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badhabitscollection · 1 year

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So Much (For) Blitz —An exclusive reveal of the star of Fall Out Boy’s latest album cover

Fall Out Boy’s latest effort So Much (For) Stardust) has been critically acclaimed and lauded by fans as some of their best work to date. The album artwork, prominently featuring a doberman, has left some puzzled and looking for additional context as to the dog’s identity and how the artwork came to be. The Bad Habits Collection is proud to bring you the exclusive reveal of the dog featured on the cover of their eighth studio album alongside the full story of how they were discovered.

—

When Fall Out Boy officially announced their eighth studio album on January 18th, 2023 and unveiled the album artwork for So Much (For) Stardust, there were a lot of opinions to be had. Some of the fans immediately felt connected and claimed it as their own, some compared it to Fiona Apple’s 2020 release Fetch the Bolt Cutters, and some downright found it revolting. Overall, most agreed that it was polarizing to say the least. Donned in an all black background, the front cover features both the name of the band and the album itself in the work of Omar Mroz (hereinafter referred to by his online moniker Mr.Oz). The text is covered in glitter and written out in the same style featured earlier in the rollout of FOB8’s album cycle with A Claymation Fall Out Boy Celebration, dropped as a surprise present from the band on Christmas one month earlier. The headlining attraction of this sideshow was in fact just a simple square box, containing a swirling artistic depiction of a doberman barking in the presence of a froth of bubbles.

From the moment I first laid eyes on the iconography of Fall Out Boy’s new era, I had just two questions in mind: Who is the dog? & Why choose the dog? A few obvious possibilities were immediately ruled out. Solely based on what’s been posted to social media, this dog did not belong to Pete, Joe, or Andy. Patrick has remained dormant online for years at this point, but still the odds felt slim. I did my best to brush it off, but ultimately I kept coming back to the thought of WHY? If you’re familiar with my previous work on the history of Take This To Your Grave’s album cover, you already know this type of sentiment means a lot to me. After a while of waiting for the band to bring up the topic in an interview or statement, I had essentially given up hope on any type of official explanation. It was at this moment, just 3 days before the release of the record, that I accepted the reality of the situation. This wasn’t a hot topic within the fandom. And no one was going to provide me with the answers I was looking for. If I wanted to know more, it was solely up to me. So… I got to work. —

To take a step back, the artwork for So Much (For) Stardust first hit the internet on January 11th, seven days before the official reveal. Posted alongside the name of the first single Love From The Other Side, our barking pup friend was featured on the home feed of FILTER | NEWs on VK, a Russian social media site that I’ve been told is comparable to Facebook. The artwork was watermarked with a subtle, transparent white logo for FILTER in the background. Despite this post being up for five days (a millennia on the worldwide web), it wasn’t until the 16th that the fandom at large made this discovery, with many claiming it was an outright fake.

However, the *stars* started to align proving this leak to have a dose or two of authenticity. Mr.Oz’s claymation video from earlier in the rollout followed the story of a similar looking doberman, who just so happened to pose in the final frame in a style strongly resembling the leaked cover.

Beyond that, a post from lyricist and bassist Pete Wentz’s Instagram dating back just two days earlier was quickly dug up. On the 4th slide of the carousel, there it was: a selfie of Pete with a Santa hat on and propped up on the shelf behind him... the physical painting of the doberman seen on the leaked cover.

All but confirmed at this point, one last clue presented itself online. The freshly created Twitter account “@muchstardust” popped up out of nowhere, making itself known by following myself and a few other notable hardcore fans in this space. @muchstardust made just one single tweet before being suspended (for reasons unknown).

The post featured three images, the watermarked cover, Pete’s selfie, and notably, a compressed form of the actual photo taken of man’s best friend —the same one the leaked cover features an oil painting rendition of.

— As we all know now, this leak was indeed real and confirmed as the album artwork just a few days later by Fall Out Boy themselves. But that’s when the trail went cold. Later promotional photos featuring the band and taken by their long time collaborator Pamela Littky included another doberman, but clearly not the same one once examined a bit closer. On March 21st, the Chicago rock group posted “What do you think the dog’s name is? 🫧”, but never followed up with the answer. It’s as if they were taunting me specifically with how vocal I had been about wanting to solve this mystery. Just before the album’s official release, I was tipped off by someone with an early copy of the CD that the liner notes of So Much (For) Stardust credit Safia Latif for the cover painting and Jen Patterson for the photograph the cover painting was based on. With new pieces of the puzzle in play, my search for the dog in question was reignited. However, my leads proved of little to no help. I could not get in touch with Safia and could not properly identify Jen Patterson online for the life of me. Taking the hunt back to the drawing board, I reverse image searched the photo @muchstardust had originally provided, which even at this point, months later, was our only source of the actual photograph. Littered with results of the album artwork naturally, I did come across one potential connection. Once again, I found myself on the public timeline of someone’s VK.com profile. “dextromethorpan 3” had included the same photograph in a gallery of different doberman puppies posted on December 21st, 2020. This was…something. Sure, this photo likely did not originate from the VK profile I had unearthed, but at least now I knew it had been around the web for a few years. Scratching my head, I wondered how Fall Out Boy had originally come across this image. Was it something that came up on one of their feeds? Or perhaps just a keyword search? Taking it to different forms of social media, I found a potential match on the /r/doberman subreddit posted 10 months ago. Titled “Cool pic of us playing with bubbles”, the dobie in question featured strikingly similar features and color patterns, and was of course, playing with bubbles.

So I did what any other sane fan would do… and sent a private message to the Redditor the night before the album dropped with Jen’s photograph. “/u/drc55555” responded Saturday morning agreeing that the dog did look a lot like their own, but that they didn’t recognize the photograph. I woke up in a cold sweat seeing the glimpse of the Reddit notification on my iPhone and replied informing them of the cover of Fall Out Boy’s brand new release and asking if the user was the Jen Patterson credited in the album’s booklet. A day later, they replied once again noting that they weren’t Jen, but that this has sparked a memory of another DM they had received in the fall of last year from an Elektra Records personnel, Fueled By Ramen’s distributor who Fall Out Boy had publicly rejoined the roster of just this January. Indeed, 200 days ago from this very conversation, a marketing representative from the label had reached out to the Redditor through the same platform letting them know that an artist they work with had come across the very same photo I myself found and that the artist had fallen in love with it, hoping to use it as part of the artwork for an upcoming project. /u/drc55555 had conceded that they regretted not responding at the thought of how their dog could have become famous. This is when I knew, I was HOT on the trail. Either a member of FOB discovered this photo of their dog while scrolling Reddit or had specifically sought out the same search terms as me, which meant the actual photograph used on the cover could have potentially been found through the very same method. My search accelerated and within a few hours I had run a variety of similar terms by Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, really any social media site I could get my hands on. Nothing had come up, but I hadn’t called it a day quite yet as one of the more obvious sites remained: Instagram. Heading to the explore page I have barely used in my own time on the platform, I typed in the same keywords that brought me to the pup’s uncanny match on Reddit: “doberman bubbles”. And there it was, exactly 60 rows down, right in the center, the original image of the dog I had been looking for all along along with an alternate photo of the same dog in the next slide in the same setting captioned “BUBBLES!!!!!”, posted —you guessed it, in 2020.

— With this case officially closed, I’m beyond stoked to introduce Blitz the Doberman to other fans of Fall Out Boy. At the time of publication, Blitz has 12.8k followers on his public Instagram account, which lead me to question how this match hadn’t already been made. Blitz’s bio reveals he was born on February 27th, 2019 and lives in Las Vegas with his human, one Jen Patterson.

In a beautiful twist of fate, within the hour of finishing the final draft of this piece, Blitz’s humans responded to my inquiry from earlier in the week. I spoke with Jen at length who was happy to share her story exclusively with The Bad Habits Collection. Similarly to the Redditor from earlier, a marketing rep from Elektra Records had reached out to her through Instagram on September 20th, 2022 inquiring about using a picture of her pup for one of their artists’ work, a message she initially regarded as spam. Eventually, she came to an agreement with Elektra, however, this story ended there for her. Up until Jen read the direct message I sent to Blitz’s account, she had not the slightest idea that he was featured on the cover of the new album of one of the biggest modern rock bands left in the world. I was shocked to hear this, but Jen on the other hand was incredibly excited to learn of the breaking news. I shared a photo with her of her name printed in the liner notes of So Much (For) Stardust, a cool moment for us both. Jen told me “I never considered myself a photographer, but that’s amazing!” When I asked about how Blitz already had such a huge following on Instagram, she told me all about how she’s networked with others in a doberman group and has kept a steady stream of posts coming on the daily. In discussion of what she’d like for others to take away from this article, Jen simply hoped others would get to know Blitz’s name —my entire goal of this investigation all along. Half-joking, she expressed that she’d also love to have gotten her hands on some merchandise with his face on it. Infinitely grateful for her responding to my DM and taking the time to talk with me, I’ve personally sent Jen physical copies of So Much (For) Stardust in both vinyl and CD format. I’ll be sure to update this write-up with a photo of FOB’s newest mascot posing with his album cover when they arrive! Closing out our conversation, Jen let me know that she “felt like if you hadn’t reached out, we would not have known.” To be honest, there were times in this journey that I thought it might be for the best if I gave up the search for this pup as to not invade anyone’s privacy. I figured if Blitz hadn’t already made himself known publicly, maybe there was a specific reason behind not doing so. I would have never guessed that reason was because his family were simply unaware of his new-found fame. I feel honored to have been the one to share this discovery with Blitz’s owners and again want to thank them for their contributions to this piece. Jen has also graciously shared the original photograph of Blitz the cover was based on in its full resolution, uncropped:

—

After scouring the internet to to uncover this story, it all leads me to just one final question: Why Blitz? What’s the connection? Moreover, what’s the intended meaning here? Jen let me know that she herself was unaware of how and why the photograph was found and selected, but we can naturally draw our own conclusions. Discussing this topic with other longtime fans of the band, all have come to the same conclusion that Fall Out Boy’s latest effort features some of Pete’s bleakest lyrics in a long time paired somehow ever so perfectly with some of Patrick’s most uplifting and dance-worthy melodies to date. As my partner pointed out, the album artwork depicts a breed known for their usage as guard dogs with a tough exterior, but shown playing lightheartedly with what’s usually associated as a child’s toy. In the words of fellow Fall Out Boy historian and Bad Habits Collection collaborator Tommy McPhail, the cover displays “the epitome of boundless joy and simplified bliss amongst chaos”, a phrase that perfectly sums up the entire feeling artistically and masterfully expressed in So Much (For) Stardust in my own eyes. Fall Out Boy’s newest full-length studio record So Much (For) Stardust, produced by the legendary Neal Avron, is one of their strongest statement pieces in years and is now available everywhere music is streamed or sold. You can follow Blitz’s adventures on Instagram: @blitzdoberman — “The kind of pain you feel to get good in the end. Inscribed like stone and faded by the rain: ‘Give up what you love before it does you in.’” Written by Alex Toor for The Bad Habits Collection

