#they don't really do much in the way of fabric crafts

[victorluvsalice]

It’s Spring Thursday in the Chill Valicer Save, and I have another longer update for you! Mostly because this one took a couple of play sessions to get through, what with me hopping into Build/Buy Mode a couple of times to make improvements to the Valicer Farm and the Van Liddelton Groceries store. Let’s start with what was going on with the home lot first --

I. While I still haven’t figure out precisely what I want to do with the extra space in Victor’s greenhouse yet, I did at least find some cute decor to add to the “crafting wall” thanks to the old Cottage Garden Fan Stuff pack! :) Victor now has a pretty little potting bench, with pots and seeds, a book for research, and a plant being prepped for repotting. It’s just a little thing to make the greenhouse look more greenhousey. :)

II. I moved the wind farm from behind the barn to the side of the lot by the path! There was plenty of open space there to work with, and arranging all our various ground-based wind turbines freed up the space behind the barn for other stuff. Plus it actually allowed me to add one more wind turbine to the lot, which should hopefully help more with power production. The water collectors got moved too, to the other side of the path up against the house -- it felt like a logical place for them. Plus it’ll make it easier to maintain all this stuff -- yes, the gang all have various teleports, but it’s nicer when you don’t have to go all the way to the back of the lot, right?

III. I actually moved the entire barn up a couple of tiles and created a new cow paddock! Yes, now that they have a grocery store, I figured they should try again to get some large livestock, and I figured a cow would be the smartest option so they could offer eggs AND milk. And the best place to put the little shed, and thus the paddock, seemed to be the back of the barn, so -- yeah! I threw in a few fun decorations just to liven the place up (like a Patchy, and a Cottage Garden Fan Pack water fountain that looked a bit like a watering trough), and moved the chicken coop’s enclosure over to intersect with it (so the chickens can visit the cow if they so desire). Took a little fiddling to get just right, but I’m pretty happy with the results! Now they just need the actual cow. . .

IV. And in general yard clean-up, I moved the tree that was previously sitting in the middle of the back boarder of the lot over by the new back porch to help fill in some of that empty space, did a little terrain painting and rearranged the rocks on the path a bit, and put some nice flower bushes along the sides of the path to the front porch. Just a few things to give the yard more interest and cover up some weird blank spots!

V. Oh, and this doesn’t have anything to do with me fiddling in Build/Buy, but you’ll notice that the insect terrariums look a lot different -- that’s because I downloaded some of @brazenlotus‘s mods, and the Core Mod actually changes their look. Had to make sure that it didn’t conflict with All Bugged Out by Lot51, but I do kinda like the jar style!

Whew! Lot to do, but I’m pretty happy with the results. :) Shame they really only have one strip of open backyard left, but eh -- sacrifices must be made! And as for actual GAMEPLAY. . .

-->Alice got up early and, after an adorable interaction with Shadow (seriously, look at that, how cute), transformed into her werewolf form to go out on a hunt! Always a good way to get both a meal and some nice werewolf XP, I’ve found. :) And I made sure to take a quick dip into CAS first and make sure she had her tail on ALL of her werewolf “outfits” so it didn’t randomly disappear on me. XD

-->Smiler, meanwhile, took advantage of a burst of power to play a little Sims Forever (as chaotic as the original), before getting a notice that one of the hatchable eggs in the coop was ready! (Well, okay, SHADOW got the notice, but as the DOG can’t help hatch any eggs. . .) So they flew down and hatched the latest chick -- another rooster! Which, uh, means that we won’t be keeping this one, as we don’t really need a third one. I PROBABLY won’t trade it for meat? Maybe? We’ll see. :p

[nonasuch]

Miss Universe National Costume 2024, Part 2!

Splitting this off into a new post so I'm not clogging up everyone's dash quite as much.

Miss Malta is some sort of environmental protection Sailor Scout. I think the giant bow would look better on the back of the skirt but otherwise this is solid.

It has just come to my attention that I skipped over Miss Albania and several other A/B countries, back at the beginning. I sincerely apologize! She went to all this trouble putting together a Fifth Element cruise ship passenger costume, and I nearly missed it.

Miss Armenia, in what even I have to admit would be a legit Princess Leia fit.

Miss Bahrain, adding some green to her Gold And Vaguely Historical look, along with what is either a comically large prop chalice or an upside-down lamp.

Miss Bangladesh appears to believe that adding two plush tigers from the toy store around the corner from the pageant venue will conceal the fact that she is just wearing a tiger-print evening dress. Miss Bangladesh is incorrect.

Miss Belgium. Girl. No.

Miss Belize let the seventh-grade art class do her whole costume, which was a bold choice.

Okay, I think that's everyone I missed! Back to alphabetical order. And I should have to rely less on shitty screenshots, now. Some countries were benefiting from the low resolution, tbh.

Kind of feel like Miss Maldives had a luggage mishap and she's just wearing the outfit she packed for a slightly dressy dinner.

Miss Martinique's costume would honestly have looked better in the shitty screencap version. The construction is... bad. It's bad.

Feel like we're in a little bit of slump here. Miss Mauritius did not stick enough butterfly appliqués to her gown to conceal that it is, in fact, just a regular evening gown.

Slump officially over! We are so back. Everyone say thank you, Miss Mexico.

I would like this better if it had just committed to the giant skirt and not felt the need to make it a Sexy Miniskirt look. Sorry, Miss Moldova.

Miss Mongolia wanted to stand out from all the other gold armor on stage, so she decided to a) wear cooler armor and b) bring a bow and arrow instead of a sword. Great work, Miss Mongolia.

Starting to feel like I'm picking on the smaller countries that probably don't have a huge pageant culture or the budget for really elaborate costumes, but on the other hand Miss Montenegro's costume is super low-effort AND the fabrics look cheap, so what am I supposed to do?

Okay, this looks like a pretty standard Miss Universe Sexy Bird, yes? Well, THIS is how Miss Myanmar entered the stage:

She had to fight her way out of that thing! God only knows what the visibility was like in there.

I think the hat is doing most of the heavy lifting to keep Miss Namibia's costume from being Just An Evening Dress, sadly.

Oh, yikes. It's more obvious in motion but Miss Nepal's bodice looks like it's made of craft foam and it fits real weird. The rest of it looks a little like she got together with Miss Cyprus and a pile of tablecloths for a sewing bee last night, I'm sorry to say.

Miss Netherlands has chosen a Tribute to Delft. I think if I were in charge of this costume I would do a much fuller skirt that falls from the waist, instead of the weird trumpet-skirt-with-hoop we've got here. And, obviously, I would make the windmill on the bodice actually spin.

It looks like she's having some issues keeping the wings and peplum in place, but I really like Miss New Zealand's costume from a design perspective. It at least slightly resembles the bird it's supposed to be (New Zealand fantail) and I think the feather pattern is meant to be in a Maori art style.

Miss Nicaragua is a Sexy Cathedral, which I think might be a Miss Universe first and is definitely a big old step closer to drag.

Okay, pausing here to get the next batch ready.

[x-brik-x]

I'm seeing a lot of people say that punk fashion is expensive and inaccessible, which is very wrong. here is a list of some ways you can make punk fashion easier, cheaper and more accessible for you, since that's... kinda the whole point.

others are encouraged to add onto this!! (just don't recommend corporations like amazon. not cool.)

1. patches!! you don't need to buy them. DIY patches are not ugly or boring. in fact, they are encouraged here!! DIY, in my opinion, is always the best thing to do when it is an option and is safe to do so.

2. speaking of DIY, spikes!! you can make them!!

cut the top and bottom off of an empty can. cut down the middle of the cylinder and flatten it, so it's just a flat rectangle of metal.

cut out a shape that is kind of a third of a circle, but around 3/4 of the curved edge is taken up by triangle shapes. (I'm not very good at describing, so here's a badly drawn picture)

roll it into a cone, leaving the 4 triangles sticking out at the bottom. this bit is optional, but you can fill it with hot glue to make it more sturdy, just be careful touching the hot metal. I tend to hold the cone by one of the triangles with a bit of fabric wrapped around my fingers for this bit. cut 4 small holes in your fabric in this kind of shape:

and put the spiky bits of triangle through the holes. fold the triangles in on themselves to secure the spike in place. boom. spike obtained. this is one I made and attached to a little piece of fabric to test this method out:

3. battle vests!! (like the base jackets). the best places to buy these are charity shops and second hand websites in my opinion, but if anyone else knows any better options, please reblog with those!!

a good trick I find works well on eBay is to filter search results to your country (or state? can you do that in the US? idk) so that a: fast delivery because local, and b: all the sellers of everything that shows up are in YOUR TIME ZONE.

why is this important? when people sell something for really cheap, it goes FAST. check eBay at like, 2am or something. all the scalpers in your area are asleep. grab the cheap stuff while they can't.

4. sewing!! want patches, but can't sew for whatever reason? I've heard of a lot of people with joint conditions like arthritis complain about the inaccessibility of patch stuff, and that does sound extremely annoying, however:

safety pins!! while they are still a little fiddly, they're much less work so you don't have to fiddle about for long. if you can, you could even ask a friend to help, since it doesn't take long at all I'm sure someone will be willing to help out!! (I know I would, but that's just me, and I love this kind of thing). safety pins on clothes are also widely considered to be a symbol of solidarity, so if anything, you're adding some extra love and meaning to your patch pants/battle jacket.

if that's still too fiddly, fabric glue is always an option. unfortunately this means you won't be able to remove/reposition patches, at least without leaving a massive patch of residue, but if you're ok with that then fabric glue is probably your best bet.

for people who prefer sewing: as for where to get the thread, I've heard a lot of people recommending dental floss, as it's apparently much cheaper and works just as well. I haven't tried this myself so can't confirm that, but I thought I'd share it regardless.

5. where to get fabric!! old clothes. rip em up. you don't need any kind of fancy fabric from the craft store. my patches are made of old jeans that I grew out of.

don't have any old clothes and you don't want to waste any good ones? I'm not sure about other countries, but in the UK, as long as you're not on private property (trespassing), dumpster diving is perfectly legal.

I definitely ;) do NOT encourage ;) trespassing rich people's land ;) to steal from their dumpsters ;)

or tbh it doesn't matter too much how rich the person is, since it's all going to landfill anyway. if it's in the bin, it's free game, but you didn't hear that from me. ;)

please add onto this where you can!! and if I missed something or got anything wrong, add that on too!!

[lissomelace]

THE EUROPA CLIPPER LAUNCHED THIS MORNING, AND I AM SO NOT NORMAL ABOUT IT!!!!!

Space is so fucking awesome. We're headed to one of JUPITER'S MOONS!

Every time a launch happens, it makes the latent space enthusiast in the back of my brain jump up and down. It also derailed all my plans for today. I did have plans.

Instead, someone made one comment about how I could now maybe make mission patches on my embroidery machine, and the space thing crossed over with my current hyperfixation (silm) to produce THIS:

Mission patch for the launch of Gil-Estel! A bit messy, but a good place to start!

Design and linguistics details under the cut, because I put WAY too much thought into it and now must talk SOMEONE's ear off about it. Feel free to ignore this bit:

So, to start: Elvish NASA. I chose to call them Vardildi Elengolmo Vilciryamoyë, or VEV. The Followers of Varda, Astronomers and Astronauts. This could very much be totally wrong. Vardildi is Varda+the suffix used in Yavannildi, the followers of Yavanna. Elengolmo comes from the coined word for astronomer, Elengolmë (star-lore), with the -o suffix from nolmo, wise person. Vilciryamoyë takes the vil- from the root of vilya, meaning air, sky. ciryamo is mariner, and yë is the suffix added to the second word meaning 'and'. (I may be very, VERY wrong on this! If anyone has better ideas, I very much welcome input/guidance/constructive criticism)

So I stuck the tengwar for this on either side of the patch. (None of the tengwar is all that legible, though, I'm working on getting that sorted out) Most NASA mission patches don't actually have NASA on them, but I put it on anyway. Here is the tengwar and the start of a logo I made an attempt at (the tehta is supposed to be a shooting star, but that did NOT come through clearly in the embroidery [because it's tiny]):

(Probably going to try to make an elvish NASA patch before too long, honestly)

Most NASA patches (from research I did with great self-restraint here) have the (last) names of the astronauts. Not sure if they also have the name of the craft or if that's generally somewhere else, but I put both--Eärendil Ardamírë (his fathername and mothername) are the tengwar at the bottom of the patch, and Vingilotë is written on the keel of the ship. None of these are legible because they are small, and my machine has limits. It's a work in progress. Also I apologize for the bad lighting in the photo.

