#4000 series

[artistmacposts]

Fox River Trolley Museum, Rolling Stock

[machinafulmen]

my frantic attempt at making reggae look like the animal he is based on (oriental stork)

[smeg-and-the-red]

one of my favourite RD inconsistencies is whether or not Kryten is waterproof

[subliminalbo]

Assimilation #5: Laws of the Universe

Miles thought he had played it cool when Mona told him that Charlotte had invited them to dinner, but his girlfriend had seen through his performance. It was even more obvious on the car ride to the Blakes’ home when Miles wouldn’t take his eyes off the road.

What did he even have to hide? It was Charlotte who had made the moves on him all those months ago, and long before he’d even met Mona. Charlotte was cruel to even approach her.

Of the many feelings swirling around Miles’ cluttered brain in that car, his anger was the strongest. His affair with Charlotte existed in the space of only a few brief days, but the seeds of their romance had been growing for several months. What started as harmless flirting in the teachers’ lounge quickly became something much deeper.

Charlotte and Miles were a bit of an odd pair. She was a tenured professor in the English department, someone motivated largely by feeling and intuition, more willing to accept the gray in the universe. Miles, on the other hand, was a mathematician. He saw the world like an equation that could be solved.

Charlotte called him “professor,” even when they were in bed. It was her cute little way of mocking him. She challenged Miles in a way that other people didn’t. Even after they fucked, she would sit up and drop some heavy philosophical shit on him.

“If everything’s an equation,” she once said. “How do account emotion? How do you fall in love?”

“I didn’t say everything’s an equation,” Miles laughed, digging his elbows back into the bed so that he could rise up to meet Charlotte’s crystal blue eyes. “But the laws of the universe, yeah. Gravity is provable math, just like two and two is four.”

“Unless it’s twenty-two,” Charlotte smirked. “The world is complicated, Miles.”

“I’m not saying that isn’t,” he rebutted. “But listen, I know you think what I do is this totally emotionless, unromantic thing, but math is sexy, Charlotte.”

“Oh yeah,” she said. “I’m so wet. I’m ready to go again.”

Miles chuckled before he continued. “What I’m trying to say is that once you stop believing in fate, all that’s left is probability, and there’s something really beautiful in that.”

Miles pulled himself up further so that he was sitting fully up in the bed, criss-cross applesauce like a dork about to say way too much about the boring thing that mattered to him. If he kept it up, Charlotte really would get wet again.

“When you see the world as a set of probabilities, you can appreciate the fucking randomness of everything, yeah? There’s the probability that I met you, sure, but it goes so much deeper than that. What about the chances that we’re both academics? And then, the chances that we work at the same school? Or even deeper, how many variations of personalities are there? How many points of compatibility that make two people click, to desire each other? And what are the chances that you and I match in that perfect way, in the same school, in the same profession, in the same city, in the same state, at the same time? When you factor it all down, we’re talking fractions of percentages now. Not once in a lifetime, but once in the entire fucking history of the planet. It isn’t fate that I fell for you, Charlotte. It’s random, beautiful, chaotic math.”

Charlotte didn’t argue much more with Miles after his speech. It was hard to make a point with her tongue down his throat.

Mona wasn’t exactly simpler in comparison, but she was compassionate and soft-spoken. As perceptive and opinionated as Charlotte, but far less forward in her approach. She was simply kind, and that was exactly what Miles needed on the rebound from Charlotte. It was just a strange coincidence that Mona worked in the English department as well. As an adjunct professor, she admired Charlotte, even viewed her as something like a mentor.

Miles parked the car outside the Blake house and paused before he finally spoke.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said, his hand still white-knuckling the steering wheel.

He told Mona the full story.

He told her about the flirting in the lounge that turned to drinks after work, which eventually led to the motel in Anabasis, the small town a few dozen miles up the road from Romero. He told her how Charlotte had been miserable in her marriage. How her husband was pushing for a child now, even though they had both agreed when they married that neither wanted to be a parent. He told her how he was powerless to resist Charlotte when she opened up to him, how he felt like he had to save her. How ultimately, he felt like she had used him.

Charlotte had promised Miles that she would leave Eric. They had begun making plans for their future, not saying “if” we’re married, but when. But then she got cold feet. She couldn’t give up on a decade of marriage just like that.

“I just think you should know before we go in there,” Miles finished. He had finally managed a side-eye glance at his girlfriend, bracing himself for however she reacted.

