#to make it more accurate to what I am trying to convey here

[diceramblesaboutocs]

I can't answer shortly because...

So Aino and Licht it is :)

*****

"Your fianceé is going crazy."

Nokto had found his way to his twin, shaking his head while letting out a dramatic sigh. The words of the 7th prince punched a violent cough out of Yves as the dainty prince was sipping his perfectly brewed tea.

Licht swallowed the remains of a sweet dariole and turned to Nokto. "How so?"

"She was all hunched over by the wall close by the castle kitchen, crafting a small door. She finally lost it." The signature grin decorated Nokto's thin lips as he sat on the setee next to his twin brother. "Told her that she was too big for that door."

Only Nokto was able to see as Licht's brows furrowed ever so slightly. He placed his plate on the table, gathered his gloves as he stood up to investigate this scene.

"I hope she told you were being rude. No matter what she was doing, you were being an ass." Yves gently and shiftly tapped his lips with a napkin, giving his usual lecture to the younger one.

"She told it was big enough for my soul." Nokto popped a small chocolate cookie into his mouth.

***

The corridors of the palace were busy, the winter holidays approaching meant that the whole castle needed its decorations for all the public events. With practiced ease Licht dodged the hasty servants carrying bells, winter rose arrangements and huge candelabras.

Nokto was indeed truthful in his words. Aino really was there, sitting as ladylike as she could on the floor, in front of a wall close by the castle pantry and kitchen. Her hands were arranging a small door, no higher than 30 centimeters, against the wall. Its wooden grain painted dark red with white details of simplistic stars and snowflakes.

Licht slowly moved next to her, looking down at the small decoration. "What are you doing?"

His words prompted Aino to look up, her eyes wide from embarrassment, only for her to return to the task at hand. "I... I'm putting up a door for the Jule elf..."

"The Jule elf?" Licht's voice had a curious undertone, even tho his expression stayed as it always was. Non-expressive.

"Mmm... Yes. It's a silly little thing. A superstition. I guess..." Aino took a tiny wooden planks to arrange like a porch in front of the door.

"..." This wasn't new and Licht felt a sting of pain in his chest. His fianceé had a bad case of homesickness and he understood that this was her way of coping. No matter how weird it made her look in the eyes of the Rhodolitian people. "...What kind of a superstition?"

Aino took a deep breath, quickly brushed a runaway hair strand behind her ear. The unorthodox activity of crafting had loosened her updo a bit. The maids insisted that it was the best way to do her coarse hair. Licht didn't understand the logic. He found that he liked her hair, how it reminded of soft hay. Sturdy and warm.

"In Charoite... During this season, this way we let the Jule elf in to the house, visit the home elf and live with us. Protect the house, the residents and make sure all the festivities will go alright. ... It is like a protector of the home and hearth. And every building and place has its own protector." She placed a small felt piece on the small porch and turned to look at Licht.

"I see..." Licht stared at Aino and then turned to look at the door. "... It is an adorable door."

His words earned him a shake of a head, a quiet laugh and a warm smile. "I tried my best. I hope the elf likes it."

"I'm sure they will." Licht offered his hand to help Aino up which she accepted.

"Well I hope so. They might turn homicidal if they are displeased." Aino smoothed her dress and smiled at her fiance.

Licht's eyes widened a bit. "Wait, what?"

Question Of The Day

Everyone has their own traditions during the holidays, whether its handmaking ornaments together or hosting holiday parties. What is your favorite holiday tradition you’d want your favorite suitor to take part in?

╰❧ Daily Q's can be answered with your voice- or your OC's!

Divider by @/sweetmelodygraphics

[localplaguenurse]

Falling Head over Heels (Pantalone x Male Reader) pt.2

Notes: yeah there was always going to be more to this, honestly. Sfw, more of Reader's dad being an ass, more elaboration on Reader's job and condition, and some suggestive content towards the end.

Pt 1 here

You weren’t surprised that your father had requested you make your presence limited during his dinner with the Regrator. That was the only part of this situation that wasn’t a surprise. The rest of it all, you’re unsure which is more shocking; the fact your father had asked Pantalone for a do-over dinner, or that Pantalone accepted the invitation. There’s also the realization that your father is willing to work with the Fatui in order not to compromise the wealthy lifestyle your family has been living for generations now. A month after the initial party, the shock is not only still real, but his doubling down on it has taken you and your mother aback. 

“Dear, I understand things have been a little shaky for us,” your mother said the night Pantalone’s invitation acceptance was made known, “but do we need to do this? We can honestly get by fine enough, even if it’s not as much as we had before.”

You could hear in his voice that your father was scowling. “You’d really want to embarrass both of our families like that? Lose all standings and ties we have with our friends and colleagues?”

“By the Tsaritsa, you’re making it out like we’re about to go homeless! We’re downsizing!”

“Will we be keeping all our servants if we downsize? Are you going to start cooking our meals? Taking our son to his appointments or to his publisher? Buying all his supplies?”

You raised your hand, not looking up from your book. “Friendly reminder that I am the one who pays for my appointments and supplies now.”

“That’s pocket money compared to the costs of transportation and the accommodations we’ve made and will need to make,” your father snapped, “and you’re still making less than us to boot!”

You looked up and directly in the direction of your father’s voice. His silhouette was backlit by the light of the fireplace, and your initial thought was how it looked like hellfire. You made a mental note to include it somewhere in the next few chapters of your book. 

That was not the end of the arguing between your mother and father, but that was the point you stepped out of the conversation. Their bickering grew louder when you left the room to read elsewhere. With the eerie, hateful silence that plagued the manor the next morning, you took that as a sign that this dinner with Pantalone was happening whether you and your mother liked it or not. 

Fine, whatever. You have work to do anyways.

That is the mantra you repeat in your head as you feel it start to ache in frustration. Your eyes pour over the words you’ve typed so far, trying to make sense of the point you’re making. The wording is clunky, awkward, but you’re struggling to come up with something more concise that accurately conveys the thoughts in your mind. You hear your editor’s voice telling you it doesn’t have to be perfect, that’s the point of a first draft, to just get the point down and then figure out how to make it sound nice after you’ve figured out the whole story. The perfectionist in you screams otherwise, but offers no solution other than to start over completely.

You rub your eyes, feeling mentally drained. Part of you says to take a break, but part of you says you have to make the most of your motivation while you have it, and you are so close to figuring it all out, it’s on the tip of your tongue. Or fingers, come to think of it.

You’re on what feels like the hundredth reread of your scene, having stared at the words so much that they start to look foreign. Your concentration on the page is hardly broken when you hear the door to your office open, and as such, you do not look up. It’s merely Adelaide, you think, just bringing you some refreshments. Your fingers hover over the typewriter as soft footsteps approach your desk, just out of your vision.

You poke at the keys slowly, feeling inspiration drain out of your fingertips. The footsteps grow closer, and you find it odd that Adelaide has yet to say anything, but continue hyperfocusing on your work. Come on, you have the image in your head, and your descriptive vocabulary is vast enough that you should know how to describe it, even if only in fragments. You have the wording of it in your head so why can’t you actually put the words down on paper?

The footsteps stop right next to you. You don’t pay them any mind, assuming Adelaide is about to place something on your desk, perhaps a slice from the cake your father bought for his dinner tonight. You move the geography textbook you have out to the corner of your desk and move what you have of your chapter so far out of the way.

Unable to look out of the corner of your eye, you can not see her move closer to you, but you sense her presence right next to you. The feeling of someone’s body heat is hard to miss, as is the distinct sensation of being watched. You can’t see it, but it feels like Adelaide is standing right on the edge of where your vision ends.

You barely look up from the typewriter when you address her. “Adelaide, I would like some personal space.”

The laughter you hear right in your ear is a man’s. You immediately jump up and away, stumbling over your chair and falling on your back. You sit up, and at first, you see the dark attire and feel your stomach sink. It continues sinking down as your eyes move up to see Pantalone’s face. He’s smiling, which might have been handsome if he wasn’t finding clear amusement in your reaction.

You can’t find your words, so Pantalone speaks instead.

“Apologies,” he says, chuckling a little, “I was just… testing something.”

My fight or flight instincts? You ask yourself but know better than to verbalize. Pantalone steps forward and sets your chair upright, and glances at the typewriter on your desk. He stares for a few seconds, and lets out a soft hum as his eyes drift to where your other finished pages are. His gloved hand drifts over to the pile, and that’s when you quickly stand up.

“That’s not finished yet,” you quickly tell him, “it’s a rough draft.”

You see his eyes glance your way, and he retracts his hand. Pantalone takes a step back, turning to face you. “So I’m not allowed to read any of it?”

“I…” The verbal trap he’s laid out is not lost on you. He knows you can’t easily, confidently say “no” to a Harbinger, especially since you have made a fool of yourself in front of him before. You swallow, and rephrase your thoughts. “I-I would prefer to have a finished chapter before I let anyone read my works.”

Pantalone smiles wider. “Ah, I suppose that is fair.”

He continues to smile and stare at you as you awkwardly sit back down in your chair. You turn your head in his direction, propping your chin up on your hand. “I, um, I thought you were having dinner with my father…?”

