#top stories to read

[rendevok]

Act I ~ The Prince

A tapestry for Let No One Sleep by @azalawa-scroggs on ao3

[egophiliac]

I DID IT I GOT MY PINK HAYATE now I am never doing that again!

(at least until they give me, like, a frilly unicorn Kamui or something)

[mimimar]

i've been completely charmed by witch hat atelier♡

(art prints)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The girls are plottinggggg

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[sevenines]

i saw this tweet and found it interesting for two reasons. one is that some people base how good cartoon network would be to toh by how it treated su, and despite the fact that su’s treatment by the network was considered poor at the time, now its thought to be exceptionally good in comparison to modern shows.

two is how exactly su got impacted by a limited budget. a common criticism is how characters like connie, peridot, and lapis are left out of missions. but balancing a lot of characters is not only hard but also costly (extra animation, extra voices—it’s been revealed that the show is limited to a set number of characters per episode otherwise they’re over budget). animation mistakes are not uncommon since retakes cost extra. the entire reason the original show got cut short was due to loss of funding!

[blaithnne]

Local big sister experiences emotions, more at 6

Been wanting to do one of these with Lauren for AGES, but I never got round to it. Then I saw the Lydia and Phinium expression sheets on @littledigits’ website and I felt inspiration like never before.

The funniest struggle I have with Lauren’s design right now is that she nose too big for she got damn face. Literally, Hilda characters noses take up a fairly small portion of their faces, and her’s took up WAY too much, leaving little room for her to make facial expressions. But I struggled to find a fix because when I made the nose smaller it just didn’t look like Lauren anymore, so I took this as an opportunity to work on that!

She still has a larger nose than most characters, starting higher up (like her grandad!) and ending lower down (but not quite as low as before). I also made her eyes a little smaller and with a shape similar to Lydia’s (though you can see in some of these I hadn’t quite landed on that yet and her eyes are a bit too big), which works both as a nod to her parentage and because I think it makes the nose look bigger. This still doesn’t leave as much room for the mouth as most other characters, but that’s okay — Lauren is a very private person who keeps her feelings close to her chest, I think it works for her to have subtler expressions, adds to how guarded she is! Oh and I also updated the shape of her hair slightly, just to make it a bit more style accurate.

These changes are pretty small on their own, but I think combined they work well to make Lauren feel a lot more…alive? Far less stiff, anyway. I think she also has a more unique facial structure now, instead of just “what if Johanna was 90% nose”. She’s still got a big old nose and I love it but now she can emote, yay!

This is really all just concept stuff, I’m hoping to get a new fullbody style-ref for Lauren out soon! Now that I’ve improved the main issues I had with her face in the last ref, now it’s onto the silhouette! I want her to read as more of a strong character (though it comes across decently in her current ref, I wanna push it more without being as exaggerated as Ahlberg, which is. A challenge for me lol), streamline her silhouette, and finally make her taller than Johanna like she’s always meant to have been <3 I made her shorter for so long because I thought it would help her read better as her daughter but you know what? That’s dumb actually, she’s tall.

ANYWAYS, thank you for listening in on the annual Lauren redesign, and to the artists behind the show for posting so much amazing inspiring show stopping concept work for free because it makes my autism worse /pos

[finelythreadedsky]

JSTOR Wrapped: top ten JSTOR articles of 2023

Coo, Lyndsay. “A Tale of Two Sisters: Studies in Sophocles’ Tereus.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 143, no. 2 (2013): 349–84.

Finglass, P. J. “A New Fragment of Sophocles’ ‘Tereus.’” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 200 (2016): 61–85.

Foxhall, Lin. “Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault’s History of Sexuality.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 167–82. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Garrison, Elise P. “Eurydice’s Final Exit to Suicide in the ‘Antigone.’” The Classical World 82, no. 6 (1989): 431–35.

Grethlein, Jonas. “Eine Anthropologie Des Essens: Der Essensstreit in Der ‘Ilias’ Und Die Erntemetapher in Il. 19, 221-224.” Hermes 133, no. 3 (2005): 257–79.

McClure, Laura. “Tokens of Identity: Gender and Recognition in Greek Tragedy.” Illinois Classical Studies 40, no. 2 (2015): 219–36.

Purves, Alex C.  “Wind and Time in Homeric Epic.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 140, no. 2 (2010): 323–50.

Richlin, Amy. “Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 202–20. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Rood, Naomi. “Four Silences in Sophocles’ ‘Trachiniae.’” Arethusa 43, no. 3 (2010): 345–64.

