#I drew these after I already edited the relationship charts

[adastra121]

Touchstarved OCs: Chibi~

I drew chibis of my Touchstarved MCs.

In order from left to right, there's Luneth the Reluctant Unnamed, Alon the Stray Hound, and Jin the Abandoned Alchemist.

[breadboylovin]

NEW POST FOR MY 95060 PLAYLIST!!! complete with explanations of every song choice under the cut because i love explaining my own creative decisions for some reason (PLEASE DO NOT FEEL COMPELLED TO READ ALL OF IT IF YOU DONT WANT TO ITS VERY LONG LOL). i may add a few songs here and there later on, or more likely rearrange what i've already put in slightly, but for now i consider it done.

alright now heres a look into my twisted mind

PART 1: TEMPTATION

Franz Ferdinand - Michael: It's a song about seducing someone named Michael. What more can I ask for (serious explanation is that it’s also very homosexually charged like you just have to listen to it… also feels taunting in a way where it’s like ‘oooooh you want me so bad’ and he’s RIGHT Michael DOES want him so bad). Also credit to this post for letting me know this song existed and inspiring me to make this playlist in the first place :-3

Mystery Skulls - Paralyzed: Just another song about how Michael is awestruck by David and feels compelled to follow him for whatever reason (the reason is that he wants him so bad)

TAEMIN - WANT: This is one of three Taemin songs on here because I think if David survived until present day he would fucking LOVE Taemin. Anyways this is a song about knowing you’re hot shit and everyone wants you and I think after seducing Michael through fucking?? Fatal motorcycle races and evil noodle mind tricks??? David deserves to feel that

Glass Animals - Gooey: OHGHGHGHFH THIS SONG… the vibes are impeccable on this one, Dave Bayley’s alluring voice feels like a slight remix of what David is going for and the way it feels like the singer is trying to convince the listener of something (even though it’s purposely vague) just FEELS like David with Michael. The line “I can’t take this place, I can’t take this place/I just need to go where I can get some space” especially fits when imagining how Michael is new to Santa Carla and may want a place to belong that David and the boys are happy to provide

TAEMIN - Impressionable: I see this as the moment that Michael downs the bottle of “wine”, where this song is David’s internal monologue reveling in how easy it was to charm Michael and get him to join. I always thought this sounded like a taunting villain song so it just fits. Also it’s like ridiculously horny which is a plus

PART 2: THE RELATIONSHIP ITSELF

MGMT - Me and Michael: In my head this is directly after Michael drinks the “wine”, and if it were an actual song in the movie, it’d play instead of Cry Little Sister in that scene. I already made art related to this but I really just love the juxtaposition between something that Michael will later see as horrible (becoming a half-vampire) and David seeing it as a perfect slow-dance moment. Also “Me and Michael, it’s not a question now” because the blood drinking has now linked them together… mmmmm. Credit to this post again for making me find this song!!

ALI - DESPERADO: This one is less about David and Michael specifically and more about how the night in the cave went down for everyone there, starting with a soft slowness as they ate and then descending into chaos as Michael downs the wine and they celebrate a new addition to the pack. The bacchanal energy is off the charts

Dorian Electra - Man to Man: This song is just one that I attribute to all of the boys because I think they do a lot of homoerotic sparring. Also the part of the movie where Michael punches David in the face and David just goes >:-3 back at him

Chase Atlantic - Friends: I don't know what it is about this one but it just Hits… The chorus kinda sounds like David and the boys trying to convince Michael to stay with them instead of coming back to human society after drinking the blood, in the same sort of taunting manner that they had when David (presumably?) made Michael hallucinate the bike lights and sounds outside of his house

Taking Back Sunday - You're So Last Summer: THIS SONG IS JUST REALLY GOOD. I don't know what it is about this one either… I guess the “Maybe I should hate you for this/Never really did ever quite get that far” part could represent the first glimpse of Michael’s more conflicted feelings about David. Also the second half of verse 2 not only fucks so hard but could also be indicative of Michael’s repressed gay feelings, lying to himself about how he wanted to be around David because he’s cool or whatever but he actually just has the hots for him and would let him do anything if he asked to

MGMT - Little Dark Age: Mostly here just for vibes. Have y’all seen that one edit set to this song? Yeah