#Fall Out Boy #FOB #FOB8 #So Much (For) Stardust #So Much For Stardust #SMFS #2023 #Pete Wentz #Patrick Stump #Joe Trohman #Andy Hurley #Blitz #Blitz Doberman #Blitz The Doberman #Doberman #Fueled By Ramen #Alex Toor #Live On Toor #LiveOnToor

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chrollohearttags · 11 months

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sub eren and hair puller y/n because eren is such a whiny little bitch when they’re alone 🥰

yeaaaaah, turn it up!! Slutting out pretty boys is my favorite thing and I will not be normal about this at allll! Bless you nonnie and I’m sorry it took this long to answer this beautiful request.

content warnings: subby eren, handjob, hair pulling, spit play, choking, nipple play, slapping, edging, dom (y/n), use of mama and mentions of pegging 🤭 (he is our bitch in this BAD)

“Oh fuck….ah—haaa, baby! F-feels so—hghhh.”

the pretty, high pitched wails of your producer and artist husband not falling on deaf ears at all as he belted out them out better than any high note you’d ever heard him hit. Those mellifluous moans serving as mere inspiration to continue on your journey to doing all the things to make him tick. Your smaller hands and long nails tracing up and down his chest, slowly circulating his abs..only to find home on his nipples; which you’d gently twist to truly get him shaking. Your legs, coiled tightly around his waist like a snake to prevent him from going anywhere. But you didn’t have that to worry about all too much. Especially with your other fist enclosed around his shaft..slowly stroking that big cock between your fingertips.

“What’s that, sweetheart? Speak up f’r me..use your words, okay?”

cooing to him in a sort of patronizing tone whilst precum emitted from his tip and trickled down your knuckles. Serving as even more lubricant to add to the collection of saliva you were making him spew as you watched his mind go completely dumb and his face go blank. That tattooed chest and chiseled abs heaving with each breath; his entire erect twitching from within your grasp..just waiting to burst. He could barely contain himself right now but you had him exactly where you wanted him..much like he had done you a plethora of times when the roles were reversed. But now, you were going to have your way and enjoy toying with him. Because the opportunity for you to be in control wouldn’t come by often!

“Eren..honey. I know you hear me talking to you. Don’t be rude..”

prompting him to open his eyes with a gentle smack to the cheek..enough to make him alert again. But alas, all you were greeted with were more pathetic moans. His Adam’s apple jumping in his throat and his breathing labored because truthfully, he wanted to come. He wanted to come so badly, he could practically taste it! However, you couldn’t grant his request until he gave you explicit orders to do so. As you told him, using his words would be the only way. But it would seem that you had him frozen in ecstasy; unable to convey his message clearly. “S-sorry! I just..” Exactly the goal you were looking for! All that talk..bragging about how he was such a domineering man that could never be controlled. Only to be crying like a little bitch because you had edged him along for nearly thirty minutes! Hands behind his back, spitting into his mouth only to have him regurgitate it back into your hand..handling him as you saw fit and having your way. “Shhh..it’s alright.” That’s when a grin would break across your face once more and that same set of digits that were once massaging his chest found home in the thick wefts of his shoulder length hair, tugging his head around, causing him to gasp even louder. Oh, if only the world could see him now. Completely helpless and caught in your blissful touch. A submissive headspace. One he didn’t want to come out of. He loved the feeling…the rush he got from being handled by the woman he looked at so delicately and precious any other time. Instead though, you were flicking your tongue around his earlobe; nibbling gently at the flesh as you filled his head with filthy, perverse desires of wanting to truly break him. From telling him how pretty he’d look getting pegged. How much pleasure he’d feel from getting fucked by a toy whilst you jerked him off. The possibilities of the heights you could take him to knew no bounds and by the time you finished, he was panting like a dog in heat, begging for you to do your worst.

“Good boy..now tell mama what you want..”

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aesethewitch · 6 months

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Shufflemancy 101: A Brief History & Analysis

Hey! If you like my work and want to support me in my quest for divination theory, digital tools, algorithmic quandries, and research into niche divination tools, consider throwing dollars at my Ko-Fi tip jar! Every contribution helps me keep making posts like this one. (You can also read this post over on Ko-Fi!)

The difficulty with researching something like shufflemancy is that it's a relatively modern phenomenon. I haven't yet found anyone (online or in a book) specifically talking about the origins of shufflemancy as a term or where it might've come from.

So, we start from square one.

What is Shufflemancy?

According to Wikipedia, shufflemancy is divination "by the use of an electronic media player such as an electronic playlist, iPod, or other medium wherein one skips a certain number of songs and the lyrics and/or tune of the song is the answer to the divinatory question."

Simple enough. Use an electronic collection of music that's been shuffled to divine.

This did lead me to the question: What counts as shufflemancy? Does tuning into a radio station count?

It's my opinion that radio divination does not count. There's no shuffle function. Yes, it has an element of chance, and that's what makes it divination. It certainly falls under the wider umbrella of divination via music, too. But it isn't shufflemancy if it doesn't make use of a shuffle function.

So, to make things simple, for something to be shufflemancy, it must:

Use an electronic medium

Involve a randomized shuffle function

Be something the shufflemancer can interpret to answer a question (pretty much anything)

Early Shufflemancy

The earliest form of shufflemancy as we understand it today, using the above requirements, would probably be tape players capable of shuffling music. With the nature of tape, it would take a while for the thing to wind and rewind to find the cue on the tape which signaled the start or end of a song, but it'd work.

With that said, shuffling as we understand and recognize it today would've started with CDs in the 1980s. There were CD players that could hold three to five disks at a time. They could shuffle songs between all disks held in the player, creating a random mix of tunes for listeners to enjoy.

Using either of these methods for divination would work, technically. The results would be somewhat limited, but that doesn't mean it's a bad method to use. Especially if your CD player could hold 5 disks, you could easily put in 5 albums from different artists with all different vibes for a wider variety of outputs.

I certainly remember using my little blue radio that held two CDs at once like this. I'd put in two albums and hit shuffle, and the first song that played would be my vibe and advice for the day. It was divination -- some of the earliest I'd ever done consciously, at the young age of nine. And when I got the bigger one that held three CDs? Game changer.

So this puts shufflemancy's origins somewhere around the mid-to-late 1980s, when Sony put out the first CD player with shuffle. As we moved into the 1990s, CDs became more popular and cassettes faced obsolescence.

The Shuffle Revolution & Early Modern Shufflemancy

In 2005, Apple changed the game again. It had already debuted the iPod in 2001, providing an easy, pocket-sized music experience as a direct challenge to the CD's cultural domination. On January 11, 2005, nearly 20 years ago, Apple announced the iPod Shuffle.

And oh, boy, did it change everything.

I could talk forever about the iPod's impact on the music industry, the death of the in-order album, and the eventual rise of music streaming services. But others have done that to death, so I'll focus in on our topic of shufflemancy.

This is where we start seeing shuffling music as it is now, in the modern day. In my digging, I found mentions of the term "shufflemancy" as early as 2007 -- just two years after the iPod Shuffle was announced. Someone proposed the concept and terminology of "shufflemancy" as we understand it today on a Halfbakery Forum "Idea" post on October 3, 2007.

It's difficult to say whether this is the first instance of the term. In reality, shufflemancy seems to have emerged as a natural by-product of the evolution of music technology. Where there is innovation, witches and diviners will mold it to their purposes. We're a resourceful bunch like that. It grew organically as we moved from buying albums to buying singles to streaming music without buying at all.

People were offering public shufflemancy readings as early as 2009 in places like TarotForum.net. It's spoken about during this era as a "silly" and "new" form of divination that people were trying out. There aren't any dates in that link, but according to the website's data, the first post in the thread was published on June 16, 2009.

From there, shufflemancy saw a gradual rise in popularity. It evolved from using iPods to iTunes, Napster, and eventually Spotify as these new applications emerged.

Shufflemancy Now

If you look up "shufflemancy" using Spotify's search function, you'll receive dozens of results. Many of the top playlists are public ones curated by shufflemancers for themselves and others to use. Options range from general playlists to "mega mixes" containing upwards of 200 hours of music from all different genres, artists, and eras. There are some with a paltry five hours of music, while one that I've seen goes up over the 600 hour mark. (If I can find that one again, I'll reblog it, because... damn.)

Select a "messages from your guides" option from the search or curate your own -- the choice is yours. For one-time shufflemancers, using a pre-made option may be the best, most economical choice. But dedicated shufflemancers sometimes boast multiple hundred-hour playlists for different purposes, all personally curated.

Clearly, it's popular. There are shufflemancers on Tumblr and Etsy offering free and paid services using their specially curated playlists. A quick search is all you need to find someone receiving a divinatory reading via song lyrics, meanings, and vibes. And it seems to work -- sellers on Etsy boast hundreds of positive reviews. Some even offer playlist curation services for personal shufflemancy or messages from deities and/or spirits.

It all begs the question, how does shufflemancy work?

Shufflemancy Methodology

Finding this is significantly easier than pinning down the history of shufflemancy. This post from Tumblr user orriculum, sums it up fairly well. So does this one by the-daily-diviner.

To do shufflemancy, the basic steps are:

Create or find a playlist of songs. A large collection seems to be the most favorable option for a wide spread of possibilities.

Ask a question. Divination 101 -- figure out what you want to know and ask it. Simple enough.

Pick a number. Choose any number and shuffle that many times or skip that many songs.

Listen to the song. Write down lyrics that stick out, messages that come through, and anything else that seems relevant (genre, tempo, vibe, etc.)

Interpret. Take the information gathered during the song and use it to draw conclusions, just like any other form of divination.

Simple enough. Shufflemancy is the sort of method that requires a high level of intuitive thinking. It's very mutable and suits a good amount of personalization.

This is both good and bad, I think. It would be incredibly easy to create a bias in your shufflemancy playlists by selecting songs with primarily one genre, artist, album, emotion, or through-line. The ideal playlist really does have a wide variety of music, and this means selecting songs that the shufflemancer doesn't necessarily like. We all have a genre or artist we hate; excluding an entire genre skews results. Impartial selections of music are critical to the success of good divination. Otherwise, we risk interfering with the outcome.

And speaking of interfering...