NASA patches sometimes also have a mission motto. That's the tengwar across the top of the patch here-- aiya Eärendil elenion ancalima, Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars (a common cry among elves and Frodo [when facing Shelob]).

(I half wanted to do something a bit more funny--maybe something like 'Now I have become Venus,' or 'Do I get to come down?' but this was a bit easier since it comes pre-translated into Quenya and tengwar, and also I have no faith in my Quenya translations that are any longer than a word)

The horizon is flat because Númenor exists, in the middle there between the shore of Middle-Earth and a teensy bit of Valinor and the Enchanted Isles.

The design for the Silmaril is sort of taken from the heraldic device Tolkien designed for the Silmarilli (though it isn't clear), and it is rayed with the six-pointed star from Eärendil's device. (I stuck the moon phases from the same source around the edges as well)

This was really fun, even if it might be the silliest thing I've ever made! It definitely needs some workshopping--i don't mind the black lines framing some sections from the background fabric, but I might try turning all the tengwar into lines of stitches instead-the satin columns really are illegible.

I now need to restrain myself from doing some sort of NASA/Astronaut Earendil AU, because it now sounds kind of fun (I do not have the background knowledge for this)

Sources:

NASA patches here: https://www.shopnasa.com/collections/patches

Quenya translations here: https://www.elfdict.com/

Tengwar transcriptions here: https://www.tecendil.com/

And if you want info on the Europa Clipper mission, here: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/europa-clipper

Embroidery digitization done with Embrilliance Stitchartist 1, embroidery done with a Brother SE630 machine. Thread is Brothread Cotton and YLI cotton bobbin thread, with a little sulky rayon on the Silmaril. Cloth is a black linen from Fabric Wholesale Direct.

[aventurinemybeloved]

Summary: Aventurine wouldn't mind being your personal mannequin forever if it meant having you this close to him

Fem!reader who's a popular fashion designer all throughout the universe, currently just "friends" with aventurine here, more like sugar daddy tho- very self indulgent because I have my oc in mind while writing this lol

"Not that I'm questioning your process when it comes to your craft, but aren't you tired?"

"Hm nope, not at all are you?"

"I've handled far worse than just standing for a few hours, don't mind me friend, continue"

While that wasn't exactly a lie, it has been a couple of hours since Aventurine was made to be a makeshift mannequin for you, this was supposed to be a day to relax and take both your mind off work.

But it seems that inspiration has struck the minute you laid eyes on a particular fabric store that just got a new stock on a handful of interesting designs, without a second thought you rushed in, your companion had looked away for one second and the next he sees that you've already made yourself comfortable shuffling through the many options to choose from.

As he made his way back to your side, the faint sound of you mumbling under your breath could be heard clearer and clearer, while he didn't quite catch all of it, he was able to piece some things, one of which you wishing you had your mannequin back at the boutique right about now.

"Hey, why not use me for a bit?"

While Aventurine obviously isn't a mannequin, he can sure act like one if you need it, and that you did so you agreed without putting much thought into it, making a mental note to make him a little something as thanks.

And now here you two were, in the middle of the store as you try to pin fabric with your hands on Aventurine's body, he expected this to happen after all he's not the type to willingly volunteer for something without it benefiting him in some way, but he was not prepared for how close you'd be.

Practically an inch away from him, chest against his as you maneuver the fabric in your hands all over him trying to come up with a design in mind, his nose catching a whiff of your shampoo as the top of your head was practically in his face, he's mastered the art of keeping a poker face but a couple hours of this, no one can blame the man for cracking as time goes on.

Luckily for him it seems you've finally finished whatever it was you were doing, he can't even remember even though you were talking about it earlier, his mind growing muddled with serotonin.

He managed to snap out of it as you call over a worker to place an order for your chosen items, and of course pay for it, Aventurine beat you to it though handing his card while softly smiling.

"It's on me"

"What? Aventurine I can pay for it myself, there's really no need to-"

"I insist, it's a treat for how much I enjoyed being your little helper"

Just as you were about to contradict him, insisting even more that you should be the one paying since he already helped you, the worker has already swiped his card handing it back to him and walked off to prepare your order.

You could only facepalm, this wasn't the first time that he has thwarted your attempts at paying for your own things, he's done it so many times you've lost count, and while it's a fact that all of it combined wouldn't make a dent in his wallet, you still couldn't hell but feel guilty.

Not for long though as you could feel a hand gently patting your head, peaking up at him you could see a soft smile on his face.

"You know the deal~" he said in a singsong way

You playfully rolled your eyes

"Yeah yeah, Just let me know when you're free and we'll hang out again"

It was weird to you at first how that was the only thing he wanted after spending so much on you, but overtime you've sorta started to understand it, and want it as much as he does as well.

[sillysillygoofygoose]

Hey I just saw Ur account and I was wondering can you do a nanami protective x Y/n

But y/n is wearing a really short skirt with a shirt revealing her breasts pls ?

Oooommmmgggg, yesssssssss 😩😩 I love protective Nanami because he's such a gentleman... thank you so much, anon, for your ask!! Hope I did it justice 🤭 kinda angsty, I'm sorryyyy ☹️

I've Got You ♥︎

"Where are you headed again, sweetheart?" Your boyfriend's baritone voice echoed through the hall of your small apartment while you finished zipping up the back of your flimsy skirt.

Three gentle knocks wrung out against the thin wood of your bedroom door before you gave the 'O.K.' and Nanami gently twisted the knob, peeking his head in.

"Just going to that new bar... for Gojo's birthday? You remember, don't you?" The innocence of your tone and the slight pout on your face as you reviewed your makeup in the mirror almost distracted him from your new outfit. Almost.

"Oh." Was all he said as his eyes slowly fell to your toes, not yet secured in the stiletto heels sitting by your desk, slowly walking up to the puckered line of fabric ghosting across your upper thigh. His eyebrows lifted as did his eyes, and finally, he landed on the deep cleavage top you wore, clinging and encasing your chest.

You turned towards him in confusion at the monotone, borderline uninterested sound of his singular word.

Kento stared back at you, the tiniest smirk on his sharp features as he admires the necklace hanging on your neck, falling between your collar bones. A simple 'K' intial, adorned with small diamonds.

You wait for him to say anything else, characteristically quiet, but shockingly unopinionated.

"Hm. What time do you have to be there?" Nanami's face once again flattens as he peers down at his watch, adjusting the cool silver on his skin.

"About 9:00, I think...why?" You ask, preoccupied with hanging other wardrobe options back on their designated hangers. What seals the deal for Nanami was the way your tits puff out from the neckline of your top as you lean over the bed.

He turns on his heels, leaving your room but not before adding, "Be ready to leave in thirty."

...

This isn't really Kento's scene. At all. Loud music, bright lights, and sweaty strangers. He wasn't the happiest when he found the "new bar" was more like a lively club. He sticks out like a sore thumb. With his hair gelled back, a white button-up shirt, his beige suit jacket, and stiff dress pants, he was undeniably Kento. It was almost laughable, the way he looked so out of place.

Gojo was ecstatic to see his buddy, and the only thing getting Nanami through the night was the feeling of your arm around his waist. Until it wasn't. You were nowhere to be seen after he handed you a twenty dollar bill to get a drink for you to share. Nanami's eyes were shifty as he nodded away Gojo's yapping before holding his hand out, a simple, "Excuse me," leaving his lips as he began stalking through the crowd to find you.

It didn't take long before he saw you, wrist stolen by an unknown lanky man as you were looking opposite to him, seemingly trying to ignore him.

Nanami mumbles small 'pardon me's' as he pushes his way through the mass of heated flesh.

...

You couldn't feel more uncomfortable... almost guilty. You thought the outfit was a little much, but you felt good. You LOOKED good. But now you didn't feel good at all.

You walked up to the bar, smiling as the bartender quickly took your order and crafted your drink. Naturally, you were approached but quickly made it known that you were taken, happy, and uninterested. He didn't care, though. He wasn't even listening, too focused on looking down your shirt.

You attempted to stutter your way out of the situation, grabbing your drink from the bartender, fleeing before you could collect any change. You didn't make it very far before you felt a hand on your wrist and a drop in your stomach.

...

Nanami felt anger bubble up in his chest as he caught a glimpse of tears prickling up in your eyes. He pushed against people more aggressively, finally making his way to you.

Without thinking, he grabbed the man's wrist, replacing yours with his hand, politely (harshly) shaking the man's hand as if he were in a furious business meeting.

"I don't think we've met before. You know my wife?" Nanami smiles, not letting it reach his eyes as he uses his other hand to pull you into him by the waist.

"Your wife? Uh, sorry, man, I didn't see a ring." The man no longer seems so confident as your stoic man finally drops his hand.

"It's too expensive to wear to a place like this. Wouldn't want something to happen to it. I assume it costs more than your yearly income." Kento stands up a bit taller as he feels you mush your face against his ribcage, resting into him. Trusting him.

The man mumbles something along the lines of, "shit dude, my bad," before stumbling off, conquered.

Kento turns to you, examining the red marks on your wrist before bringing it to his lips.

"'M so sorry, dear." He leans down so you can hear him, only making your increasing sniffles more prominent in his ear.

"No, no, Ken. Don't apologize. I just - I... can we please go home? I'm sorry, I should've know. Shouldn't of worn this." Tears stream down your face as you feel the guilt over take your heart, eyes filling with salty shame.

"Don't say that. You look very beautiful, sweetheart. That man was just an animal." Kento rubs your back as he leads you to the exit, shrugging away your worries about leaving without saying goodbye with a, "I'm sure they'll understand, honey," and a kiss to the forehead.

Once you get outside, Kento places his lightly burnt-shaded business coat on your shoulders, picking you up bridal style as he makes his way down the empty street. You inhale deeply for the first time since you walked into the stuffy, overcrowded club, taking in the smell of fresh air and your sweetheart. Your heart beats in tune with his as he holds you close, resting his head on yours. And you're safe.

Hope you enjoyed! Xoxo

Thanks so much again to Anon! I love asks, they're like little presents 🤭

[nellyofthevalley]

wedding dress

astarion x fem!tav rating: explicit content: wedding night, marriage/domestic living, sad and sweet, stupidly soft tailor astarion, smut but it's not the focus (cunnilingus, fingering, piv), death. summary: astarion makes tav's wedding dress and looks back on their life together. i don't want to say too much, just read it :)

Hand-making a wedding dress was hard work, but he loved it. He would lose himself in it and insisted that he be the one to craft it because he couldn’t trust anyone else with the task. No other dress could do his love’s beauty justice, but he’d spent years perfecting the arts of tailoring and studying her—he knew better than anyone what was worthy of being draped on her body.

based on this post by @spacebarbarianweird! i hope i did the concept justice. it was a joy and a challenge to write.

i really hated writing the vows lmao don't laugh

read it on ao3 or below the cut

i'll be here

Astarion spent months and months in his study sewing away at the white fabric. All day, all night; the hours passed without notice. Not until Tav would softly knock and enter and put her arms around his neck and shoulders and ask him to retire to their room with a heavy yawn, taking care to avert her eyes from his project.

Hand-making a wedding dress was hard work, but he loved it. He would lose himself in it and insisted that he must be the one to craft it because he couldn’t trust anyone else with the task. No other dress could do his love’s beauty justice, but he’d spent years perfecting the arts of tailoring and studying her—he knew better than anyone what was worthy of being draped on her body.

“Come to bed, love,” she’d say, and he thinks of it often. He remembers exactly how she said it; he remembers her tone, her voice, the way she’d kiss his ear and down his neck to entice him on the nights he was particularly engrossed in his work.

He remembers one evening he’d been in his study since the minute they woke and shared ‘good morning’s, so close to finishing the skirt; she entered quietly and startled him, trailing her hands from his neck down the front of his shirt, begging for him to come to bed with a whispered ‘please’ that he couldn’t say no to.