Zeitlin, Froma I. “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia.” Arethusa 11, no. 1/2 (1978): 149–84.

[urfavcrime]

dsmp is still SO insane to me. still not completely convinced it wasn't a social experiment. it is something that can never be replicated again due to the really specific circumstances that attributed to it's creation and popularity

[brn-t]

Thermotropism

TAGS:

eyy where my plant fuckers at? 👀🌱🌿 you can read it on AO3 here

I don’t think I should have taken this plant home…

Like, when I saw it baking in the sun in that alley outside my building, it’d looked like it had a lot of potential! It was all shriveled but the leaves branched out from a thick basal stem like a monstera almost and there were these bright red blotches on its roots that looked super cool!

When I brought it in (heavy!!) I could tell just by looking how root bound it was, so I popped it out of it’s cheap decorative planter (poor thing was probably never repotted) and yup, there were more roots than dirt.

I had no idea what the hell it was. Inatural had no frickin clue. It looked like a tropical plant with it’s broad green leaves and knobbly aerial roots, but the ground roots were so thick they looked like tubers!! 

I have to admit I was fascinated, but I should have gotten rid of it then…

It spent uh, a couple weeks underneath my shitty little plant light, the one in my room. I was quarantining it in there until I knew it didn’t have any critters on it, but it seemed happy with its repotting and daily soakings for the most part.

The thing really liked water

Like, I started off watering it once a week, and it did perk up, but it didn’t really change much until I started dousing it every morning before work.

And man when it started goin off, it really went off.

It seemed like every time I came home it had sent out a new aerial root or new leaf! The thing was voluptuous as hell! When it got too big for my pathetic little plant light I moved it to the window sill next to my bed. 

It was kinda nice! Like a natural blind or something once it got its runners going up the screen.

I didn’t mind, it was always hot as hell in my little apartment and my landlord couldn’t be arsed to install an AC. I just had to be careful not to accidentally crawl over the little shoots it was sending out all over when I got into bed.

I guess where I fucked up is when I found out about.. its uh.. nutrient preferences

I swear it was a complete accident the first time!! 

I had just gotten home from another 10 hr day and I was tired and smelly and needed to jerk off pronto. I hosed myself down and threw myself into bed, still steaming from trying to scrub off the smell of fried food from my skin, and cracked open my laptop.

Now, fun fact, there's this thing that plants do where they move towards things. Most of the time its towards light, but they can also be attracted to heat! It’s called thermotropism. So I dunno if it was the heat from my ancient laptop or the steam off my skin, but just as I'm about to nut I feel something brush against the head of my dick.

It took me so much by surprise that I came right there, frickin coating a leaf in my jizz. The thing had turned completely around from facing the window above my bed to nearly touching me with its broad soft leaf.

Even for a tropical plant that’s shockingly mobile.

So I cleaned it off as best I could but I guess some of my spunk got absorbed into the soil, I dunno, I passed out shortly after that. I didn’t wake up until nearly nine o clock the next morning because the room was still completely dark thanks to the density of the wall of leaves covering my window. The plant had frickin doubled in size and the terracotta pot I had repotted it in had some fresh cracks in it where the aerial roots were exploding out through.

I didn’t have time to freak out about it since I was once again late to work, but I gotta admit, I was digging the jumanjI vibes it brought to my otherwise very dull room 

So.. I may have started jerking off into it every night?

What! It’s like, natural fertilizer, or whatever!! And the plant seemed to like it? 

I even got it to flower!! It started putting out these crazy flower stalks that closed up during the day but unfurled at night giving off this crazy floral fragrant scent.

It made me remember being a kid and running around in the woods behind my stepdads rental cabin, so I let it keep spreading.

I realize now, this was not the smartest idea, but fuck it, my landlord all but explicitly told me I wasn’t getting the deposit back unless I sued him for it so when it started putting its roots into the drywall, I let it.

It was nice honestly, coming home after seeing nothing but concrete grey for hours and then throwing myself into my little tropical nest. And the smell of the flowers really set the mood when I was jerkin it.

Embarrassingly I think my mind started associating the smell with orgasm because I swear I walked past a florist shop the other day and had to walk bowlegged to the 7D train.

The trouble really started when it started sending its roots in my direction .

Now, I ain’t proud of it, but I more often than not just sleep on a bare mattress. Its got one of those memory foam layers on top and I just couldn’t be bothered to put a fitted sheet on it half the time.

