. "Like this, your Highness?"

His only reply is a nod.

The rhythm he sets is slow and even, raining firm slaps onto the already pink cheeks before him. He feels the Prince tense in his lap but relax into the steady sensations. A few moments pass by.

"Learned your lesson yet, your Highness?"

The Prince scoffs. "You know what I want."

"I want you to say it, my Prince," the knight easily retorts, not leaving up on his smooth slaps.

"Fine," the Prince bites out and hangs his head. "Will you please finger my boycunt while you spank me?"

The Knight hums. "Who is asking?"

"No one," comes the biting reply that loses some of it's verocity to the faint motions of the Prince's hips. "Your Prince is demanding."

Finally satisfied, the Knight slides two thick fingers between wet folds and teases them over the hole before pressing in. He savors the deep groan his Prince makes in reply. "Good boy."

It doesn't take much of the fingers sliding in and out and a practiced thumb rubbing his cock before the Prince starts to clench and writhe. His cheeks burn from the continued slaps. He barely registers the Knight stopping the spanking in favour of rubbing his red butt because he finally tenses fully and cums with a desperate whine.

"No more Princess nonesense?" the Knight asks after a brief pause to let the Prince catch his breath. At the answering nod, he stands up and lits the Prince into his arms so they can kiss while he steps down from the throne. "Let's go and get you out of this costume then."

[haunted-carousel-productions]

Lessons for first-time Audiodrama creators I learned making Lavender Evening Fog

Today marks the four year anniversary of the first full episode of @lavender-evening-fog-podcast. If you want to make audiodrama, here are some lessons that I learned along the way, that will make it easier for you. We went into it loving the audiodrama artform but not knowing a lot about it, so please learn from the experience we gained making the show over four seasons.

Cut the volume you plan to put out in half. And then maybe cut that in half. There are a few ways you can do this-- for example if you are planning on every other week, put out monthly episodes instead. Or maybe rather than doing a 12-episode season, you do a 6-episode season. Or maybe rather than doing 12 half hour episodes, do 12 fifteen minute episodes. One of these ways of reducing may make more sense for your story than the others, but the takeaway is the same--producing an audio drama is a lot of work, and if you have never done it before, it is likely more work than you expect. You can still tell your story, it might just take more time. "But Victoria," you say, "I am already being very pragmatic about this!" I believe you dear reader. When we started LEF we intentionally made the episodes monthly because we knew more frequently would be difficult. Yet the plan was to have two 12-episode seasons that would involve dropping an episode every month for two years without break. About six episodes in we realized that we would burn out if we did it that way. Fortunately, because of how we mapped the story, it was very easy to convert that to four six-episode seasons. This allowed us to take breaks while still having consistency in our release cadence, because that consistency is incredibly important, and it is easiest to sustain over time if you have a handle on the work.

Have as much as possible done before you develop a release schedule. This may be the exception to #1--if you have everything done, by all means, go forward with whatever schedule you like. But it is easier to have a season done and drop episodes than to be working on it up to your release day.

If you can't have everything done before you start thinking about a release schedule, at least have the writing done and polished. Sometimes, you will need to revise pretty heavily. Especially at the beginning when you are getting the voice right. Because writing and getting feedback can take awhile, you want to give time to think about it, try to have your scripts done if nothing else.

If you find yourself relying on some part of your story too heavily, try writing a scenario without it. At the end of Season 1, we introduced the idea of Nick voicing Billy, and by the Season 2 premiere, we felt comfortable recording more interactions (remember, this project started during peak Covid). I was so excited to write for more than just myself, so I wrote a bunch of Billy scenes that didn't move anything forward. Once it was pointed out that this was a problem, I decided to send Billy to a conference. That gave me an opportunity to reframe rather than relying on a narrative crutch. This resulted in the Anna-Georgina is sick episode, which I still think is one of my favorites.

Create frameworks that make writing easier. For example, we wrote the show in little fragments of Anna-Georgina's audiodairies. That made it so much easier to plan (we know we need 8-12ish segments per ep), to write (again, if I wasn't feeling like tacking a particular big of the plot, I could work on another), and to record (The Lucy letters and the long pieces of exposition were always recorded last)

Figure out your tech before you record your first episode. We didn't fully and I'm still kind of embarrassed. Like I'm proud of what we produced starting out, but I wish we (mostly me, Nick always knew what he was doing) had figured it out earlier.

[specific-dreamer]

thinking about how when you’re 14 it’s so easy to lash out and get in arguments when you don’t really know to defend yourself properly

thinkin about pony and darry’s first almost fight post canon. maybe pony’s late for curfew or he forgot something and darry’s trying to talk to him about it but he has a way of sounding belittling whenever he talks to pony about stuff like this and ponyboy’s getting frustrated and he says a bunch of stuff he doesn’t really mean bc he’s trying to deflect.

and darry almost falls for it, he almost bites the bullet, but then he closes his eyes, ball’s his hands into fists (remembers that he’s the adult here) and in the calmest voice he can muster darry says “i’m not trying to start a fight here pony, but you are making it really difficult. i just want to know what’s going on with you”

and that does wonders. all the fight leaves pony, his body is visibly looser, and suddenly he’s got this guilty look on his face like he just got a lecture from their parents instead of darry.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

medialog august-december 2k24

i was like, should i just abandon this and start fresh in 2025... but no. also i'm putting this behind a cut bc it is long but it's shorter than it sounds bc LOL working 7 days a week is not conducive towards having the brain space to interact with a bunch of new art!!