He finished the line of stitching he was on and set the dress aside, turning his head to look at her and steal a kiss from her plush lips, just as eager to kiss her as he was in the beginnings of their relationship. The passion and desire never faded in the slightest, not after so many decades, and not even when they fought and yelled and cried.

Astarion kissed her over and over again with haste, cupping her cheek; he could hear the blood course through her body and feel the warmth rush to her face, a lovely, irresistible display of her own desire. He rose to his feet and picked her up, her legs draped over his arm and hers around his neck as he carried her to their bedroom.

“Darling, you’ve interrupted my very important work,” he said as he laid her down to the bed and crawled on top of her, trapping her under his weight. “I have a deadline to meet, you know.”

It was only a few weeks until their wedding night. The whole thing was a formality really, they’d been living as if they were married for years—rings and all, but Tav insisted on it. She dreamt of walking down the aisle as a little girl, she said, and Astarion relented despite his protests. But after a few weeks, after he’d started working on the dress, he was just as hellbent on it as she was.

“You’ve been working so hard,” she replied, fingers impatiently tugging at the collar of his shirt.

“For you,” he reminded her. “But now, I’ve lost my focus.”

She managed to unbutton half his shirt before he bent forward to press his mouth to her neck, giving her tender kisses down to her collarbone. He lifted her nightdress, pulling it over her arms and head and continued kissing down her front, slow and damn near torturous, relishing in how her heart raced for him; true power, he thought, was the power to make her plead for more.

“My sweet love,” he purred, finally tugging at the sides of her underwear and guiding them over her legs. “I’m afraid I can’t return to my work until I’ve tasted all of you.”

Never had Astarion felt more alive than on their wedding night.

A very quaint, private affair in the woods with the friends that could make it: Shadowheart, Wyll, Halsin, and a few friends they’d made in the city attended. Gale, honored by Tav’s request, officiated and he’d never seen Astarion looking so… elated, and so regal; the nobility in him blossoming in his white and gold attire, a fine suit and eccentric jabot. Astarion certainly softened during their journey, but here, he was far more than that: he bore a beaming smile that not even a God could wipe from his face and when Tav finally came out with her dress, the dress that he worked on days and nights for months, he watched her, thoroughly enraptured by her, as if the world around them had simply dissipated.

“Beautiful,” he whispered as she approached.

All he saw was her. Gale, the guests, the arch blanketed in flowers and strands of magicked lights were little more than a blur in his peripherals. Astarion lifted a hand to her face and delicately ran his fingertips across her cheek—the touch of her warm glow never lost its appeal—and brushed her lips with his in a modest, affectionate kiss.

“Usually, we save that for the end,” Gale joked.

“No chance in the Hells I’m waiting that long,” Astarion retorted, blithely aware the ordeal would last a mere few minutes. “And where did you find such a perfect, magnificent, finely crafted dress, love?”

It was his best work, and he was sure he’d never set his eyes on anything sweeter than her wearing it.

The bodice top of the dress hugged her waist exquisitely and donned a sweetheart neckline covered in detailed floral embroidery. The skirt was long and composed of layers of netted fabric with more scattered, intricately sewn flowers; it had an almost ethereal, softened look about it as it flowed when she walked. He’d spent weeks alone searching for the finest material with a cost difficult to swallow, but worth every last coin.

She was the embodiment of grace and elegance in it—like royalty, a beauty beyond the imagination.

How they gazed at one another while Gale officiated went unnoticed by not a single person; the vibrancy of their love and devotion radiated off from them as it breathed life into the air, and captivated every guest—every friend.

Astarion hadn’t cried since he killed his master, but a tear gathered at the edge of his eyes as he recited his vows.

You’ve given me something to care for. I choose you. I give you my hand, my love, my soul, and with you, I live again. I’ll always be here, my love.

Tav didn’t share his same composure, she couldn’t stop crying; she wept as she made hers, and through every word, he held her face gently in his palms and wiped them away.

Where you go, I’ll go. Where you stay, I’ll stay.  I give you all my love, my passion, my heart; it beats for you, belongs to you, for eternity.

“Careful not to let your makeup run onto that dress, dear,” he smirked. 

She managed to hold her tears as they exchanged rings—old but new; not the ones they’d been wearing for years as she expected to see, but ones Astarion had saved ever since they found them in the shadow-cursed lands. Tav extended her fingers and looked at hers, a cute little cute little alexandrite gem on a simple golden band.

There was something enticingly dangerous and bittersweet about them with their magical warding bond and tragic tale of the couple who once possessed them.

Astarion insisted she wear the ring of embrace, reminding her of his enhanced healing abilities since being freed of the tadpole and arguing, “My life has flourished with you, now let me protect you with it.”

“You may kiss the bride,” announced Gale, taking a deep breath before continuing, “again.”

Astarion reeled her in with one arm behind her waist and his free palm took one of hers, intertwining their fingers; he brushed his lips against hers, remarkably subdued as he taunted her with a little peck and gentle nip on her bottom lip before sweeping her into a deeper, heated kiss.

When he pulled away and lowered the hand on her back, she heard a sniffle coming from Gale.

“Are you… crying?” Tav asked with a laugh, still resisting her own cry, but when Astarion was the one to walk up to Gale and wipe his tears away, she couldn’t keep from weeping any longer.

They rented a lavish room in the Upper City and joked about becoming part of the snobbish high society for a night on the walk there, drunk on their new life, her new name. It must’ve only been two seconds they were in their room before Astarion swept her into his embrace, taking her by the waist and gently pushing her to the closed door.

“Astarion, wait,” Tav said, giggling as he removed the space between them and pressed his body flush against hers. 

“Darling, I’ve been so patient already,” he argued, his hands meticulously removing the ties and pins keeping her hair perfectly in place. “I’ve been waiting ever since I set my eyes on you in this dress.”

She turned her head and tried to shy away as Astarion kissed the tip of her nose, her cheek, and beside her ear; he continued, “It’s been utterly distracting.”

His cold kisses spread goose flesh through her arms and raised all the tiny hairs at the back of her neck. No matter how many times it’d been, he could always incite her fierce need for him, crumbling her into dust with his carefully crafted words and sweet touch…

“Don’t you know how hard it was for me to focus on reciting my vows for you, when all I could think of was tearing the dress from your body and making you cry for me?”

Astarion knelt and lifted the front of her dress, draping it over his back and disappearing beneath. He hummed with satisfaction in the way Tav’s breath caught when he slipped his fingers under her underwear and kissed her over the dampening fabric. 

“Seems it was hard for you too, wasn’t it?” he teased as he slid the garment down her legs. 

“Oh, shut—ah.”

She wished she could see him—his face on her cunt, wearing that devilish look he had when she glanced down at him, every time, well trained in picking up on every small thing that made her weak between the thighs—but he loved to toy with her and slapped her hands away when she tried to raise her dress with a tsk.

Tav‘s palms tightened against the wall and her legs quivered while Astarion lapped at her cunt like it was every bit as delectable as her blood. He worshiped her with his tongue, tasting every part of her he could reach—and when she started to truly unravel, legs shaking and weak and her mouth unable to keep its quiet, he gripped her hips firmly and swept the very tip of his tongue across her clit. 

“Astarion, I’ll—”

Ah, her protests only encouraged him. Two fingers slowly pushed into her cunt, coated in her fluids; she pawed at the wall like she was trying to rip through it as Astarion licked and sucked and curved his fingers inward. His pace hurried, curling and nudging her inside between thrusts until at last, she threw her head back and cried his name, a sound that paralleled no other, a sound he’d remember for the rest of his life, even thousands of years from now if he survived that long; no one said his name like her, and she said it best when he was on his knees. 

He withdrew his fingers as she clenched and writhed around him, but he refused to waver and set her free, absolutely not, liking to push her and drown himself loving her until she nearly went rabid trying to get him off. He kept his hands firm on her hips, lapping up every last fucking drop of her come and circling her clit until—

“Gods, Astarion, please!”

She hastily lifted her dress and dug her hands and nails into his hair and scalp, clawing at him and pulling him away. 

Astarion just stared at her with a smirk and her come shining all over his face, thoroughly pleased. She was panting, recovering, and she looked like a mess with her hair tousled and her face red and sweaty and it was fucking beautiful. 

“You, my love, my wife,” he started to speak, kindly kissing her thighs before he rose to his feet again, “are divine.”

Before Tav could respond, he cupped her face in both hands and pushed his lips to hers, sharing with her a little taste of the divinity she’d granted him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he broke the kiss, seizing the opportunity to tuck a limb under her knees and pick her up, into his arms.

Astarion carried her to the bed, laying her down carefully and climbing on top of her; she looked so lovely, so perfectly messy with her hair sprawled across the pillow after looking so pristine in its updo. She reached up to remove his jabot as he shrugged off the jacket and quickly worked at the buttons of his shirt, tossing it aside in a hurry; tasting her wasn’t enough, he had to have more, needed to love her in every way he could—it was their wedding night!

He could hardly believe that this day had come at last, that he was married, after centuries of serving his master and being taught how unworthy he was of any sort of kindness, let alone love, something he’d long lost belief in…

The wedding had been her idea from the start, but over time she started to think, though she’d never vocalize it, that he wanted it more than she ever had. It showed, in his excitement when they looked for places to host it, in the countless hours he spent perfecting her dress—he tailored his own attire as well of course, and it came out wonderfully, but he seemed to get through it far sooner and paid more attention to the dress, not a single stitch out of place.

Tav sat up and reached behind her to undo the clasps at the back of the dress, but Astarion grabbed the sides and pulled violently, ripping it at the back and guiding it down, down her stomach and legs and sending it to the floor with his shirt.

“Have you lost your mind? I love that dress! And you spent so much time on it!”

“Darling, every minute I spent working on that dress, I thought of how you’d look on it on this day and how much I’d love tearing it from your body. It suited you perfectly, my love,” he replied, lifting her leg over his shoulder. He showered her with featherlight pecks at her ankle, and continued down, ending with a bruising kiss on her inner thigh that made her squirm. “I could’ve died the moment I saw you in it and lived a happy, satisfied life—it served its purpose, I promise you.”

A few months into their life as newlyweds, after a couple nights tucked away in his study working on another project, Astarion found Tav brushing her hair at the vanity and set a neatly wrapped pink-and-white gift box in front of her.

“Oh? What’s the occasion?” she asked.

“Just open it dear, you’ll see.”

He sat behind her on the stool, legs around hers and pressing his body to her back. As she tugged at the ribbon and unwrapped the box, he wrapped his arms around her and nestled his head into her shoulder, looking ahead to the mirror and attentively watching for her reaction. Tav opened it to find a nightgown, white with familiar embroidery around the edges, short and tight around the waist.

“Is this my wedding dress?”

“Of course it is.”

“You kept it all this time?”

Astarion saw her eyes light up as she held it and turned it over in her hands, admiring how perfectly he’d recreated every thread—the gown looked brand new, as if he’d gotten all new fabric and thread or spent a fortune at a luxury attire shop in the Upper City.

“Much as I enjoyed ripping it apart to unwrap you, I did put a lot of work into it,” he said.

“It’s beautiful, Astarion, just like the first time I saw it.”

Tav sounded like she had to hold back tears just from seeing it, like she’d expected it to be lost forever; he found delight in her surprise, as if he’d gotten away with a crime with how she somehow never noticed or suspected what he was working on in his study.

“Get changed,” he ordered quietly, lips to her ear. “I’ll tear it off you again and again, starting with tonight.”

His hands lingered on her body as she stood and stepped aside, then his gaze remained set on her as she undressed and pulled the gown over her head. He studied how it draped over her breasts and hugged her waist and fuck, he didn’t want to wait another fucking moment; he reached out and pulled her right back, into his lap and into hungry kisses on her neck.

“Astarion,” she murmured, already succumbing to his touch, “you didn’t even allow me a minute to see myself in it…”

“One minute then, love,” he said, and he meant it—one minute.

He lifted her by the waist, standing and pushing her forward until her palms rested on the vanity and she could see her reflection, unseen fingers raising the gown’s hem at her thighs. Tav rotated what little she could in his grasp, carefully pulling at it and observing how well it complemented her figure.