So when I started feeling a bump underneath me as I lay in bed, I just thought it was like, a sock  or something that had gotten shoved underneath there, nbd, until that night… 

I was feeling particularly pent up and kept grinding my ass against that spot on the mattress. I don’t know why I did it, I just wanted more friction and the blooms on the ceiling above me were gettin me wound up with their heavy fragrance. Anyway, it feels like there's a soft tear below me and suddenly something hard and Wide and cold is pressing right against my gooch.

I kinda jump (because it’s cold!!) and look down to find that the frickin plant has grown into the mattress !!

And it was a fat root too, no idea how I didn’t notice it more earlier.

It was kindof freaky to be honest how fast it had grown, the thing really must have liked my semen, but at that point with how humid the room was and how dizzy the flowers were making me feel… I went with it.

 I ground my ass into it and when the thick ridge popped in past my ring I swear I came harder than I ever have in my life dude

I felt like I blacked out a little at the end there because the next thing I knew, it was morning and I'm absolutely painted in my own cum. I guess at this point I should have realized what was going on but I think the pollen those flowers were putting out were scrambling my brains a little. When I woke up, there was a network of thin bright red roots crisscrossing my body, sending out these feathery little things, absorbing the frankly ludicrous amounts of cum I had shot out last night. They pulled at my skin a little as I tore them off but part of me was still a little horny. So I cleared them away and and pulled out my phone.

Fuck it, right? It was my day off and I had no responsibilities that day anyway.

I just rolled over and started going to town on my morning wood.

My ass twitched around something and that's when I noticed...

The fuckin root was still in my ass from last night!!!

I'm trying to use one hand to milk my dick while the other one shoots down in between my legs and sure enough, that fuckin root had buried itself who knows how deep! I tried in vain to pull the thing out, but it was rooted in the mattress after all and didn’t budge. So, humiliatingly, I had to pull myself off of it.

I have to admit, I came a little just from feeling how much of it was inside of me, there was a good 7 inches of thick knobby root dragged out of me, grinding against my prostate as I pulled myself off of it.

I just lay there breathless, staring at the root, sticking straight up out out of my mattress now that it was no longer buried in my ass. My inner walls twitched and contracted, trying to close around the space it had carved out in me.

I guess I still had some sense then because I did actually prune the plant after that

I pulled the root out of my ruined mattress and trimmed all the stalks and roots near my bed. I started jerking off in the bathroom and yea the leaves wilted a bit but that was too much for me, you know?

Well, I don’t know if plants can get pissed but I must have pissed this one off because it responded to me suddenly not “fertilizing” it by sending out these little sticky climbers that got everywhere.

I woke up one morning to the fuckers wrapped around my tiny nipples. I went to sit up and yelped because they got yanked by the fuckin things, pulling my chest to the side. I tried to pull it off as delicately as I could, but the thin stems snapped in half, bleeding a reddish sort of liquid all over my chest!

It sort of burned but I just yelled at the plant, wiped it off and got dressed for work.

Now, I don’t know if I was allergic or something, but for the rest of that day my nipples stayed hard and puffy, poking out visibly from underneath my thin uniform shirt and earning more than a few snickers from the girls up front.

Good thing I had a vacation week coming up.

It had been asked for months in advance, and was the first one I’d had in a decade. I was supposed to drive out to the lake across the state to hang with a buddy of mine at his parents bougie lake house. Well, that night was the night before I was due to head out, and I went to bed in my travel clothes so I could just pop out of bed in the morning. Not wanting to ruin my clothes, I watered the Plant like usual and saved the jerking for when I got to my buddies place.

I was just on the edge of unconsciousness when I felt something moving up my shirt sleeve. I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming it or not so I just laid there, feeling the thing slowly snake its way up to my chest, resting on the sensitive swollen bud there 

I only really tried to react when I felt a second tendril branch out from the first and start oozing that same irritating sap over my OTHER nipple!

Groggily I straightened up, falling for the same headphones on the doorknob trap as last time, but this time it felt a lot better.

My nips hadn't really gone down since that last time so when they got yanked I thought a yelp of pain was what was gonna come out of my mouth, so imagine my surprise when a full bodied moan slipped out instead.

I immediately got super red in the face and yanked off my shirt.

This, unfortunately, snapped the thin tendrils stem, causing it to bleed more of its spicy sap all along my side and chest as I shucked off my shirt.

It left an angry red trail of raised sensitive skin, swelling my nipples far beyond what was normal, and they stuck out of my chest like two puffy toilet plungers out from my swelling pecs.

I tried to pull the tendrils off of them but they were too tight and my nipples were too big now.

I looked up from groping my chest to see how many of the plant’s flowers had opened up above me, showering me in who knows what.