watched

ponyo - THIS IS THE CUTEST MOVIE IN THE WORLD!!! miyazaki/ghibli is a big blind spot for me bc as a kid i was like "but i want anime to be pretty, like sailor moon..." so i never got into kiki or totoro (very stupid but again i was: A Child) and then as an adult, this is embarrassing, i tried to watch spirited away and just literally didn't get it. i was like, i am so confused about what is happening and what emotions i am supposed to be feelings. and i know that spirited away is a movie for children and this makes me stupid. but i have never pretended not to be stupid. anyway i would die for just about every character in this movie and when i watched it a second time to make nick watch it i was so full of tenderness for how lovingly it captures what it's like to be a small child who has a small creature to take care of that i felt like i could explode!

deadpool & wolverine - i think if i had been in a better mood when i saw this movie i would have disliked it more but as it was i was in a HORRENDOUS mood and, basically, had a good time. funny to watch this, the Superhero Movies Isabel Has Never Watched Cameo Show (literally i had never watched an x-men other than first class, in which wolverine only appears to say fuck off, or either of the two deadpools), and still get to experience the same OMG IT'S HIM rush as everyone else did, but for matthew mcfadyen. the guy next to me was like "i love channing tatum" when channing tatum showed up and like, same.

trap - great movie to see with a group of like 10 people with whom to giggle the whole time. josh hartnett understood the assignment and his dad-vibe era is soooo much hotter to me than his twink years ever were (not always the case for me! but between this and how hot he was in oppenheimer i've really warmed to him...). i think it's nice that m. night shyamalan loves his daughter so much. ladyraven has a ballad with the line "faustian trade-offs" which caused me and no one else in the theater to laugh real loud. her music is pretty bad but tbh in an era when people want to put chappell roan on the A-list i'm not even mad. it was funny trying to figure out her niche though because like the vibes are obviously supposed to be taylorish (the cabin onstage... lmao) but the music was giving... idk, ariana? also it's just inherently funny to make a movie premised on the fact that it would be really easy to narrow down who the serial killer is by identifying the adult men at a pop girl concert + this movie REALLY captures the vibe during the opening act no one gaf about a pop event concert, like i saw 5SOS open for 1D and that's exactly what it felt like

popstar: never stop never stopping - rewatch, duh. is this the funniest movie of all time? it's gotta be up there, right?

josie and the pussycats - also a rewatch, duh. love everything about this but most of all the soundtrack, the songs are legit incredible, no fictional band has ever had better music (rip adam schlesinger who contributed some songwriting!!!). first time rewatching this movie since figuring out some Stuff and understand now that rachel leigh cook needs to be on the Oh Those Were Gay Feelings. That's What That Was list. (rosario dawson too, but i already got there with her.)

vice - really incredible to think it would be possible to fuck up a movie about how dick cheney is basically satan but somehow mckay managed. christian bale is a professional though, i feel like we don't appreciate enough that no matter how bad the movie or how stupid the writing he's out there giving an absolute top tier performance every single time.

aliens - sorta half-watched this one but idk i feel like me and james cameron just don't vibe. not as incredible-looking or cool as the first one.

godzilla minus one - really really cute!!!!!!

jurassic park - rewatch on the big screen, still slaps the hardest of almost any movie ever

twentieth century - this is i guess nominally a screwball comedy (howard hawks, 1934, for those of you for whom that means something) but it's about these two toxic theater people who are horrible for and obsessed with each other and it's... darker... than my experience of that genre has usually been. in a way that sort of works in its favor partly because it just gives it a certain interest and partly because the gender politics of screwballs can be so dark themselves so it's kind of a relief that this one lacks the cognitive dissonance of pretending this all isn't horrible? idk. it's a weird one. but i liked it, on balance. there's a (pretty funny tbh) running gag about suicide threats and a really bananas third act plot that comes out of nowhere... great performances across the board and some real bangers dropped into the screenplay!

the substance - i didn't, like, love this, and i think a lot of common criticisms of it are right, but some are also very silly (guys i think the director knows nothing about the morning exercise show makes sense... i don't think she was going for a realistic depiction of 21st century celebrity...), and i did have a good time for the most part (the last 30 minutes is gross in a way that doesn't do it for me... but i know it does it for some people and those people deserve movies too...) and respected its commitment to its own bit, as well as the fact that it's basically a fairy tale (a woman who lives in a tower makes a bargain with a force she doesn't really understand to regain her beauty...). oh also i liked that the thing that drives the back half of the plot is essentially the idea that you simply cannot have a 22 year old's body without also having to contend with a 22 year old's dumb dumb stupid ass piece of shit idiot brain. haven't seen a lot of people comment on that aspect of it but it was like my favorite part!

female trouble - people throw out the word iconic a lot but like what else is there to say? rude, disgusting, occasionally genuinely offensive, mostly (for me) delightfully so... really great to watch with a crowd that would whoop and cheer for I'M SO GLAD I HAD AN ABORTION and THE WORLD OF THE HETEROSEXUAL IS A SICK AND BORING LIFE... also like it's really key for the way this movie functions that divine is a fat drag queen that most people do not consider the pinnacle of beauty but it's incredibly clear that john waters and this movie does... like divine's constant proclamations of her own gorgeousness are in a kind of inherent tension with the average american's disagreement with that sentiment but in a way where it's like, if you disagree you are an idiot and this movie is not yours. she's so hot in this it's crazy!!