Astarion ran his hands softly along the sides of her hips, her waist, then leaned forward, pressing his hardening length to her backside. In the mirror, he saw how her face flushed, how the thin fabric appeared to magically rise from her body from his hand cupping her breast, how her head tilted back to where his would be as his other clenched around her throat.

“Look at you, I’ve hardly even touched you yet,” he teased, her swallow budging against his grip.

“I thought about this all day,” she choked out, an alluring confession that made it difficult for him to keep what little patience he had left.

“Did you?”

His hand to her neck loosened and let her free as he unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it aside, his feet shuffling and then deftly slipping off his shoes and socks, too. Every sound and every movement, the rustling of fabric and his cock pushing into her all taunted her as arousal grew from within and yearned for what she’d been fantasizing of, now barely out of reach—

“I was waiting for you,” she said quietly, pushing her ass back into him, desperate to feel all his cock against her skin, bare, frustrated at the paltry pieces of fabric still separating them. “For you to be done in your study.”

“Did you see me between your legs?” Astarion whispered, nipping at her ear. “Or did you think of us like this—me bending you over this vanity, fucking you so well that you can’t walk tomorrow?”

Gods, she couldn’t fucking take it anymore, how he dragged it out until she could think of nothing else—then, he lowered the straps and kissed her from shoulder to shoulder before grabbing at the neckline and pulling, throwing the gown down to her feet in one violent motion; a demand, a fervent need to have her. 

“Astarion! Be kinder to it this time,” she warned, but her threats carried little weight as he knew he held her in his hand, wound tightly around his slender fingers for him to contort.

“Absolutely not,” he argued. “My dear, you forget I’ve mastered this craft. I’ll fix it right up, every time.” 

Tav whimpered, grieving the presence of his cock when he stepped back and began unfastening his pants. She turned to face him, guiding him backwards until he met the bed and sat, her following and hovering over him, easing him further back. She finished undressing him, fingers dipping under the waistband of his pants and underwear and sliding them over each limb before crawling forward and taking her seat in his lap.

“Good,” Astarion said as Tav ground her hips against his and slid her cunt along his aching cock, drowning it in the slick dripping between her thighs, and drawing a low growl from his mouth amid his words. “I want to see your face.”

Her palms on his shoulders tensed, nails prodding at his skin and threatening to break it as she adjusted, aligning her body with his and, in disciplined motions made to boil his blood with the rising heat of his impatience, taking in only the head of his cock. The tension among them almost caught flame—each provoking the other until someone broke.

Astarion slid his arms behind her back and covered her mouth with his in a ravenous, needy kiss, tongue laving over the outline of her upper lip—and when she finally lowered and sat, impaling herself on his terribly hard cock that throbbed for her attention, he groaned and bit at her lip just enough to draw blood and coax a hushed yelp from her throat.

“Ah, you—”

“I know,” he acknowledged, tongue swiping across her bloodied lip. “Mm. Saccharine, sweet like honey. Move, my love, let me watch your pretty face come undone for me.”

He kept his arms on her back, tenderly running up and down with a soothing touch that encouraged her as she gathered her strength and rose, hitting a steady rhythm; he kissed her lips, her cheek, the edges of her jaw, anywhere he could—little marks of encouragement, physical expressions of his love, how well she was doing, how good she was for him.

Tav’s thighs tensed as she fucked herself on him, bouncing on his cock with all she had to give while he watched it disappear inside her, transfixed by the sight. He kissed along her collarbone, down her breast, fangs grazing her supple skin. She gasped and braced herself for his bite, but it never came; he garnished her with harsher kisses, promises of bruises in the morning—little blemishes that marked her as his.

He was wholly enveloped by her, body and mind; her tight, wet heat consuming his cock, the view of her parted mouth and half-shut eyes even more ambrosian than he imagined, and he needed more of it, more of her—Gods, just holding back  slightly and allowing her control was testing his limits, he wanted to take her and fucking ruin her.

When her movements slowed and breaths strained, stamina running dry, Astarion trailed his fingers down with a feathery touch down her back, along the curve of her ass, then settled on her hips. His languid movements that of admiration, like she admired the dress—the little dimples in her back, her hip bones poking out, a scar she’d earned from battle that he vividly remembers tending to.

“Give me all of you,” he said, holding tightly and guiding her up to hover at the tip of his cock, eager and beyond pleased to take the lead and fuck her until she couldn’t walk as he vowed earlier. “Your body, your mind—all mine.”

“Astarion, please…”

“Please,” he started, a moan escaping as he harshly brought her body down to his, the slap of her ass on his thighs ringing through his ears, “what, love? Use your words.”

But she threw her head and voiced filthy cries for him instead, incapable of using her words, reduced to a sweaty, whimpering mess from what he was giving her—just his hands on her hips wasn’t enough; he bent his knees for leverage and pushed into her with rough, starving thrusts chasing release. The heavy pants mixed with lascivious moans pouring from her mouth and the scent of their sex and sweat in the air antagonized him, made him thrust into her harder until he couldn’t go any faster or deeper and—

“Don’t—don’t stop,” Tav whined, wet walls of her cunt devouring his cock as she neared the precipice and pulled at his hair and finished, “please, take me, come with me.”

Astarion sank his teeth deep into her neck the instant she said it and drank—she yanked hard on his hair and dug into his skin, her other hand scratching desperately at his back. He was close, so fucking close, he could feel it in her too as her cunt swallowed his cock and he could almost taste it in them both, sucking at her wounds and drawing out more and more blood, rich and thick and rushing past his tongue, then hot and sweet down his famished, dry throat.

He had to force himself to pull away from her neck, exhaling heavily, mourning it; he thrusted up into her once, twice before he broke, release rippling through him—overwhelming every sense, wringing him tight as he held her hips to him and filled her past the brim with come. Tav took his face and tilted upward, smothering him with messy, feral kisses as she came, too, her body writhing over his and constricting around his cock, drawing out all he had until it overflowed and seeped from her slit, dampening the bed below.

“Shit,” she cursed, pushing Astarion—weak and light-headed, as if all the blood he’d taken had simply evaporated—back to the bed and lying on top of him, his spend trickling down her thighs as they uncoupled.

Pale arms wrapped around her and he ran his fingers through her hair with delicate, adoring strokes, kissing the tip of her nose.

As promised, he mended her nightgown the very next day.

After years of blissful domestic living, the pair packed light and set off to travel; see new sights, adventure, reminisce on the journey that brought them together in the first place. The intent was to spend a few years on the road, but outside of the rare trips back home for a short stay, they traveled for decades, caught up in beautiful scenery, mercenary work, and the hope that they might find a cure for the sun or Astarion’s vampirism altogether. 

On one visit home, Tav saw herself in the mirror and decided to stay longer than their typical few days or week long breaks. Surrounded by their things and memories of their younger years, her reflection was a harsh confrontation with the reality of her own mortality.

“I miss home,” she said. “And I love seeing the world with you, I do, but I want to stay here for a while.”

Astarion agreed, and they decided to spend a few years in their home in the city before heading back on the road for a final trip. He returned to tailoring in the evenings and she picked up new hobbies: painting, sketching, gardening, whatever she could get her antsy hands on.

A few years turned into more years and then another decade, and Tav no longer craved adventure again, so they remained at home, back to blissful domestic living. Astarion and Tav both missed the thrills and the pretty views many people would never have the chance to behold, but that time had passed.

“I’m too old for that now,” she said.

She grew vegetables and fruit to cook and bake with and took pride in it, and Astarion wished he could sit with her at the table with a full plate of her handmade food in front of him, too. He started cooking more, asking for her help and seizing these small moments of time together that he’d lose one day.

Tav started to leave the house less and spent more time sitting in the living room sketching, or tucked away in a little corner of Astarion’s study she’d made her own with an easel and paints. She drew and painted his face so many times over that he stopped looking in mirrors hoping that would be the time he finally saw his face; he saw it already, and he saw it through her eyes—he couldn’t ask for more.

Mirrors aren’t much use, but being reflected in someone else’s eyes? Well, I could do worse.

No matter how hard he tried, Astarion couldn’t escape the truth of her mortality. He constantly attempted to push the signs, the symptoms away, and convinced himself they’d find a way.

It was easy to brush off, at first. They started following a more humanlike schedule, awake during the day and asleep during the night. He found himself surprisingly accepting of house confinement; by then, the idea of outings were long forgone—the decades they spent out were enough to satiate his own wanderlust, though if Tav were capable and interested in traveling again, he would’ve done it in an instant.

He would’ve done anything she wanted, without question.

At nights, she made herself tea before bed to help her sleep.  When she started to retire to their room early without tea, citing exhaustion too fierce to want to stand at the stove beside the kettle for so long, Astarion started making it for her.

And he knew something was very, very wrong.

“Love, you’ve been in that bath for hours, I swear,” he said on one rainy evening after returning home and finding her right where he’d left her.

The dark clouds and early sunset permitted him safety beyond the curtains, and he took advantage, walking a few streets over to pick up a hot meal from her favorite restaurant. Tav turned over in the bath to look at him in the doorway; she smiled and lifted her hands from the water, observing her wrinkly, pruned fingers and giggling. 

“I was feeling a bit sore, is all,” she answered. “Don’t you want to get in with me?”

He knelt beside the tub and folded his arms over the rim, meeting her eyes and taking in the sight of her. Tired eyes, tired body, an expression that tried to look happy but something was so clearly missing from it.

“I’m soaked enough from the rain, dear,” he answered. “I brought you dinner, so let’s get you up and dressed, alright? I can bring it to you in bed.”

Astarion helped her out, dressed her and led her to their bed and she looked at him with melancholic eyes that he had to pretend didn’t rend at his heart and soul. After that night, he spent every night helping her with her bath, cooking her dinner (on occasion, picking up dinner from her favorite place again), making her tea, and delivering it all to her in bed on a tray. 

He waited on her hand and foot, in every way he knew how. Tav hated asking for help, always trying to do things on her own, and Astarion had to learn how to offer his aid without troubling her—observe silently and learn what she struggled with or what could grant her another stretch of relaxation.

What hurt most was how much she wanted to spend time in the garden on the sunniest days and he felt useless, unable to help. He took her out when possible, when the clouds covered the sun or sunset started and he could don a heavy, dark cloak, but he was never able to take her out on the brightest, happiest days. As an unspoken rule, Tav never went outside when he couldn’t, at least not farther than a few steps—the few that he could take, if need be.

As her condition worsened, Astarion looked for doctors, healers, anyone; he sought out Halsin and Shadowheart and wrote to Gale all for naught. Nothing helped, and she started to fight him on it.

“Please just stay home,” she requested one time, when he’d come to see her in the study with her journal, telling her he’d found yet another healer only a few days travel away that might be able to help. “I’m done with this. I’ve accepted it, and you should, too.”

Accept this? It was awful enough to accept that she wouldn’t live in immortality with him—but to accept that she’d be gone even earlier than he ever anticipated?

The first time Tav stayed in bed a full day was the most harrowing experience of them all. She hadn’t budged; the fatigue piled on more and more each passing day and those feelings of self-loathing and worthlessness bubbled up until she couldn’t feign the happiness anymore and felt like nothing more than a massive, life-sucking burden.

  Astarion came to their room with her nightly tea and when she heard him walk in, she yelled at him to stay out.

“I don’t want you to see me like this,” she said.

“Don’t say that. Please,” he begged. “I can’t miss a single moment with you.”

He stayed home at her request; he stopped seeking out help and any hope of a cure, and the tradeoff for that was spending every possible fucking second beside her whether she liked it or not.

Tav said nothing, but her face said enough; she refused to look at him, lips quivering and eyes fluttering holding back tears, and it only made it hurt all the more how she despised him seeing her tired and weak.

Astarion knew this day would come, of course he did, but he didn’t expect it to happen so fast. It all happened so fast! They spent decades on the road and even through all the trials and discomforts of mercenary work and harsh nights sleeping in the cold in forests and fields, wherever they could find, she didn’t seem to age a day.

After they returned home for that short stay that turned into an indefinite stay, the years started to feel like days. He didn’t have to look in a mirror to see and feel how he’d not aged—he felt just as young and spry as he did when they met, but every single fucking day, he looked at her and saw how the time wore on her. She was still beautiful, perfect to him, but he saw the light slowly fade from her and it hurt.