I couldn’t take it anymore, I was openmouth panting, inhaling the perfume and palming my shorts which had at some point started to fill out. I ripped my shorts off too, and only after a few strokes realized how deeply I had just fucked up

If you guessed “that idiot just smeared a sap he’s clearly allergic to all over the most sensitive part of his body” you would be correct...

I was howling in pain as it started to burn, but after a minute or two I was thrusting into the air and moaning like a whore, the fire had turned into an electric storm of pleasure.

My dick was swelling way past normal hardness and I could only continue to try and fuck the hell out of my hand.

It was entirely too humid in that room, everything felt wet and sticky, so when I came finally, I barely even felt it on me

I screamed so loud the neighbors probably thought I was dying I probably did die a little... I think I shot into my own mouth at one point??  I collapsed immediately after, and when I woke in the morning, the whole plant looked shiny and glossy, like it was gloating over the fact it’d gotten me to come for it yet again.

I know it was just a plant but I got mad

I jumped out of bed, completely ignoring the tendrils still wrapped around my nips, put a thick jacket over my shirt and left the room with my suitcase while flipping it the bird.

I felt bad that I would be gone for a week but I’d set it up with a slow release watering pitcher, so I figured it’d be fine without me.

What I didn’t plan on was how I would do without it.

What should have been a great vacation turned into the worst case of blueballs seen this side of the Mississippi.

Not only did my nipples constantly pulse and throb against the tendrils, but I found out later when I went to go use the bathroom that one had slipped around the base of my dick as well, which had also refused to recede back to its normal size. The woody chord was a bit thicker and it wrapped around the base and balls, completely blocking any and all attempts to even get hard.

So instead of focusing on the boat ride or my friends stupid alcohol choices, I was stuck in a constant struggle of being aroused by my throbbing nipples and being unable to address it at all. I was actually filled with relief when the final day came and I was saying goodbye to my hosts.

I flew home after that in my tiny little beater car, shifting uncomfortably at my seatbelt rubbing directly against my chest. I practically kicked the door in, shedding all my clothes in a line to my bedroom and threw myself into bed.

I yelped when I landed on several thick somethings beneath my body creak under my weight, poking me through the thin layer of foam.

The Plant was the worst I’d seen it since I brought it home, with several dead leaves deposited on the bed and an explosion of fuzzy white runners running the length of that bedroom wall.

The roots jabbed into me like it had planned this.

“Ow!” I’d said, “ I'm sorry ok? I just needed a break!”

As a response, I watched a giant cream white flower slowly expand and burst open, sending a shower of shimmery yellow pollen floating down directly over my face.

Things uh, got a little out of hand after that…

The tendrils had finally loosened enough around my dick to where I could pull them off but that just led to all my pent up semen literally dumping into my balls as soon as the tie was removed. I moaned as I could physically feel them growing heavier as a weeks worth of pent up jizz dropped into my balls. They felt like leaden weights.

It was almost painful how quickly I got hard, and it didn’t take more than a stroke or two before I was yelling and releasing said load all over myself and the plant.

You could visibly see it perk up, opening up more buds, showering me with pollen and dusting the bed. The two substances got mixed by my frantic motions and soon I was lightly cheeto dusted with the stuff,

My skin was on fire but it also.. uh, felt really good somehow... So once the high of the first orgasm died down, it wasn't long before I was rarin to go for a second round.

I palmed my recovering erection and was just about fully hard when I felt it.

Again, at my ass!! Was one of the plant’s thick basal roots!! Except this one looked a little weird..

First off it was tremendously thick, about the width of my wrist, and secondly it was covered in all these little backwards facing ridges, like a drywall sink

Man, I don’t know what wires go crossed but between the way my ass was twitching and the pollen I was huffing, I put my ass right against that thing

It must have reacted to my bodyheat because it felt like as I was pressing down on it, the thing was pushing into me as well.

It was intense, there was no give to its turgid walls, so I had to stretch myself out around it to get it past my ring.

Once it was properly seated inside me I started going to town on my dick, which at this point was leaking like my kitchen sink maintenance had refused to address for weeks.

I swear I could feel the root get deeper and deeper inside me as I jerked and spasmed around it I was panting and moaning like a bitch, I can’t believe how horny I was

at some point I felt something at my mouth and wouldn’t you know it, an equally thick tuber had been drawn to my hot breath and was poking at the corner of my lips

I was way past the point of rational thoughts at that point, I just leaned forward and let it creep into my mouth.

The further it got the hotter I felt. My tongue swiped across the underside and that’s when I tasted something sweet

Was this root leaking sap??