Pantalone nods. “Yes, we were, but when I had asked why you were not joining us, I could tell I had struck a nerve between your father and mother.”

“... How so?”

“Your mother asked if she could speak to your father for a moment, and when they did not come back for another ten or so minutes, I figured I should go find them.”

“Did you?”

“They seemed… busy.”

You can imagine the argument right now. You shake your head. “Sorry about that, things have been sort of, um… hectic here. It’s taken its toll on my parents.”

Pantalone nods in understanding, and you wonder if he thinks this has anything to do with the party. You turn back to the typewriter and, rereading the page, decide you hate it and it needs to go. You reach forward and grasp the knob on the end of the roller, twisting it until the paper can be slipped out. You reread it one last time, then crumple it up in your hands.

You hear Pantalone’s voice. “So, I take it you enjoy writing?”

“Right now? No,” you say, which earns a laugh from Pantalone, “but generally, yes.”

“How long have you been writing?”

You lean over and toss the crumpled paper in the waste bin next to your desk. “Professionally, I’ve been writing for eight years, though I started using the typewriter when I was ten.”

Pantalone watches as you slip more paper into the roller, cranking the knob on the end until the paper has been fed through properly, making minor adjustments to the paper’s position. You then slide the roller to the left, the carriage stopping it once it’s in place. Your fingers hover above the keys for a moment, and Pantalone sees your focused expression shift into exhaustion. You groan, running a hand through your hair. If he had to wager a guess, you’ve just lost all writing motivation.

“You know,” Pantalone says, “I could hear your typing through the door before I entered. You type rather fast, it’s impressive.”

The flattery noticeably catches you off guard. “Oh, um, thank you,” you reply, still a little on edge with a Harbinger in your study.

“I have secretaries who couldn’t type that fast without making mistakes, but that page you were working on had consistent strokes and only one typo.”

You turn your head in an attempt to sort of hide the way your cheeks warm up, but Pantalone silently leans over anyway to see you blush. You don’t see him doing this, which Pantalone makes another note of.

“I have the muscle memory for it, I suppose,” you remark, “it’s one of the things I’ve been working on since my diagnosis.”

“Diagnosis… oh, your eye disorder?”

You blink, and turn to Pantalone, surprised at the casual question. “How did you–”

“Your mother briefly explained it at the party,” Pantalone recounts, “that you were diagnosed as a child and do not have any peripheral vision.”

You sigh, and Pantalone hears a hint of annoyance. “Yes, that’s why I ran into you.” You turn to your typewriter, fingers hovering over the keys while you balance thinking of your scene and carrying on the conversation. “It’s called retinitis pigmentosa, and it runs in my mother’s side of the family. My grandfather had it, which made my mother a carrier for it, and then she passed it on to me, and possibly my sisters.”

“Wait, sisters?”

“One older, two younger,” you say, “and an older brother, but he got lucky so his eyesight is still fine.”

“When were you diagnosed, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I was eight when I was properly diagnosed,” you recount. “I used to stumble and trip over furniture all the time when I was little, and was scared of the dark. My family used to tease me about it, until I was around six or seven. That’s when my mother started getting concerned, because I was a seemingly normal child who could read, write, and talk just fine, could walk and stand upright just fine, but I would still trip and fall over seemingly obvious hazards, especially in the dark.”

“I see, I see…”

You pull your hands away from the typewriter, and interlock them on your desk. “With adequate treatment, the rate of my going blind has slowed, but cannot be prevented. From what my doctors say and what I know of my grandfather’s case, I will lose my central vision sometime in my forties if I’m lucky.”

“Oh, I’m… very sorry to hear that.”

Uncomfortable silence hangs in the air. Internally, you’re screaming at yourself for just dumping all of that on the Regrator. In all fairness, he did ask, but still.

At the edge of your central vision, you see a page from your rough draft slip away from the stack. You turn your head, and see Pantalone holding it. Heat spreads across your face, and you quickly pull the page from his grasp. The knowing smile on his face tells you it’s too late.

What sounds like condescension laces his voice. “I was enjoying that, thank you very much.” “And I said I don’t like people reading my work before it’s done,” you hiss, your embarrassment painfully obvious. You place the page back on top of the stack and lift it up and away from Pantalone. You search for a spot on your desk to put it before deciding on sticking it in a drawer. When you slam the drawer shut, your humiliation over the scene you are writing makes you use more force than is needed, which knocks your geography book off the corner of your desk and onto the ground.

Pantalone tilts his head, and you watch him lean down to pick the book up. Horror floods your body, and you try to rush around the other way to stop him, only to bang your knee against the desk. When you stand upright and look, you see Pantalone has not only picked the book up, but has opened it and started flipping through it. Now, that would not normally be a problem, except for the fact that this isn’t a geography textbook, it just has the dust cover on it.

Pantalone’s eyes widen, and though the lighting in this room is a little dimmer than you’d like, you can tell there is the faintest hue of pink on Pantalone’s face. Time slows when he looks up and meets your eyes, and all you can see is his lips twist into an absolutely massive smile, before he cackles with laughter.

He turns the book around to show you the page and the picture displayed inside takes up the entirety of your vision. Your face is on fire, and Pantalone nearly doubles over with how hard he’s laughing. He barely manages to pull himself together enough, straightening his posture and wiping tears from his eyes. He’s not even trying a little bit to hide the amusement he’s feeling at your expense.

He adjusts his glasses so they’re no longer crooked. “J-Just what sort of writer are you?”

You snatch the book from his hand and slam it shut. Pantalone watches you, waiting for an answer. “I-If I tell you, will you leave me alone?”

Pantalone just smiles down at you, and you feel your heart pulsing in your throat at the sound of his voice. “Oh? Are you that eager to get rid of me?”

You glare at him, and he just shakes his head in defeat. You look down at the floor, and your voice trembles in shame. “... I write romance, b-but my editor said I should try something, um, steamier. Their w-words, not mine. I-I don’t really know how to write that sort of thing, so I have this, for reference material.”

“Reference material, he claims,” Pantalone teases.

“L-Look, I’m not in the mood for this,” you snap, “and my father is probably looking for you, so could you please let me get back to my work?”

You do not wait for Pantalone’s answer before you walk away and plop back into your chair. You toss the book into another drawer and slam it shut as well, this time out of anger and embarrassment. Pantalone takes that as a sign that any and all conversation has stopped, and decides he’s had enough fun toying with you. This bizarre scenario aside, you do make a good point; he really should get back to this meeting.

He walks away, trying not to laugh again at what he’s learned about the young man who nearly ruined his suit. He makes his way to the door, taking hold of the knob.

“Wait.”

Pantalone pauses, and looks at you over his shoulder.

“... Don’t mention this to my parents.”

He chuckles. “I won’t, as funny as that would be.”

“N-No, it’s not even that, it’s…” You lower your head and voice. “I haven’t told my family I like men yet.”

At that admission and your obvious discomfort, almost shame, the hilarity of the situation fades. A feeling of almost guilt starts to build in Pantalone when he looks at you. He would normally find and revel in the schadenfreude of this sort of situation, but given the new context, Pantalone can recognize a crossed boundary and general invasion of privacy.

He grips the doorknob. “I won’t. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

The door shuts behind Pantalone, leaving you alone in your study. In the quiet of the room, you’re left with your thoughts, and the bizarre reality of what just happened actually sinks in. A Fatui Harbinger just walked into your study and found your gay smut.

You push your typewriter forward so you don’t hit it when you smack your head against your desk to keep yourself from yelling.

[nisaetus-nerd]

I noticed people rating alterhuman terms and wanted to join in, so here is my personal list of favourable (and unfavourable) labels:

Alterhuman (8/10) This effectively communicates the nature of my identity and is therefore one I use frequently, but the implication of ‘still human in some way’ can be uncomfortable and misleading sometimes. It is slightly better when not shortened as ‘alternative human’.

Non-human (9/10) More fitting, but misleading once again. I do not see myself as human but there are undeniable aspects of my meat suit, including brain, that instil some humanity into me. (The distinction I am trying to make between human and humanity here is, for example, similar to the distinction between female and femininity.)

Interestingly, my fictionkins are canonically human, yet my being them is in a non-human way.

Therian (7/10) Similar to ‘alterhuman’ but with a higher degree of inaccuracy — I am not just a therian. Additionally, this sometimes implies a certain image to some outside alterhuman circles.

Otherkin (6/10) This works, but it is also unspecific. I tend to use placekin/objectkin more. (I do not see myself as ghost kintype as separate from my fictionkins, although it is a paratype.)

Fictionkin (7/10) Same reasoning as ‘therian’.

Human (0/10) Though I do not deny that this body would classify me as human in some ways (eg., biological species), this does not accurately reflect my identity and discomforts me.

Person (7/10) This is good for conveying I am an individual, it just feels off for a reason I have not been able to discern.

Being (7/10) Correct, but makes me sound a lot more significant than I feel.

Thing (10/10) Reasonably vague to fit my different kintypes and works incredibly well, especially if the user establishes it is meant in a neutral or positive way. There are also moments I feel more like an object or concept than a living being.

Creature/Critter (10/10) I just enjoy the slightly cryptic connotations of the word — it makes me feel like an unidentifiable entity, or something but not quite.