The Algorithm Problem

(Note: I'm focusing in on Spotify since it's very commonly used and because it's accessible to me. Shufflemancy can be (and is!) done with plenty of other apps like Apple Music.)

When Spotify was originally launched, it used a version of the Fisher-Yates Shuffle to perform its shuffling of music. In essence, this algorithm takes a finite sequence of data, picks an option from that selection of data, and removes it from the pool. Then, it picks another and another until no more options remain.

At first glance, this seems great! It creates a fairly random output. But as is the nature of randomness, there were clusters. The same artist would play four or five times in a row from a large playlist, and Spotify users complained. It was random, but it didn't feel that way.

The human brain is wired to find connections and patterns. When the same artist plays over and over again despite a playlist being on shuffle mode, it creates a pattern that the brain recognizes. Therefore, the "true" randomness of clustering outputs was unsatisfactory.

So, in 2014, Spotify updated it. Their new algorithm would detect and remember the song it just played and, in shuffling, account for the artist and album to provide a more random-feeling result. The new algorithm detects what's already played and selects accordingly to prevent the same artist from playing twice in a row, just as it prevents the same song from playing twice. It spreads artists out evenly (though not perfectly, to maintain the illusion of randomness) to provide an enhanced listening experience.

What does this mean for shufflemancy, then? If Spotify's algorithm is interfering in the output provided from a playlist, does that mean it's not a reliable form of divination?

At first, I wasn't so sure. I adjusted my thinking -- if a tarot app was preventing certain cards from being drawn (or from being drawn in a particular order) because I'd already drawn them that day or week, would that render the app unreliable? And the answer was yes. It would! It removes the random element from the method, therefore making it not true divination by my definition.

So shufflemancy with Spotify isn't (good) divination, then. Right?

My Opinion & Theory

In thinking about this further, I think it comes down to personal opinion. People certainly have success with shufflemancy via Spotify, or else they wouldn't do it. They definitely wouldn't offer their services (free or otherwise) if they weren't confident in the results it provides.

Thinking that way, I believe there's a way to off-set the algorithm's interference. With enough songs in a playlist, the random element is enhanced despite the algorithm. Not by having the same song multiple times (Spotify would surely detect this and prevent it from playing), but perhaps the same song covered by different artists. Songs with the same vibe, the same meaning, similar lyrics... AND songs from a wide variety of artists and genres, regardless of whether the shufflemancer likes the songs or not.

The person with that 600+ hour playlist for shufflemancy has it right, I think. That's the key. Variety and volume to make up for Spotify's algorithmic shuffler.

Additionally, in listening to my many, many Spotify playlists, I noticed something. If I'm listening to a playlist on shuffle and decide I want a specific song, I can choose to play it immediately. Afterwards, songs I've already heard might play. It seems as though doing this resets the shuffling algorithm in some way. Doing this in combination with a large and varied playlist might be the key to making shufflemancy in Spotify truly, fully reliable.

My Next Steps

Obviously, scholarly research only goes so far in situations like this. In order to properly gauge the accuracy of shufflemancy, I'll have to do it myself.

First, I'll need a playlist. I have a handful of playlists that sit in the hundred-hour range, but they're curated with friends for specific vibes. They're not really suitable for shufflemancy. So making one for myself is step one. I'll use premade playlists as a springboard for ideas, but the end result will be my own. For transparency, I'll make the playlist public and share it as part of the next edition in this series of posts.

The next step is to just... do it. Do the divinations, and do them regularly. Instead of a daily tarot card, I'll do a daily shuffle. I'll form "spreads" and put together a more in-depth methodology that fits my style as it develops.

Then, finally, maybe public ones? For reviews and feedback, obviously. It's one thing to do divination for myself -- confirmation bias and all -- but to do it for others and to be open for immediate feedback is entirely different.

Last, it's a matter of compiling my findings into a coherent document. Easier said than done, but done it must be.

Resources

I pulled from a lot of places for this one. Massive thanks to the Crossroads Discord for listening to me yell about divination for the last several weeks. It will continue.

In any case, here are all the resources I referenced for this leg of research:

Wikipedia - The Fisher-Yates Shuffle

Wikipedia - Methods of Divination

Wikipedia - The iPod Shuffle

PopSci - History of Shuffling Music

Engineering at Spotify - How to Shuffle?

The Verge - The Mixed-Up History of the Shuffle Button

Auntie PanPan (YouTube) - Shufflemancy - What IS It?!?

Halfbakery - Shufflemancy Idea Post

Fox and Faith Wordpress - Radio Divination and Intentional Living in Your Day to Day

Scientific American - How Randomness Rules Our World and Why We Cannot See It

PC World - The CD Player Turns 30

Make Use Of - How Spotify's Shuffle Feature Really Works

Orriculum on Tumblr - Post on shufflemancy technique

The-Daily-Divinre on Tumblr - Post on shufflemancy technique

Empirical Zeal - What Does Randomness Look Like?

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thesistersarcheron · 1 year

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Pairing: Elriel Rating: E Word Count: ~4.7k Tags: Kindergarten Teacher Azriel, Shibari Artist Elain, Fluff, Smut, Social Media, BDSM, Modern AU Summary: After a messy breakup with her college sweetheart, Elain retreated from her life as a social butterfly, moved home to Velaris, and started a work-from-home career as a shibari artist and a playful, kinky influencer on social media. She’s perfectly comfortable at home, using her earnings from her small online empire to build a greenhouse in her backyard and start a side-hustle as a florist.

But her little sister, Feyre, is eager to get Elain out of hiding—and to set her up with a man who she might cling to for some peace and quiet. However, there’s more than meets the eye to Feyre’s long-time friend and the local kindergarten teacher, Azriel.

And Elain knows it all too well.

Read this fic on AO3!

Azriel Teller was so fucked.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

A breath hissed through his teeth as he took one long, final glance at his phone before swiping out of the app he’d been scrolling through and stowing it in his oversized tote—a Teacher’s Friend, the Amazon listing named it. Really, it was a heinous mishmash of faded denim and novelty buttons shaped like pencils and apples, but the abundance of pockets, including one for a supersized water bottle, couldn’t be beat.

Often, Azriel found himself wondering which poor elementary school teacher had to die so the manufacturer could tear her themed rompers out of her cold, dead hands for his bag.

The scent of crayons, Elmer’s glue, and stale coffee assaulted him as he pushed through the small employee entrance at the back of the school. The faded couch in the faculty break room seemed to sag when he passed it with only a small, sidelong glance—the old beast was still standing, at least for today—to toss a crumpled grocery bag full of the odds and ends that made up his lunch into the fridge.

He was pretty sure he’d packed a whole bell pepper, some lo mein that was edging its way past its prime, and a bottle of salad dressing today. Pretty sure, because he hadn’t looked as he packed his lunch. He wasn’t even sure if he had any utensils for the lo mein.

He had been too busy filling his supersized water bottle with cold brew and scrolling through TikTok, as he did every morning.

Azriel couldn’t be certain, but he thought the couch might have groaned in disappointment as he passed it on his way out of the break room

A glance at the watch strapped to his wrist made him pick up his pace. With only ten minutes until the doors opened and kids started flooding in, he needed to at least get the lights on in his classroom and get a video looping mindfulness and affirmations going on the projector.

The Meditation with Miss Gwyn Youtube channel was the only damn thing he knew of that kept twenty-seven five year olds hyped up on maple syrup and sugary cereal bars calm until morning recess.

He made it to his room without incident, sidling past Merrill’s fifth grade class, and dug a hand into his Teacher’s Friend for his keys. The lanyard caught on his wrist, and he pulled, blindly selecting the proper key and shoving it in the lock—

“Az!”

The Spanish teacher strode down the hall toward him with a student perched on his shoulders—Nyx, Rhys’s son. The principal’s son, which was why he got to be the one child in the building before opening hours and not outside with his classmates and the teachers who had the extreme bad luck of pulling morning drop-off duty this month.

Nyx untangled one of his hands from Cassian’s hair and waved. “Hi!”

Azriel folded his hands together behind his back. Calm, cool, and collected—that’s who he was. That’s what he was manifesting for his classroom this morning.

“Hello, Nyx.”

Cassian caught his eye and waggled his brows. “It’s Friday, brother. You up for Rita’s tonight?”

Despite himself, Azriel scowled back.

Cass’s smile sharpened—challenge accepted, it seemed to say—and Nyx dissolved into a gale of laughter as he practically crawled down Cassian’s body to get to Az.

Hopes for a calm day shattering, Azriel still had to swallow down his own amusement; all of his students seemed to think that his penchant for wearing black and frowning deeply at them when they were too rowdy to pay attention to his lessons was the most amusing thing they’d ever seen. It was delightful, even though it turned basic classroom management into a special sort of hell for Az.

Tiny heathens they may be, but he thought the collective sense of humor of five year olds was unmatched.

“Come on.” Cassian unhooked Nyx’s legs from his shoulders and deposited the madly giggling child at Azriel’s feet. He waved a hand down the hall toward the specials classrooms where he and Feyre reigned. “Feyre already talked Rhysie into paying the tab, so you’re coming, like it or not.”

Nyx’s grin turned devilish. “Rhysie.”

Cassian pointed at him, “Don’t tell your dad.”

Nyx shrugged.

It was not a shrug of agreement.

But Cassian was appeased, because he turned back to Azriel.

“Mor will be there,” he crooned, off-tune and off-putting. “Her half-birthday is coming up so she promised to bring those fluffy icing cookies she and Feyre love.”

Once, that would have been enough to light a fire under Az’s ass. He would have gone to Rita’s and stuffed himself with cookies that tasted like some mad scientist decided that sugar and chlorine were a perfect flavor combination if it meant Mor might look at him twice. But now…

“Mm. Lofthouse. My favorite,” he deadpanned. At Cassian’s pointed—and disappointed—look, Azriel shrugged. “I’ll think about it. It’s been a long week.”

He would, too. But he would be thinking about how exhausted he would be after nine hours of wrangling twenty-seven kindergartners without the teacher’s aide the district had been promising him for years now. How his caffeine problem was definitely messing with his ability to sleep through the night. How he just wanted to go home after a long day and load @boundinivy’s blog to see if she posted the video she’d teased that morning on TikTok.

God, he needed to see that video.

A small tug on his belt loop caught his attention.

Azriel looked down.

At his side, Nyx swayed on one foot, one set of small fingers gripping Azriel’s belt loop to help him balance. The other was knuckle deep in his nose as he dug and dug, sniffling and snorting.

Cassian grimaced. “I’ll let you get settled in for the day. Be good, Nyx.”

Azriel sighed through his nose as Cassian clapped him on the shoulder (“I’ll be back to drag you out of here at 3:30!”) and all but sprinted back down the hall, preparing himself for a long, long day as he swiped a box of tissues from the bookshelf just inside the door.