michael clayton - i wanted to watch a talky thriller-ish movie and the men of the ringer podcast network literally never shut up about this one so i gave it a shot and it delivered! clooney predictably great but i had no idea tilda swinton & tom wilkinson were in it and they are both also awesome, as is merrit weaver in a small but very well cast role

venom - you can sort of glimpse the movie this movie would be if it weren't shackled to What A Superhero Movie Is Now / loosely to the MCU even though it pretends it's not, and i bet that movie would be a lot of fun!

black christmas (1974) - perfectly done urban legend horror with an interesting little pro choice streak, great cast, camera work so perfectly spooky and tense even i noticed how well it was done, makes good use of the cinematic potential of christmas lights. i really liked that this movie is short and a slasher but all the characters in it feel very well drawn even though we don't spend much time with almost any of them... reminded me that this is actually possible to do and i should be harder on movies that don't do it!

black christmas (2006) - nowhere near as good as the first one, but it is, uh, absolutely bugfuck crazyass bananapants start to end. my favorite of many deranged writing choices in this movie is that the sorority mother makes them all open their secret santa every year with a gift for the murderer who killed his family years ago in this house and then when one of the girls' townie boyfriend is like "this is the house that used to freak us out when we were kids" the sorority mother is like, "why?" ?????????? ok!!!!!

heretic - hugh grant is a fucking movie star. i love sophie turner and the other girl was good too. sort of loses steam once the "actually" scary stuff happens because horror movie shenanigans are hard to make as scary as the situation of two young and not very experienced girls slowly realizing they are trapped in a house with a man who just keeps pushing the boundaries of the social contract a little further, but i had fun

the apprentice - not a good movie but a great viewing experience for those of us who have reblogged in our lifetimes approx. 1 million combined gifsets of sebstan and jerbear... like yeah those are my guys and my guys did great :) i think my favorite thing about it as a movie (other than the way the "look" of it updates with technology, which is a cooler idea i wish had been used for a... better movie?) is that it really beats home the aspect of trmp wherein he has no social skills at all and has never felt authentically comfortable in a group of people in his entire life, which is something i think we should culturally be meaner to him about

gladiator - dumb (affectionate) movie magic. russell crowe has so much movie star charisma while looking so much like Just Some Guy it's literally crazy. when he kisses the little dolly of his wife who's about to die ;_;

raising arizona - miracle movie, can't believe i'd never watched this before. the coens' control of their tone is so incredible to see so early in their work (still gotta watch barton fink one of these day). incredible cast, gorgeous colors, so funny, so weirdly sweet, when it finished i felt like i'd watched a magic trick

erin brokovich - watched this for the first time since high school and like what else is there to say but Queen Icon Legend Slay? i am speaking of course about steven soderbergh but julia is pretty fucking incredible too.

conclave - i'm gonna be real i feel like the hype got to me a lil with this one because it's not as bitchy and fun as i feel like i was led to believe... also requires more buy-in re: the moral direction of the catholic church than i anticipated. however it does have its moments and it's nice to see some of our best actors being good at their jobs and it looks great!

the philadelphia story - i found this movie so delightful to watch that for a moment i really thought she might run off with jimmy stewart at the end and not get back tamed with her abusive ex..... but such was the power of the hepburn/stewart chemistry in that one drunk garden scene that i found myself totally incapable of actually integrating the gender politics of this one into my feelings towards it... like i just couldn't be mad at a movie that gave me a scene that made me want to scream JUST KISS!!!! the most anything has since the first time i watched "cooler"... do you know what that is? for me to bust out "cooler" as a comp? my god... i understand why my friend has been like that about hepburn our whole lives and am also now fully baby jimmy stewart pilled

gladiator ii - the consensus is right on this one: not as good as the first, paul mescal is no russell crowe, but denzel really ate. my friends and i laughed out loud at almost every single denzel scene. we're so lucky to have him.

wicked - bad movie of a bad musical, fundamentally misunderstands the function of songs in a musical and thus shoots every single musical number abominably, as ugly as you've heard, we are not advanced enough technologically for me to emotionally invest in CGI Goat Voiced By Peter Dinklage, but ariana deserves an oscar. the prettyboy was pretty good too. orivo can really sing but her acting was kinda giving Distressed Pixar Mom for me although i'm happy to add this to john m chu's many crimes.

out of sight - the romantic premise of this movie is CRAZY but george clooney kinds of sells it actually because and not in spite of the fact that he's one of those curious Incredibly Handsome But Not Very Sexy actors... like you believe that she wouldn't really hold a grudge against him locking her in a trunk with him, because, what, clooney's gonna act untoward? no... not him... j. lo joins andie macdowell as an actress out of whom soderbergh somehow coaxes a much better performance than experience would lead you to believe she is capable of. shockingly stacked cast of pros doing great, INCREDIBLE production design - banner movie for characters costumed to match or complement their interiors!!!

burlesque - dr. sam from new girl fucks stanley tucci in this movie... i literally can't stop thinking about that. xtina maybe has the all time highest ratio of vocal chops to charisma, she has the screen presence of a recurring character on a cancelled WB drama and then she opens her mouth and you're like, damn. i would watch an 8 season HBO sitcom of cher and stanley tucci running a failing burlesque club. at one point i said out loud "chekhov's air rights." great time

logan lucky - "what if steven soderbergh made a heist movie but decided to put his coen brothers hat on and, also, cast channing tatum as a divorced dad who wants to support his daughter's dreams but is seriously wigged out by pageant culture?" yes please. absolutely. adam driver almost never acts in movies i actually want to see but he really is one of the real ones.