[Specified Kintype] (10/10) I have no comments on this. The acknowledgement that I am what I am would mean a lot to me.

I was not entirely sure of which terms to include, so I hope I covered as many bases as appropriate.

[artisgonnabeok]

Best Friends of Friends.

More Details Below:

So, there are two characters here, the second Trickster aka Axel Walker and Red Hood aka Jason Todd.

I picked these two for a few reasons:

1:they are both close friends with Bizzaro, with Axel however it's in another universe. I love the friendship Bizzaro has with both of them so when it came to deciding who's head Axel will be holding it came down to Joker, Riddler or Jason... I picked Jason

2:for the event there had to be a Batman component so.. I picked Jason. It doesn't help he is easily the most recognizable out of the boys.

3:Also Jason died before and when you're making a spooky drawing you can play around with that concept.

4: the popular headcannon that his eyes glow helps provide a lovely contrast.

5: been working on my Jason design for months

6: For me picking Trickster the main thing was... I like drawing him and he's one of my favorite characters.

7:Also he's worked in Gotham before.

8: Also my design for him has two golden fake teeth in the form of fangs which can easily become vampire fangs.

9: The boy is goofy which allows more freedom in the colors he wears, his facial expression plus his actual clothes.

10: using him allows me to worry less on a specific pattern/design and more so what I am trying to convey.

Details:

As always... I have patterns.

I wanted to adjust my design I have for him originally which Incase you forgot is this:

As you can tell his hair is different in the form of the purple sides. I added a animal pattern to further push this crazy, childish side of him.

Also I added more piercings to his updated design as well as gave him a younger look

Now most of the patterns I added were out of seeing what I could do to add more wacky. However the music notes were added as a reference to his earbuds he normally wear.

Going back to the patterns, I wanted to fit as many clashing colors and patterns into his costume as I could. This adds a contrast between him and Jason but also it works with his character.

The costume itself is a fusion of his outfit and a vampires, of course a vampire cape, vest, etc. but then we have the see through sleeves, the oversized shorts. We have him showing off his robotic arm.

Also a closer look at the see through sleeve:

Also his arm got a upgrade from the original design:

Old:

New:

The biggest change was having his entire arm robotic.

By doing that the "T" tattoo ended up going away. However I did bring it into the design in the form of it being apart of his prosthetic.

I also kept the muscle design with his arm but this time looking at reference photos to get the lines more accurate.

I also added graffiti to the new design to better fix Axels character. I added rust as well due to the fact that Axel is a villain after all, so it makes sense for his prosthetic to not be in the best shape. Especially since he's a teen who doesn't seem to care much about his own health.

As for Jason, having his head off is a design choice because it allows me to reference the Batarang scar, the Lazarus Pit, His death, all in one simple pose.

I really wanted to have his eyes glow green because, Lazarus Pit and also Spooky Halloween.

I used my toned down design for him, added in the scars but also I added in the eye thing because Spooky Halloween.

The background is a mix of several things because I really want you to figure it out for yourself on what it is.

All in all I am proud of this artwork and it was really fun participating. Thank you so much @wait-whos-batman for doing this Spooktacular event.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 8/13/2024

i think i'm going to take a break from scifi written by men for a bit

listening

Ahmed Malek's Les Vacances de L'inspecteur Tahar, from the 1972 film of the same name.

if i can be really really real for a minute here the only thing i've listened to more than twice this week is GUESS by charli xcx but i don't want to have the same tuesdaysong twice in a row. this would make for an annoying end of year playlist.

i got an ad for a collected set of Ahmed Malek's Algerian jazz music on instagram. a session musician in Algiers, he made his name as a soundtrack composer with this comedic detective movie and was in demand for the rest of his life-- he's still really beloved in the African jazz scene, his works are super collectible, and his daughter gifted all his masters to a tiny record company so they could rerelease and preserve them.

it sounds exactly how you think a 70s cop movie should sound. impeccable example of the genre. instantly evocative. i wonder if it influenced the wider cop drama soundscape or if it's just an early example?

-

reading

many books disappointed me a great deal this week.

thank you philip.

the only comic i did like was Marauders (2019-2022), trying to get a little bit more into the xmen since my bestie has decided we're watching all their movies. this is really fun bc i knew who kitty pryde was, and she's a privateer captain who looks beat to shit the whole book. extremely fun and gay and swashbuckling, i placed holds for the other volumes already.

the two rogue and gambit books assumed i knew more about those characters than i already did, and had a heavy reliance on flashbacks and references to other issues.

the magic order was insufferable and did not stick its landing. made me worry about the characters and then feel really fucking stupid for worrying about the characters. i don't know why i keep trying mark millar books and thinking i will like them.

HOTELITOR had a very fun concept (mech hotel), but was a little more middle-grade than i was expecting, even from a teen book. very calarts visual style. very power of friendship will undo an evil corporation, which, i wish.

this little mermaid manga was not for me. and that's fine. most manga isn't for me.

we have to take a brief detour into how i store my books (poorly). these big middle shelves hold an unsorted mass, mostly of stuff i'm not sure i want to keep. i'm trying to be more thoughtful about which books i keep bc realistically i do not reread very often (if at all) and i am running out of space. as much as i love weird little scifi and fantasy paperbacks it would be cool if they all fit on one shelf.

here are four books i rapidly cycled through this weekend that are going to be donated.

Michael Moorcock's The Black Corridor, 1969, about a man slowly going insane in a spaceship fleeing a politically violent Earth with his friends and relations in cryosleep. not a very beloved Moorcock book among the Moorcock fans. this has a heavy focus on the rise of British fascism and i'm not now, nor will i ever be, in the mood for this. a shame bc this slim hardcover has proportions that were very nice to hold.

Thomas Burnett Swan's Where is the Bird of Fire?, 1970, three not quite short stories but not quite novellas about mythical creatures at the founding of Rome, Xerxes the Great's empire, and Britain near the fall of Rome. states very clearly exactly what it is on the tin and delivers it, unfortunately i don’t like any of the flavors on offer. every single one of these has the half-coy kind of sex scene common in historical fiction, where in order to represent the past accurately and with full verisimilitude we Must convey that they fucked nasty and had fun doing it. many times. unfortunately a middle aged man wrote these and our erotic sensibilities are Very far apart.

Glen Cook's Cold Copper Tears, 1988, a noirish urban fantasy. there are fourteen books in this series so clearly people like them. i found a lot of the Noir Similes a little tortured. "but kay isn't that the point--" yes but these annoyed me. also there's a rape joke i didn't enjoy on the fourth fucking page. i have very few hard outs in fiction and one of them is on-screen or on-page sexual assault or rape jokes in chapter one. i am slightly less likely to drop a book if it has rape jokes in chapters that are not the first but like. it’s still almost a flat line at 100%.

and the only one i got two-thirds of the way through, and which i partially liveblogged here,

Eric Kotani and John Maddox Robert's Between the Stars, 1988, the third in their Island Worlds series. it stands alone fairly well, which is impressive.

this book is good at differentiating a very large, very clannish cast, which is a hard thing to do in a political opera. people are often differentiated by little physical movement quirks, which a spy later uses to identify someone. it’s a lovely bit of business and definitely the authors’ strong points.

also props for two of the most capable people, an ill-liked matriarch/scientific genius and a femme fatale Russian, for being two of the most interesting characters with the most screen time, both on their own and in other character’s thoughts. unfortunately, with such a large cast and so many factions, the action is often split and meandering. racist in the very specific orientalist way cyberpunk eighties fiction often is, but uncommonly, they remembered Turkey existed and included in the orientalism?

severely suffered from a second act where it tripped over its own feet a lot instead of continued forward motion, quite honestly i got bored and tired of being hit over the head with various points. a very whedonesque quality of needing to comment on the political implication of something the instant after it happens.

this is not a subtle book, and it smacks less of an urgency to get a point across in as few words as possible and more an uncertainty in the authors of getting their point across at all. this is confusing to me bc this was their fourth book together and the third in this series. have some more confidence in your writing abilities. like, if you've already established your baddie as a fascist torturer who literally owns slaves and plans on taking over earth, you don't need to have him also say "Hitler was much-maligned" at a dinner party he's holding in a room full of hunting trophies where the only things on the table are red wine and whole game birds. you've more than established him as evil. the whole book is like this. it's exhausting.

not a book for me! many such cases!

-

watching

my brother was really singing the praises of vampire hunter d's animation and i was like, postapoc roaming vampire bounty hunter? say less! im already getting in!

i watched the 1980s version with some bemusement until he was like "why did you watch that and not the 2000 version." well that would have been so cool of you to be more specific, my boy!!! vampire hunter d (1985, dir. Toyoo Ashida) was still fun but clearly had way less of a budget than Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust (2000, dir. Yoshiaki Kawajiri)

i enjoyed bloodlust a little more bc it had a postapoc style i enjoyed a little more: showed me big manta rays that hide under the sand, big ruined radio dishes, and lots of beautifully ruined skyscrapers and fucked up highway overpasses. every time you see me post about a BIG!!! FUCKING!!! DISH!!! you should hear this schoolchildren "YAAAAAY!" sample from Jet Set Radio

-

playing

nothing much to report, a lot of grindy genshin impact shit as i try to clear all my map markers before the new nation drops at the end of the month.