A small voice piped up from knee-level.

“I’ll go if you go.”

Azriel shot his godson a look.

“Neither of us is going.” He kept his face straight as Nyx frowned up at him, inspected the finger that had been in his nose, and stuck it in his mouth. “Mother above, come on, pal. We can treat ourselves better than that.”

With a tight grimace, Azriel returned the tissues to the bookshelf. Nyx was already wiping his finger on his shirt, and Az decided that it was better not to waste such a precious commodity at all when, apparently, the kid preferred alternative methods of booger disposal.

The neon sign in the window of Rita’s Taphouse taunted Elain as the steps up from the metro station spit her out into the middle of Arktos Avenue.

O… P… E… N.

Each flashing letter bathed the slush-damp pavement in a fresh wave of blue light. Each ticked down another second she was late to meet her meddling little sister.

She bit her lip and glanced down at her phone. Half past five—half an hour late.

More than half an hour, she thought, slowly mincing her way across the slick street. Although her sturdy winter boots were suited for the ice and wet, the fluttery skirt of the dress she had been foolish enough to wear beneath her woolen coat was not, nor were her thickly knitted tights.

She shivered at the thought as she edged around a puddle. If her tights got wet, she would rather turn around and go straight home rather than spend an evening with her calves turning into icicles beneath the table, no matter who she was supposed to meet at the bar.

But she made it across the street without incident. With one last, mournful glance at the metro station, she pushed into Rita’s. The handle of the door was so cold it bit into her skin, even through her mittens, and for a moment, she regretted ever agreeing to meet Feyre for an evening out.

“It’s not really my scene,” she’d initially demurred when Feyre called during her lunch break, glancing at the clock half-hidden by her monstrous fiddle-leaf fig. Two o’clock, on the dot—a ridiculously late lunch for an overworked art teacher whose day started at seven.

“Your scene?” Feyre’s voice had been incredulous. “Then what is your scene? Your backyard?”

Elain had blushed and looked down at herself then—at the ropes crisscrossing her torso and the freshly cut flowers she had been in the middle of weaving in beside the intricate rigging of knots and loops when her phone rang.

No, her scene was somewhere decidedly more selective of its clientele than a dive like Rita’s, no matter how discreet the bar’s owner was rumored to be. But it had been years since Elain had patronized the BDSM clubs in Rhodes during college with her ex. If a similar establishment existed in Velaris, she didn’t know of it.

But it wasn’t like Feyre knew that about her. She had never dared tell either of her sisters what she and Lucien had gotten up to all those years when she lived in Day… or the lucky break she’d had at turning it into a work-from-home job when she mustered up the nerve to take a few safe-for-work videos of a harness crafted of ropes and flowers that she was particularly proud of and post them TikTok, only to have them go viral.

It wasn’t that she was ashamed of it, of the fact that, no matter how clean she kept her TikTok account, the content on the subscription-only blog where she posted most of her work veered irrefutably into the territory of sex work. On the contrary, in fact; whenever she logged on, she felt something within her swell with pride that she had managed to turn a passion project into a lucrative, if modestly so, career. Her following was large enough—and generous enough with their monthly gifts—that she had been able to purchase a small house on the outskirts of the city when her relationship broke down. She’d even had enough left over to build a little greenhouse in the backyard, so she could try her hand at growing her own flowers.

But Elain knew that if she ever dared to utter the words “kink influencer,” Nesta wouldn’t wait for an explanation; she would start a fight that might level all of Velaris before turning her sights on Lucien for corrupting her little sister. And although Feyre might appreciate the artistry of it, she was far too nosy not to go digging, and Elain felt herself flush from her hairline down to her toes at the thought of anyone she knew “in real life” seeing some of her more risque riggings.

And, yes, maybe she was a little nervous to admit to them both that all the time she spent studying and mastering her backhand swing to win a tennis scholarship to one of the best colleges in Prythian hadn’t quite panned out in the way she expected. Maybe she had wasted two additional years pursuing a master’s degree in a field she ended up loathing when she was supposed to be a lawyer or a teacher like Nesta and Feyre by now.

She was supposed to have a real job, one that came with health insurance benefits and a retirement account. Something where she could flex her wings like the social butterfly she had been in school and shine.

She wasn’t supposed to be a recluse with a vague job as a content creator that made Nesta’s lips purse and Feyre’s eyes go a bit too soft with concern every time it came up in conversation.

Thus, the phone call.

The line crackled as Feyre sighed into the receiver when Elain didn’t answer. “I’m just worried about you. You moved here to be closer to us, but you holed yourself up in that house and we never see you anymore. I know the breakup was hard, but—”

“Feyre, I’m fine.” She was fine… most days. Elain didn’t know how to infuse her voice with enough pep to convince her sister of it, though. “I told you: I’m not holed up here. I’m just working from home.”

“Are you playing from home too?” Feyre asked, sharp as Nesta could be sometimes.

Elain’s spine stiffened, and she didn’t justify Feyre’s attitude with an answer. The first few months after leaving Lucien last year had been hard, yes. They had been together since high school, and adjusting to life without him after a full decade had been more trying than she anticipated. It had been hard enough, some days, to uncurl her limbs and slink out of bed for a few minutes to eat some instant noodles or wash her hair when the sun sank below the horizon.

But the worst had passed months ago. Elain had picked herself up, throwing herself into building her greenhouse before winter hit, and even Nesta had deemed her well enough to stop coming to check on her every morning before heading to work.

Her little sister let out another long, slow breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried about you.”

“I know you are. But you don’t need to be. I said I’m fine and I meant it.” Her words were short, clipped, and she regretted them as soon as Feyre made a gentle noise over the phone.

“You’re alone.”

“I am not! I just went to brunch with Nuala and Cerridwen this weekend, and we’re planning to take a girls’ trip to Adriata this summer—”

Nulana and Cerridwen, the twins who worked at the local florist shop where she got all of her flowers while her greenhouse was still a pitiful stack of steel and glass and bags of potting soil, were the best thing that had happened to her since she fled Rhodes.

“Elain!” Feyre exclaimed. “It’s November.”

Ire bit at Elain’s throat, tugging at the tenuous leash keeping it on, and she snapped, “You know, Feyre, we don’t all have to be married with a kid by the time we’re twenty-five to be happy.”

The line went silent, and Elain sagged against her chair. She reached out an idle hand, grasping one of the violets on the table in front of her and pressing her nail against the cut stem until it split.

Married with a baby by twenty-five—that had been her goal once. Once, before Lucien’s world fell apart when his parents split up and a secret father slinked out of the woodwork. He had vowed never to have a child of his own, to never introduce even the possibility of harming one as much as he felt he had been into his life after that, and Elain’s plans had been tipped into the incinerator of his hurt like so much garbage.

“Now I’m the one who’s sorry,” she muttered into the phone. Feyre hummed shortly, and Elain said, “I love Rhys and Nyx with all my heart, you know I do. I’m just… I’m only twenty-seven. I’m not some sad old maid rotting away in this house.”

“Then come out with us tonight. Rhys misses you. Nyx, too.”

“You’re taking Nyx to Rita’s?” Incredulity coated every word, though… Elain could see her wild-hearted sister slipping Nyx into a dark booth quite clearly. The little boy was the only child in their family, and he was so beloved by Feyre’s entire inner circle that Elain knew his presence on one of their nights out would only be celebrated. That he would be pampered and treated like the little adult he sometimes pretended to be, while pride shone out of his every pore simply because he was being included.

“Well, no. He’s staying with Clotho this evening while we’re out. But I’m sure he wouldn’t say no to Aunt Elain dropping by for a hug before bedtime on her way home,” Feyre wheedled. “Come on, Nesta and Cassian are circling each other like sharks and I need you to witness it with me. She keeps trying to drag me into their little spats to defuse the situation, but it’s painfully obvious it’s just foreplay.”

Elain curled the stem of the violet around her little finger. She never could say no to seeing Nyx or Nesta.

A glance out the window revealed the shadows stretching across the snowy rooftops of the city. Darkness fell earlier and earlier every day, and although Elain had once thought the endless winter nights in the north were oppressive, this one seemed to beckon to her now, to beg her not to spend another lonely night puttering about her empty house.

But the thought of going to Rita’s still made something like panic rattle her ribcage.

“Why don’t I just take Nyx tonight? We can go see that new train movie and get some ice cream,” Elain offered.

A muffled bell rang, and Feyre huffed. “We’ve already arranged it with Clotho. Please come with us? Az will be there—you can finally meet him!”

Elain bit her lip.

Az.

Azriel. Her nephew’s godfather, one of her brother-in-law’s two best friends. Her sister’s coworker. It was almost embarrassing that she hadn’t met him yet; he featured in damn near every story Feyre told, and although he was always lingering in the cut-off edges of every photo, he still showed up in every one in three posts Rhys and Cassian made on Instagram.

Not that Elain was keeping count.

Hell, they were even following each other on Instagram, though they had never interacted aside from silently liking one another’s photos. @azriel had popped up in the notifications of her personal account when she posted about a visit with Feyre a few months after Nyx was born. And Elain, curious about who he had to kill to get a first-name-only username, still living hundreds of miles away from her family with Lucien, and desperate for whatever crumbs of her little nephew’s chubby baby cheeks that she could get, had followed back without a single qualm.

And if Elain were a recluse, then Azriel seemed to be a hermit. He only went out when Feyre’s friends dragged him out, it seemed, and only posted when Feyre was the one taking and editing the picture. Elain couldn’t blame him. She doubted any job was nearly as loud or as exhausting as teaching twenty-odd five year olds their ABCs all day long. A little peace and quiet in his own head must be a welcome relief after he went home for the evening.

But on that note… it certainly didn’t hurt that her nephew’s godfather was a drop-dead gorgeous kindergarten teacher—all high cheekbones and sweeping black hair and sweaters stretched over a toned chest and rich, brown skin. Just his passing presence on her feed had enlightened her to the meaning of all those “female gaze” memes floating around the internet.

So Elain did what any self-respecting woman would do when weighing the prospect of meeting a hot man who loved kids and her sister’s husband versus another quiet night at home and said, “Alright. I’ll come. I’ve just got to get some work done before—”

“Yes!” A din of high-pitched voices filled the background on Feyre’s line, and she cawed triumphantly. “Me too! I’ve got a class now. Meet us there at five.”

“Five—?”

“Bye!”

And so Elain had rushed through placing the rest of the flowers in her ropes, filmed the short, playful video about rigging up a macrame holder for small flower pots for indoor plants that she had teased that morning, and edited it in record time.