Turns out the itchy nectar tasted amazing so I ended up suckling it as I frantically jerked my dick. The root inside my ass had reached my prostate at that point and thats when things got really hazy for me.

I remember exploding all over myself, I would have been screaming if not for the thick root tunneling its way down my throat

I was jerking and spasming to the best of my ability but the roots were getting a little out of control, they were budding from the base of the main roots and expanding all over my body, and every couple of inches they would plant a sticky little node like a command strip onto my skin and keep going, until I could barely move.

The only part that hadn’t been covered was my right arm, which was moving too fast jerking myself off for the tendrils to colonize.

The root in my mouth seemed to expand further, and suddenly I realized that I could still breath despite it feeling like it had reached my guts almost.

My tongue felt a small hole on the underside and sure enough, I could breath just fine.

Good thing too because that’s when I noticed the two thinner roots making their way up my nose, expanding into my nostrils and plugging them completely.

The root in my ass must have had the same idea...

At this point I was slowly starting to realize, like, “oh shit, I really can’t move” and started trying to pull things off of me to escape bu t I honestly couldn’t budge. My left arm was completely rooted to the mattress and my right arm couldn’t be lifted above my waist, just enough to reach my dick but not enough to reach my face.

Leaves were starting to branch out from the tendrils, and with them came more flowers.

They were visibly crawling all over me now, moving fast enough for me to track with my eyes, and I watched in horror as several thin tendrils spiraled up my cock.

I wish I could have broken away but I was quite literally rooted to the spot watching these tendrils poke at my leaking pisshole and worm their way inside.

I screamed and cried but the progress was unceasing, it steadily tunneled into my dick until it hit the base and pinched my prostate against the root in my ass, which at this point must have reached high up into my guts.

I screamed against the root as I came, but no semen escaped my completely plugged dick.

I could feel it making its way inside my through my internal passages, rooting itself straight into my balls, 

At that point I really did pass out, whether from lack of oxygen or overstimulation I couldn’t tell.

Well, I'm awake now and I am utterly fucked, the roots have expanded into nearly every available orifice, even trying to fill out my belly button and uh.. they might have broken through the skin...

I can see ridges beneath my skin.. little hard lines were they’ve penetrated me.

I'm being constantly milked and I can’t even move as they constantly grind against the inside of my cock

I'm not even thirsty or anything, the liquid being drip-fed down my throat fills me up and I'm just kept in a constant state of bliss.

I dunno what to do bro, I have my phone but even texting is getting hard with one hand and roots slowly crawling down my fingers…

you’re the only one close enough to me, theres a key underneath the mat..

you gotta help me man before it's too la

[pepperpixel]

+ Butch 4 Butch +

(Except neither one of them is rlly that butch but holy fUCKING SHIT THAT SONG IS LITERALLY THEM… the version of them I made up in my mind palace… it’s them.)

Anywayyyy. Yeah! Have a tagr art dump..! aka, those vibes when you, out of a series of moments of temporary insanity, end up finding, taking in, nursing back to health and eventually falling into a tangled messy yearning situationship w the asshole tsundere alien who tried to destroy your entire planet… rlly extremely relatable vibes!!

[vynnyal]

This is a pretty good point in the wip to share this, methinks :]

Map part for the hole dwelling map, starring... Not my ocs! I wanted to use ocs, but I don't have any-- so I just used the characters from a fic I was reading at the time 😂

Turns out, the symbolism was so much fun to twist into the 11 seconds I had to work with, I ended up going way more complex than I meant to. If you wanna read the fic this was based on, please do!! And tell the author I said hi! :D

[all-too-unwell-13]

one thing about me is if a fic includes dorlene, i'll read it

[pitchthepeach]

Based on @astronomical-fog ’s wonderful And if you close your eyes

[seagreenstardust]

One of my favorite things about bkdk is how easily they fall into just about any AU

And Hori gave us so many to work with, winter and fantasy and pirates and steampunk and dragon riders and even band AU’s, and more and I just realized

It doesn’t matter what world you put bkdk in, it works because the chemistry is there in canon

[ruporas]

wow?! amazing stunning inspired incredible especially the cigarette smoke panel

thank you so much !! i also liked working on that panel hehe i’m glad others liked it too :’)

[yasmeensh]

I finished reading 4 books from Earth's Children series. The last three were really hard to read. After finishing Plains of Passage, I have come to really appreciate Clan of the Cave Bear as a standalone. I miss all the Neanderthals and Ayla's character arc. Gotta do some fanart!

PS. I MISS IZA! Best character in the series.