-

making

the girls have three litter boxes available to them (laundry room/spare bathroom/utility closet), all in the correct and recommended locations, all with good sightlines and escape routes and all out of the main hustle and bustle of the apartment, all open top, all with the same kind of litter and the same kind of litter mat. they only use the one in my laundry room. since phil has had free roam of the house she has not used the one in the office bathroom. i asked my vet about this and sent her pictures to make sure i was doing everything right and the diagnosis was "yeah that's a little weird of them". can we spread the wear and tear out a little more, girls? so i don't have to deep clean the same litterbox every week?

[cipheramnesia]

Experiencing a conflict process about information and communication. The material of information is important, and how the information is communicated is secondary. Questioning information on the basis of semantic hair splitting is often a sign of a bad faith attempt to discredit information.

However, the choices made about how to communicate information are vital to ensuring that information is understood. However great a truth, it can be undermined by bad communication. The aspect of information which should be least relevant to its importance or veracity is by human nature essential, even demanding argument to seek the best formula for the communication process.

This feels overwhelming and discordant tonight, thinking of how often I have watched just the smallest or unimportant word choice shift the tone of information against the fundamentals of communication. Every day I want to stick my beak where it don't belong and just make the little corrections here and there to steer information towards better communication but I don't because those aren't my words and it's not my playground.

Sometimes I've gotten close to understanding this kind of dissociative separation for more distant cultures. Slowly getting better at understanding how to modulate my written tone and word choices to allow information to flow better from me to people in China or Korea or India or Vietnam. It's a strange process to try and express in my language information which will carry accurately through cultural and linguistic translation. I cannot explain it, because it's emotional, rhythmic, intuitive and while there are definitely specific cultural norms, another role of communication is to convey "this is who I am and where I am from," as part of the delicate dance around respectfully conveying information.

I can always pick out the little details that go wrong for me and for other people, I just can't explain what works. I talk to a lot of people from a lot of places and I am tragically monolingual, and the consequence of this is that how I communicate is shaped by finding a way through translation of English into dozens of languages, Icelandic, regional languages in Nigeria or Ethiopia, Turkish, different languages in India. Cursed English is everywhere nearly, and for me it's a sort of code to solve with words, find the words that unlock the right meaning to someone who needs information and I'm what we both have to work with.

So it goes, the information can't move anywhere if the language doesn't make it desirable to understand. What a shitshow.

[telekitnetic-art]

Hi!! Your art is so fucking cool! Can I ask what the process looks like for form line? Ex. What do your sketches look like when they are really rough? How do you go from idea -> final product. 💕

Hadih, thanks so much for your question!

Honestly, it's sort of hard to explain? I do have some sketches to sort of give an idea though.

This sketch I posted a couple days ago is a pretty good example of what my initial concept sketches sometimes look like.. As you can see, they're pretty chaotic and very rough, and usually these sketches are more about getting the idea down then actually making the formline itself. There aren't formline shapes just yet, although I do sometimes sketch out elements or shapes like eyes or bodies or paws/hands that will usually have an ovoid in it, because those elements tend to be a focus or centerpiece. The sketch is obviously not final, and things can change along the way to account for space and balance as well as what I'm trying to convey. (These sketches aren't entirely accurate of course because they're for pieces that are meant to be fusions of character illustrations and formline art, but they're the best thing I can find on my pc at the moment)

The rough sketch helps me figure out the flow of the piece, and once I'm satisfied with it I try and get to putting down the shapes and silhouette, and it's here where I try to find the balance with my rough sketch and how the shapes can fit and behave in the piece to the best of their limits while also still conveying the message I want to send. The most common shape I start with is the focus shapes, which are usually ovoids.

This rough of my harbor seal formline which I sent to my aunt for review sort of gives a better Idea of what I mean when I say I try and focus on where the centerpoints will be. Ovoids are usually a focus, so you can see them pop up a lot; in the body, the head, the eyes, the tail, etc. Ovoids are so important and probably the most common shape in formline art, and one of the most common feedback I get from my aunt is to adjust how the ovoid looks in any one of my pieces; she often compared them to a loaf of bread! You don't want your ovoids to look like a loaf of bread! (Her words, not mine). I feel like I've gotten better at drawing ovoids though, because she gives it as feedback less and less nowadays. Ovoids usually also have to have a bit of weight/perspective to them; it's hard to describe but essentially the top of the ovoid should usually be bigger/thicker/have more weight then the bottom.

From ovoids, the next shapes are usually circles, u-shapes and crescents, then usually y-shapes/trigons. It can be difficult, because the key is to make sure the shapes flow together and feel cohesive, as well as to make sure the negative/positive space balance feels right. Also a fun tidbit, trigons are most typically used to essentially fill space; it's always important to make sure that they are binding bigger shapes like u-shapes and ovoids and not stealing all the space and attention.

The lines in this stage tend to be very rough and messy, and I always try to go over the next rough draft with a smoother and cleaner pen.

Once the initial shapes are done, I'll usually send the piece to my aunt (sometimes I send them earlier on, when I'm in the middle of working out the shapes) for feedback! I am still a student in formline work after all; basically all of my teachings come from my aunt, who has a lot more years of work in formline art then me. She'll give me feedback and tips of what she thinks I should fix or experiment with. I adjust and fix and sometimes even completely delete and redo parts of the piece with her guidance. The list of things she tells me to change decreases with each piece, so I like to take that as a sign that I'm improving!

Once the black and white version of the design is done, I move onto coloring. Usually I already have a color scheme in mind when I go into a piece, so I'll mess around and put down colors and see how well they contrast before I color it. Typically, a piece will have about 3 colors; one for the background, one primary color, and one secondary color. I use a clipping layer to color the entire formline piece with the primary color, and then go in with the pen tool and bucket tool to use the secondary color. Adding in the secondary color is tricky but important because it once again falls into balancing positive and negative space/colors and the transitions between the two.

Once coloring is done, the project is basically finished! Unless there are some other plans I have for it, ie using it for an overlay in a bigger piece, colouring is usually the final stage.

And that's about it! I hope this helps you understand a bit; this isn't a perfect explanation as this is just from my own artistic POV and other nations and artists have their own process, but I hope it helps nonetheless!!

Edit: I forgot I posted other WIP formlines here before 😭 here and here!! You can sort of see me figure out the flow and balance of the designs in between the WIP and the finished piece!

[yersina]

a linguist plays chants of sennaar (pt 5)

[pt 1] [pt 2] [pt 3] [pt 4]

the home stretch!!

disclaimer: can't promise that i'll have any insights that a layperson wouldn't have, this is kinda just me thinking through the grammar of the language out loud haha.

this post covers the fifth and last language in chants of sennaar and will contain spoilers for both the language and the endgame! it also assumes you know what the symbols mean already.

i.... to be completely honest with you, i did not enjoy this language 😂 i think the experience of deciphering it got lost in favor of the storyline, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for everyone, but hey, i am the one going through each of these languages like a linguistic bloodhound here lol. because of that, i'm not as familiar with these words as i am with the other languages.

before we get into anything else, and also because i imagine that this will be a shorter post because the game itself tells you what patterns to look for, i do want to say that this language strikes me as being incredibly artificial. which is a good thing! it emulates the digital apocalypse vibe that exile gives. but a language that leans so heavily into being constructed and recombined and modulated so easily really gives me the impression that it was created and not organically developed. the only other irl example that comes to mind at the moment is korean hangeul, which was purposefully created by king sejong and is an alphabet, not a logography. like, this is a language that i would make for fun in high school (which is to say, it gives a kind of overly grammatically strict, awkwardly too regular vibe?).

it's kind of funny that this language is where i'm starting to get reminded of conlangs, especially when, well, everything in this game is a conlang. but if we take each of the radicals in this language as affixes/morphemes when they're being combined into one character, then this actually reminds me of a specific conlang (ithkuil, i think?) where you can convey incredibly complex ideas through very few words.

the language of the anchorites isn't quite this complex, but hopefully the comparison gets my point across?

i’m curious if only certain elements can be combined with each other or if there’s a certain order to them, but it’s hard to tell when there’s such limited evidence in the game. interestingly, i believe the anchorites’ language is the only one in this game that makes a distinction between “die” and “death/dead” by combining the noun with the verb “go”. not sure why the developers suddenly made that decision haha.

this language, like most in the game, is an SVO language, which we can see below:

but i think also they (the developers) were trying to convey more complex sentence structures than their language was designed to communicate??? so then you end up w smth like below:

which, if you translated literally, would actually be “you man i wait”. again, super interesting bc i think an actual, more accurate anchorite sentence should be “i wait you man”. they have a more complex sentence here bc of the predicate (“you’re the one”) and the dative (“for”), but really the sense that they’re trying to go for is “i was awaiting the one [who is you]”. i guess it’s possible that different grammatical cases are treated differently in this language, or that, like english, word order is occasionally variable (even tho that option seems iffy bc we haven’t really seen evidence of it before), but tbh i suspect that really it’s that the developers wrote the dialogue and then brute forced it into the anchorite language haha. no shade! (and also impossible to confirm either way lol) just kinda amusing and also it makes sense when it’s p obvious their focus shifted from the language to the story.