Shibari really was a fantastically versatile skill, after all, if only one got creative with it.

She could still feel the indentations from the rope on her upper arms when she pushed through the door into Rita’s and busked her hands over her arms, trying to generate some kind of warmth. Her cheeks warmed before the rest of her, and she peered into the happy hour crowd, searching for her family as a small mental war started up between the desire to stay and the growing impulse to run.

But Rhys spotted her before she could come to a decision. His blue-black head of hair swooped down out of nowhere, and he dropped a kiss on her cheek as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. The familiar bulk of him and the comforting salt-and-citrus scent of his cologne drowned out the Top 40 radio station playing over the muffled old speakers and the stale scent of cigarette smoke and beer.

In for seven seconds. Out for four seconds. Elain stole the moment to gather herself, and Rhys, undoubtedly sensing her hesitation in that uncanny way of his, held onto her until she pulled back. When she mustered the courage to look up, his violet eyes were gentle, and when she gave him a tentative smile, he returned it with a handsome grin.

“I’m so glad you could make it, ‘Lain.”

He was so earnest, so polite, that Elain couldn’t help but say, “Me too.”

“Come on, let me take that—” One smooth flick of Rhys’s wrist had Elain turning, and then her blue coat was draped over the crook of her brother-in-law’s arm, her mittens finding a home in his pocket, as he shooed her further into the bar. “—and you go find your sisters. We’re in our usual booth. Cass and I were just grabbing drinks for everyone.”

“Your usual?” It seemed impossible that the massive bulk of Cassian could hide behind anyone, but he slid out from behind Rhys with a small, considerate smile playing on his lips. “Vodka cran?”

Elain let out a shaky breath, and just the thought of a little alcohol in her bloodstream had her nervous limbs loosening. “Yeah. Yeah, why not?”

“Excellent!” Cassian rustled a hand over her hair, clapping her on the shoulder. “Follow the trail of ice and you should find Nes.”

“Oh, Cassian, don’t bait her.”

Cassian made a face and pointed at one of the nearby speakers. It wasn’t nearly loud enough to justify the way he cupped a hand to his ear and shouted, “What? I can’t hear you!”

Elain pressed her lips together to hide her smile, shaking her head at him, and began winding her way through the crush of bodies once he and Rhys disappeared into it, sidestepping a couple already swaying drunkenly to the music. A tattooed hand broke the surface of the small sea between them, and Elain’s shoulders dropped as she quickened her pace, cutting through a small crowd of red-haired men that looked too much like her ex for comfort.

“Elain! Over here!”

Feyre met her halfway, liberally applying her elbows to the crowd. She wrapped Elain in a crushing hug, walking backwards with her arms still wrapped around her sister. “Just a few more steps,” she muttered, as if she could tell that Elain wasn’t comfortable with the press of bodies around her.

They slipped out of the crowd and into the booth in record time, and Feyre ushered Elain in without a backward glance to her husband.

Nesta and Morrigan sat at the table across from her, a plastic tray of grocery store cookies half-hidden by a massive, stylish tote back spread between them. Elain dropped her small purse on the table beside it as Nesta blinked at her, her cool blue eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“Hello, everyone. Are these for the table?”

Elain carefully ignored the way Nesta’s mouth thinned into a straight line, sending her elder sister a small smile as she reached for the cookies. She wouldn’t say no to sweets, or to the helpful distraction they provided, but the furtive glances Mor was throwing at the bar seemed to hint that they weren’t quite allowed in Rita’s bar.

But the tray was just out of reach, and her fingertips only grazed its outer rim. A male arm slipped out of the shadows of the booth beside her, a hand mottled with scars that stretched and shone in the low light reaching further than she could, and—

Elain froze.

That hand.

She knew that hand.

Like a boiling kettle had been poured over her head, mortified heat sank down from her cheeks to her chest.

Oh, gods.

Ages ago—it had been ages ago that she’d first seen it. The small, independent gallery on the edge of Rhodes’ arts district hadn’t been her scene then either, but she had gone to take a few photos for Feyre during her freshman year. It was supposed to be some kind of proof, she supposed, that life got better after graduating high school and moving out of their father’s run-down cottage in the foothills bordering Velaris.

But when she’d arrived…

When she’d arrived, the gallery had been full of sharp, strange angles and harsh lines and so, so much red and black. Inside, wooden crosses shining with gold leaf took up half the floor, and shredded tapestries had been twisted and woven strange, short benches scattered throughout the floor. One small room had been entirely dark until she walked in and a spotlight shone on her, blinding her to the small crowd waiting to follow her path through the room one-by-one as the attendant at the door instructed.

Lucien had ushered her through the entire exhibit, laughing at the way she turned pink and wide-eyed every time she caught sight of something new, and when they finally got to a wall of black-and-white photographs, Elain had relaxed…

Until she saw the ropes.

So many ropes, wound sensually around nude bodies that, even now, she blushed to think about. Each and every one was knotted into the shape of a hand somehow—a massive, grey hand spanning a woman from shoulder to hip, covering her breasts entirely and leaving the rest of her exposed. A gentle hand of black rope cupping the jaw of a man whose face was etched with ecstasy. A possessive white one, grasping a lush female backside with such force the ropes dug into her soft curves. Dozens of examples, lined up like soldiers in two neat lines.

And then one photograph, the final and smallest photograph on the wall—two viciously scarred hands, knotted and marled and wound in rope like some sort of medical brace. Like some sort of tool that only those hands could make use of, some special device only their owner could make sense of.

She knew then that she would never be able to tell Feyre about this gallery. That she would have to find something else, somewhere else, and never share what was on show at the first exhibit she went to: the famously anonymous Shadowsinger’s shibari art.

By that time, Elain had been reduced to clenching her thighs together to fight off the growing heat between them as she made her way down the line. Every blink of her eyelids was an effort; every breath seemed thick, heavy with some sort of anticipation, and Lucien—

Lucien had gently walked her through every other exhibit, but the photos… Elain had been captivated. Gods, she hadn’t even known what those intricate, intimate ropes meant then. She’d read it the name of the display off of a small placard on the wall next to the photograph of the scarred hands several times before she made any sense of it and hastily jotted it down in her Notes app as her boyfriend’s fingers began to wander, his voice turned teasing in her ear, undoubtedly sensing her interest.

She had gone home and typed that beautiful, strange word into the search bar on her laptop and it had all been over for her.

And now those scarred fingers twitched on top of the table beside the cookies, and Elain lifted her own hand to her mouth.

Beside her, Feyre coughed, the sound awkward and uncomfortable, and the mottled hand slid away into the shadows beneath the table as Elain finally looked up, finally met the shadowed hazel eyes of the man they belonged to, and said to Azriel stupidly,

“Oh, but I always thought your hands were so beautiful.”

And that’s what you call a bait-and-switch.

Anyway, happy Elriel Month! Here’s my small, unhinged contribution Please expect one chapter a week, plus a short epilogue.

#elain #azriel #elrielmonth2023 #elriel month 2023 #acotar #a court of thorns and roses #my fics #glitch #kindergarten teacher azriel #influencer elain #modern au #smut #fluff #acotar fics #a court of thorns and roses fic #azriel shadowsinger #elain archeron

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monstrousproductions · 3 months

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✨Travelling Light - Episode 11✨

There's no bad weather, only bad clothing; and the Traveller enjoys a musical night out…

Subscribe now Spotify, Apple Podcasts or your podcatcher of choice 🚀✨ Full transcript available here.

CW: Alcohol consumption in the archive entry, from 09.24 onwards

Travelling Light is a science fantasy podcast that follows the Traveller as they explore their galaxy, collecting stories from the people they meet and adding them to their community archives.

Every week our artist Matt McDyre (@diabeticspoon92) illustrates the episode’s archive entry, shown above. This week’s entry was based on a submission by Snootleboop! 💕

If you’ve got an idea for an archive entry, you can send them to us via the Submissions page, by email, or through monstrousproductions.org. You can send anything from a one-word prompt to a fully written entry, so don't be intimidated - we'd love to hear your ideas! ✨

This week's trailer comes from @innbetween, a fabulous fantasy adventure set between adventures. Stick around to the end of the credits to hear their trailer, or find them on your podcatcher of choice! They've just started their fifth season with a whole new band of adventurers, so it's a great time to start listening!

As always, if you want to support Travelling Light the best thing you can do is help us get more listeners. Tell your friends, tell your lovers, tell your rivals 🎧💖

You can also support us a little more tangibly by making a one-off donation or a monthly pledge at ko-fi.com/monstrousproductions. 💸 Supporters get access to tons of bonus content including annotated scripts and an invitation to our Discord server!

🚀✨ See you next Friday! ✨🚀

#travelling light podcast #travelling light #monstrous productions #new podcast #new episode #podcast recommendations #fiction podcast #audio drama #science fiction #science fantasy #speculative fiction #queer podcast #queer creator #monstrous agonies #inn between #inn between podcast #fantasy

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needfantasticstories · 3 months

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SKIP'S LU MASTER POST

List of Collab project and my fics. All credit for creating LU goes to Jojo, who is amazing! And THANKS A MILLION to @hotcheetohatredwastaken for reading my stuff and offering advice and encouragement. She deserves all the love and kudos for her fics!

(My AO3 name is SkipBreaker)

WRITING PROMPTS

Collection: Write It In Your Style (or draw!)

Prompt: create something about the chain helping a family rebuild their house after a monster attack.

ALL products welcome if tagged appropriately. Let’s see all your styles and beautiful brains at play! Tag all your friends. There is no deadline. Tag works as “LU rebuild the house prompt” and please use TWs.

LU Rebuild the House Prompt | Archive of Our Own

MY FICS

Short Fluff/Crack

Sneaking Apples and Other Tales is a collection of one-shot crack or fluff pieces.

Short Angst

Febuwhump2024 one-shots with a few that carry between days, and some are draft chapters for my bigger fics, especially Hidden Hero because torturing Sky makes me feel big feelings.

Here Now is a short fic collab with the amazing artist @hiimgin over us thinking about how nice it would be for Hyrule to get a hug from the best huggers, Twilight and Sky. She turned it into beautiful art, and I turned it into a whump-lite fic.

Longer Works-In-Progress

Angst-heavy for now, but they have bits of romance, fluff, and crack, and I'm slowly adding more. Update irregularly. If there are things you want to see in them, feel free to tell me and I'll consider it! Feedback keeps me alive.

Hidden Hero: Prequel to Blood and Blade where Sky has a terrible bad time during the War of Ages. Ghirahim makes good on some of his promise during Skyward Sword and keeps Sky from interfering. Sun, wrestling with the hurt Goddess within, will not stop until he's safe. (We were robbed to not get to play Zelda's arc, so I'm giving her a turn as the hero!)