Tav resented that it was her choice to come and remain at home. The shame ate at her, constantly creeping on the edge of her mind, telling her that it was her fault they were trapped here in this little house in the city, that maybe if they’d not come back things would be different, or they could have settled somewhere else, somewhere new, or perhaps, if nothing else, she could’ve died more valiantly.

Astarion laid down with her despite her protests, cradling her and brushing off the tears she finally cried until she had none left to cry, and he thought about how she wept as she read her vows on their wedding night.

“I love you,” he swore. “Now and forever.”

with you,

The little house in the city was always their home, even during the decades they spent abroad adventuring, but after she was gone, he couldn’t stand to live in it anymore. He wouldn’t sell it, either; he couldn’t imagine never again having the option to walk in and envision her cooking in the kitchen or painting in her corner of the study. He simply abandoned it and decided to travel the lands once more, alone. 

He went to places they’d already been, remembering things they’d done at each stop—the days they spent huddled in inns or camp, the nights out exploring or heading to their next destination, the battles that almost incited a strange nostalgia for their tadpoled days. Tav adapted to life in the darkness; they still did what they could during the daytime, though options were limited. A cloak worked once sunset was near, but still too dangerous midday. They searched far and wide for remedies, temporary or permanent, and nothing proved fruitful. Even Gale researched when he could. 

Astarion visited him first at his tower in Waterdeep.

Seeing him was a sharp punch in the gut. Of course Tav had aged, but it was gradual, it happened so slowly and yet so quickly; her sickness was the true brutal awakening. But Gale—he hadn’t seen Gale in decades and it was almost a shock, even though he knew better, to see the wizard so… old, so wrinkled.

“Gods, you’ve seen better days,” he said.

“And you’re still seeing your best ones,” Gale replied, but he had it wrong.

Astarion was seeing his worst days, and he questioned whether it was the right time to leave, whether he should’ve stayed behind and waited in their home until he’d worked through it all. But he wasn’t sure when that would be, and he couldn’t tolerate living there anymore with her things on the wall, on the shelves, in their room, all constant little reminders of how he’d never see her again.

It was an endless torment that trailed close behind him on his travels, because as much as Astarion hated seeing all these pieces of her, he didn’t want to let go, either. He left behind much of his own stuff, but carried around that nightgown he’d sewn from her wedding dress.

Gale kept him for a couple weeks until he was ready to move on. It was nice to see a familiar face. That first night, they sat at the table and reminisced of old times for hours and the sweet outweighed the bitter.

Gale didn’t ask about Tav, not until Astarion mentioned her. Perhaps he already knew.

“I buried her,” Astarion said unprompted. “A few weeks ago.”

“She was good for you.”

“Too good, in fact. I never deserved—”

“Stop right there,” Gale interrupted, raising his palm. “She loved you more than anything.”

There was a long pause, a heavy silence in the air as Astarion carefully considered what to say next, as images of their life together ran through his mind like a slideshow. Gods, would he ever escape them?

“I don’t know how to move on.”

“You’ll learn, I assure you. You must. For her sake and yours.”

Months later, he settled at an inn and when he unpacked and came across her nightgown again, he looked it over in his hands and something about it this time was different. Instead of the pain, he saw her wearing the dress at their wedding under the flowered arch and then splayed across their bed in the gown, watching him closely and waiting for him to join her. 

He hardly tranced and spent sunrise to sunset tearing at the seams and separating the fabric. The next day, he drew up new patterns. For the next week, he spent the days in a chair by the fireplace sewing it back together. He pulled extra fabric and thread he saved from when he transformed it into a nightgown, having held on to every single piece of it from the start, and he used nothing new at all, yet the resulting clothing didn’t resemble the dress or the gown one bit, except in color. 

Astarion held it up in the air once he’d finished stitching and to anyone else it must’ve looked like a simple, white shirt—albeit a bit eccentric—but when he held it close to his face, he swore he could smell her again.

For months, he’d searched far and wide for the perfect fabric for the dress, and for more months, he sat in his study and cut and sewed, dreaming of the day he’d finally see her wear it and Gods, when he saw her walk that aisle it was even more beautiful than he ever anticipated.

He was proud of it. More proud than he’d ever been of anything, possibly. 

He thought of how he tore it off her body that night, literally tore it apart at the seams—and then, he remembered the time he pieced it back together into a nightgown and she chastised him for ripping it yet again, but he sewed it back together the next day; he tore it from her countless times and fixed it in the mornings every time, all because she loved it so much.

He wore the shirt everyday. He continued traveling with it and washed it far more carefully than he ever handled any other garment, and eventually, when he was no longer sure where he’d like to go next, he stopped by Gale’s again to stay a few weeks, knowing it might be the last time they met. 

When he told Gale the history of the shirt and received a warm smile of understanding in return, Astarion thought he might be ready to go back home.

always.

Astarion finds their home how he left it, though with a thick layer of dust coating their furniture and possessions. He heads to their room first to unpack his bags. On her nightstand lies an old, dusty book; her journal. He avoided it for so long. 

He wipes off the cover and turns the pages. Scribbles, notes, even quick sketches—of animals, of scenes from the city, of him. He flips through the book until his eyes settle on a page covered in her writing. 

I’m scared. Any healer we speak to says it can’t be cured. That I’ll 

He stops reading and skips to the end, the last page. Shaky, imperfect writing that’s a harsh contrast to the page he just read, but unmistakably hers. Written in her final days, when she became too weak to keep drawing and filling pages with her thoughts and spent the majority of her days in bed.

Love lasts forever, even if the body does not. I’ll always be here, my love.

[silkscreaming]

I made a volume 10 trimax vash cosplay for MAGfest and I am SO proud of how it came out :) Some process stuff below! Warning for image and text heavy.

Truthfully this cos is only about 85% complete—I’d purchased a bunch of hardware to really go in on a volume accurate version of his undersuit and belts, but simply ran out of time before the con. It was the first cosplay I’ve sewn since 2017 and the first wig styling I’ve done since 2020, so I’m not gonna beat myself up too much!

(This is all purse hardware off Etsy and some buttons from M&J trim)

This was my first time ever making a muslin mock-up, but I knew it was going to be necessary to get the coat to lay the way I wanted it to. I really wanted to try and create proportions that elongated the legs/torso and widened the shoulders by placing the coat tail splits appropriately and raising up the shoulders with some padding. And of course arm and leg details that I’ll get to someday lol.

I created two mock-ups. One of basic muslin that helped me go from an existing pre-bought pattern to something more Vash-shaped, then a second one on a slightly sturdier scrap fabric with my finalized torso proportions with padding so I could accurately pattern out the sleeves and collar.

I was tracing my pattern pieces onto newsprint and vellum as I went, so once all of those were finalized, it was time to cut my fabric! I used a heavy cotton twill from B&J fabrics and two kinds of fusible interfacing from Mood (I’m spoiled by being local to the fashion district these days). A smarter person would have bought a thinner fabric to line the inner torso with, but I did not feel like getting that complicated with my first ever muslin-drafted AND lined project, so I simply cut double of every pattern piece in order to create a lining.

Sleeves were done by interfacing and cutting into a top panel, carefully snipping at the cutout portions, ironing and fabritacking in place, and then top stitching the whole piece to the main sleeve. I later added some leather backing squares and interfacing behind the larger eyelets for aesthetic while keeping the ventilation in tact. Ideally in the future I'll also add a strip of fabric to the gun arm that creates a slight bunching effect since that sleeve is a little more ruffled over the cuff. Photos below also include three shoulder pads pinned together on each shoulder, but I ended up forgetting not using them on my final wear.

Unfortunately at this point I was approaching con time, so I started cutting some corners that I made easily replaceable for future upgrades. The coat tabs are just painted craft foam cut to the size of the buttons, tacked in place where the button pierces through the tab and where it wraps around the edge of the front panel. The straps that attach to the lapel and wrap under the arms also were just decorated with some silver trim instead of hardware, and I skipped the side button panels at his hips for pattern-making simplicity and time. They'll be added later! I'd also love to do some weathering, but don't think I can quite bring myself to riddle the coat tails with bullet holes as some people do haha.

Gun arm attachment was also a quick and dirty addition, just some vinyl trim on eva foam attached with contact cement and a decorative button. First time working with contact cement somehow, but I look forward to also being able to upgrade this at a later date to a more accurate shape with the full belt attachments!

I was also hoping to update the shoes a bit by making some boot covers for them and rub-n-buffing the soles to disguise the platform a bit, but I love my pick for the cleat-look that Vash has! Some good ol' Demonias in classic vash fashion :)

Last but not least: The Wig. My pride and joy.

I got lucky enough to nab an Arda sale, I think right before Halloween, and picked up the Morpheus lace front in black, along with some extra wefts in pale blonde. (I also bought a whole separate pale blonde Morpheus wig, boldly thinking I could swing a normal trimax vash wig lol. It made for a convenient Eriks wig in the mean time.)

Since I was aiming for the end of volume 10 post-Wolfwood death look, I started by trying on the wig, roughly tracing out my hairline, then gently unweaving that portion of black in order to re-ventilate it with blonde.

After I replaced that whole strip of plucked hair, I tried on again to finalize where I needed to ventilate to cover my own hairline, and completed my outline with both blonde and brown-black wefts (i had them on hand lol). All in all, I ventilated more than 4 square inches of blonde, and at least a solid centimeter extension of the black hairline across the whole front of the wig. Probably close to 30 hours of work in the ventilating alone, but I am a little slow since I haven't ventilated in a few years and didn't keep clear track of time.

If there's one thing I should be used to by now about Arda wigs, they are THICK. There is zero teasing in this wig. None. Just got2b, a blowdryer, and a prayer. And a good load of bobby pins. The wig was also sadly a last minute hotel room mad dash, and I do hope to restyle it under less duress, but I do think I successfully achieved the Trimax swoop and am very proud of it! It was unbelievably windy on the walk from our hotel room to MAGfest, so the photos in the start of this post show a bit more droop than my initial styling, but I think I'll be able to touch things up next wear.

And of course, shoutout to my partner for gifting me the official glasses for Christmas :) And thank you to my roommates who barely saw me for a month and a half except for when I needed help with a hem lol.

All in all, I am unbelievably proud of this cosplay, I can't wait to put some more love into it and wear it again!

[ghouldtime]

HI HI HELLO MY NEW FAV COD ACC <33 from my comments you can see how much i love your könig teehee 😚😚 Question ! if he would give them any gifts (ex: birthdays or christmas), what kind of gift would he give? would he give a “just because” gift or naw? to me, i’d think he’d give very thoughtful and hand-made things but i’d like to know your input :33 LOVE YOU!!

💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚 AWWWH THANK YOU SO SO MUCH I'm so glad you like my version of him :D

(I'm just assuming the 'them' being 'the person who is closest to him/a Significant other')

König is a considerate, thoughtful gift giver. Because his words tend to fail him and actions speak louder than words, he speaks THROUGH those actions. Giving gifts is actually one of his favorite love languages! He knows he can't be around all the time and it's his way of giving a solid reminder of his affection and care for you.

He's actually someone who hates thoughtless or "useless" gifts. Being given things that you can't use and don't fit you is basically just offloading junk or saying you don't put thought into it or try to consider the person. It's one thing if the attempt is there but usually many people are lacking. He's not one of those.

Before he gets you ANYTHING, he's thoroughly considering it. What do you need? What do you want? What do you like? He always tries to figure out by what you say or even off handed remarks. Usually, casually talking to someone is the best way to find out what gift they need or might want.

Such as someone who mentions that, offhandedly, their old baking apron is a bit stained and dirty and are embarrassed about the state of it as they put it on. Not that he cares, he sees those as indication of it being well used and well loved, but if you seemed so flustered, why on earth wouldn't he make you a new one with fancy pockets and all? He knows how to sew. And he can pick a fabric of your favorite color! And monogram it! (ignore the little crown on the tag, that's just his personal signature)

He's very much someone who gives 'just because' gifts. He doesn't need an occasion to do it. Just going "I saw this and thought of you" is enough of a motivator. Don't always expect a fancy presentation, he'll often just give you things without warning.