this trend continues throughout all of the anchorite dialogue (imo) and makes it kinda slow and awkward to read if you don’t have all of the characters translated. in my opinion, the way that the language functions in the last part of this game makes it pretty clear that the developers meant for you to rely on the given translations during this potion of the game, especially when the translation mechanic is mostly through the matching terminals in exile, rather than speaking with people.

annoyingly, the anchorites’ language is also the only one in the game that doesn’t have words for the other people/cultures in the game (demonyms), which also doesn’t give much to work off of in terms of cultural context, relationships, etc.

again, i’ve decided not to get into an in-depth orthographic analysis of this particular language bc the game itself introduces you to them. one that i noticed that wasn’t specifically addressed in-game is the similarity between “open” and “key”, which is something that i actually also noted before in the devotees’ language. i’m sure there are others, but i’m also sure you can find them yourself!

all in all, a strange ending to this game. if you’ve made it this far in all of my posts—thanks for hanging around! hope you were able to learn smth new :)

[doverstar]

how do you feel about writing kiss scenes? because, admittedly, I enjoy reading and writing scenes where characters are making out, and I think it can add to the story- like the fic I'm writing, one of the characters is terrified of intimate relationships, and it would be a natural conclusion for their relationship to end with a lot of kissing described, but do you think the principle of writing a scene where characters are just making out is ok?

Wow, people have been asking me deep questions lately - not the norm. I like it!

So, are you asking because it's bothering you? Are you asking because you want to know whether it's right or wrong? That answer will determine what you think of my answer!

Do you want me to make this long? I can-

So! Great question. Are you asking about the principle morally? My feelings morally? How I feel about writing kiss scenes is this: don't do it in detail.

I don't read kiss scenes - not ones that go into detail - because it's usually exciting feelings that I shouldn't be having over a book (or fic). It's emotional pornography, is what I'm saying. Other people might be adept at going cold in those moments, feel nothing; I'm not like that, and I don't know many who are.

Why are you writing them making out?

I'll explain my thought process real quick. For me, I write kiss scenes very intentionally. I don't talk about physical details much at all, unless it's to drive home a point about a character's feelings. Showing and not telling. I just recently got used to writing kiss scenes after I was married. I've only ever kissed one person: my husband. And only after he became my husband. I am in perfect comfort and contentment with my own kissing experience, which means, happily, that when I write kisses, I am a little more comfortable than I used to be - and I have the perspective of someone who has only ever kissed the man she loves, who has her full commitment, till death do us part, and I'm expressing that affection and commitment through physical interaction like God intended. I'd imagine that's not the experience of most people when it comes to "making out".

I don't talk about the characters' mouths, or write in a way that drops you, the reader, in the place of one of the characters if I can help it. (I can only control so much.) If I write a kiss scene, it's not about immersing you and putting you in the scene and trying to get you to feel like you're making out with one of the characters. I write it because it's what should happen; it's the natural progression of a relationship - or because, especially in fanfiction, it's what the characters would canonically do based on what we've seen in the source material. Good fanfiction is immersive because it's accurate.

I talk about when it happens, why it's happening, how it makes the characters feel, maybe I mention hands, maybe, if that helps in terms of conveying a feeling the characters are having, but that's it. I write kisses the way I've experienced kisses - an expression of love. So I focus on communicating love, the way a kiss is supposed to, and not on communicating lust.

I'm not writing a kiss scene so the reader can feel butterflies (if they do, okay, but part of that is often because relating to a character is natural in the writing process and people by nature crave affection). I'm writing a kiss scene because it's part of the story, and the relationship, and that's it. Which means if the characters would canonically make out, I would pull the door shut and leave them in peace, cut the scene there, because even if they would do it, married or not, that's intimate, and I don't want you, the reader, feeling lust because of two fictional characters. Intimacy is by definition a private thing. I'm not here to create emotional porn. I'm here to write a good story. And I, the writer, could easily be sucked into emotional porn by writing, in detail, a makeout scene! So I'm not gonna do that, and from what I've seen, stories suffer for pure self-indulgence. There are whole genres dedicated to emotional pornography, and I'm not in that boat. I'm paddling my little dinghy as hard as I can in the opposite direction. Ten-year-olds can find and read my stuff, and if they do, they will not be losing their innocence because I got swept away in attraction to a fictional character.

You said in your story, the characters are making out, and that that's the natural conclusion to a story about one half of the ship being terrified of intimacy? Right? Yes! Okay - makes sense - but I would argue that there are other ways of showing this character is dropping their guard and learning to grow in that area. You can say they made out after that first initial kiss in a myriad of ways without going into great detail - without parking the readers in the room for half an hour, watching two people eat each other's faces off.

Disclaimer: the vast majority of fic readers would love it if you did that. That's why they're reading. That's what they're looking for. They want to be excited. They want emotional pornography. And the question for you to answer then is, do you want to write emotional pornography? Why are you writing what you're writing?

Also, tiny additional note - you say just making out, but making out is a lot of physical interaction for a longer time period than one kiss. It's not just anything. It's a big deal, and it brings big emotions!

Now, if you believe what I believe, and you agree with me, you won't be comfortable writing emotional pornography and you'll pull the door shut so the story can continue and show that Character Whoever is growing in intimacy without having everyone watch them suck face. Because the story's not about that butterfly feeling you get when you imagine yourself making out with someone; it's about [insert theme here]. The goal of your story shouldn't be "and this is how I'd feel if Character A kissed me". That's not a good story. That's the Twilight saga. That's Bella. That's a pair of brunette, emotionally-vacant pants. Are you sewing pants or writing a story?

woo

let me inhale here

Anyway, I'd say study your motives. If the characters would make out (and I would argue, again, that making out is not necessary to express that a character is growing in the area of intimacy and facing their fears; there are tons of other creative ways you can do that), just allude to it in one line or less and then move on. Close the door. Cut the scene. People do kiss a lot, that's realistic, and especially when there is real, honest love, but the setting in which they do so matters morally, and I can't think of a single reason your readers need to know every last detail of that makeout scene other than evoking lust in them and, consequentially, in you. Because writing is personal and you can't not be standing in the TARDIS with the Doctor when you're writing a Doctor Who fanfic; if you're not there, neither are your readers.

Philosophically, I say don't write makeout/kiss scenes in great detail. Find ways to express the things the kiss (singular) is supposed to add to the story, and then close the curtain. It should be there for a reason, and the reason shouldn't be "I just want to place myself in this situation in my mind".

That's what I think!

[max1461]

One of the most frustrating things is making a post that you think is right, and also important, but which unintentionally conveys something that you think is subtly wrong. Especially when the post gets popular. You want to keep it circulating, you want your point to keep spreading. But you worry that you're spreading something bad along with it, a misconception that your readers might not even know they're absorbing.

That post I made about the Meiji restoration a while ago was one of these. I ended up making in unrebloggable, mostly because I was just getting tired of that discourse. I think it was a good post and I stand by it. I criticized the Meiji government for an ideology that saw "Westernizing" and "industrializing/modernizing/becoming competitive with the Great Powers" as necessarily part-and-parcel, and I criticized contemporary political leaders who think the same thing. And I think that's a fair criticism in both cases.

But I did have a major concern about that post, which is that it I think it played into this idea that the Meiji restoration was some absolute break in Japanese history, where Japan stopped being... idk, "authentically Japanese" and started being "a Westernized country". Which is almost exactly the type of narrative I'm trying to critique! Like, no! Disregarding even the general dubiousness of those categories: there was serious continuity between pre-Meiji and post-Meiji Japan, this wasn't an early-Soviet-Union-level reshaping of society.

Maybe I shouldn't say that, I don't know enough about the early Soviet Union. But you get my point. I worry that my post made it sound as if the Meiji government were ripping up shrine gates and shit left and right, shredding kimonos and foisting Western suits upon people, and banishing nay-sayers to the gulag. No! That would not really be an accurate description of what happened.

So I worried about giving the wrong impression. I think I've posted about this already.

But my whole point, really, the point I was trying to make with that post and the point I am perennially trying to make, is that the modern world is not inherently "Western". Not in principle or in actual fact. Modernity was made across the whole globe. That sounds like a sort of trite statement, a meaningless inversion of the typical Western chauvinist narrative, but it isn't! The more you learn about early modern history the more clear this really becomes.

Japan was an early industrializer. Not among the very first wave, but ultimately still early. This means it was not only "on par", in terms of access to material wealth and technology, with many nations in Europe, but that its industrialization also meaningfully predated that of much of Europe, especially Eastern Europe. The core element of industrial society—the industrial factory—is a technology. A technology invented in Britain, which just like any technology spread first to nearby regions and later to far off regions. Of course in the increasingly interconnected modern world, sometimes technologies make big geographical jumps, as industrialism made to Japan in the nineteenth century.

And of course I'm oversimplifying the history here, but my point is that this is all ordinary. There's a narrative which sees the whole process of the spread of industrialism as almost mystically exceptional. A divine enlightenment was given to the West, which from then on separated the West and the Westernized in their very essence from the rest, the unenlightened masses, the savages. The White Man's Burden. But, aside from being a perennial justification for colonialism, this view is intellectually immature. It's a just-so story.