(Warrior, I'm coming for you and the battle of Skyloft, someday...)

Blood and Blade: Ghirahim becomes everyone's problem when he ends up in Wild's era. My most ambitious project so far. A lot of elements for this fic and HH were taken from my first LoZ fic, TBD.

Friends and Foes: The start of my Hyrule kick, wherein Hyrule does a very Hyrule thing: gets injured while lost, and makes new friends. They kind of remind him of the Links. What could go wrong?

TBD: my first fanfic, and strictly LoZ set between BotW and TotK for now, though it could become LU. Wild has a terrible time when the Yiga start to recover after BotW. (Romantic fluff in the beginning, and other parts are probably so cringe, but I don't care anymore. I'm allowed to be a little freak. It's unfinished, like all my big fics, and it will probably change a great deal along the way.)

#skipwrites #lu fanfiction #linked universe #linked universe fanfic #build the house challenge #loz fanfiction

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strijkdesign · 11 months

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"Astra"

My latest traditional painting for the Bad Apple Artist Collective Auction, which is live now! You've got until 31sth of May 5PM EST to place a bid. Check out the auction for this piece and more mermaid themed paintings by some amazing artists!

So happy with how she turned out!

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littleesister · 13 days

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Remeber tthat one episode from MLP where Fluttershy, Rarity and Rainbow Dash were exposed from eating Pinkie's cake for a competition?

I feel like they deserve some tickles after what they've done! (Your choice to i clude AJ and Twilight if you want.

((Sum up if you can't process: Ler!Pinkie (optionally also Ler! Twilight and Applejack) and Lee! Flutter, Rariti and Rainbow Dassssh

Yup I rewatched the episode it’s season 2, episode 24 for those that are looking.

This is also my first tickle fic ever so wow congrats on getting my messy writing but let’s go and I’m so sorry like this fic has 6 characters and the 3 extra bakers at the end. So I tried my best to keep it clear who said what while still keeping a good flow. Aka my writing a book I’ll never finish face coming in clutch. Anyway here we go! Hope you enjoy my dear anon❤️🫠

Rarity combed through her hair as she looked at the cake, I know I shouldn’t have, but you just made it sound so delectable. I only wanted to take a small bite out of the cake. Very lady like but I couldn’t stop. She said as she kept fidgeting with her hair clearly embarrassed from the whole ordeal as Flutter shy blushed and looked at the floor, her eyes barely kept open from shame. So did I, it was so tasty I couldn’t resist. The pony said sharing the same feelings with her friend. The attention then turned to Rainbow dash, who stood fluttering with her wings and fidgets with a few lose feathers. Aww nuts so did I and to be honest it was the best cake ever and I kinda couldn’t resist like the texture and the softness of the cake. Combined with the fresh filling and toppings and the color and design and like…

Twilight clears her throat and rolled her eyes as she looked at the blue pony while Pinke pie crossed her arms. Flutter shy nodded, I’m very sorry Pinkie she said in a low tone. Rarity pouted but joined in. Me to I shouldn’t have scared you like that and ruined your good work, as an artist myself I would’ve been heart broken to find my dress like this. She said pointing to the barely standing cake. Rainbow dash shrugged a bit trying to change the topic. I mean it isn’t so bad. She said casually as Applejack growls a bit.

Rainbow dash gulps and nodded at that. Well umm come to think of it that was very uncool of me, sorry. Pinkie smiled a small bit hearing her friends apology as she walked up to the cake, it’s okey she said still clearly very upset.

Twilight and Applejack stands on either side of Pinke pie and gives her a side hug. She gently nuzzles into the affection. Don’t worry you guys I’ll be alright, she said staring at the cake with tear filled eyes trying to keep her feeling in check. She then look around, out the window to the beautiful landscape, to her other fellow 3 bakers, her friends and around the train cart. She then looks at the evidence twilight had placed next to the cake, Rarity’s eyelash, Flutter shy’s hair and Rainbow dash’s feather. She looks closer at one in particular. The blue and bent feather in pristine condition still. She smiles gently as she gets a few fond memories of when a few tickles had been given out.

Twilight looks at the evidence confused but Apple jack just smirks. Oh how lovely a feather and we just so happened to have a few apologetic ponies here. She teased as she gently nudged Pinkie pie. As Rarity, Flutter shy and Rainbow dash heard this they collectively gulped and suddenly the floor and window were very intriguing. Or they had a time to pass, Rainbow dash in particular. Even though twilight was still slow with social cues she could easily spot an embarrassed mood and a Lee one in particular. So she to smirked like Apple jack. Well it’s only fair, a lesson in the consequences of one’s actions hehe. She said with a giggle at the end.

Apple jack nodded as she walked up to the 3. Exactly like an apology won’t bring back the cake, but a few giggles and laughs will bring back Pinkie pie’s happy mood. As the two said that the baker froze and turned to look at the 3. Wait for real, you’d really let me tickle you guys she said surprised.

Flutter shy nodded, I mean it’s only fair

Rarity walked a bit closer with a shaky smile, indeed

Rainbow dash backed away but was soon grabbed by both Flutter shy and Rarity, ugh fine she said.

Pinkie pies eyes soften as she walked closer with a gentle expression. You’d really let me tickle you guys just to feel a bit better? When she saw the 3 of them nodding she smiled affectionately and nodded back. You’re the best friends I could’ve asked for. She said as I sat down on the carpet. Rarity, Flutter shy and Rainbow dash sat down infront of Pinkie pie as Twilight and Apple jack stood behind them to keep everything in check.

Pinkie pie crawled closer and hugged Rarity and nuzzled into her hair. They both giggled a bit as they hugged. Should I be nervous? Rarity teased as Pinkie pie shrugged. It depends on what spot you’ll let me tickle. She answered as she leaned her head on Rarity’s shoulder. The pony in question giggled of anticipation as I guided her friends hoofs to her hips. I think this is fair she said as she giggled hugging her back tightly to ease her nerves. Pinkie pie smiled as she gently massaged Rarity’s hips and then gently started to tickle the chosen area. Her friend started to laugh and snort in a very unlady like way. And as her true unfiltered laughter filled the room she wiggled in Pinkie’s grasp. Oh goodness ahahah oh gosh I’m so sorry ahahah. She mumbled between laughter, but she didn’t really try to push her away, the fashion designer took it like a champ. She was the element of generosity after all. Pinkie pie soon giggled along as her mood got brighter from hearing her friend laugh like that, but also letting her do this just to make herself more happy. That showed just how pure their friendship was. A few happy tears formed as she gave a few last squeezes to her hips to hear a final snort and chuckle. She then rubbed the area and nuzzled into her hair. There there, and thank you so much Rarity. She said with a wink as the let her friend go. Rarity melted into the carpet giggling out the tingles but would have given a thumbs up if she had hands.

Flutter shy smiled gently as she looked to the side, I’m ready, she mumbled. Pinkie pie giggled and hugged her squeezing her in the hug. Flutter shy melted into the touch and let out a content yawn. She hugged Pinke pie back and then shyly looked at her tummy as an invitation. Pinkie pike giggled and teased, I think it’s better if you lay in my lap so I can get your tummy. She teased getting into a bigger ler mood. Flutter shy nodded and soon looked up at the roof and then closed her eyes full of trust in her friend’s lap. She gently rubbed Flutter shy’s tummy to warm the area up. And then added a few pokes and tracing around the sides of her tummy and bellybutton. When those areas where tickled particularly her friend laughed crazily and wheezed. A sound very bold and unlike their shy yellow friend. She tried to cover her mouth from embarrassment, but Twilight and Apple jack grabbed a hoof each and gently held her down as she laughed and giggled. Rubbing her arms to help her relax and feel more safe. Oh no ahahahah not my belly button please hahaah. She laughed and giggled desperately as she leaned onto her friends. Pinkie pie giggled along as she soon traced around the area and playfully swirled around one in particular with smiled full of joy just like her friend’s. She leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on Flutter shy’s tummy. Then rubbed her as they both calmed down. Applejack and twilight cuddled up to flutter shy as Rarity watched with a content smile.

Pinkie pie then turned to Rainbow dash, and she’d never seen her friend so full of anticipation and fear as she trembled and fidgeted with her wings more frantically by the second. Being brain fogged from watching her friends get tickled like that and anticipating her turn. Pinkie pie smiled and walked up to her. So you ready? She teased as the blue pony nodded shyly. And that made Pinke giggle. She had quickly connected the dots and realized affection and intimacy, tickling in particular had caused her friends to act opposite to how they usally were. Rarity the elegant and calm pony had a laugh full of snorts and wiggles very country like, while the shy friend had a very loud and obnoxious laugh. It’s like the tickles helped bring on their true laughter and giggles, unfiltered and raw. With no need to regulate it. Just enjoying themselves and letting lose in a room full of friends. And now it was the last pony’s turn.

Pinkipe pie hugged rainbow dash and she quickly melted into the pink pony’s embrace. She had already gotten cuddly and nervous, very unlike the cool and confident pony she usally portrayed. It seemed like the promise of tickles had brought out something more vulnerable and true. And that was something her friends instantly recognized and melted for. If you don’t feel comfortable and ready we can just skip the tickles for now or completely. Pinkie pie said, not feeling the same frustration over her cake anymore. Rainbow dash nodded but giggled. Don’t worry I feel ready and I’ve kinda been full of ummm giggles at the idea. She said and Pinke pie giggled. Oh a Lee mood I see, she teased her and rainbow blushed a light purple as she turned away. Oh no it’s just it would be very uncool of me not to go through with it. Every pony and other creature in the room rolled their eyes and soon Pinke pie petted through her wings. At that simple touch the pony in question started to giggle in a light pitch and tremble a bit. They giggled together as she gently ruffle and combing through her feathers. Carfully massaging the gaps and rots leaving behind a few tickles. They were gentle and calming as a way to finish up the revenge tickles on a nice high. No longer after revenge and more so connection between the baker and the cake thieves, so they all can move on. Oh Celestia, Pinkie please hahahah no more hehehe.

At that she stoped her tickling and gently nuzzled into rainbow dash’s wings with a big smile. All the pony’s soon joined in a group hug as they caught their breaths relaxing and rejoicing together at the beautiful moment. Giggling and whispering among themselves with pinkie pie in the middle. You’re the best friends ever she said happily. And they all laughed together giving a few hoof bums and friendly shoves.