babygirl - one of those movies where i can understand lots of things that didn't work for people but i, personally, was completely rapturous the entire time because i wanted a movie where i could walk out saying "nicole kidman did that" and i got that AND ALSO (a) a story about a perfectionist who hates herself and (b) sex scenes that are funny and weird and awkward and warm and human. that's so many things i love happening at once, i will happily forgive and overlook any flaws. i really just loved how much the two of them are actively figuring this thing out as they go and how that's embarrassing and goofy and also sweet and fun. plus nicole kidman really did do that, i mean, like, my god... my god....

fantasmas - you have to watch fantasmas... why haven't you watched fantasmas yet... i really struggle to imagine the person who would follow My Dumb Blog but not be into fantasmas... "the gay ones don't draw dicks, they draw eyes"... julio torres is the voice of a generation

the franchise - not quite as much of a banger as i wanted to be but likable enough, & i'm a sucker for showbiz jokes (jokes about insecure actors, etc.), although i think chris ryan had a point on the watch pod when he was like, the thing about the satire elements of this show are that if you know anything about the actual production stuff on superhero/franchise movies it's hard to satirize because like, the real stuff is actually just that crazy... there's a running thread about the overworked VFX guy and it's kinda funny but also like, well this lines up more or less with what those teams have actually said... anyway. i want to say i'm a lil bummed it didn't get renewed nonetheless but also i forgot until i was typing up the list of things to document here that i had never gotten around to the season finale, so i guess i can't really honestly claim to be that bummed lol. (watched it while washing dishes - pretty good!) did love daniel bruhl as a sensitive artiste director being soul-crushed by the studio machine though! that guy's great.

read

r. o. kwon, exhibit - this one's tough. ultimately, there were actually a lot of things i liked about this book. it had some moments that felt really human and well observed (when the protagonist says something about how usually orgasms aren't worth the guilt and then says she knows she's letting us down and her paramour says who's us and the protagonist says all women... that's funny and real and not unrelateable to me for different reasons!). the bones of it were i think ultimately solid - like yeah she's terrible at communicating but ultimately the book is about her running away from the hard fact that her husband wants a baby and she doesn't and the psychology holds water throughout, i think. (also a funny paragraph about how she knows how to cook but mostly subsists on like handfuls of nuts and bread dipped into olive oil or whatever and then she's like "and you thought i could raise a child?"... also relateable...) i REALLY related to the idea of being a person who simultaneously has the memory of experiencing the loss of faith in god as genuinely, actually traumatic and also being like "btw my family might be cursed by vengeful spirit, it's a whole thing, but i gotta try to talk to her before i do this because she kind of gave me the idea," and i really liked that the book didn't spend any effort on reconciling these two things because... i mean iykyk, like i really can't explain beyond "sometimes that's what it's like" - AND i also liked the ultimate reveal of that storyline and how it tied into the core character work of the main plot. plus the whole thing is like the "trying stuff out sexually as a vehicle/metaphor for owning your whole self" thing that i (a) have enjoyed writing in fanfiction and (b) really loved watching in babygirl lmao. unfortunately the writing was the most annoying tryhard I Get It You Have An MFA ass prose i have ever encountered... i complained about this at the time but it's craaazyyyy to use the word "mirific" three times in a ~200 page novel lmao. deranged. calm yourself. i also felt like the dialogue was really bad although i guess i can't totally rule out that this is a book about artists and artists actually are that annoying? idk though... it didn't feel stylized it just felt weird... who says "tippled"... so, ultimately i couldn't say that i "liked" this even though it had elements i admired or enjoyed.

naomi klein, the shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism - as i mentioned at the time, very enamored of its framing device in a very popular nonfiction/thomas friedman lite kinda way, but when it's not doing that (which luckily is most of the time), this is an informative and well explicated accounting of the horrors milton friedman has unleashed upon the world. i liked her fundamental argument that you can't politicize along economic grounds horrors committed under communism but not do that for capitalism, which has sort of seeped into general internet leftist thought (a testament to the success of this book) but which i appreciate more having seen how she builds her case.

the red nation, the red deal: indigenous action to save our earth - read this for a mutual aid book club that never happened lol. at the end of this book they're like "well probably none of this is new in the climate justice conversation but we don't think things have to be new to be valuable" and like... on the one hand true... on the other hand if you're even vaguely aware of climate justice discourse... not a lot here is new. i also, perhaps unpopularly, have become kind of a... idk... i mean when people are like "we can't solve climate collapse without dismantling capitalism" these days my reaction is basically "well one of those things might happen in the next two hundred years and it's not dismantling capitalism." i'm not like a tech-zealot but a... tech-realist? idk. this is not what i want to be true but it is my honest accounting of the situation. so, any argument that's like "step one: dismantle capitalism" is... it's just not where i'm at these days.