Like all inventions, the industrial factory and the technologies which emerged around it have a geographical place of origin. But like all inventions, they spread—both inside and outside the West—and people in the places to which they spread immediately started iterating on them and adapting them to local conditions and contributing to the larger sum-of-effects we call the modern world. Modernity was made all over the globe. Japanese modernity is not a mere Western importation, layered on top of indigenous pre-modernity. It was made right there in Japan, by Japanese people, in Japanese institutions, and so on and so forth. It drew from ideas developed elsewhere (as cultures always have! As Japan did with China just centuries before!), developed in France and Germany and Britain, and it contributed ideas which were then taken up in France and Germany and Britain.

And these kind of effects are easy to see with Japan, because it was an early industrializer, but once you pay attention you see them everywhere. The making of the modern world not as a unilateral imposition of the West upon the rest, but as a mutual engagement of many societies across the globe making something new together—sometimes cooperatively, usually competitively, and very often at the expense of the most marginal. But, still, together, as an aggregate process.

Our world was made everywhere. I do think it sounds completely trite, especially because I'm rather tired and don't have the wherewithal to source more specific examples. But I really do think this because meaningfully clear when you engage with the history.

[roshambo05]

(TW: Mentions of ableism)

A few months back, my little sister and I started watching ROTTMNT together. While we had many reasons for our sudden interest, it was mainly due to the high praises from fans for its stellar autism representation. I myself am autistic, and my sister, a sucker for a good cartoon and my biggest supporter in more ways than one, was just as enthusiastic as me if not more so to see if the show lived up to the hype.

For a little background, Rise's version of Donatello is canonically autistic. And honestly, it was incredible representation. Watching the show with my sister, I was shocked by how often I was able to relate to Donnie. His sensory moments, difficulties with conveying emotion, his touch aversion, even little things like his use of sign, it all hit so close to home that it was almost scary. But what really hit me the hardest was the movie (spoilers btw).

Near the end of the movie, there were two moments that really stuck with me. The first, of course, was the incredibly accurate and disgusting scene showcasing Donnie's texture sensitivity as he tried to link with the Kraang ship. And while I was still ruminating on how accurate it was and how disgusted and panicked I felt, I was hit by this line: Raph - "Don't worry, Donnie! This is not a hug! It's a rescue!"

Now, to many of you, this might seem like nothing special, but for me, this was the single most important moment in any piece of media I'd ever consumed. To me, this was Donnie's family understanding and accepting him as he is. This was his brother making an effort to accommodate his needs. Because Donnie hates touch that isn't on his terms, especially when he's already around anxiety and unfamiliarity. Raph's acceptance of this fact and active reassurance in an attempt to comfort his brother in a high-stress situation shows just how much he and the others cared about Donnie, not in spite of his autistic traits, but because of them. Believe me when I say I started tearing up. And at first, I was embarrassed. Here I was, eighteen years old, crying over a children's cartoon. But I came to realize that it was because I'd never felt seen in that way before.

When your only exposure to autism in media is Sheldon Cooper and Rain Man, when you're given movies like Sia's Music and told to be grateful, when the largest corporation claiming to speak for you is actively trying to eradicate you, when all you're ever told is that your very existence is wrong, it becomes hard not to believe those things. A lack of representation in my life not only led to a late diagnosis but an extreme self-consciousness and lack of understanding from my peers. I struggled to be treated as an equal because people saw me as stupid and reclusive. But for the first time in my life, I was given one movie, one character, that made me feel accepted. And it made everything feel that much lighter.

Representation always matters. Whether it be ethnicity, disability, sexuality, gender identity, or whatever else it may be, it is incredibly important. Most marginalized groups grow up with no one to relate to, feeling like they are unimportant or wrong for existing. And that cannot stand. People deserve to feel seen, no matter who they are or their background.

[fewblood]

Beware of the Shadow - König x Fem Reader - Part 2

I couldn't believe it; here I was, stuck in this mess, feeling I reached the gates of hell earlier than I should. This wasn't how I planned my fucking 'new start', and karma sure had a wicked sense of humor.

I got to my small bedroom to change and, without much conviction, I made my way to the gym. Or, more accurately, right into what felt like a death sentence. 

As I entered the empty place that reeked of sweat and musk, I quickly spotted König laying against the back wall, already waiting for me. 

Eager to reduce me to dust I see…

He dropped his gears for lighter clothes too, but his face remained hidden as always. He looked down at me for a moment, and I could only look back nervously. 

Focus—If I play this well, maybe I'll be able to get out of this without anything broken. 

Or not… 

I swallowed painfully, unsure of what to expect of my last moments. Should I try to get my way out of this? What's worse, being labeled as a coward or as a dead woman? The atmosphere hung in a hushed stillness, as if we were observing a moment of silence before my impending execution. 

His hoarse voice jolted me back to reality as it resonated through the gym and down my spine, sending unpleasant shivers.

"Let us begin. Make sure not to hold back, soldier." he warned as he promptly directed me into the ring.

Why am I doing this again…? 

Think… I could take advantage of his height, but still… König is huge—like huge huge. My head don't even reach his shoulders for fuck sake! How am I supposed to fight against that? 

I locked my gaze to his as I tried not to show too much of a defeated look. Yeah, let's put on a brave face for now… Something could work, but that would only be possible if he makes the first move. 

Yet, König stood perfectly still, appearing like those flawless Greek statues that convey pure strength through their very form. His muscles were accentuated by the snug fit of his t-shirt, the sight alone would dissuade anyone from even looking in his direction. 

Like all the other lucky people he sparred with, I was obviously shorter than him. That's nothing new. But I too had consistently faced opponents higher than me—well, maybe not that high...

He was calm, yet something was off. He raised an eyebrow, clearly waiting for me to make a move. But here I was, staring back at him like a mad cat ready to pounce, longing for him to engage. I waited. But nothing happened. 

I have to make him move, I have no other options.

… 

Ok, maybe I’ll die today, but I'll make this at least entertaining for the both of us. Resolved, I switched to a smug look, determined to make this act at least somewhat believable.

"What are you waiting for? Afraid to take on someone smaller?" I taunted.

I maintained my smirk as sweat beads formed on the nape of my neck. König's eyes remained fixed on me for a moment. He seemed tense, but his mood still remained mainly indecipherable.

"Nice try, but a true warrior knows when actions speak louder. I recommend doing the same." 

I felt my insides slowly twisting into a knot, acknowledging briefly all the anxiety I was desperately trying to ignore since the beginning of this ill-fated evening.  

I can do it. At least I have to try.

After taking a deep breath, I stared back, straight into his eyes, now full of a newfound determination.

"Of course." 

I waved two fingers at him as my smirk grew wider. 

"Bring it on."

König stood motionless as he watched my fingers move in front of me. He saw my hand gesture, he knew what it meant, yet he remained still. 

Although, I could see something flicker in his eyes. Was it anger? No, more like… annoyance. Understandable, given he brought me here to teach me a lesson.

I also noticed his fists slightly clench in my peripheral vision.

Huh… So my attitude might somewhat affect him.

I obviously can't win by force, so I have to think, and think well. My mind was going wild, racing with possibilities. I kept my grin on, but this time it was genuine.

"Come on, no need to be shy. I don't bite." I almost purred to provoke him again.

I hope I won't regret my words…

Shit, I know I'll fucking do, but at least it's working.

König’s eyes widened a bit at my words. He stood his ground again, yet I could feel it: despite his stoic demeanor, he was growing more and more irritated as the seconds ticked by. 

"Still hesitating? You're softer than I thought..." I chuckled.

It was as if you could see the air change around him, how the shackles of control were on the verge of giving in. He just needed one last push, something that would make him want to shut me up badly… So, I took a deep breath as the thrill made my heart pound louder and louder.

"Come on, big guy!" I shouted, "Cat got your tongue, or are you afraid a woman might show you how it's done?!"

König stayed still and yet, just as I feared he might, I could tell his lips curled up into a dark smile. 

In an instant, he stepped forward with fire in his eyes, his anger turning into rage. He seemed furious at himself for falling into some stupid mind games, but his frustration could not stay contained anymore. He lunged forward, his fist flying towards my face.

Yes, now! 

In one swift motion, I squatted as much as I could and slipped between his legs. He tried to close his thighs on me, but I violently kicked the back of his knee with my forearm right before he could react. 

It luckily made him lose his balance, so I sprang back behind him and pulled his arm in an arm lock, ignoring the throbbing pain I got in my own after the blow I just gave him. 

He grunted in pain as he bent down, his hurt knee on the ground. As I pushed myself on his back, I immediately felt the immeasurable strength under there. The description of him being a "muscle mountain" felt pretty accurate, at least as much as I wished it didn't. 

I'll have to anticipate all of his movements, otherwise, if he manages to catch me, I'm fucked. Even all my years of practice could find themselves useless when faced against such an opponent.

Although my movements were a surprise attack, König surely had been anticipating something like this. He winced as I put more pressure on his arm and back. Still, he tried his best to fight through it.