As she giggled she looked around the room and noticed a particular gryphon, unicorn and donkey looking around blushing and giggling clearly in the same dilemma. It didn’t take long for the pink detective to find Gustav had moose in his mustache, Joe had eclar in his hair and Mulia had sprinkles in her wrinkles as well as the perfect way to bring unity to her fellow bakers. It might involve them combining their fellow baked good’s leftovers into a massive cake together. Giggling and having fun along the way as they make the best cake ever for Celestia. But if they do find a few other ways to make each other laugh or bring unity to the table, then that’d would make the journey on the train even better.

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monkichixo · 25 days

Text

about me ✿

୨୧ i'm french and danish , and i live in the united states

୨୧ i'm crazy shy . and super quiet . and i'm a crybaby . and im always sleepy . and i'm really high maintenance and needy and clingy.

୨୧ my favorite colors are pink and green!!

୨୧ i'm autistic ♡ if you would like , use tone indicators . i don't need them , but i always love seeing them!! they help me know if you're being sarcastic or not if you're talking about a serious topic ૮꒰っ´༥`ς꒱

୨୧ i had 90% hearing loss up until i was four years old! i still have hearing issues, but they aren't nearly as bad and i barely ever need anything done to help me

୨୧ i'm always looking for new friends & moots so if you ever want to be , just ask or send a dm or an ask !! ૮꒪˙꒳˙꒪ა

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my hobbies

୨୧ i really enjoy collecting silly little guys . i'm a little obsessed with sonny angels & calico critters & stuffed animals & littlest pet shop

୨୧ i've been playing piano since i was four! but now i'm kinda just playing for funsies and to show off to friends and family (my grandma loves when i play for her) . i looove playing any compositions by tchaikovski ♡ i own my great-great grandma's grand steinway and sons piano that was made in 1911 ૮๑ˊ˘ ˋ๑ა

୨୧ ballet!! oh my gosh i lovelovelove ballet . i haven't done it in a long while due to an injury, but i'm hoping ill get back into it soon

୨୧ art is one of my faaaavorites . I've been drawing like my whole life, and i love all sorts of mediums. acrylics, watercolor, colored pencil, pen, etc etc.

୨୧ video gameesss ♡ my favorite game of all time is zelda: breath of the wild (i basically grew up on it) and i also love animal crossing, the older pokemon games and puzzle games! (im currently obsessed with dorfromantik)

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my interests

୨୧ history oh my gosh dont get me started on history its my favorite . i love it so much . if you come into my dms talking about history i WILL respond.

୨୧ i love music!! my favorite artists are princess chelsea , hozier , pheobe bridgers , the cranberries , mac demarco , harry styles , fiona apple , and lana del rey ₍ᐢ⸝⸝› ‹⸝⸝ᐢ₎

୨୧ poetry okok i know that sounds boring but i LOVE poetry . it's so beautiful to read

୨୧ i love reading so much . i love getting sucked into that little world in a book and the smell of old books is so nice

୨୧ sharks . okay thats really random with this list but seriously they're the best . whale sharks are my favorite

୨୧ politics!! it'll always get me a little worked up to talk about but i love talking to people i agree with . please don't make our dm's like my christian family's side during thanksgiving

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wow, you really read all of that yap session . if you share any of my interests .... like...slide into the dms

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

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bookshelf-dust · 1 year

Note

another request for Gareth! what if artist!reader asks Gareth if they can draw him and he gets all panicky and blushy🥺🥺

(don't you dare worry if I'll like it or not, I know your work is going to be amazing as always and the important people is that you enjoy writing it!)

bane of my existence

gareth emerson x gn!reader

word count: 622

warnings: swearing, fluff

a/n: hi lovely! this was fun to write. the art kid in me enjoyed it. i hope you like this too!! <333 love you!

————

You set down the piece of charcoal you’ve been using, start playing with your eraser. You stretch the putty out, trying to get some of the dust off of your fingertips.

“Gare?” You ask, something coming to mind. You’re sick of charcoal for today.

“Hm?” He’s sitting on your bed, raiding your comic book stash.

“Can I draw you?”

Gareth’s fingers freeze where they flip through an issue of Captain America, one with Sam in your favorite red outfit on the cover. The boy feels his face go red. He’s panicking.

Drawing him would mean you’re looking at him intensely for however long—long enough for you to pick on all his flaws.

“Are you sure you wanna do that?”

You nod, patting the eraser over the edge of your desk. There really is charcoal everywhere.

“Yes. You’re the prettiest boy I’ve ever seen. I think you should be documented.”

Gareth shuts the comic and sets it on the bed before running his hands down his face. He’s trying to hide the blush before you see it.

You look up at him. “I have a new pen I want to try too,” you say, but your voice softens even more when you notice his state. “Gareth,” you coo. “Don’t go all shy on me please.”

He puts his hands down and you grin at his reddened cheeks.

“I’m gonna hide again if you don’t stop looking at me like that.”

“I don’t have to if you’re really not okay with it, Gare.”

He finally makes eye contact with you. “No! No, it’s okay. Do I need to do anything?”

You grin again. “Nope. Just forget I’m here.”

He rolls his eyes. “That’s impossible.”

Now you’re the one blushing.

————

True to your request, Gareth does his best to relax and go about his business of sorting through your belongings. Your comic book collection is much more extensive than his, and frankly, he’s kind of jealous.

You sit in your desk chair, one knee propped up with your sketchbook resting on it.

You started off using a pencil, sketching the prettiest parts of him—which proved difficult since they’re all the prettiest parts. You decided this would be more fun than a portrait or anything. Portraits stress you out.

Now your page is full of different Gareth features. His nose, his mouth. You’re working on the eyes now, the ink from your pen spreading over the paper to give him the long and unfair lashes he has.

You’ve used the pen to hatch some shadows in the areas that need them, and even if it’s a little messy—and by no means perfect—you’ve had fun drawing him.

You stand, capping your pen. You hand the notebook to Gareth, who looks over it so intently that it makes you nervous.

“Damn,” he says.

“Good ‘damn’ or bad?” You ask tentatively.

“Very good. Although I can tell you spent a little more time on my eyelashes than probably necessary.”

Your face splits in a grin and you take his in your hands. “Your eyelashes are the bane of my existence, Gareth Emerson.”

He laughs heartily. “And your nose,” you start. “And your mouth. And your freckles. Your everything.”

You tilt your head back, mock swooning. Gareth is bright pink, and you soothe your thumbs over the apples of his cheeks. “You really like them though?” You ask, needing reassurance.

His eyes dart to the page in your sketchbook again. You really are talented. Everything is so simple, the lines practiced though messy. “I love them,” he says.

Gareth pauses, looking you over.

“You have charcoal on the side of your neck, honey.”

“Dammit!” You exclaim, releasing him from your hold to examine the crime scene in the mirror.

————

please let me know if you liked this! feedback is always appreciated!! comments and reblogs mean more than you know. <33

#gareth emerson #gareth emerson x reader #gareth emerson x you #gareth emerson x y/n #gareth emerson x gn!reader #gareth emerson x gender neutral reader #gareth emerson fic #gareth emerson ficlet #gareth emerson fanfic #gareth emerson fanfiction #gareth emerson fluff #gareth emerson comfort #gareth stranger things fic #gareth stranger things #gareth the great #stranger things fic #savannah’s fics

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whump-princess · 2 months

Text

Hunted and cursed imagines/prompts

Biting into an apple and there’s worms in it.

Things go missing that you literally just saw two seconds ago.

You think you see a figure of a person in the distance.

A vampire sneaks up behind you and bites you. You pass out and wake up in your bed, it’s the same day again.

You find ashes in your pockets.

A tooth in your shoe, a pointed one like that of an animal.

All the coins you have are heads on both sides.

A mysterious rash appears on your body.

You look in the mirror and can’t recognize your self.

Your spoons and forks keep ending up bent. Really bent, all the way back.

Your suddenly afraid of things you were never afraid of before.

Your nails keep breaking and chipping.

You’ve got multiple new gray hairs popping up all over your head.

You suddenly can’t remember your name.

Someone smiles at you as they walk by but you could have sworn they had fangs.

Everyday there os a book on your porch, the doorbell camera doesn’t show anyone leaving it though. The titles all together reveal a secret message.

You keep getting letters written in code. P.S. it’s a vampire who’s is madly in love with you and is getting upset that you aren’t returning their letters.

Cats everywhere. All the cats in town seem to all hang out around your house. All the black cats that is.

You wake up and your hair is a completely different color, you didn’t dye it.

A witch turns you into a frog, someone kisses you to turn you back into a human but now your in a different human body. Where you just reborn?

Dead birds keep showing up on your lawn and you thought it was the stray cats in the area doing it. You haven’t seen the stray cats in months now that you think about it.

You have nightmares every time you sleep next to your new partner. Horrible nightmares about them.

Your partners apartment is extremely hunted, every time you go over something scary happens but your partners never seems to notice.

A motorcycle drives by every night at 3pm, you hear it, it’s loud, but you never see it.

Your on the train and the lights flicker and the only other passenger is suddenly in another seat… closer and closer to you. You move to another car, they are already in that one too.

Nosebleeds. You get them all the time now.

Your tattoo, the words are backwards.

Cats show up in your house, how do they keep getting in.

Your mail box is filled with valentines. It’s not Valentine’s Day, who are these from?

You get these emails, one everyday, it only contains one letter. combined they spell something.

Your suddenly allergic to your favorite foods. All of them.

You get sick and there’s butterflies in your stomach. Literally.

Something had been hurting in your chest, your ribs to be exact. After much complaining to the doctor your able to get some tests done, the X-ray shows a key in between your ribs.

Your an artist, no matter what medium you try you can only ever seem to paint, sculpt, draw, etc… the same person. A stranger you’ve never even met.

Your craving sugar, but it’s so bad trying to eat anything else tastes disgusting. Eventually you eat sugar straight from the bag.

All the produce in all the grocery stores in your town have rotted over night.

Your house is infested with butterflies.

You collect dead bugs, pin them into pretty picture frames, they decorate your wall. They’ve come back to life and are crawling around in their frames on the wall.

Someone keeps leaving voicemails about how great and cool you are and how nice you look… who is this and how do they know how I look?

Crows keep leaving you little shiny stuff. They bring you a ring, there’s dried blood on it.

Your plant is growing some suspicious looking fruits, you can’t find any information on them online. Taste test.

#how do i tag this #not whump #but your could definitely make these whumpy #horror prompts #?#haunted

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mariacallous · 10 months

Text

You know it’s bad when the cocreator of The Matrix thinks your artificial intelligence plan stinks. In June, as the Directors Guild of America was about to sign its union contract with Hollywood studios, Lilly Wachowski sent out a series of tweets explaining why she was voting no. The contact’s AI clause, which stipulates that generative AI can’t be considered a “person” or perform duties normally done by DGA members, didn’t go far enough. “We need to change the language to imply that we won’t use AI in any department, on any show we work on,” Wachowski wrote. “I strongly believe the fight we [are] in right now in our industry is a microcosm of a much larger and critical crisis.”