The Neighborhood - Prey: I feel like this song captures the general unease that Michael feels right before he sees the boys kill for the first time, knowing that he’s probably turning into a vampire and something horrible is happening… especially with “Something is wrong, I feel like prey” just generally describing what it must feel like to be a human among vampires (though he’s not fully human anymore at this point)

PART 3: REALIZATION + FIGHTING BACK

TAEMIN - Criminal: YET ANOTHER TAEMIN SONG!!!! It’s all about realizing you're with someone who’s like, an evil manipulative villain and genuinely bad for you but you can’t escape just yet because you’re kinda into it. I don't think David is THAT bad of a guy, but Michael could be like “I need to get out of this situation because this man is a vampire but I feel attracted to him and it’s hard to really get away”. Also the line “My hands holding yours that stabbed me are not clean either” just HITS cus Michael hates David’s vampirism but HE’S a half-vampire now so it’s not like he’s innocent either. This is just a really good 95060 song AND a good song in general, listen to it even if you don't normally like K-pop cus it slaps

Glass Animals - Wyrd: This would be the moment where Michael snaps out of it and just starts running away, but to no avail, because he’s still a half-vampire (“You can’t run so you must hide” meaning that he can’t outrun his new monstrous nature, the best he can do is hide it until it eats him alive). Meanwhile David laments over how this is a stupid decision from his perspective (“So, my friend, our time is done/You and I could’ve had so much”)

Moonface - Minotaur Forgiving Theseus: This is a very veeeeery bitter song from Michael’s perspective about David being a vampire… with the “You’re just a hitman” repetition referencing how David. Y’know. Eats people. And the “I heard you're coming for me now” references both how David first approached him and the impending confrontation

The Neighborhood - The Beach: This song goes from the bitterness of the previous one to a pseudo-acceptance of the end of their brief friendship and what’s inevitably going to happen next. However, I think the bridge of the song illustrates the little bit of Michael that doesn’t want this to happen, that wants this relationship to somehow work out because he cares about David even if he is a vampire (unfortunately he ends up repressing this because he feels a duty to kill David now)

Gorillaz - Rhinestone Eyes: This is mostly in here because of the music video, the buildup to a battle just echoes in my head whenever I hear this song now. In the context of this playlist it makes me imagine David looking up at the Emerson’s house from the hotel (and Michael doing the opposite) knowing that something’s about to happen and it’s going to be horrible

Glass Animals - JDNT: This entire song feels like the climax of the movie. Verse 1 feels like the Emersons and Frogs getting ready to attack the cave (“I’m all armored up”) with “I feel that final poke” being when Marko gets staked, and the chorus right after is a tinge of regret that Michael feels once the plan starts to take shape. Verse 2 is the other boys waking up to see that Marko is dead + them dying themselves (“Where my funny friends gone?”) and the bridge is Michael and David’s fight before Michael finally gores David on the antlers. The outro of “You can’t breathe without me” VERY much feels like David taunting Michael from beyond the grave, knowing how much Michael loved him and how horrible what he’s just done is

PART 4: GRIEF

The Brazen Youth - Burn Slowly/I Love You: Ooooooghghgh the conflicted feelings about their relationship is STRONG in this one… The “Burn Slowly” part being him trying to convince himself that he did the right thing by killing David while the “I Love You” part is him realizing that he really did love David and it fucking hurts

Sufjan Stevens - The Predatory Wasp Of The Palisades Is Out To Get Us: MAN. MAN… Everything past “I can’t explain the state that I'm in” is just so… it’s Michael realizing what he had even more and just how much it hurts that he’s lost it. He knows he was in love now and it fucking hurts SO MUCH!!!!!

Sufjan Stevens - The Only Thing: [head in my fucking hands] Michael moping around Santa Carla because it feels empty without David. All the “should I tear my eyes out now?/Should I tear my heart out now?” parts oh my GOOOOOOOOD sufjan stevens i'm going to slap you on the head.

Paramore - Tell Me How: THIS SONG HURTS SO MUCH ITS SO. It’s another one about conflicting feelings so theoretically it should be earlier in the story but I always envision something very morbid when listening to this (and have now written a fic about it so check that out)… Michael going back to the hotel where he put David’s body and musing to no one, asking how he’s supposed to feel now, the “And always coming to your defenses” where Michael keeps defending David and their relationship to his family who all think David was a horrible monster… this song fucking hurts. Also I unintentionally drew a parallel between JDNT’s “You can’t breathe without me” and this song’s “Do I suffocate or let go?” and now that I’ve realized that it hurts even more. Fuck this song

[monstersandmaw]

Male dom orc x female sub reader (sfw)

Edit which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me.