The only time he'll REALLY go out of his way to put in extra effort for aesthetics and presentation would be on days personally significant to you and things such as holidays/birthdays where that is usually a given. His gifts will NEVER be low effort, but he'll be putting in that extra touch on those times.

They'll always be personal, clearly thought out, even if it is just a box of chocolates with a handwritten note on top. That being said, he greatly prefers to handmake gifts he gives. "It's the thought that counts" is usually expressed best by him when its something he makes himself. He'll put love into every second he makes it (even if he's saying some not so lovely words if he does something like burning his hand on a hot glue gun, RIP)

Naturally, he has that artistic side, he got it from his mom. He's got a wide range of skills and talents and will pick up new projects and types from time to time. Learning a new skill or art style is absolutely on the table so if you want something, he'll learn, he'll do it. He LIKES learning, he likes getting to find new creative ways to express himself, he likes trying his best and seeing just what he can do. It keeps his hands busy, mind sharp, and it makes you happy! Win-win situation all around.

His most favored craft is certainly creating miniatures and his beloved dioramas - he'll be ecstatic if you share his enthusiasm and WILL make whatever you want. Doesn't care what it is, if you want to paint a detailed scene of unicorns getting their hooves done at a salon, he'll do it. Nothing is too out there, he just wants to make you happy.

But in general, expect plenty of random gifts from him. They're not always going to be the most extravagant but he'll put his heart into it as thanks for sharing yours with him 💚

[maleficore]

It always makes me feel so ehh when people use chosen!Durge when they strictly mean this bloodthirsty cruel person because be honest, what choice did they really have? Unless you play Durge as being incredibly suicidal and unhealthily self-sacrificing, telling Bhaal they will do his bidding is for the most part a survival choice. Durge as a character doesn't know Withers will just swoop in and bend the fabric of the universe to his will to save them, they have no idea that their refusal won't be the last thing they do. So it makes perfect sense for someone who is not necessarily an Evil person to go along simply because they're scared of dying (and being tortured in the Bhaal's domain forever), but both the game and a large portion of players refuse to acknowledge it.

Chosen Durge is always the baddie, a lost cause, and while that can well enough be true for some characters to me it's just.. boring? Unless you play/write them evil from start to finish, it really falls flat. Where are the blurry lines? Where's the moral complexity? Not everything is binary, but it feels like in Durge's case everyone from the characters in-universe to a lot of people engaging with the story only believe they can be one or the other. Completely different, changed person who would rather die than to endure Bhaal's hold on them or a monster so soaked through to the bone with Bhaal's taint, even amnesia wasn't enough to save them. That's what the "redeemed" and "chosen" shorthands look like to me. Even using [alignment]!Durge is better. Someone saying they made a redeemed!Durge tells me nothing. Yeah they let Bhaal kill them, great. What are they like, though.

Ezra could very well fall under the Chosen category, but he is SO far removed from what that means in the fandom, using it for him would be doing him a disservice. I refuse to simplify him that way, he has too many layers and is too complex as a character to put him in a box like that. Even alignment does a shoddy job at summarising him to me. People don't work like that. They're often self contradictory and don't think before they act. Okay his baseline is chaotic neutral, but sometimes he borders on evil and other times he's so incredibly selfless you could call him chaotic good even. Circumstance and emotions can affect people greatly!

It really just boils down to.. PLEASE try to get out of the black hole of Larian's rushed "Oh shit we need to put a bhaalspawn origin in this" black and white narrative and see just how many galaxies there are to explore. Don't constrain yourself to the story forks they established, you're just hurting your character writing in the long run and putting a big ass sign on them that pretty much makes them get lost in the sea of all the other "redeemed" and "chosen" Durges. They might make good descriptors if you're just crafting characters to play as, but I wish we dropped them entirely. It's not OC language, it's AU language for canon characters who already had all the work done on them by writers and that people at large know well enough to tell there's more to them than that. In here it doesn't work.

And I also consider it kind of TikTok lazy and uncreative to use, but that's just me.

[halfmoonshines]

Hey! I saw that your requests are open and I wanted to know if I could get a fluffy angst with Damon Salvatore x poc(or ambiguous appearance, if that's easier for you) fem reader, in which she is his girlfriend and consoles him after Lily's death and understand why he reacted the way he did and don't judge him, please?

thank you for the prompt; it got me to write today!!

send any fic requests here!!

Unrepenting

damon x f!poc reader

summary; Being untouchable was one of the only things Damon had ever had a chance of being in control over. He didn't like sentimental threats to that carefully crafted shield, but if his mother dying again didn't splinter it, your love for him certainly would

angst/fluff

˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.

Damon didn't know he was holding his breath until your hand landed on his back and he gave a sharp intake.

"I thought I would find you out here." Your warm, lilting voice was a balm over the ice that had been frosting his skin for the last hour. Since the incident.

"You know this is my favorite place to drink. The view is impeccable." Damon had always favored your family home, nestled at the edge of town right on the forest line.

The house was nice, large property and wrap around porch with perfect seating to watch the sun rise over the trees. He would always sneak out of your bed in the early hours of the morning and sit in one of your fluffy reading chairs that he swears are over the top, just to watch the sky pink on the horizon. Since having to give up the boarding house, he's basically moved in.

He wasn't relaxing in a lounger now, though. He was leaned against the railing of the porch with a glass in his hand, posture indicating nonchalance but the tightness in his shoulders told you everything you needed to know.

Your hand came around from his back to his chest, eyes trying to demand his attention. He was distracted for a moment, by how beautiful you always are. Ever-soft hair and skin a darker shade of brown than any time in the sun could do, lips that always smiled at him. Even when other people didn't.

"Do you want to talk about it?" You asked quietly, mouth worriedly pursing instead.

His hand that had been rising to meet yours dropped, jaw clenching as he turned back to face the treeline. "Nothing to talk about. She's dead and conveniently left us with the problem of her insane boyfriend."

His words were venomous, a swift gulp from his glass following them. You knew Damon, knew the ins and outs of his bravado and his trauma. You knew that his hatred for his mothers actions, and his grief over losing her in so many ways were not mutually exclusive. They roiled together inside of him like angry lions staking a claim.

You leaned up next to him, eyes searching for his again as he favored the sky. "We definitely do have a problem we still need to handle. And she is gone. Really gone, this time."

His tumultuous feelings simmered in the back of his throat, coating his thoughts in the same black ink reserved for all of those that he had loved too much. "Are you here to lecture me on how unhealthy it is to pretend I don't care that my mommy is dead?" He said it like a joke, some small child asking for extra desert. "Because I'm not pretending. That bitch did everything but be a mother, and now I have someone else chomping at the bit to murder me or send me to eternal prison because she couldn't even handle being a martyr correctly."

Your body shifted in front of his quickly and efficiently, shimmying yourself between the deck and him, demanding his full attention. His eyes met yours reluctantly after your hands came to rest on his chest, thumbs rubbing soothing circles through the fabric there.

"She was unhealthy, Damon. She never once chose you when it mattered, and all you wanted was what all kids want from their mothers. Love. She couldn't give it to you, and no matter what everyone else thinks - there's no right way to heal from that. You were expected to process a lot of things emotionally very quickly, and to be honest, I'm not sure she deserved your forgiveness. No one can tell you how to feel. I'm just so proud that you're allowing yourself to feel anything."

His hands coming up to touch your face almost distracted you from the mist in his eyes, and you offered him a small smile while he sought comfort at your touch.

Damon wasn't very sure about anything in his long life, even the emotions battling inside him now were ambiguous and clouded. But the dark haired man knew with every fucking fiber of his being that you were going to destroy him one day. The tears threatening to fall from his eyes an indication of the hold you had on his soul. He didn't want to think of his mom. The abandonment, resentment and lies. It bled into everything else in that little box he keeps tucked away. His father and Katherine and Stefan and Elena and everyone who had ever promised to protect him but ripped him to shreds instead were pounding at their confines, begging to wreak havoc on him.

"This really fucking sucks." His voice was almost a whisper, tears falling just as silently.

Your posture changed to match his, mirror images. Stood bent over each other, hands cupping the others face. Your fingers moved slowly, wiping the moisture from his cheeks. "It does fucking suck. You can feel however you want about that. However, we will be together in this. Whatever this is. Always."

You loved him before he saved your life, but now he was ingrained into every part of you. That night a year ago changed nothing about how you felt for Damon - he was always meant to be yours.

"Can I hold you?" Damon needed something tangible to ground him, your satin curves molded to his chest.

"Let's go inside, babe." Your smile was the same as it always was for him, large and glittering, as you grabbed one of his hands from your face to lead him inside.

You were thinking of just how much Damon Salvatore had grown over the last few years while he was moseying after you into the house, drink dangling from his fingers while he thought of what wedding ring would fit your beautiful umber colored hand best.

˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.˚. ✦.˳·˖✶ ⋆.✧̣̇˚.

my works

[little-pup-pip]

Do you have any tips for buying/hiding littlegear or petre gear?

I have a few!! Good luck with this, friend!

Buying:

I was able to start collecting gear when I was pretty young, because my parents got me my own bank account at 13 and became uninterested in my purchases not long after. That's probably not the case for you, so my buying advice won't all necessarily be based on experience! If you can order things online though, Amazon has pacifiers and stuff for really cheap, and Etsy is usually pretty good, too!

Assuming you're able to go to in person stores alone, most of them have sippy cups, teethers and bottles for pretty cheap (especially dollar stores)!! I don't recommend pacifiers for babies because those aren't comfortable and can hurt your teeth! This is also a good way to get pet or kid toys!!

If you struggle with opportunities to be in stores, make up excuses like needing craft supplies for school or pet treats/toys if you have pets! If your people like to accompany you into stores, maybe saying something about how you want to try being more independent will work.

If your people are nosey about what you purchase, buying something else along with your gear, putting the gear in your backpack or something similar, throwing away your receipt, and only showing them the other item(s) can be a good cover! This also works for online purchases, as long as they arrive at the same time/in the same box!!

Hiding:

My favorite place to hide things was definitely behind the books on my bookshelves!! You can also store things in a container that implies something else is in there (ie boardgame box, jewelry box etc)! Another popular location is inside of a closet depending on how much space is in there! Closets are especially helpful for hiding bigger toys (again, depending on the size) if your people don't approve of you having stuff like that!

If your people are s u p e r nosey, inside of a vent is not somewhere people usually think to check, if your vent covers come off (mine did). If any of your pillows have zippers, that's a good place to hide fabric things like pet collars! Generally beds can obscure or hold things better than you'd think! Under pillows is an easy location if you and your people don't typically move them, but I'd consider that as a temporary location more than anything else.

That's all I got! I hope at least some of this stuff can help you out!! Good luck!

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

Hiii, do you have any tips for drafting out embroidery patterns? I've got one in mind, but drafting it out and color picking is so nerve-wracking!!

[Hi!!!! this got kinda really long so I'm gonna crop it under a read more. And I honestly don't have any real training/instruction in fiber arts so this is just how I do things, and probably others do them very differently!]

Haha so my fandom embroideries are VERY different from my non-fandom personal pieces in this respect. For non-fandom things i just kind of throw myself in like WAHOO FREEFORM LETS GO and go for a kind of messy colorful approach that ends up as things like this:

Versus my fandom stuff is way more structured and designed to fill space, be very precise, etc. So for those I do go in with a digital mock up of the design I make in photoshop, that I then color in, and then as my last step translate to thread colors.

For my Dragon Age series. this has been because I'm specifically trying to mimic the stained-glass style of art you see in parts of the game like the dialogue wheels, some icons, windows, etc. The icons in particular were really easy to copy into embroidery because they already come in handy circles:

This is mostly because I have desperately wanted to pick up stained glass work as a hobby for like 6 years now. As in once every 3-6 months I put everything I'd need to start doing it into an online shopping cart and look at the price total and then sadly close the window because I just don't actually have any space I could do it in (I live in a 2bed apartment so i have no garage or yard or anywhere it wouldn't make everything else a mess or be a hazard). The day after one of those events I impulse bought and completed a floral embroidery kit from the craft store and kinda was like... ok, well, I did this once how hard can it be to use this medium to mimic the hobby I wish I could be doing? Plus, it's only like 60 cents per color! I can afford that! So I took the first design I wanted to do, the romance icon, and basically redrew it sloppily in photoshop, then freehand-copied the design onto fabric and stitched it the next day:

I learned a lot from this piece and changed my approach a little. Here you can see I tried shading in the parallel direction to my thread, which looked messy and added texture, so now I shade horizontally to my thread direction instead.