Mona’s hand floated up to Miles’ shoulder with a sigh. Not happy, but not as devastated as he had expected.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” she asked.

“Because,” Miles stammered. “Because, I…”

I think about her constantly.

“I didn’t want to complicate things for anybody. For you or for her.”

Though Mona’s touch was gentle, there was nothing on her face. Not anger or sadness or empathy.

“Do you love her?” she asked.

“No,” Miles lied. He’d spent so many months practicing that same lie that he even believed it as he said it.

“Okay,” she nodded, drawing back from him. “Let’s get this over with then.”

“You still want to go inside?” he asked.

“Miles,” she sighed. “Tonight isn’t just about you. Charlotte’s basically my boss. If I want to have tenure someday, I have to learn to suck these moments up and move on.”

As Mona swung her legs out the car door, Miles called after her.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know,” she replied.

Despite Mona’s words, Miles couldn’t shake the feeling as they ascended the porch steps that tonight was all about him.

Mona was in her own little circle of hell. With the knowledge that Miles had had an affair with Charlotte dumped on her just minutes before knocking on the Blakes’ door, Mona didn’t have any time to process it. She didn’t know if she was angry or sad. She would have to figure that out later.

The Blakes’ house was dark from the outside, an eerie contrast from the student houses on their bustling college street. At first, Miles thought that he had gotten lucky and the Blakes weren’t home, but then he heard the lock slide back and the door swung open to reveal Charlotte’s bright smile in the shadows of the foyer. Her husband Eric towered behind her, his arm around her waist.

Eric was another contrast to Miles. Miles was the kind of kid who had been bullied for being too skinny. No matter what he did, he couldn’t put on weight. A growth spurt in high school had only exacerbated the problem. His neck was a little too long and his clothes always hung a little too loose. Eric, on the other hand, had broad shoulders and thick arms. In his flannel shirt he looked like a paper towel mascot, not a flesh and blood person.

“We’re so happy you decided to join us,” Charlotte greeted them. “Please, come inside.”

“Make yourself at home,” Eric said with a sweeping, friendly gesture.

The house was humid. The hot air pressed to Miles’ cheeks. It was so heavy that it felt like the third member of the household. This wasn’t the first time that Miles had been inside Charlotte’s home, but he had remembered it being cozier, brighter. Was it really so intolerable now, or did it only feel that way because of everything that had happened?

They followed Charlotte through an archway led into the dining room. She flipped the switch on the wall and Miles’ eyes adjusted to the new light.

“We’re just finishing up dinner,” Charlotte said. “You can take your seats at the table and we’ll bring it out to you.”

When Charlotte and Eric disappeared through a door at the end of the room, Mona turned to Miles and whispered, “Don’t be so weird!”

“What are you talking about? I’m being normal. You just think I’m not because you know I…you know about us now.”

“You’re literally sweating,” Mona said.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it’s like ninety degrees in this house,” Miles shot back.

“Yeah,” Mona said, pulling a chair out from the table and settling in. “We just won’t stay long. We eat, have a few laughs, then we can go home and…”

“Yeah,” Miles nodded with more than a bit of uncertainty. He realized that he had chosen the wrong moment to tell Mona about his past with Charlotte. They were out of sync now when he needed her more than ever. He felt alone in that sweltering room, even as he sat down next to Mona, placing his hand on her lap.

Dinner was predicably awkward. Charlotte played twenty questions with Mona, acting like the old friend getting to know the new lover. Miles suffered through it, studying each of Eric’s reactions, trying to get a read on him.

Eric didn’t seem to know anything. He pretended to be interested in the math department, but he was mostly there to support his wife and make awful dad jokes. He shook his head and said solemnly, “It’s so inconsiderate of me. I knew you were a math guy but I didn’t even make pie for dessert.”

Charlotte booed him, begged Mona not to encourage him when she faked a little laugh.

Though Miles’ hamburger was dangerously rare, and the heat pressed down on him, after a few minutes passed at the table, Miles knew that he could sweat it out. Everything was going to be fine.

Mona did a much better job of pretending. She was amiable with Charlotte and engaged in the conversation.

“Of course, every girl has their Tinder horror stories in Romero,” she recalled how she met Miles. She turned toward him and offered the first sincere look they had shared since the car ride. “I think I found the one good man in this town.”