I thought this was already up here, but I can’t find it, so here it is again. I’ve got a ko-fi commission for a part two in the form of a chunky 10 sentence drabble, so I’ll be working on that, hence looking for it.

This features someone beginning to think about maybe entering into the very early stages of d/s lifestyle, and this story is just the two getting to know each other first. Trust is an absolute must in any relationship, and none more so than in one featuring consensual submission/domination. Rules and boundaries must be talked through, it must be healthy for both parties, and needs must be met in all areas. One person may like one thing and not another. This is what Orok feels very passionately about, and he reflects my values on that.

**********************

When you’d signed up for the website, you had been at a real low point in your life, and what made it worse was you felt like you had no right to feel that way.  

You had a brilliant job – a high up position in the company – and a great group of friends, and, at the time, a great boyfriend. Before him, you’d only ever been with humans, but there had been something about the tiefling that had just drawn you in. Too bad you’d driven him away too in the end.  

So, after indulging in watching a bit of your favourite porn, you had washed your hands, and, not being remotely tired, had settled down in front of your laptop, the harsh blue light making you squint. You’d found the website first by accident while browsing around one evening that had gone not dissimilarly to this one, and now you clicked back onto it and did some more serious investigating into what it had to offer. Namely, that was putting submissives in contact with a potentially suitable dominant.

A chat window popped up and you suspected it was a robot, but when they asked if they could help you with anything, you reluctantly typed in that you weren’t sure whether this was for you, but you were curious.  

- Don’t worry, came the reply. We get that a lot. Anything I can do to answer your questions?

Your heart was hammering, and you were the next thing to slamming the lid of your laptop shut and forgetting the whole thing, but something made you pause.  

- How does it work? you typed after a moment. 

- Simple – you sign up and take our questionnaire. It’ll ask you your preferences, things you’re definitely ok with, things you’d be willing to try, and things that are absolutely off the cards. Based on your answers, we’ll forward it (without your name attached) to a few of the doms we have on here that we think might be suitable for you, and then they’ll get in touch with you via messenger on the website or the app if you have it on mobile. We’ve got human and non-human doms registered.  

- Then what?

- You can get to know them a bit first before you meet, to see if you like them, and if they think it’d work out with you too. It’s important that both parties feel comfortable. What you choose to exchange is up to you. Anything you send to your prospective dom is kept confidential. It’s just company policy, and if they want to be a dom registered with us, then they have to agree to that.  

- I see, you said. It certainly seemed professionally organised. What does the company get out of this then? Do I have to pay you or something?

- No, no, came the response. We don’t take any payment from you. That’s not what we’re about. We get enough money from advertisements on our site to cover the admin costs. It’s all free for you and the dom.

- Ok, I’ll think about it. Thanks.

- Not a problem. Just hit ‘contact us’ if you have any more questions.  

You thought about it for a long time, and then signed up. The questionnaire was very thorough, covering things from activities and scenes you were willing to do or try, to words and names you were ok (or not) with. It took you nearly half an hour to finish it and you hit the button that, rather cheekily, said ‘submit ;P’ on it with a little snort.  

The next screen showed a polite little message thanking you for completing the questionnaire and reminding you to download the app if you hadn’t already.  

It wasn’t until the next day that you got a response.  

Your phone buzzed and you drew it out, standing on the crowded Underground at half five, packed in on all sides with similarly wan-looking commuters. At least some of the trains had wifi now. That was a bonus.  

When you saw the little notification beside the demure little app logo, your heart leapt and you glanced about you apprehensively, but everyone was too glassy eyed and ashen-faced to pay you the slightest attention.  

The message was from someone named Orok, and you could tell from the little photo beside his name that he was an orc. You clicked on it, enlarging it, and you saw that he had long, black hair, and surprisingly pale skin for an orc. It was the kind of colour that might have been called apple blossom or something on a pretentious colour chart. There was a patch of darker green skin just visible at the line of his collar though, and he had some beautiful freckles across his cheeks as he smiled. The gesture crinkled the corners of his eyes and his flattened, typically orcish nose. He had thick, blunt, gleaming twin tusks on each side, which was somewhat of a rarity, and his delicately-tapering ears sported a couple of piercings.  