His strength is undoubtedly prodigious, but still: it doesn't mean he's immune to pain. 

He let out a loud roar as he attempted to break my stance, his free hand reaching for me. 

If he could just get one good grip, I would be terminated. 

Expecting such a reaction, I managed to avoid his big palm but shit—that was close.

I tightened my grip and forced his other knee on the ground with a strong foot kick. This allowed me to firmly plant both of my feet on his calves and keep them grounded, exerting all my weight on them like my life depended on it. Even though, in this moment—it kinda did.

Grumbling in pain, König placed his free hand on the ground to resist being pushed down further.

Despite my best efforts to pin him down, even with only one hand to support him, it still proved impossible.

I need to neutralize him in some other way, and quickly!

König suppressed his grunting; he wasn't giving up too, not that soon, not like this. His free hand reached for me again, searching for my arm… 

...and he found it.

_______________________________

Previous part ● Table of content

[grison-in-space]

I'm honestly curious how you square the criticism of paternalism with the apparent conviction that people (or at least some people) are better off with some kind of minder, or in some way unfree. These read as basically the same things to me, so what qualifications need to apply to the latter to make it acceptable?

You know what, that is a fair question. I think what I was trying to articulate last night is actually a little more complicated than that, but I definitely did not lay out the connective tissue to get there, and I see how you got that reading. (I am very much one of those people who thinks by speaking, sometimes, and I am absolutely doing some of that by this point.)

First: I don't think that some people are better off unfree, full stop. I really want to emphasize that very strongly here.

Second: I was trying to articulate some of my tension with the notion that 100% unbounded freedom of choice is inherently the ideal to which all individuals (do? should?) aspire. ARA philosophy focuses really heavily on the idea that any curtailment of choice or influence from humans to animals is inherently coercion and therefore immoral. It focuses very strongly on the idea that freedom to choose is the highest possible value to strive for.

And I think that partaking in society is inherently to accept curtailments on at least some freedoms, in exchange for receiving the support and resources of the greater social whole. (If nothing else, sometimes things I would like to do are also things that will upset someone else in my shared social world, who will then impose consequences on me about it.) What I was trying to do is articulate that trading some of those freedoms in exchange for the benefits of a society can be, and often is, a pretty good trade. That's why sociality exists in the first place, even in the existence of some pretty harsh hierarchies within some species.

I was not very clear about this, I freely admit.

The thing you gotta understand about me is that I think in terms of trade offs. Life is a series of imperfect decisions made to allocate finite resources (if nothing else, time) between series of conflicting demands and desires. Understanding those decisions is essentially my bread and butter. And everything has a cost—even preference itself.

Now, in terms of humans, one of the things that humans are genuinely rather unusual about is our collective capacity for delayed gratification, impulse control, and abstract reasoning. When we talk about animals, we have to recall that informed consent in this sense is essentially impossible to acquire: without language to convey abstract options and with much less capacity to consider future outcomes, it's harder to present these ideas to animals the way you can with humans.

And... for all that humans are unusually good at those things, we're not always that good at them! I was trying to reach for and articulate that my own experiences with decision-making in the present instant don't always square with my longer term goals and values, and that reasoning through the long term consequences of my actions like a perfectly logical actor isn't always something I am capable of doing in all moments of all time. Which is why I build in structures to outsource some of that cognitive load. I think there's a considerable cognitive load that comes with decision-making in an infinitely complex world, and I think that part of the utility of society is to help structure choices so that you don't have to engage in the cognitive effort of gathering information for every potential choice you could make and then making it. The structure lets us conserve effort and reserve energy for other goals and decisions.

I don't have to know why the fire code says there needs to be an egress window in my basement bedroom and think about whether the future risk of fire justifies the definite immediate cost of paying for the window and accurately assess the risk of burning alive; I just need to know that my city fire code says my choice is to have a bedroom with an egress window or not have a bedroom there. Risk assessment is really hard and it carries a lot of uncertainty; yielding my judgement to a trustworthy authority is a way to conserve effort.

Of course, how do we know an authority is trustworthy? That's the thing that is hard; the consequences of yielding choice to a structure that is not actually built to support you are stark. And authority isn't always trustworthy by default.

I view the ideal role of the state as a way to structure our society such that we leave maximal room for freedom while minimizing the amount of effort and discomfort it takes to attain longer term collective goals for safety and comfort. The inclusion of humans with all kinds of experiences in that power structure to the extent that we can do so, with expertise in various situations outsourced to people who have dedicated significant time to thinking deeply about those cases, helps us to minimize the risk of authority wielded to oppress rather than to guide. (And yes, circling back to disability and mad pride, the experience of people with cognitive, emotional, and perceptive disabilities absolutely needs to be a part of that structure.) We collectively build authoritative structures that shape our choice making environment such that we have relatively little room for harm and increased freedoms elsewhere.

That's humans. We can think far enough ahead and communicate well enough to make that work. Animals generally can't. So when we think about the ethics of human/animal interactions, it's likewise important to make sure that we are listening as carefully as we can in order to try to navigate that trade off as carefully as possible, with the caveat that it IS a trade off rather than an unalloyed good juxtaposed against a certain evil.

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

Hey all!!

I've been trying to write this post for forever but uhhh yes I suppose it's a lot easier to do a quick primer first but uhh

I'm so so sorry I don't answer asks! And I want to change that soon.

[a LONG post about autism, blog updates, and PDA]

TL;DR: I have Pathological Demand Avoidance, but I'm growing from it and hope to become more social on here in the near future!

If you've seen me asks or messages, I promise I don't hate you!! I love you!! I'm so serious

Soon I plan on making a longer post explaining what I've been preoccupied with, and also changes I want to make to this blog in the near future (all small and good!)

But to put it shortly -

I've been suffering from Pathological Demand Avoidance SO HARD and it's been something I've struggled with for some time.

If you don't know Pathological Demand Avoidance - or more accurately named Pervasive Drive for Autonomy - is a profile of autism:

In short though - because asked to do something, ANYTHING, even indirectly makes my brain stall. I know it sounds ridiculous.

It's not even in a cute anarchist 'I don't have to listen to you!!' type of way. Fam it's. EVERYTHING.

It's not so much the activity that's triggering it. I LOVE talking to people so much, but... like, speaking in conversation is like a demand. Someone calling my name is a demand, doing homework, showing up to places on time, brushing my teeth everyday etc.

It's often why young children with autism may not respond to you talking to them, say 'I can't do x, my legs don't work!!', hide when expected to do things, literally REFUSE to go to school (big me thing), etc.

It's linked to the diagnosis (and misdiagnosis) of 'Oppositional Defiance Disorder'.

That's why I may seem very extroverted (which I am!! ILY!!!) but I don't ever appear to talk to anybody or react to them.

For example - It's more likely for me to add to a tag game if I'm not tagged because when I am, I feel really happy to be thought of but then 'Oh God I have to do a thing. Not right now but soon. The thing I have to do. That eventually must be done. I have committed and I must Do Something. Me doing the thing is approaching. The inevitable thing. That must be done. The inescapable thing'.

ON & ON regardless of what it is. I'm not opposed to doing whatever it is, the demand could be completely self-imposed. I'm just opposed to doing something.

Anything preplanned, asked, or expected of me.

That's why I often abandon fics, or say I'll write an essay and then don't do it. I still remember, but finishing the essay becomes a self imposed demand and then.. I can't do it lol

All in all - this can kinda make notifications really hard for me.

@spidey-bie can tell you, even in discord I'm a little lurking gremlin who is only summoned at inopportune moments and when someone has pissed me off

Usually, my response is ALWAYS flight. I may like an ask or message and enjoy it, even have a response in mind - but instead of answer my immediate reaction to is abort mission and FULLY close the app and find the nearest corner, or try my best to appear offline.

IT'S WEIRD.

I have no idea if others will understand what I'm trying to convey because I know the concept may sound bizarre, and I get that. It really was a concept I only really learned about recently.

But that's why I mean seem very talkative and hyperverbal and bubbly but also like never appear to be social with anyone ever.

PDA is like -

Me: oh wow this person is so sweet. I consider them a friend, I should message them back.

My brain: Yeah.

Me:... message them back.

My brain: fuck you. anyway write an essay literally no one demanded

Me: Why? Can I at least write that fic that I left hanging for eight months

My brain: No someone complimented you on that once and now there's Demand. Write something 100% unrelated.

Me: *starts writing an essay no one asked for and doesn't even finish it because finishing it has become a demand even though I'm the only one who even knows the essay exists in the first place*

Like girl be so fr. Even saying this I feel like it sounds like a lie 😭 I got Hobie brain. Some old 'I'll do it but not because you told me to' headass.

I'm Miguel and my brain wanna 'Nah imma do my own thing' on some Miles shit.

Guess how many drafts I have. Guess. WRONG. TWO HUNDRED.

Nah be forreal is that normal? Y'all got that or nah? Is that common I'm being deadass 😭😭

And girl I'm not even gonna show the number in my inbox cause I'd rather be tarred and feathered than indure that humiliation imma be honest 😐 rather be burned at the stake

But I know that me being so active and like... Not Responding can be very hurtful and I'm so sorry!!

Though I know that didn't make up for it. I know it can make me come off as fake or mean but that's not my intention at all, I promise.