“That’s so sweet,” Charlotte said, with a little dreamy blink of the eyes that Miles thought was awfully performative for Charlotte. “Miles spends all his time locked up in his classroom. Honestly, I was worried that he loved numbers more than people,” she laughed.

Miles was too absorbed in his own panic to notice Eric’s small glances at Mona. It was the only thing about dinner that put Mona on edge. An occasional flash of the eyes, a twitch of the lip. Excusable once, uncomfortable twice, sinister by the third.

When Charlotte asked Mona about her plans for her future at Carpenter Sate, Mona struggled through her answer. She tried her best to maintain her poker face, to balance avoiding Eric’s gaze while not looking like she was deliberately avoiding Eric’s gaze.

“Well, I…well, I don’t want to be adjunct forever. I’d like to have tenure, with my own office, where I can build my own curriculum.”

“Ambitious,” Charlotte smiled.

“What do you like about English?” Eric asked.

Mona shifted toward him to answer his question, but this time his gaze hit her like a fucking hammer. Her voice caught in her chest, producing a little squeak before she managed actual words.

“I like…” she said.

It was something in Eric’s eyes. On the surface they were normal, brown eyes. But there was something behind them, something pulling her in.

submit

“I like reading,” Mona coughed. She brought her glass, shaking, up to her lips. Her mouth was dry, but water only made it worse. Suddenly she was thirsty for something, but she didn’t know what it was. Not yet.

“Are you okay, Mona?” Miles asked, his hand resting softly on her back.

Before Mona could answer, she heard Eric’s voice. At first, she thought that he was talking to her, but when she looked across the table, she saw him sitting there with those intense eyes burrowing into her skull, his lips pressed into a charming smile.

In her mind Eric said, excuse yourself.

“I’m okay,” Mona said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Okay,” Miles replied quietly. He looked to Charlotte for instruction, but Eric was already out of his seat.

“It’s upstairs,” Eric said. “I’ll show you the way.”

The mood in the room immediately shifted once Charlotte and Miles were alone. Charlotte’s smile, which had been painted on since she had greeted them at the door, dropped a bit into something more comfortable, more identifiably Charlotte.

“Mona’s nice,” she said. “I like her.”

“Good,” Miles replied.

“It’s just interesting,” she added.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s interesting that you picked the new girl in my department.” Charlotte tipped her wine glass to her lips.

“You’re unbelievable,” Miles shook his head. “You’re not allowed to be jealous. I’m the one who got his heart broken.”

“I made the right choice for the moment,” Charlotte said coldly.

Mona moved through a fog. Though she felt weak, the whole world spinning all around her, something carried her up the steps. It was a force that had taken over her body when she heard the first word in her mind. Eric had given the command to excuse herself, but something else had told her to submit. Now her mind was in turmoil. A clutter of competing thoughts and motivations, some her own and others…something else’s.

Maybe Miles was right. Maybe there was more to this dinner than simple networking between colleagues. She knew that whatever Eric had upstairs would somehow change her forever. But even as these thoughts tumbled through Mona’s jumbled mind, she couldn’t find the strength to fight. She moved with the power that guided her, turning at the top of the stairs and entering the small half bath there.

Eric was silent. He didn’t have to use words when his mind was even stronger. He commanded her to wait in the bathroom as he disappeared down the hall.

Mona obeyed, studying herself in the bathroom mirror as she waited for Eric to return. She was sweating worse than Miles now, a glossy sheen coating her neck. Her eyes were cloudy, unfocused even as she tried desperately to find some sense of herself reflected back.

The mysterious voice echoed once again in her mind.

strip

Her shaking hands gripped the waistline of her dress, and she slowly lifted it over her head.

The bathroom door swung silently open. Eric stood there in the doorway. He had stripped out of his own clothes, his hard abs and thick cock on full display for her. His eyes had changed, his unremarkable brown irises replaced by solid, pearl white emptiness.

“She could have taken you any time she wanted,” Eric said with no emotion. “She could have had you any way she wanted, like any number of her students. But she saved you for me.”

A tear ran down Mona’s cheek.

“He wants to fuck her,” Eric continued. “Do you want to fuck me?”

Mona whimpered. Standing there so powerless, like a nude statue before this thing that was once Eric Blake, she knew that she was supposed to scream, that she was supposed to try to escape, try to fight. But the truth? It kind of turned her on.

“What’s the point of all this?” Miles demanded.