His eyes, however, were perhaps the most arresting thing about him. One was a dark, rich brown, while the other, his right eye, was a light, forget-me-not blue.

You minimised his picture, noticing the way his big shoulders looked in the pale blue work shirt, and read his message. You had been worried it would be inappropriate or overly sexual, but it was nothing of the sort.  

Hi, he began. I got sent your questionnaire, and I’d really like to chat with you a bit more about a few things you said on it. I see you’ve never had a dom before, and that you’re not sure if this is even for you, so I’d like to see if you’ve got any questions I can answer to set your mind at ease about it all. I’m happy to do this on whatever level you feel comfortable – from very low key upwards, so don’t worry. Looking forward to hearing back from you, Orok.

You stared at it a long time, and then clicked on his picture again, trying to imagine him dominating you. It wasn’t hard. He must have had massive hands, and frankly you were certain he could be very forceful if he wanted to be. It seemed totally at odds with the sweet nature of his message.  

Confused, you shut the app and locked your phone, sliding it back into your bag without answering.  

You let it go another whole day before you plucked up the courage to message him.  

- Hi, sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I’d like to give it a go. What did you want to know?

About ten minutes later, just as you were pouring yourself a big glass of wine, your phone buzzed.  

- Good to hear from you. I had begun to think you’d lost your nerve.  

- I suspect it happens…

-:) yeah. It’s ok though. People often don’t know what they want or what to expect, and get overwhelmed. I’m here to help, and make sure that doesn’t happen, whether you end up deciding to let me become your dom or not.  

- Thanks, that’s reassuring.  

- :). So, I suppose I’d better start. What is it you’re hoping to get out of this?

You sighed and reached for your wine. You had your legs curled up beneath you on the sofa, and a cushion at your back, but it didn’t make you any more relaxed.  

- honestly, I don’t really know. I need a release. I need someone else to do all the worrying and the caring for once, you know?

- I know, and I understand. Totally something we could work from and build on. I have a few ideas for us, but I’d like you to meet me first. And if you decide I’m not for you (or this isn’t for you) after all, that’s ok too.  

- thanks, you wrote, sighing and sipping your wine before sending it. This is all kind of… a lot easier/more relaxed than I thought it would be? You know?

- haha, yes, that’s a common reaction I think.  

After a few minutes you fired off another message. Do you have more than one sub at a time?

- personally, no. Some of the other doms who use the site do, but it’s not my style.  

You arranged to meet after work on Friday, with Orok letting you pick the place. You went for a quiet bar not far from the river, and you’d been sitting there for perhaps a quarter of an hour when he walked in, exactly on time.  

Your breath caught when you saw him. He was seven and a half feet tall, wearing a white shirt this time that stretched just perfectly over his huge chest and arms without looking obscene, and his hair was pulled back in a traditional orcish braid, plaited into small braids at the sides and drawn back into a larger, Dutch braid over the crown of his head. As he looked around, wondering who and where you were, you saw the beads woven into it at various stages as it hung in a rope as thick as an anchor chain, all the way to his waist. Your stomach twisted slightly at the sight of it. You’d never been with anyone who had hair that long.  

His heterochromic eyes were stunning, if a little eerie, and when they locked onto you, sitting at a table in the corner, they narrowed and you smiled. As you offered him the gesture, he returned it with genuine warmth, his tusks gleaming in the low ambient lighting of the bar.  

He came over, quietly spoke your name, and when you nodded, he grinned and stretched out an enormous hand. His skin was mottled between the pale of the skin of his face and the darker patch you could see on his neck, and you wondered if he was like that all over. God, it was attractive though.  

“Hi,” you croaked, standing up to shake his hand.  

“Hi,” he said back, his voice rich and warm and deep. His mismatching eyes flickered to your empty table. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Choose something for me?” you said, not trying to be coy.  

He chuckled, a friendly, rolling laugh that reminded you of distant, summer thunderstorms. “I think we’re going to get along just fine,” he said as he turned away and you resumed your seat. 

___________________________

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[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to the first edition of … [taps microphone and grins sheepishly] … Silver Bulletpoints.

You don’t want to know how much time we spent workshopping that name. What you do want to know is what this column will be all about. Here are the parameters: Every week or so, I’ll write about three topics in 300 words per topic or less, not counting headings, words embedded in charts or tables, screenshots of tweets and so forth.1 I’m going to ask FiveThirtyEight’s editors to hold me to those constraints even if I complain about them later, sort of like how you can ban yourself from casinos and even get arrested if you then try to play the slots. For the time being, all the topics will relate to the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, but that might change later.