patrick radden keefe, say nothing: a true story of murder and memory in northern ireland - there are no doubt quibbles or political issues to be had with this book, a story of the troubles focused largely on a particular group of IRA members operating in west belfast in the early 70s - as an idiot coming into this subject basically cold, i would have appreciated slightly more grounding in the political situation leading up to the swelling of violence in this period - but, damn, this book is fucking mesmerizing. keefe really brings the people involved to life, particularly the young IRA members at the heart of his chronicle, and while it's clear he doesn't condone all their actions, my own sense was that he was more interested in truly understanding and making clear their own understandings of their motivations & understanding of themselves & ethical framework than he was in passing judgment (and i also definitely felt like he had a certain admiration for the integrity of someone like brandon hughes or dolours price, who were always willing to own what they did and why they did it, and a genuine disdain for how fucking crazy it is for gerry adams to rebrand as a peacenik when literally everybody knows he spent the early 70s telling people to plant bombs lmao). (also having read empire of pain... he definitely holds the sacklers in lower esteem than the IRA, lol.) the final chapters of the book also touch on the really fascinating difficult question of how you morally reckon with the revolutionary violence you did if the revolution you did it for never came to pass - this is the heart of why his fellow ex-IRA comrades feel so betrayed by adams, who has left them to shoulder the burden of that guilt alone while pivoting to the compromise they once agreed would not suffice which was part of the reason for all the violence, and it is something i think about a lot as someone who would not self identify as a pacifist and thinks the historical record leaves no doubt that sometimes violence is necessary for change but nonetheless feels very reluctant to endorse specific acts of revolutionary violence in theory. thrilling and thorny, ultimately i would say deserving of all the accolades i learned after reading it has apparently received lol.

patrick radden keefe, the snakehead: an epic tale of the chinatown underworld and the american dream - not quite as tremendous-feeling as say nothing, but that's mostly because that's a crazy high bar; this is a really fascinating look at the human smuggling trade (& other organized-ish crime) in NYC's chinatown in the 80s/90s, including the middle aged woman who was at the heart of much of it. contains: some totally deranged gang warfare stories; a really fascinating look at the weirdness of chinese immigration policy in the 90s, when china's one-child policy pushed normally anti-immigration republicans to switch on this issue for pro-life reasons (the one child policy... maybe the one thing every american politician shares the same view on, for different reasons?); interesting background on fujian, the high-outmigration region of china from whence many of the principles in this story came; an accounting of an insane boat journey gone so wrong that at one point after the would-be migrants have been trapped in a harbor off the coast of africa (i forget which country), when they finally leave, two of them decide to stay because the chinese restaurant they've opened is doing so well. i keep thinking about the fact keefe highlights that of the hundreds of doomed migrants on this hugely traumatic journey who wound up deported after crash-landing, nearly all of them eventually made their way back to the US.

kazuo ishiguro, nocturnes - my first ishiguro since my teen ishiguro phase (a concept that should really be regarded the way that teens getting into heavy metal and grunge is in pop culture e.g. a sign to check in on their mental health lmao). didn't love these but i can't tell if that's because i prefer ishiguro as a novelist or because i'm just bad at reading short stories... also to be fair there were at least 2 ishiguro novels i read back then and was like "the fuck was that" lol. some very funny moments and a lot of like, amusing portraits of unlikable people, and i do love his style, which is like, a pathologically conversational first person that years of reading since has taught me is much more technically difficult than it looks, but ultimately it felt pretty slight.

naomi klein, doppleganger: a trip into the mirror world - klein takes on, like, "the wellness to alt right pipeline" is an oversimplification but topics in that neck of the woods, inspired by the wack ass shit constantly being tweeted by Other Naomi (wolf), with whom klein is frequently confused on twitter. this is an inherently very funny premise for a book and a lot of what klein says is in my view pretty accurate, and some of her literary/theoretical musings on dopplegangers as a Thing are interesting to read, plus the whole thing is on topics of interest to me, aka Alt Right Derangement And Weird Shit People Are Up To Online. however..... so klein says that she herself was very offline until covid happened, basically, and so if you have been online longer, and especially if you have been actively reading stuff about Weird Shit People Are Up To Online, then this book is basically a smart person catching up with topics you yourself already know a lot about. so in a funny way i found this a more enjoyable read than the shock doctrine, because it's less of an unrelenting fucking bummer about human evil and suffering, but it was also less enriching, because she didn't really bring any new insight to topics that, again, are probably in the top 5 of Post Headlines I'm Most Likely To Click On. like yeah, deranged alt right types are using the language of social justice and inequality and bodily autonomy to further their various causes... tru... i mean it is tru... i also think the fact that her default is a Not Online person who only changed her vibe after covid makes her a bit more of an internet doomer bc she doesn't viscerally get the nontoxic value possible to find in Online through diligent curation lol. but i do think it was a solid accounting of the subcultures and and ideologies she explores so like i said i basically liked it and if you're less tuned into weird internet radicalization currents than i am you will probably find it informative!

suzanna clarke, piranesi - i don't even know what to say about this one, probably tied with tender as my favorite book i read last year (strong fantasy year for me i guess). it's so crazy that suzanna clarke wrote jonathan strange & mr. norrell, the most perfect book of all time, and then did this, which is also the most perfect book of all time, in a completely different way. her gift for atmosphere and voice is second to none and in this one she uses it to draw us into caring so deeply for a narrator who can't even remember his own past - the book in some ways is a mystery and the doling out of information is perfectly paced but the reason it works is because we just love this guy because of how much he loves the universe. the final chapter expresses something about survival & upheaval & change (&, sure, trauma, if you want) that, as i said before & will come as no surprise, is so so so precisely keyed into an idea so deeply important to me... ahh! just sublime!