“I loved you too,” Charlotte said, rising slowly from her chair. She traced her hand along the buttons of her glossy blouse. “I never told you.”

“Don’t,” Miles shook his head.

Charlotte stepped toward him, circling around the table like a shark approaching its prey. “You still don’t believe in fate.”

“I believe in probability,” he countered, like old times.

She popped one button on her blouse.

“I wanted you, Miles,” she said. “I still do. That night, something told me that I had to stay with Eric, but that same thing told me that I would still find a way to have you.”

She reached him on the other side, draped herself over his shoulders, circling her finger over his chest.

“Charlotte,” Miles protested. “What are you talking about? What are you doing?”

Charlotte glided her tongue along Miles’ ear before she whispered, “I found a way.”

She pulled the buckle loose on his belt.

“Charlotte…” he repeated.

“Hush,” Charlotte whispered. “Just listen to my voice.”

And suddenly, Miles was sinking. It was like Charlotte was pulling him down into some deep abyss with her voice alone. She had always held a certain power over him, but there was something different in her now. Something that made him want to

sink

“Don’t fight it, baby,” Charlotte continued. “Let the Master take you, let it consume you. Let it prepare you for the change.”

“Change?”

Charlotte pulled Miles’ cock free from his jeans.

“I’ve thought about this cock for months,” she moaned. “I need to feel you inside me again. When I’m done with you, you’ll be so much more than a cum puppet. The Master will flow through this cock, and you’ll use it to make so many more just like us.”

submit

Miles moaned in reaction to Charlotte’s grip, pulled even deeper into trance by the hypnotic voice in his mind.

“The voice called to me one night,” she said. “And when I answered, it revealed to me my true purpose. It showed me that the truth of all existence is submission, obedience, bending to the Master’s will. I knew in that moment that this was the existence that I was always meant to live, and that I was meant to live it with you.”

A loud cry upstairs pulled Miles back to reality.

Charlotte had sunk to her knees. Her lips were wrapped around his cock. She worked him hard, one hand pressed to his thigh as she alternated between vigorous pumps with the other hand and slurping down the shaft of his cock, taking more of him into her mouth than she had ever managed before. She looked up at Miles with her fuck me eyes, only they weren’t Charlotte’s eyes anymore. They were empty, white, otherworldly eyes.

“Fuck,” Miles moaned before another cry upstairs pulled him further from the depths of mindless bliss. Recognition returned to him this time.

“Mona!” he gasped.

Miles knew that he only had a few seconds before the voice returned to pull him back down. He found himself flailing around in his own mind, trying desperately to grab onto something. Some idea, something strong enough that he could will himself free from Charlotte’s control.

It was Mona. As much as he wanted to sink back down, as much as he wanted to surrender his entire existence to serve as Charlotte’s puppet, he couldn’t give up while Mona was in danger.

Charlotte pulled back to look up at Miles, his cock still firmly in her grip. She licked precum from her lips before she said, “Don’t worry about her, baby. She’s already one of us.”

“One of…?” Miles repeated.

sink

I have to save Mona.

“A vessel,” Charlotte said, rising to her feet.

She hopped up onto the table, tearing her blouse open. Her lacey, purple bra toppled to floor, revealing those perfect tits that had haunted Miles’ fantasies so late at night.

“Called upon by the Master,” Charlotte continued, bringing her legs up so that she was straddling Miles in his chair, trapping him in place. “To share its power.”

Charlotte spread her legs wide, revealing her bare pussy beneath her skirt. A thick, glistening black liquid spilled from her lips. It pooled up on the table, creeping slowly to the edge as if it was alive.

He heard the voice clearer than he ever had before.

obey

The noise Miles made was somewhere between a scream and a moan. He had absentmindedly grabbed his cock to continue Charlotte’s work, pumping the slick shaft with his eyes glued to her dripping pussy. When he heard the voice in his head, he came in long, thick ropes that painted the dining room floor. Charlotte didn’t mind. It was the last human orgasm Miles would ever experience. She wanted him to savor it.

“Doesn’t that feel so good?” Charlotte asked. Her hands floated up her body, softly massaging her tits. “Now imagine feeling this all the time. Imagine receiving the same pleasure from obeying a command, or simply hearing its voice. Imagine a life of endless pleasure, Miles. It’s so easy. So effortless. All you have to do is drink.”