But it gave me a basic approach for turning the Tarot cards or DA Keep tiles (or any other art!) into embroidery patterns, which I couldn't copy as directly into this really smooth stained-glass style. There's a basic process I follow when doing these conversions that generally follows the same order, which I'll go through below.

STEP 1: SHAPES

The first thing I do is pick the shape of my display frame which is usually a circle, but could be an oval or rectangle too, since I hang the finished pieces on my wall to have nice way to show them off. I like to fill the whole space so knowing the size and shape of what I want the finished project to look like is a good goal for me. Since I am doing fandom pieces I want to be recognizable, I do stick pretty close to the "original" character design/art, but you can absolutely change as much as you want and freehand draw your own interpretation instead. If you're doing original art just substitute the below composition notes with "sketch out roughly what you want it to look like". I personally do my pattern drafting digitally as I find it easier, but you can do this part by hand too.

First, I keep the reference image I'm working off of open next to me while I work, and draw in the shape of my frame (here, a circle). If I'm adding in the little border to be fancy, I add a second inner circle. I keep these as their own top layer so I always know I'm working within the final "frame" and don't spend time designing any section that will fall outside it. Then I will take copies of the reference image and knock the layers down to 25-50% opacity, and start moving them around underneath the 'frame' layer until I like the way their positioning looks as a composition. Sometimes elements of a card I want to include don't all fit in, so I'll chop the section out and add an additional layer to throw in (like the background circle things in the Hermit design below). Or I'll just freehand things like adding much bigger diamonds behind Solas in my Hierophant design because I did NOT want to do 1000 tiny ones. Then once I'm satisfied with the general composition, I'll use the plain ol circular brush tool to trace out the major shapes of each element. I try to keep in mind that I can't go too small, and curvy lines are more difficult to fill in than straight ones. I usually do a rough messy version first, make it mostly transparent, and then a cleaner and more precise one over that.

(you can see parts of the rough one on the left and the fully 'cleaned up' on the right for the Hierophant design)

Now: depending on what you are doing next with the pattern, this might be where you stop and start coloring. If you are planning to freehand your design or just trace it onto fabric (or even print it onto fabric here), there's no need to do more than this kind of lineart! However, if you are working digitally and want to create a scalable vector so you can print it at different sizes, you can use the pen tool in photoshop to trace your design and make a "work path" of the lineart. However, another note: THIS PART IS VERY FRUSTRATING AND TEDIOUS BECAUSE THE PEN TOOL WAS CREATED BY THE DEVIL TO TORMENT US. It is so so so easy to accidentally delete a line or even the whole path and not notice later on. Ask me how I know 😭 Anyway I'm not going to include a pen tool tutorial because I don't even know how to use it well and have to google or watch videos every other time I try to use it. But if you can muddle through it gets you some really clean lines that eventually look like this:

With the work path selected, you can select the brush tool/size/color and use the "stroke path" option to create lineart of the vector. Then you can save this as a transparent png file for use at different sizes and for printing and it looks so nice and clean! one of the big benefits to this is that you get really fine lines that are easier to be precise with stitching on. This is extra perfect if you are printing the design directly onto your fabric (which you can do with an at-home inkjet printer for designs under 8inches wide, as long as you stick a piece of stabilizer on the back of your fabric and cut it down to printer sheet size--this is what I do and can make another post about that process if people want haha), or if you are printing onto transfer paper like you can buy at craft stores.

This is where I end the lineart for my designs. After I have this, I move on to the next phase, which is...

STEP 2: COLOR

For interpreting my designs into thread, I start by thinking of it as flat colors first. You can't "shade" as easily with threads as you can with things like paint or brushes in digital art (though you can A Little, which I will get into), so to start color planning I pick the "main" color each section will be in the piece.

For the existing icons this was simple--I kept the same sections as the original designs, so for each I just color picked or eyeballed the color in photoshop and colored it in (but you could do this on paper with pencils, markers, whatever as well--they don't need to match your threads exactly and usually won't, it's just to give you an easy reference to follow as you go). For the tarot cards which were more complicated in coloration, I just did my best and went with what looked good next to each other, even if it was a little off the original art. It will be off more later anyway when you have to pick threads so don't stress it too much honestly. I will often make layers with different color options and turn them on/off for direct comparison to try to determine what I think looks best as well, like below where I was debating between more blue/desaturated for the background or brighter colors.

I do wanna note I have regrets about the color selection, shapes, or shading in EVERY SINGLE ONE of my finished pieces. But no one else ever comments or probably even notices! One aspect of this hobby is just learning to be satisfied with what you've made and using what you learned to get closer to your preferences next time. I'm only going back and redoing some of my designs' colors because I want to make it easier for others to choose on the patterns I sell, more than I care for just for myself. Also since I'm doing this lineart/stained glass looking approach where I go over the distinct shapes with black thread at the end, it means I get these clear delineations between sections you might not necessarily have in your own pieces, and that's ok.

Ok right. Now while shading/coloring in detail is hard with thread, you CAN make whats essentially dithered gradients. "Dithering" in the concept of art means using 2 (or more) colors to give the impression of a third color, or to gently scale between the existing binary rather than a hard line. Think of it like blocky pixel art or gameboy game images. If you're doing needlepainting, you use really small stitches close together to get this effect, which translates to "smaller pixes"--if you look at the jellyfish in my first photos that's a very messy casual version of that. If you want a better example, I recommend looking at @ammocharis 's pieces like these in her pinned post, which are truly amazing! I simply do not have the patience myself 😂 For my stained glass style, I work only in very long straight stitches, so I can only shade in one direction and have to be a little more precise with it.

So for shading, I think about in each section which direction my threads might go. Then perpendicular to that direction I pick which side will be the light one and which the darker one. Sometimes I color this in on my pattern mockup, but sometimes I don't! Or I'll only do it for certain sections to make sure I don't forget. Like for my Tower design I only colored it as flats, and waited until I selected threads to decide how the shading would go. I am currently working on a smaller, simplified version of my Hierophant design and I did add shading digitally for that one just for fun. But it's not as important as having the flat color version you can use to quick-reference how you want your design to go while you're stitching. You might also notice I don't actually color my gold--I just throw in a stock image of gold foil for that layer so I can't confuse it with any of my yellow thread sections.

Here's a close up where you can kind of see what I mean by the "dithered" effect between colors--some are more obvious (like the red on the far left or middle orange) and others pretty subtle (dark grey to dark red on the wolf face):

Now, while I use single layers of satin stitches for this, and just alternate thread colors increasing/decreasing as I go, you can accomplish the same thing with short overlapping stitches like with needlepainting, or with clusters of french knots, or whatever else. But in GENERAL you are going to be able to trick people into seeing gradients out of dithering best when you are using the same type of stitch for that whole area. So if I was using multiple stitch types like having french knots, daisy chains, ladder stitching or whatever else for some sections, I would keep those to contrasting areas/colors. A fantastic example of using different layered types of stitching to create more intricate color/texture in an embroidery would be these incredible tarot card depictions by @hattedhedgehog, which I like even better than my own embroideries. Here's his take on the Tower card as well for comparison to mine (I'm so in love with it!!!).

But anyway, at this phase, your design is actually still digital--the above is just to explain how it translates later in the process. The next step is...

STEP 3: THREAD SELECTION

I will admit here I am not great at this part. I am constantly second guessing my thread colors, and can spend over an entire hour in the thread aisle at the craft store agonizing over choices. Really, I think this is just one of those things that takes practice and you get better at it over time. What I have had the best luck with is actually printing out a reference photo of my design/the original artwork and taking it with me. If you already have threads you can do this part at home too, but DMC alone has over 500 colors and I definitely don't even own half that so I like to torture myself by looking at them all together on the thread racks. Plus Anchor and Artiste and whatever other brands there are out there. One approach is to just sit there and pick out what you want for each section and line it all up together on top of your printout. Or in the case of my Tower I laid a bunch of options out on top of my template in the hoop to guess how they'd look in the frame.

For me since I am also doing this dither shading thing, I also need 2-3 colors per sections depending on its size. Sometimes it's easy and the threads have a color just a little darker or lighter right next to them in the numerical lineup! Other times, there is no good match, or it looks too far away to shade nicely, or I want one to be a warmer or cooler tone than the other... which means a lot of standing and fretting to myself over it. I actually take a lot of photos at this stage because it can be easier to see how they will look in the end from a photo than in person to me? Idk why. Plus then after they get scrambled in my bag I remember wtf order I meant for them to go in later. But as long as you're not preventing other customers from shopping themselves, you can spend as long as you want staring at thread in the embroidery aisle and they won't kick you out unless it's closing time, so take your time.

Now, IN THEORY, you can sort of combine steps 2 and 3 by color-selecting from your threads and using that to color in the design. However I have tried this and it led to mixed success because the photoshop eyedropper brush simply isn't actually that exact (in my experience, it desaturates compared to what we actually see). And because then you have to have the threads on hand while you're coloring... which means you might buy ones you don't end up using if you don't like them. So I prefer to just use this as a refinement step where I pick threads based on the design colors, then will re-color the design a second time to match those threads more closely to be sure I like the effect.

I've even used this as a tool when I needed to adjust my color choices mid-project, by digitally coloring over over my WIP:

Or here's a design (but I haven't posted the finished piece yet bc it's a gift so shhh) I made with certain color tones initially, but after buying thread I re-did the color mockup to be more vibrant, because I liked those threads better in the store:

Once you have your thread, you can make yourself a little reference chart with the colors you intend noted on the sections you want them, like below:

(note: i didn't end up sticking to these colors because I ended up dying my own thread for several sections. And then forgot I made this entirely and picked new ones because I put the project down for a year between design and stitching. Sigh).

Or for my Solas pattern I did this in a really detailed way, which i am sorry but i have redacted because... i have it for sale now and don't wanna just give that away haha. But if you buy the pattern from my shop this is one of the files you'd get with it, for ease of reference. I do also include a text-only list of them as well.

Now I don't go to this much trouble for all my designs, just the ones I put up for sale (or plan to). You can also just make a text list of your color plans if you want. Though for fun I also have been using my scrap thread to make these little "color palette" keyrings for my finished pieces, so if I ever remake them or update their patterns I will know what the original colors were, plus I can compare what i used to other threads if I wanna change part of the design up. This step is absolutely not necessary and I'm just doing it because I'm selling the patterns now, but they are kinda fun to look at.

And don't forget.. if you start a section in a certain color and decide you don't like it, you can just cut the threads and pull them out! I did that with my original hierophant piece actually. I had an entirely different color for one row of diamonds i thought just clashed way too much with the others, so I used photoshop to paint over it with some alternate options until I found one I liked better. Then I cut away all the old threads and put in the new color. It can be a little harder to fill a piece the second time since the fabric will have stretched out a little, but as long as you're using a good stabilizer it usually doesn't move too much.

You can also just make test swatches on spare fabric to test before you add them to your real piece. I wish I'd done this for some color transitions that didn't end up looking the way I wanted, but I am simply too lazy most of the time. My exception is usually for metallic, satin, or sparkly threads, because I want to know how they feel while embroidering. But if you're really worried about a certain color or shade it's a good thing to remember you can just do.

SO yep, that's my general process for drafting patterns. I start with the shapes/design, then do my flat color version, then I pick my threads. Makes it sound easy and short when phrased like that :) But I can honestly spend 8-10 hours just on making the lineart and coloring it in. If I was better at art, probably this would be less, but I'm working with what I've got (not much) 😂 I think all aspects of this are also something that gets easier over time, but it will probably never look as bad as you worry when you start out. I think all my pieces look awkward and rough right up until I do the finishing steps and move them to the display frame sometimes.