v. c. andrews, flowers in the attic - book club!! this book is CRAZY but there's only two real things i want to say about it: (1) a lot of what's totally deranged about it is that on the one hand, it has the most gothic novel ass set-up ever - horrible incest house of dark secrets and shame, children literally living in an attic, physical decay, etc. etc. - and on the other hand in all other respects its sensibilities are the most american 70s suburban ass thing, so that it's like, a gothic novel where the evil mother goes to secretary school and the kids watch sitcoms and cut construction paper in the secret attic... like, the tonal clash is soooo crazy, it's incredible; and (2) ok so like by the time it happens you 100% want those siblings to fuck. like. you just do.

suzanna clarke, jonathan strange and mr. norrell - counting this as last year even though i read the second half in january lol. ummm best book in the world. third time through and i genuinely think it gets better every time. most purely pleasurable reading experience of all time.

stephanie mccurry, confederate reckoning: power and politics in the civil war south - ditto re timing (technically i have like a couple pages of this one left and a few more quotes to post lol). i picked this back up as a comfort reread after the election and it slaps so hard it's crazy. love to read about how a bunch of war-losing loser traitors lost in no small part because it's hard to wage war as a modern state committed to resisting the tides of modernity!!!! sucks 2 suck!!!!!

listened

maude latour, sugar water - i'm kind of obsessed with maude latour not in terms of being obsessively in love with her music, although i think she's very good, but because she's my go-to example of someone out here doing girlpop toiling away in the spotify minds unremuneratively who i would easily and even gladly swap fame-wise with basically any of the pop girls in our current rising class (thinking of olivia/chappell/sabrina... none of whom are like terrible - well ok i have yet to hear a chappell roan song i think is actually good lol but i guess she can sing and it's nice that she's gay - but also alleged newcomers like tate mcrae? addison whoever? madison beer? these are not real people stop trying to act like they're real people! ladyraven ass pop girls...). she just makes really solid, well written, inventive but still catchy pop. i returned to this short album a lot more than i expected to, often thinking i wanted to hear just the first song (a standout) and then realizing i was happy to let the rest play through. also gay stuff, if you care about that.

sabrina carpenter, short n sweet - like it's all very competent and espresso deserves its flowers but who cares? who could possibly ever care? i've been SUCH an antonoff apologist and please please please is the first song where i felt like i was hearing him as his haters hear him, it sounds like shit. there are better moments and worse moments, some ok lines, she can sing, etc., but where's the vision? where's the personality? nothing to grab on to.

beabadoobee, this is how tomorrow moves - beabadoobee is obviously talented and intelligent and her music sounds enough like a kind of music i like that i always feel like i should like her more... but i think she's a little too stripped down and sophisticated for me. that said "ever seen" was one of my top songs of 2024, total absolute BANGER

charly bliss, forever - doesn't quite live up to the heights of young enough, but given that young enough is a strong contender for my favorite album of the past decade, i'm not really sure it could. this one is pop-punkier and very hooky lots of fun, and i just love eva's taffy-pull voice and wanna listen to her sing anything. also it has a song that sounds so much like a pop punk version of a kesha song it's legit uncanny to me.

pom pom squad, mirror starts moving without me - big step up from their last album, IMO, and i liked that a lot too! ambitious in an interesting way but also lots of fun. this one also has a song that at points sounds so much like a kesha song it's crazy, as does a 2023 album i was recently listening to by underscores... i feel like we're living in a big post-kesha moment and i don't know if anyone is appreciating it enough...

pale waves, smitten - i agree with pale waves that "what if avril lavigne got really into shoegaze and was also gay" is a great idea for an album. really pretty production on this one!

070 shake, petrichor - my friend dave was like "this album might be bad but i'm obsessed with it" and i listened out of solidarity and was like, i don't like this but i can understand why you specifically would. friendship!

charli xcx, brat and it's completely different but it's still brat - i never really listen to enough albums to justify having an album of the year but something about the release of the remix album really opened up the whole project to me and i was completely obsessed with it for a while and still love it. track by track most of the remixes are not quite as good as the original track (although some, like caroline polacheck's gorgeous turn on everything is romantic, are definite upgrades), but something about the spirit of generosity that infuses the project, the way it makes it all feel like a project more than an album, the sense that charli has thrown this party and she's invited up and coming spanish rapper bbtrix alongside ariana grande, the way it's less disciplined than the album proper but more expansive, at some points grimier and clubbier and at other points more emotive and romantic... idk. feels like a whole world. the so i remix alone, like - releasing a sad song about your friend who died, and then releasing a faster song about all the fun shit you used to do, that sounds more like a song your dead friend would have produced, is one of the most loving acts i have ever seen committed through art and it made me cry even though i never connected with SOPHIE's music bc i'm not really cool enough to be into hyperpop. rooting for charli at the grammies even though i know it's not gonna happen lmao.

other

jenny holzer at the guggenheim - there was a jenny holzer installation at the guggenheim!! it was really cool!! i finally understood something @rgr-pop said years ago about how it matters that she is a visual artist and her words (incredible as they often are as words) appear physically in a space. it is in fact Different, to see them in a space. in addition to The Classics (i got so fannishly excited spotting IT IS IN YOUR SELF INTEREST TO FIND A WAY TO BE VERY TENDER lmao), the installation also included a lot of her more recent and more overtly political stuff, some of which engaged specifically with the bush ii administration & iraq/afghanistan, which made for intense viewing given that i happened to go right around the time i read the shock doctrine (as did spotting the one about how mothers who have a reason to cry should do so in public....). jenny holzer is great! so glad i could experience that!