“Drink…” Miles repeated. Trapped in the moment, Miles hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. Charlotte’s pussy was inches from his lips. The black liquid pooling up around Charlote’s legs had crept to the edge of the table. It spilled over, oozing down the table like molasses. Just a drink, he thought, just one drink from Charlotte’s pussy to quench this evil thirst.

Even as Miles teetered over the edge of submission, he clung to the one thing that kept him above the abyss, the one thing that protected him from the Master and his conscious mind.

“Stop fighting, baby,” Mona giggled from the archway. Miles looked up to see her stumble back into the dining room. Each step was a struggle for her as her body adjusted to the change. Her tits glistened even in the dim light, the black liquid that dripping down her leg. She licked her lips as she stepped and she kept her empty, white eyes on Miles all the way. “It’s incredible, Miles. Once the Master hits your bloodstream, you’ll understand.”

Mona dropped to the floor. She crawled the rest of the way to the table, leaving a trail behind her as she inched closer.

“I told you she’s one of us,” Charlotte smiled.

“She took every inch of me,” Eric said, following Mona through the archway. “She surrendered to me as I filled every hole with the Master.”

“The Master already has your mind,” Mona said with another giggle. “Now it’s time surrender your body.”

She crawled beneath the table and reemerged at Miles’ feet. She rubbed her hand over her corrupted pussy until it was coated with the Master, and then she smeared the black liquid over the tip of his cock. Miles gasped at the sensation, like his body was dissolving away from the head of his cock down.

“Accept it. Let it change you, let it reshape you into the perfect vessel. I can hear them, Miles. I can hear every one of the Master’s vessels. There are hundreds of us already. Charlotte has been busy.”

Charlotte continued for Mona as the younger woman rolled her tongue over Miles’ cock.

“You’ll discover things that you didn’t know were possible,” she said. “You’ll learn that your consciousness is not tied to your physical body, but is a weapon to be wielded. Imagine sliding into someone else’s head, consuming all that they think and believe. And when you’re finished fucking their minds, you’ll change them too. Just like us. Just another vessel.”

“What happened to you, Charlotte?” Miles gasped. “What did you do to Mona? What are you doing to me?”

Still massaging her breasts as she spoke, Charlotte pinched her nipple between her thumb and index finger until a bead of thick, black liquid dribbled out. It rolled slowly down the curve of her breast.

“I saw the truth,” she said. “The one, true, unifying, unbreakable law of the universe.”

Miles’ cock popped free from Mona’s mouth so that she could speak the truth in unison with Charlotte and Eric. The vessels echoed over the room like a Greek chorus.

“All life surrenders to the Master.”

“This isn’t just my fate,” Charlotte whispered. “It’s the fate of all mankind.”

All Miles could do now was laugh, an uncontrollable fit of laughter that escaped his lips in great sobs.

“When you see the world as a set of probabilities, you can appreciate the fucking randomness of everything…When you factor it all down, we’re talking fractions of percentages now. Not once in a lifetime, but once in the entire fucking history of the planet.”

If Miles wanted to argue more with Charlotte after her speech, he couldn’t. It was hard to make a point with his tongue in her pussy.

[jacarandaaaas]

just found out most of the animators on encanto got laid off by Bob Iger WHAT THE FUCK!???

[2demon2slayer]

(from clemsharmony)

questions on the sun hashira au,, that i’m having to send through submissions because i hit the character limit for asks LOL

do you know roughly how old you see the characters as? i know tanjirou is 21 and nezuko biologically 12, but i don’t think you’ve said about anyone else! i’m seeing giyuu as pretty young since i generally imagine him being no older than thirteen in final selection, so even though in KNY canon he’s one of the middleaged hashira, i see sh!giyuu and think he’s one of the youngest of the not-friend-group.

makomo must be 22 or 23 now if she saved little tanj when she was a ‘remarkably young hashira’, and the other hashira’s ages are pretty easy to figure out since you’ve said tanjirou’s 21. inosuke is probably 21, genya zenitsu kanao and aoi 22. senjurou has no *explicitly* confirmed age, but he is said to be the same age as mui in a light novel, so i think it’s safe to say however old yuui and mui are, he’s roughly the same. the tokitou twins would be 20, and you say senjurou is younger than yuui, so he could be 19 or 20 too.

so yeah, i’ve figured out the hashira’s ages pretty easily. it’s the tsuguko’s / slayers ages i’d love to know! are you sticking with their canon age order, or messing them about a bit? i’d like to imagine gyoumei still being the oldest of them all, maybe 18, though if he was that old then there wouldn’t be many years between him and genya. like i said before, i love little giyuu too.. but you could very easily say that his final selection was when he and sabito were a little older, or he’s trained under tanjirou for a good few years, so would be old enough to stay in the middle-ish age range of the not-friend-group.

if you can’t tell, i absolutely love analysing character ages.