I hope this was helpful and answered your questions!! Feel free to post/share your WIPs to ask for feedback or advice ever too :) I've only ever had people in the embroidery community on tumblr be encouraging and helpful to me, and I'm happy to answer any questions myself when I can or if parts of this were confusing

[practicalsolarpunk]

Hello! I live in a very small efficiency apartment where there is not a lot of wi dow space/the window is glued shut and the land is exclusively owned and maintained by the company. What can I do to incorporate more solarpunk practices into my life? Are there any plants that can still grow well indoors? I'm afraid to start up a water station or anything like that outside because I'm afraid maitenance will mess with it/remove it. Would it be better for me to do something like knitting/embroidery that I can more easily do indoors?

Hello! As a fellow apartment-dweller with not a lot of window space currently, I feel your struggle here. If you're concerned that maintenance will mess with anything you put outside, then it probably is best to focus on things you can do indoors. However, there are quite a few things you can do indoors!

Plants: If you're looking for experience growing things, there are a variety of plants that grow well indoors and with low light - here's one list. (I've heard spider plants and snake plants recommended to beginners a lot, but I've never personally grown either.)

Fiber crafts: If you're more interested in crafts like knitting and embroidery, go for it! I also recommend people who are interested in those types of things learn about mending as well - it's a great way to extend the life of your old clothes (and other things made of fabric) and reduce the amount you need to buy.

Cooking: Cooking is a great skill to have, but it can be a challenge in an efficiency apartment. If you have a cooktop or a crock pot, you can look for simple recipes that you can make with the space and tools you have.

Building community: One of the foundations of solarpunk is that it's about community. My favorite way to start, especially in apartments, is by meeting the neighbors. Introducing yourself is a great way to open a relationship. Tying in with the previous idea, if your entire building is full of efficiencies and you can cook a big batch of something in a crock pot, that's a great excuse to have some neighbors over for a home-cooked meal.

Share: Part of building community, it doesn't require any outdoor space. You and your neighbors could put together a shared pantry in your building. You could start a Free Box at your workplace. Talk to the people around you - what do they need?

Get involved: Solarpunk isn't just about growing plants and mending clothes - there's also an activism component that is how we change society as a whole. Volunteer with an organization doing things you care about. Find a local mutual aid group (here's some tips for how to find them) and see what you can do to get involved. Start your own mutual aid project. The size of your apartment is irrelevant if you're out doing things.

Research: Not being able to do things outside right now doesn't mean you can't learn about them. And many of those "big picture" ideas have a lot of concepts that can apply to the efficiency apartment life. Looking into the "7 R's" or permaculture can help you come up with ideas for more things you can do.

Also if you're really set on doing stuff outdoors, don't necessarily discount it, especially if you plan to be in this apartment for a while! You can propose outdoor projects to your apartment complex's manager. They may be more receptive than you think, especially if you can spin it to sound beneficial to them. (If you're proposing a community garden for residents, for example, it could be a draw for new residents, convince current residents to stay, be managed by you the residents so they don't have to do much to maintain it, and they won't have to pay their landscapers to mow/maintain that space anymore.)

Check out more ideas in these tags:

#apartment solarpunk

#dorms and small spaces

#community building

#activism

#fiber crafts

There's also some additional tips in this post and this post, which are earlier responses to similar asks.

I hope this helps! Followers, feel free to chime in with your best tips!

- Mod J

[mayajadewrites]

Sweet Secret (Levi Ackerman x Reader)

Pairing: Levi Ackerman x F! Reader CEO Levi Ackerman coming in hot. I've been wanting to write a CEO Levi/Sugar daddy Levi story for a hot minute. Enjoy! Story Summary: You needed a job. Ackerman Inc was hiring for an in house assistant for none other than the CEO: Levi Ackerman. He's known to be essentially the worst to work with, you decide to take the job and take on the challenge that is Levi Ackerman. Will your relationship remain professional, or will their be monetary value added to the stakes? Or possibly even... love? ao3 Chapter Seventeen: Warmth

The smell of your vanilla shampoo fills Levi's nostrils as he takes a deep breath. Your hair was wet, sticking to your skin as it stretched down your back.

"Stay." Your voice is soft enough to comfort Levi's everlasting mental wounds. You would never know, but the way you speak soothes Levi's soul. He came from a place of violence, poverty, and loneliness that left his body with invisible scars. He was always alone. 

Always.

Until you.

After you changed into your pajama set, your smooth skin rubbing against the fabric of your tank top and shorts. "Can you be honest with me about something?" You take a step toward Levi, letting your chin tilt upwards towards his face.

Levi only nodded.

"You're not one to hold back anyways, so I don't know why I asked." You crossed your arms over your chest, all of your feelings bubbling to your head. You feel like your entire body is on fire whenever you look at Levi. The feelings have become too much to bear alone. 

The past few days have shown you who Levi is, specifically who he is when he's with you. Your entire life seemingly shattered around you and there he was to pick up each and every piece and glue it all back together.

"Spit it out." Levi's voice interrupted your thoughts. 

"Do you feel anything between us? Besides our... arrangement." 

"Be more specific." 

"When I'm with you, I feel like I can be myself. That I can let everything else go and only focus on you and I. You light a fire inside me. When I look at you, it's like theres a whole butterfly garden in my tummy that takes flight."

You watched Levi's eyes follow your movements as you spoke, his eyes blue-grey clouds and you would love to curl up on. Your eyes dragged down to his jawline, studying his chiseled face that was crafted by Renaissance artists. Your hands were screaming to touch him, but you restrained yourself.

"Mm." Levi stands up a little straighter as he peers at you through his half-lidded eyes.

"That's all you have to say?" 

"You bring me... warmth." He finally spoke. You weren't sure what you were expecting him to say, but it definitely wasn't 'warmth'. 

You raise your eyebrow as you wait for him to explain further, to which he sighed and shook his head. He didn't want to explain himself more because he didn't know how to put what he felt into words that were coherent. 

"All my life, I've done everything alone. I wanted to be alone. Never having to rely on anyone, lean on anyone, nothing. Which is why I've never been good at relationships. The women I were interested in, well, I was sort of interested in - they weren't... right. It was like I was trying to succumb to what people were telling me to do. Erwin would tell me it's nice to have someone to come home to. I dated one woman, who I semi-enjoyed spending time with. It was more physical though. There was not really any mental connection which is very important to me. So that ended fast."

You stood and listened to Levi. Your large doe-like eyes watched his mouth as he spoke, making sure you understand every word that he's saying. 

"When I met you, something inside of me changed. It was like I was a block of ice, and you were a small flame. I almost didn't want to acknowledge it was happening. Once I couldn't anymore, I brought up the 'arrangement'. I just wanted more of a reason to be near you. To feel your warmth." 

You can't help but feel tears well up in your eyes. The melody of his words played through your ears - more of those butterflies being released in your tummy. 

"I was serious when I said I want to be there for you through whatever you throw at me. Not as your boss, not as your sugar daddy, but as your man. As your partner."

Gulp.

"The way I feel about you... I've never felt for anyone. I want to create a home with you. I want you to be the mother of my children. I want life. With you." Levi's hands reached for yours. Finally. His touch. You let your hands mend to his as he holds your hands close to his lips, leaving kisses on your knuckles. You watched as his lips left your skin, hoping his touch would forever linger.

"I want you to be mine. I want to be yours." 

You bring yourself closer to him as he speaks and wrap your arms around his body. You press your chin to his chest as you study the expression on his face. 

"I've been yours, Levi. I tried to deny it so many times. I'm yours, unapologetically." 

His Index finger finds your chin as he brings your face to his, eliminating all space between you with a kiss. It's slow, but filled with passion. You drag your fingertips along his body as you reach his neck, tracing shapes along his undercut. 

Levi's tongue moves along your lower lip as he begs for entry, to which you oblige. His breath hitches when you open your mouth slightly, his hands squeezing your plush hips gently. Your skin starts to feel hot as his fingertips sneak into the elastic of your shorts, the pads of his fingers gently pressing against your skin.

You press your body into his as he touch leaves you feeling like you're on fire, the kisses almost fleeting. Levi brought his attention back to your lips, making sure he puts most of his effort there. Your lips were soft, like pillows that Levi always wanted to be on.

"Levi." You take a breath as your heart rate excellerates. "I need you." 

"Tsk." Levi sucked his teeth. "You are so impatient. We're not making love for the first time like this." 

"Are you saying all those other times weren't love?!" You say sarcastically, putting your hand on your chest. "I'm offended, Levi Ackerman." 

"Shut up." He presses his lips to your temple. "Let's go to bed."

[thegreatyin]

How did you manage to handle not one, but FOUR separate accounts in fl? I recently made the account for my HD little guy but having to do the tutorial again just seems miserable

there's... weirdly several answers to that question, actually??

a HUGE part of it is due to the way FL is structured. the 10-minute action timer is a core part of the game on a fundamental level, and the fact that i can very easily run out of stuff to do on one character and thus have an excuse to quickly and easily swap to another is just... convenient? satisfying? i'm not entirely sure how to explain it. the fact that i can make progress even while i am fundamentally simultaneously Not Making Progress is like pure dopamine for my freak insane awful little brain. there's just something really pleasing about spending all of my actions pursuing The Goal Of The Day™ on one account before casually swapping to another and doing the same without feeling like i'm wasting time or acting to the first account's explicit detriment. the downtime helps! the recharge time helps! the structure really really works!!

i'm technically only actively playing three, maybe two accounts minimum. the only reason the fourth (the one that'll be my future BaL playthrough) currently exists at all is so i can get his earlygame completely out of the way now and not have to waste time running through it all later, when what i actually want to do is play the ambition i've made myself wait a full year to play. and also getting free goodies as seasonal stuff happens,, something something surprise tools to help us later. the only two accounts i'd say i'm really "actively playing" at the moment are caeru and lark- and of the two, lark takes the most priority, since his ambition is the one i'm currently pursuing in earnest. for a couple months now- despite being My Main FL Character- the scoundrel has actually been pretty inactive on a gameplay front outside of the occasional progression in TLC and discordance content. purely by virtue of having Very little left to do outside of Very long-term grinds and vanities. they're in their "now what?" "now you can start playing the game" era. they've graduated to previous protagonist background cameo in a sequel anime series. they're like the yin FLPC equivalent of red at the top of mount silver. they're Literally just vibing rn. i only keep posting about them regardless because i'm insane and i will never ever ever ever ever let that bat go. but yeah, big TLDR, outside of doing the bare minimum to keep making waves/notability up every week, i'm not actually spending that much time on accounts i'm not currently actively interested in playing. and that accounts for way more gaming spoons than you might think.

i have a virtually lifelong history of playing MMOs, especially and specifically world of warcraft. i was born in the endless grind for useless video game pixel vanities and/or bragging rights. molded by it. you all have merely adapted to doing the same piece of content a pointlessly excessive amount of times for literally no reason besides whimsy and folly. me? i've done my time. i've served my sentence. i've spent weeks doing the original burning crusade netherwing dailies. i've devoted days to running praetorium over and over and over again, back-to-back, nonstop, long before square enix cut it in half and made it NOT take at minimum an hour and a half per run. i've perfected my silverwastes + auric basin goldfarming strategies. i've (almost) crafted dragonwrath tarecgosa's rest. i've killed the sha of anger so many times its dying scream of agony is embedded into the very fabric of my being. ""only"" doing making your name content four times over? that is nothing to me. it means nothing to me. it is so infinitesimal i can do the persuasive seduction quests in my sleep. it's not a matter of handling misery, or having the capacity, or even sighing as i remember the brass embassy raid segment of the watchful questline seriously i don't know why i keep forgetting that exists or what even is my problem with it i just am so consistently mildly inconvenienced by it and its highly specific resource requirements and it is the worst thing ever. maybe i'm just so used to the scoundrel's near-infinite money and troves of disposable items that i've completely forgotten what being poor is like. despite having done that step 3 fucking times now. ahem. anyway. i have transcended the feeble mortal bindings of my resistant-to-grinding flesh and ascended to a higher plane of enlightenment, they may call me insane but they will be the ones left laughing when they see what that "insanity" has wrought, i've usurped them, i've usurped them all-

hacks and coughs and awkwardly clears my throat. i mean. uh. um. Ahem.

the empress' court artistry + tales of the university nerfs helped too.