On Thursday, that crisis hit another major milestone when the Screen Actors Guild—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)—went on strike. Like the Writers Guild of America, which is also on strike, one of the biggest disputes was over AI. Leading up to the strike, one SAG member told Deadline that actors were beginning to see Black Mirror’s “Joan Is Awful” episode as a “documentary of the future” and another told the outlet that the streamers and studios—which include Warner Bros., Netflix, Disney, Apple, Paramount, and others—“can’t pretend we won’t be used digitally or become the source of new, cheap, AI-created content.”

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the WGA strike and its parallels with the Luddite labor movement. Like the Luddites, writers worry about new forms of automation taking their jobs, but also aren’t anti-tech hard-liners. If AI tools could be used to help writers—to, say, drum up new names for some sci-fi planet—they could serve a purpose without threatening anyone’s livelihood. If writers could be trained to use large language models as tools, that’s one thing. But if they’re used in lieu of writers, or used to write scripts that humans need to fix for lower fees, that’s a problem, the WGA argues. Ultimately, they want a say in how AI gets used in filmmaking.

Actors want that, too. But the way AI could impact their work looks very different. Unlike writers, actors can’t necessarily be trained to use those tools to produce their work—the AI was trained on them. Yes, if generative AI creates, say, a scene in a film, actors will have to be hired to give those performances, but it’s easy to see why they want protections on the use of their likenesses—and are willing to strike to get them.

Hollywood’s glitzy stars taking a stand to keep AI in check feels like a turning point, especially this week when the US Federal Trade Commission also launched an investigation into ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The FTC is looking into OpenAI’s data collection practices and its potential to give consumers bad information, but these things happening at once create a sense that AI is about more than just asking ChatGPT to write poetry or getting Stable Diffusion to draw a fish on a bicycle.

Though AI’s potential to impact human labor has been a topic of conversation for months, in recent days those conversations have begun to bubble over across industries. This week, the WGA East slammed G/O Media over its use of AI, following a Star Wars article that appeared on Gizmodo full of errors. The union called AI-generated articles an “existential threat to journalism” and noted the similarities between journalists and the striking screenwriters. Meanwhile, on Monday, comedian Sarah Silverman became the face of a pair of class-action lawsuits against OpenAI and Meta, accusing the companies of copyright infringement for allegedly training their AIs on her book The Bedwetter. Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo backed her, saying it “will most likely become a landmark case.”

Will any of this stop the rise of the bots? No. It doesn’t even negate that AI could be useful in a lot of fields. But what it does do is demonstrate that people are paying attention—especially now that bold-faced names like Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence are talking about artificial intelligence. On Tuesday, Deadline reported that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, was prepared for the WGA to strike for a long time, with one exec telling the publication “the end game is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses.” Soon, Hollywood will find out if actors are willing to go that far, too.

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dairy-farmer · 1 year

Note

Tim is trending in arts for some reason, nobody's sure why until they find out that an artist takes to making Tim Drake his muse. The artist draws Tim like... like he was a goddess bathing in the woods, unaware of the eyes seeing him. The artist draws Tim like he was the love child from pureness, naked with just a sheet covering his lower half as his fingers trace over an apple. The most famous picture is the one where Tim is looking at the viewer, smiling so innocently, so purely, so beautifully. A smile no one has seen since years ago, decades ago, a time before wayne. The art gets sold in museums, the artist well-known and face well-spread so it's to only mild shock when the artist meets Tim Drake for the first time and immediately gets down on one knee to propose.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖💖 I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!!!

an artist and his (unknowing) muse!!!! i love the idea of this artist not having to know anything about tim personally, what his life is like, all the good and bad things he did- those don't matter to him. all that matters is tim. tim alone is what drives him, what fuels his art, what gets him up in the morning. he is the endless fountain of genius and artistic love that this artist has.

tim doesn't have to do anything but exist for this artist, they don't even have to have met before and it was tim's existence alone that brought forth so much success and depth to this person's art. so this artist getting down on one knee and proposing to tim!!!

the two of them would be like all those famous art couples only not toxic.

except for tim's family.

at first when tim was found to be trending on social media it was a little funny. just one of those things to laugh over dinner when one of them becomes mainstream enough to be referenced in pop culture. like how bruce is used in rap lyrics or songs when a man wants to talk about getting bitches, or how dick was used as a famous orphan in a countdown youtube video that included people like Annie and her 'daddy warbucks'.

tim's is just something that they chuckle over and laugh about, pulling up photos of the painting and ooing and aahing. it's only when they're going around the table and reach damian that they start realizing something.

damian is tensed with his jaw clenched, eyes locked on his phone and staring intently on a collection of gallery photos belonging to the artist that had boldly proclaimed timothy drake his muse even though tim was sure they'd never met. afterall the artist was someone based in maine, one of the few states tim had never set foot in.

not that it would matter. there were photos of tim on google totaling in the millions. that didn't even count the ones he posted on his instagram to keep in contact with all his civilian friends who were prepping for college.

it's not until jason makes some jab at the artist about choosing a 'shitty' muse and being a two bit talent hack that damian puffs up in defense of his fellow artist. it's one of the times that they're all avidly reminded of how closely damian follows the art circuits, he's likely knows more about this artist's work than all of them combined.

damian goes on some long tangent, slapping his phone down and scrambling for his backpack where he'd cleared his homework away when the dinner table was being set.

damian launches into a lecture like a college professor as he breaks down an analysis of one of the artists' most recent paintings. he explains how anyone, with enough dedicated time and practice can be a skilled artist.

"but do you know why those youtubers who do realistic colored pencil portraits of celebrities don't have their work hanging in the guggenheim but this person does?" damian is glaring at all of them at the dinner table that's suddenly a lot less light hearted in the face of damian's fierce indignance. "soul! depth! passion! meaning! anyone can create a souless bit of art with enough technical skill to get a few admiring sounds but this is real art!"

damian launches into another tirade of how artists used their crafts the same way a writer does their pen, to transmit meaning, deliver an understanding, a revelation, make a statement about something.

damian punches his finger against his screen so hard they're all surprised it doesn't break. the painting that just went up in a gallery somewhere in new york features tim dripping with rich animal furs, each of their heads visible as he cradles a bowl of pears close. the painting shows juice dripping from tim's red lips, his mouth parted and opened for another bite as he glances away from the viewer, staring at something in the distance.

the painting is done ins browns and greens, dark colors aside from tim's skin and the bowl that he's holding which shines brilliantly with gold leaf.

damian is almost frothing at the mouth and frustrated with them for not understanding the layers upon layers of meaning and depth packed into this one work alone. the pears! a fruit that across many cultures is known to mean abundance, to signify divinity, and femininity! the shape of the pear alone implies the soft slopes and curves of a woman. it's no coincidence that the artist chose pears rather than apples and oranges! look at how timothy in this painting has bitten the pear from the bottom, how juice drips down his lips- if the pear signifies femininity and timothy is eating it with visible evidence streaming down his lips- do they think that's a coincidence! then the furs! the animal heads are clearly perked up and alive! the foxes ears are at attention and listening to timothy, presumably as he chews. timothy is eating a divine fruit and wearing a coat made of living animals. the bowl! golden and made with gold leaf! gold leaf has been used very sparingly in the past and only for something of deep meaning or importance. such as the tombs of kings. but the artist was an anglo-christian raised in america and studied art in italy, meaning the golden bowl was not a bowl but rather a nimbus, a golden disk usually used to imply divinity- popularly seen in depictions of mother mary and her son jesus christ.

can all of them truly be so blind to what the meaning here is!! the artist is trying to convey that timothy is a god who descended among them, cast away divinity to be among mortals and walk as they do!

damian is almost trembling with fury and eventually turns and stomps away because he 'cannot stand to be surrounded with such idiocy for much longer!'

after that dinner is quiet, everyone too into their own heads to notice how tim is blushing so hotly.

after that the family is paying much more attention to this new artist. more than a few of them have bruce shifting uncomfortably because they have tim near naked on a stretched canvas. bruce resists the urge to call up his lawyers and have them contact this artist because timothy is still very much a minor and bruce's son.

but damian would likely protest. he said something about how art deserves a pass and cannot possibly be subjected to the ever-changing sensibilities of society. the rest of the family is discomforted by this artist and their near...obsession with tim.

damian insists that they just don't understand. they don't get it.

this man has found his muse. his muse.

the thing that powers his mind, that guides his brush, and leads him to create.

every time a painting is put up for sale bruce is tempted to buy it...just so no one else can have it. after all what kind of person wants a near naked painting of bruce's son hanging in their living room.

some of the paintings are bordering on obscene even though the internet and this artist are intent on lauding him as a genius.

to bruce they're just....inappropriate.

this stranger shouldn't need to reveal so much of his son's body in such a public way just to convey his "meanings". dick is of the same opinion. very much firmly grossed out by this near fifty year old artist who's developed an obsession with his little brother.

jason is more silent on the matter and bruce isn't sure what to make of that. he's walked past the library and the sight of jason with an open laptop on that artist's website and a book on analyzing art.

when the gotham museum is holding a big charity event and invites both their wealthiest donors and artists- bruce doesn't even need to look at the guestlist to know who will be there.

this artist has made a killing selling his paintings of tim, what few he does sell because even though he's an artist he's apparently very reluctant to part with some of his work.

bruce doesn't like that.

it just gives him a strange...feeling about it.

he instructs dick to keep tim in his sights at all time at the party. bruce needs to mingle and feign getting drunk. he can pay attention to tim but tim is slippery and bruce has more than once lost sight of him at an event.

and it's not strange for bruce to do that. often times bruce will pair dick or jason up with damian and tim to make sure they all keep each other in check.

something must go wrong.

because bruce is mid-swish of some dessert champagne when soft gasps run through the crowd like a wave, people gathered in a circle around something and murmuring to each other.

if anything unusual is happening that's usually a sign for bruce to check it out so he shoulders and stumbles his way through, apologetically grinning and jovially slapping people on the shoulder until the sight reveals itself to him.

the sight of that....that artist that bruce had spent hours digging up information on.

kneeling. on the marble floor of the museum. cupping one of tim's hands so tenderly and reverently, staring up at tim who was frozen and wide-eyed.

bruce sees the man mouth words but with the hushed silence of the room he may as well have yelled it.

"marry me."

bruce isn't sure what he's more shocked at.

the man's proposal. or tim's response.

a soft, breathless "yes".

#anonymous #asks #answered asks

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