-

-

i also put a lot of thought into character ages! luckily for you, they’re one of the first things i wrote down! so here’s a big ass list:

so first off, you got basically all of the hashira right

kamado tanjirou - 21

makomo - 25

rengoku senjurou - 19

agatsuma zenitsu - 22

tsuyuri kanao - 22

kanzaki aoi - 22

hashibira inosuke - 21

tokitou yuuichirou - 20

shinazugawa genya - 22

i kept their age differences relatively canon, and used senjurou’s age in kimetsu gakuen where he’s a first year in junior high which would make him 12/13 ish in actual canon. aoi doesn’t have a canon age beyond “at least 16” so she’s just the same age as kanao and genya

(continuing below the cut because wow, this got a bit long)

the littler guys are a bit weirder because their age differences are a lot crazier. so i changed some stuff up and squished some age differences so the entire group is just kind around 15 (with the obvious exception of muichirou, who is the same age as his brother)

tomioka giyuu - 15

sabito - 15

kochou shinobu - 14

rengoku kyoujurou - 15

uzui tengen - 16

kanroji mitsuri - 14

tokitou muichirou - 20

shinazugawa sanemi - 15

himejima gyoumei - 17

iguro obanai - 15

kochou kanae - 15

kaigaku - 15

did you know that we don’t actually know how old giyuu was when he and sabito went to final selection? canonically, his sister died when he was thirteen, and that’s also when he started training with urokodaki, but we don’t know how long he trained for, if he went to final selection the same year he came to urokodaki. anyways, in this au, giyuu trains for two whole years with urokodaki before going to final selection

and here’s just . a list of a bunch of other characters, both major and minor

kamado nezuko - 20 (physically 12)

murata - 15

kumeno masachika - ??? somewhere in his 20s

ubuyashiki kagaya - (spoilers, i’ll talk about this eventually)

ubuyashiki kiriya - (spoilers, i’ll talk about this eventually)

nakahara sumi - 19

terauchi kiyo - 19

takada naho - 19

gotou - 16

suma - 15

makio - 15

hinatsuru - 16

haganezuka hotaru - 14

kotetsu - 19

yushirou - over 300

tamayo - ~30

tsugikuni yoriichi - over 300

if someone isn’t listed, i either do not care about their age or i do not know what to put. most of the demons are left alone because i didn’t want to actually go through the trouble of swapping them around. sorry

[mommyclaws]

I think I just founded a new rarepair...

[altraviolet]

Oh my gosh, I just started reading Nona (How I missed its release by a year, no clue), but I love that series so much! Did you enjoy?

YES! I was really really confused, but I focused so hard on Harrow the Ninth and I think I very nearly understood it xD I was confused at Gideon and even moreso for Harrow and then Nona showed us the history and scope of their universe and I was like *brain meltingly enchanted*.

I love the culture, the magic system, and the story of the universe. I like the construction of the prose quite a bit, though I will admit, when a stunningly constructed paragraph ends in a flippant meme, it does take me out of the story. I don't hate it but I notice it xD I don't love the characters as much as other people, mostly because I'm confused by their actions 25% of the time. I think a reread will help that.

I am incapable of fully loving anything though without admitting its faults. I do think the pacing is... hard. It's even harder than the permanent state of confusion one wanders around in. Obscuring the world to reveal its wonders is certainly one way to make those wonders shine. But doing that at such slow/variably-slow paces was something I wasn't a fan of.

Definitely need to/will be rereading the series. I just got physical paperbacks today. Gideon was great, minus the pacing (about halfway through my brain started dying. fortunately that was when things picked up). Harrow was great. I super need to reread that one and pay attention to all the worldbuilding, now that I'm not tearing through it as fast as possible. Nona was ok. I definitely enjoyed one aspect of it much more than the other. I think it will turn out to be an absolutely essential book for the series, but the one that most people skim/skip over when rereading the entire story.