[puppyscatorccio]

abo anon from earlier... hi

(tfem or not) alpha!yjs & omega!reader..

omega!reader who had to take so many meds for supressants and have so blockers so they could be on the soccer team, because as an omega they couldnt. and all of the yjs just thought they were a particularly sweet scented beta.

& now its winter & everyone is stuck in the cramped proximity of the cabin. but thats not readers current worry, not the starvation or the cold. the fact that they knew their heat was due anytime now, and that if it ever did come, they were so fucked.

not only cuz everyone would find out that they were lying, and that they would get in genuine trouble for doing so— but because almost all of their teammates were alphas who probably havent gotten off in awhile.

& so one fateful winter morning when they wake up absolutely soaked, achy and needy they're practically terrified. as its been hard enough keeping their scent from being super regonisable all these months, but how the hell were they gonna hide this? not just their scent— which was already a massive problem in itself— but the symptoms. the unbearable aching, the incredible sensitivity— theres just no way..

and as their mind is scrambling with ideas n shit they hear the stirring of the others, the pheromones— only intensified— making them practically double over. readers mind is practically screaming for anyone, but god damn if they arent gonna give up so easily

the real question is; are the others going to fight their urges aswell?

sorry if ts is alot feel free to ignore this LMAO 😭😭😭

also lowkey not even an ask anymore but i wrote sm so

anon, i'm gonna hold you when i say this: i love long asks. do not apologize for that! in fact, the longer and more elaborate the ask, the easier it is for me to write. / mdni, cnc/noncon if you squint

at first, i think most of them would try to control themselves. keyword, most. shauna would definitely be the first to complain that you're stinking up the whole cabin with your scent, that "it's actually fucking unbearable" and that "someone should do something about this". even though most of them internally agree, lottie is all protective, trying to keep you safe and not letting anyone hurt you. does it come from a place of her wanting you just for herself? sure, probably.

since you can't do much of anything, they lock you up in the attic for a while. it's safer for both you and them, the last thing they need is another a baby and a bunch of alphas fighting like animals over you. it lasts for about a day and a half.

i think shauna would be the first to break that rule. she's angry, stressed and needs some kind of outlet. of course, you're an easy target, just there for her to take. she would sneak into the attic when nobody's looking and have her way with you, pretty much using you for her own pleasure. of course, the others obviously hear it all with how loud you're being and decide to say fuck it, if shauna can have you, why can't they too?

after that, it's a mess. even after your heat is gone, all of them still use you like some sort of toy for their relief. nat usually does it after she's tired from hunting, lottie breeds you claiming that it's what the wilderness would want, all of them make up excuses and more excuses to why they just need to have you. it's not like they need an excuse; you're an omega stuck in a cabin with a bunch of alphas, they barely have to lift a finger to overpower you. the excuses are more for their own comfort than anything, to convince themselves that you were asking for it, that it's totally fine for them to take you anytime, anywhere.

[the-fabled-void]

What’s your opinion on Lust Sans? How do you think the creator could have handled hypersexuality better? Because honestly I don’t think it was handled very well -as a hypersexual anon myself.

What’s your opinion on Lust Sans? How do you think the creator could have handled hypersexuality better? Because honestly I don’t think it was handled very well -as a hypersexual anon myself.

I can't really say much about hypersexuality as i have no experience with it, and it's been a while since I read the Underlust comic.

One thing I have to say, I don't think NSFWShamecave probably didn't intent to portray SPECIFICALLY hypersexuality? From my understanding at least it doesn't seem like it.

Despite the way monsters behave being similar to hypersexuality, I believe the creator was trying to portray something that they believed was fictional. (The lore reason being the fact that everyone's injected with an aphrodisiac.)

And that's where a lot of the issues come from.

I will have to say, it was a genuine attempt by someone to make something with serious lore out of an AU with origins that are hard to take seriously. I would blame it on age, but I'm just gonna go on a limb and say someone with the username NSFWShamecave was at least 18 back then.

Regardless, it's not a story that's easy to tell. Even with genuine intentions, their story- you can tell it wasn't made by someone who knows their stuff.

Additionally, it seems like a kind of AU where the creator thought 'designs first, lore after'.

Which isn't a bad thing on it's own! It's interesting to already have a point in the story that the characters are at and think "okay, how did they reach it". But the creator didn't execute it well.

There's also the 'love fixes everything' vibes I remember getting with Papyton with what happened to Mettaton.

The AU itself feels kinda puritan, with Frisk needing to show the monsters true love as if they've never had it before. It feels extremely reminiscent of the internet's culture at the time, especially the Undertale fandom. I remember being very active on Wattpad at the time, and I remember on there... It was treated jokingly, but we did call anything sexual 'sin' and shamed people for being into it (12 year olds like I was SHOULDN'T be into it, but still...)

Not to mention... Chara. Obviously the character who was the fandom's genocide scapegoat, who was seem as evil back then, is gonna be made weirdly lustful. Good thing they aged them up, I'm glad this creator didn't try to dive into child hypersexuality (while it does exist, someone with those views on sexuality would not have handled that very well, and they would have received more scrutiny), but giving them the soul trait of Lust? That was probably not the best way of explaining why everyone is horny.

In short:

The main issues are that the creator was portraying a real issue bad because they didn't know it was real, and that the creator wasn't all that experienced in writing stories (and designed most characters other than Mettaton and Frisk without a story for them in mind).