Honestly I just have a brain where everyday feels like opposite day.

But I'm a grown ass person and uh!! I want to change that response.

So please don't stop replying or tagging me in things! I genuinely do love it 💖

This blog is really one of my favorite places in planet Earth and I love this community SO SO MUCH.

Going forward I want to invest more time here and just meta writing in specific.

I'm thinking (girl I'm phrasing this SO CAREFULLY so my brain doesn't think it's a demand like shh I hope the autism doesn't hear me) -

I'd like to maybe designate a day for asks to be answered/queued (as many as I can pump out) because I really love talking with y'all and y'all have SUCH good ideas

I'm hoping to do more Spidersona stuff but I'MA HAVE TO PACE MYSELF OKAY that's not a Demand autism we're just having nice hopeful thoughts NOT A DEMAND

So uhh I don't know how I'll encorporate more Spidersona stuff but yeah... It'll happen.

Other stuff too. Other stuff.

[Notice how I have to be like 'I'm hoping, I'm thinking, I might, I'd like to,'. I'm ALLERGIC to 'I will' 🤢🤢🤢]

I plan on making another life update post just to clear up some things maybe talk more specifics. I'm thinking Tuesdays or Thursdays -

I'll most likely close my ask just to pump out the asks that are still relevant time wise.

I'd also like to take more about PDA in short posts of if anyone is interested. Honestly, I think there are some advantages to PDA.

YES I HEADCANON HOBIE AS HAVING IT.

I DON'T FOLLOW ORDERS NEITHER DOES HE.

Save me Hobie.. Hobie save me (I be using him to internally justify my PDA.. 'like Hobie wouldn't want me to answer this linkdin email' 😭😭)

BUT UHHHH If you read this far and you're still here I LOVE YOU YOU MEAN SO MUCH TO ME HOBIE BE UPON YE

I truly appreciate you, thank you for hearing me out!

Hobie says remember to be a public nuisance and never cooperate with anything and leave the function early and steal

I'm gonna go do something that doesn't matter and that no one asked for that I probably won't finish for no reason :) (/pos)

Bye.

[callmekasandra]

A new myth. A myth is not meant to be accurate history, but to tell a story that conveys a deeper spiritual truth. Stories are powerful.

This myth is the over-arcing story of Genesis to Jesus.

Note: I'm not trying to save you or anything.

I certainly don't want to ruin a perfectly good Atheist or Hindu or whatever. I write this for the fundamentalist Christians like myself.

My myth is the story of Genesis to Jesus. We get bits and pieces in church and Sunday school. Here's the whole thing in one hour. Really helps us to see more of the meaning in Christ's life, death, and resurrection.

(There's a 14 minute tl;dr explainer/addendum further down.)

I don't think God is waiting for us somewhere else. God is always with us, walking with you and me and every other person through time and never turns away. But home is where the heart is. And God wants us to come home to the heart of God where there is Love, kindness, justice, generosity, Creation, the poor, the oppressed, etc. The things God loves and cares about.

I don't even really want you to believe the truths within the story. I just want you to consider the possibility and see if it resonates for you with history, our experiences, scripture, and who we know God to be as revealed in Jesus. You need to wrestle with this angel and make it make sense to you. Especially if you can't understand. The less you understand the more I beg you to listen again and sit with it.

I really don't want to convince you of anything. If you have the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and understanding, you'll probably be able to recognize the messages in here.

Rather than looking to confirm or reject the ideas you are expecting to find, please just consider. These are brand new ideas (for you anyway) using old pictures and familiar stories. But they are not the same ideas or messages. I'm telling a different story.

A 14 minute explainer of the primary take-away from all of this, along with addressing some mistakes/poorly communicated concepts.

Dear Reader,

If you are on the inside and reading this, just know I don't think you are foolish or silly or stupid. I don't think you are evil or hateful. I think you are very good and probably thoughtful and intelligent to boot. You are just fucked up like the rest of us and you were unlucky enough to be born into it or got tangled up inside. Happens to the best of us.

I think the story told in the longer video can help you see better where I'm coming from and that story can help you free yourself if you want to. If you don't want to free yourself, you can still watch it and entertain yourself by pointing out all the flaws and sending me a bulleted list😘.

Yours truly,

Kasandra

PS- You might hear a bit of anger or derision especially in the first few minutes. I'm not angry or derisive towards you or Christians in general or Jews at all. Any anger or derision towards people/powers is towards those much, much higher up the food chain than you or anyone you know (probably).

As I tell the story, I am using lots of voice inflections to tell the story and that include sometimes a sing-song or sarcastic tone. The tone of the story is never to make fun of the reader or Christians. It's never to say that I'm smarter than anybody or put people down or anything like that.

The purpose of the incredulous voice inflections is occasionally to draw your attention to a joke, but usually it is to highlight the absurdity of the story we were given. The absurdity of the theology we were given. And the absurdity of the judgmental, autocratic, 1-strike picture of God we were given.

See how it is different.

Consider what's different about this story & consider a few of these as you go:

-what is different from the original stories we were given (as you know them)

-what is different about the meaning

-is it more or less likely to be true than your present understanding of things, given all we know?

-Does it resonate with who we know God, humanity, creation, & the World to be?

-Does it seem truer in meaningful ways?

-Does it somehow misrepresent God or Truth?

-Does it encourage more things of God? (or of the World?)

-What do you think of the Paul and Philemon bit?

[the-blind-assassin-12]

20 Questions for Writers

I was tagged by the lovely @maggiemayhemnj - thank you!!

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

Ten. I was cross-posting everything for a minute there, but I lost steam and now I only post here - except for Aphelion, which I am co-writing with @something-tofightfor. That still gets posted in both places.

2. what's your total AO3 word count?

68,449 - not counting Aphelion. My tumblr word count is... a lot higher.

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Right now just Pedro Pascal characters.

4. top five fics by kudos?

Gonna go by notes on tumblr instead because that's where most of my stuff is:

Bes'laar Din Djarin x F!Reader (based on artwork by @stealyourblorbos!)

Survivor Blues Joel Miller x F!Reader

Forever Din Djarin x F!Reader

The Cold Offends Me Oberyn Martell x F!Reader (The Viper & The Wild Thing universe)

Point of No Return Ezra x OFC Clara

5. do you respond to comments?

I try to respond to all comments because I appreciate them SO MUCH MORE than I can accurately convey. I love hearing from people about what they liked or what shocked them or what made them feel things, and I really love the chance to sort of have a micro mini chat about it in the comments. That being said, sometimes I completely check out and miss a whole batch or a whole fic worth of comments goes unresponded to for far too long. And I always feel bad when that happens, which sometimes results in me responding to things WAY after the comments were left, to the point where it wouldn't surprise me if the person has already forgotten the fic/what they wrote... but I haven't forgotten how much it meant to me that they read and commented on my work. So even if it's 6 months to an eternity late, I intend to respond to them all.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

It Pours From Your Eyes Joel x Tess

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I feel like most of them have happy endings, but we'll go with A Little Christmas Magic - Frankie x F!Reader as perhaps the fluffiest happy ending.

8. do you get hate on fics?

I have gotten non-fic specific hate directed at my writing before, but that was a few years ago and it hasn't happened since. Which is cool because the fewer people wasting their time and energy on being unnecessarily mean about things - let alone about stories about silly little fictional guys - the better.

9. do you write smut?

I do, but I do not consider it one of my strong suits, and I typically only include it if it fits with the overall story though a few times I have written smut just to be filthy as a challenge... and as a treat.

10. craziest crossover?

I've been slowly spinning a True Detective x Tim Rockford crossover like a rotisserie chicken for months but I've only managed to jot down a few unconnected snippets thus far. And a title. It's gonna be called (maybe, if I ever actually write it) Flat Circle, Twisted Game.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

No, but if I did I would be absolutely PISSED. And I can't say I'd be nice about it.

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope, but that would be cool AF.

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! I am currently co-writing Aphelion with @something-tofightfor and it is so much FUN.

14. all time favorite ship?

In all honesty it's probably Leslie Knope and Ben Wyatt. I was straight up ready to stop watching Parks and Rec if they didn't end up together.

15. what's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

lol what kind of passive aggressive, self-doubt feeding question is this? I'd like to finish them all and I try like hell to believe that I will.

16. what are your writing strengths?

I think it's probably describing natural settings? But maybe dialogue. Idk.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

Smut. Also keeping the momentum to finish things in a timely fashion, but mostly smut.

18. thoughts on dialogue in another language?

I try to only use it when it makes sense or when it benefits the story and not just as like... a novelty or an afterthought.

19. first fandom you wrote in?

Teeeeeeeeeeechnically? Like first one I ever made content for? I guess that would be the Twilight series. But I will not be sharing where to find that here. And if you find out where it is, you take that knowledge to the grave with you, you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME, FRIENDS?

20. favorite fic you've written?

Even though it's nowhere near done, I love and am so very proud of Survivor Blues. But then again, even though it's a few years old now and I feel like my writing has grown since finishing it, Point of No Return will always have a very big piece of my heart.

Tagging: anyone who sees this and wants to play! Please tag me so I can see your answers!!