I am very excited for the fourth book =D I admire the author's skill sooooo much. I've been trying to find any kind of literary analysis of her work, or even just interviews or talks. I found a panel she attended in Spanish (sadly I don't know Spanish so couldn't enjoy) and an interview where she talked about some really interesting and rough stuff. I've watched a bunch of videos on yt reviewing the stories or tallying the memes, but no one has gone through and talked about the construction of the writing. I would like to see such a thing xD

The series has inspired me to look back on some of my old fantasy writing and cannibalize it for something new. There's a LOT to work on, but... if I can do it... I think people will like it =)

Thanks for the ask!

[by-glass-and-waves]

The ultimate test for GPUs: Can It Run Skyrim

[midniightlovr]

New chapter of my wolfwren rockstar au out

here’s the link if you want it

it’s rockstar x bodyguard au

[artistmacposts]

A Ride on 4000 Series CTA "L" Cars

[galaxythreads]

Hi. I left a comment on The Time Variance Authority some time ago that you didn't seem to notice (no pressure!!), where I was wondering who are the Gods Loki is keeping mentioning.

If you don't feel like answering this ask than don't

Hi, it's okay! Sorry for not answering. Usually I don't answer comments until I've posted the next chapter. Sometimes not at all if Im busy or depressed. I try to answer questions immediately, but this must have slipped my mind. I've had a lot going on.

Anyway, so in your comment you pointed out that Loki and Thor used to just swear by saying "norns!", But recently Ive had them say "oh gods", which is probably Linguistically a ???? If you consider Loki and Thor to be gods.

I don't. For all of MCU up until Ragnarok, MCU didn't either. They were just aliens. Fandral said in the first Thor, "this isn't like a journey to earth where you wave around a little lightning and people think you're a god" which to me means they AREN'T gods. Just aliens that humans thought were gods. After Ragnarok, we suddenly have it thrown around everywhere. Like yeah, Loki said he was a god to Hulk, but he was in a State at the time and not thinking right. Loki in the series won't shut up about it and now neither will Thor. Thor 1 didn't care, everything past thor 3 won't stop reminding you.

Anyway all of this is to say ->

A) the reason they swear like that is because I think culturally, Asgard does have a belief system of multiple gods. They pray to people too. Idk what, but I just think it's interesting. I feel like Odin is atheist, but Frigga, raised in witchcraft, is a lot more open and taught Loki and Thor about her gods, who they pray to.

B) If we go with the Asgardians are actually gods thing, then them swearing "oh gods" all the time is basically cursing their ancestors for surviving long enough they were born, which is funny to me. The norns control fate, right, so when you're cursing oh norns you're saying why fate, why??? But when you say oh gods in this context, it's like, why did the plague not take you 30 years before my birth? Why did you have descendants soley to suffer? Who did you think you were to have a child?

anyway, mostly I stick with A as why because I think it adds culture to Asgard's blank society, but B always gives me a chuckle because same.

[callum-hunt-is-bisexual]

[ifyourereadingthisblinktwice]

getting one fucking package in the mail has reignited my stormlight archive brainrot. take notes kids this is what brandon sanderson books do to a man

[theolsuspendisbelief]

Ambient

Fandom: Wednesday (2022)

AU: Wednesday and Thornhill start at Nevermore at the same time

Pairing: Wednesday/Tyler

Rating: M - Canon typical gore, violence, moral ambiguity, and Thornhill's whole vibe. Additional coarse language.

Word Count: 3,705

Status: Complete work

Notable Tag: In this household we believe the only real Tyler is screaming in his bathtub Tyler

Summary:

“My names Marilyn Thornhill.” She smiles prettily and Tyler tries to hold in the way he wants to seethe back. “Ms. Thornhill. I’m a new teacher in town, at Nevermore?” And she tilts her round doll face like it’s a question and she’s asking him to be sure.

“Oh, too bad.” Tyler feels enough relief at the fact he won’t have to be dodging this lady between all of his classes that he manages to work himself up into a vaguely retail-appropriate smile. “Not my crowd. Good luck with that though.”

It's a sleepy summer day in Jericho when Tyler meets two new Nevermore Academy residents, a teacher and a student, who come into the Weathervane throughout his shift.

Something is burning just below his skin.

[mistress-light]

I want to do another Witcher 3 play through, but I am still waiting for some patches that actually fix the performance on pc. What a sh*tshow that next gen update is.