As for Lust Sans himself, I didn't really answer that question specifically very well, did I?

Firstly, he suffers from what most characters in the story do.

Additionally, as a Sans, I'm gonna have to think about him in the context of the multiverse.

His portrayal is what happens when an already not too well executed idea is brought towards a bunch of kids.

Of course there were older people in the fandom, but I say the majority of us were not the intended demographic for the AU.

And kids, especially in today's day and age, are notorious for wanting to seem mature and therefore portray stuff for adults, but at the end of the day, we weren't and we couldn't.

So Lust, in especially the early fandom's eyes, was reduced to "non-consensual flirt bordering on rapist".

-

I do have my own version of the AU, slightly altered. So far it's just lore from the AU itself instead of individual characters or story. I wasn't really planning on doing much with it, and I made it before voicing my own criticism, so it doesn't really address more than the Chara sexualization. Feel free to read it if you're curious though!

[guillemelgat]

Language Goals 2025

As I said in my last post, I'm slowly getting better at figuring out how to set goals which both push me out of my comfort zone and which actually orient me towards what I'm trying to do. This year my main goal is to just remember how to be a learner again; I feel like recently I've gotten a little too in-my-head about how I need to be perfect before I speak, and actually this tends to be a problem I have in general - I won't talk to people unless I feel like I can talk perfectly, but that's not how you learn. I'm also trying to get better at setting reasonable timelines for what it takes to get to a particular level of language, which I have a better feel for at this point, and taking into account how much time I'm spending on the language every day (it shouldn't feel overwhelming if it's supposed to be a brief warmup). With these in mind, here are my goals for the year:

CATALAN

This year, I really want to speak Catalan with more people. That's the bottom line. I'm at a level where I need to be doing language immersion, and that means not being shy about not knowing how to say things or starting off the conversation wrong or any number of things (this historically has been less of a problem for Catalan with me, but for some reason I was absolutely taken out last summer and essentially went partially mute from social anxiety, so we're going to find out what was up with that and try to coax me away from it). I also want to learn to speak the Valencian dialect of Catalan better, and hopefully I'll get the chance to do that!

I'm planning to continue my reading challenge as well, but I'm going to make a separate post about that.

BASQUE

I want to improve my Basque vocabulary, and also my listening comprehension skills. I want to finish Eskamak kentzen and also watch/listen to more things in Basque. I think I just need a whole bunch of audio input - I know a lot of the words, but it's still very hard for me to parse them in speech. In order to improve my vocabulary, I want to do a quick vocab review every day when I get to the library, before I start my work. That way, I'll have a constant, easy, long-term exposure to a wider variety of words, and hopefully after a few months I'll start remembering some!

WELSH

I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with Welsh this year - I feel a bit directionless with it, so I might put it on pause until it feels like the right time to take it up again. But I'd also like to get more listening and vocabulary practice - I can understand large portions song lyrics without looking them up, which is a huge step forward for me. If watching Rownd a Rownd seems like the vibe, I might try to take that up again. We'll see, this one is more open.

MALAYALAM

Mostly, my goal with Malayalam is just to keep taking class, but also I'd really like to get over my fear of speaking. I struggle to pronounce a lot of the letters, and I don't know a lot of words, but if I work on these, I think I'd feel more confident. (I do also just need to feel okay with looking like a fool, though.) By the end of the year, I hope I'm able to have conversations in class or with my family without wavering too much, even if I forget something or mess up the pronunciation.

OTHER LANGUAGES

One main thing I want to work on is learning how to learn a small amount of a language but still being able to use it with people. There are a few different languages which I've wanted to learn for a while but haven't had the time - I'm hoping that maybe I can work up the courage to learn a few phrases, talk to someone, and perhaps learn a thing or two. This is very open-ended, but it's more a challenge for me to expand my comfort zone.

Aaaand that's a wrap! Here's to 2025 being a good year for languages, at least!

[hinamie]

alongside someone like you

[tubbytarchia]

I see so so many videos and comments and discussion from people including artists expressing grievance and cringing in one way or another at modern and performance art, and all I can think is damn. That sort of art is really goddamn effective when it gets this much publicity and attention from people trying to cope because it gets under their skin so easily and not realizing the irony

At this point there's no modern or performance art I don't respect (other than ones that cause harm to animals 😐) just for being able to so effortlessly get reactions out of people. Like the "who's afraid of yellow, red and blue" paintings that to most people look like solid boring colors, 'how in the world is that art?' and all that, and yet, fittingly for its name, it gets vandalized (and is also impossible to restore because no one can replicate the intricate technique of the author). Some things never change. Godspeed modern and performance artists

[lunar-years]

obviously Jamie not being in season 4 would suck mostly because I simply want Jamie to be there and to get more of his story and get to enjoy more interactions between Jamie and the other characters. At the end of the day though, I can just not watch s4, which I'm perfectly okay with.

what sucks EVEN MORE to me, and is far harder to avoid, is that not having Jamie in the show totally changes the *canon* of the character in a way that will inevitably bleed over into fan spaces, regardless of whether or not I'm actively watching. However they write him out (I assume it would just be having him go to another team) becomes the new "Jamie Tartt canon." And that small thing totally changes his story and we don't even get to see it play out! When i was perfectly happy playing in my sandbox of a million equally valid possibilities.

[hyumjim]

just some of my little opinions btw