The idea is that I have a lot of thoughts about 2020 — let’s not call them half-baked thoughts, but three-quarters baked might be fair — that are longer than a tweet but shorter than a full-length article. (I tend to write long, the editors tell me.)2 Back in my day in the mid-to-late aughts, we used to call those three-quarters-baked thoughts “blog posts,” so this column is basically an effort to Make Blogging Great Again. We’ll also sometimes take reader questions — if you have a 2020 Democratic primary question that you think I can do justice to in 300 words, drop us a line. I could go on, but that would be defying the spirit of the column. So let’s get back to politics.

Bulletpoint No. 1: The Buttigieg boom isn’t just a media bubble

Pete Buttigieg is everywhere on your TV these days. Last week, he ranked second among declared Democrats in cable news coverage, behind only Bernie Sanders. And as tends to happen with these things, there’s already a backlash to the Buttigieg boom, from jokes mocking the media’s admiration for his language skills to Columbia Journalism Review articles describing him as the “flavor of the month.”

Here at Silver Bulletpoints, we like nothing better than to backlash against the backlash when we think the data supports our case. And in this case, we’re wary of the notion that the Buttigieg boom is solely a media concoction.

There’s no doubt about the initial spark for the Buttigieg bump: It was his CNN town hall on March 10. You can see it in itemized donations to Buttigieg’s campaign, which begin to spike on March 10 and continued from there.

But how the public and the media responded to that initial spark was different — and the public responded sooner. Here is a comparison of Buttigieg coverage on cable news to how much Google search traffic he’s been getting.

Notice how that Google search spike (like the fundraising spike) began immediately after the town hall and then slowly but steadily built. The media coverage boom lagged behind, by contrast, and largely didn’t accelerate until the past two weeks, long after Buttigieg’s rise had begun to be apparent in polls and in other ways.

Yes, it’s complicated. Public interest and media attention have a self-reinforcing, symbiotic relationship. The CNN town hall was itself a type of media coverage. But this looks like a reasonably organic surge in voter interest in Buttigieg and not just a media fixation.

Bulletpoint No. 2: High-information voters may be leading indicators; high-education voters may be misleading ones

But maybe we should be cautious about Buttigieg for another reason. As my former colleague (and still friend) Harry Enten points out, Buttigieg’s support is concentrated among demographics overrepresented in the media. He overperforms, for example, among highly educated Democrats. For better or worse, journalists are also highly educated, and they mostly live in highly educated neighborhoods and have highly educated peers. If journalists are going by what they hear in their social networks, they may overrate candidates like Buttigieg and underrate those like Joe Biden. According to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 65 percent of voters in the Democratic primary electorate in 2016 did not have a four-year college degree.

We’ve also detected this when interacting with FiveThirtyEight readers. Buttigieg drew huge applause when I selected him in a 2020 candidate draft at a live podcast in New York on March 20. He’s not the only candidate popular with our readers; Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are well-liked too. But — no surprise if you know the demographics of our audience — Warren and Harris also rely heavily on college-educated voters.

Here’s the catch: High-education voters also tend to be high-information voters. And we probably do want to hear from high-information voters. They’re more likely to vote — and they may be leading indicators for how other voters behave once they acquire more information. Maybe, for instance, high-information voters like Warren for her wonky policy proposals, while low-information voters don’t have much of an impression beyond that she’s a liberal woman from Massachusetts who flubbed some DNA test — but they’ll come around once they learn more.

In other words, if education is correlated with informedness, then performing well among college-educated voters could be a bullish sign.

Bulletpoint No. 3: Why it’s hard to rank the Democratic candidates

One recurring bit you’ll see in Silver Bulletpoints — maybe we’ll try to rotate in different features like different pricing games on the “The Price is Right” — is an attempt to rank the Democrats into different tiers. Here’s a version of that from last week, for instance:

I don't have particularly strong feelings about the order of the candidates after that, but I suppose I'd go:

Tier 3a: Castro, Gillibrand, Inslee Tier 3b: Yang, Hickenlooper, Ryan Tier 4: Everyone else

Abrams would be at least Tier 2 if she ran.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) April 10, 2019

I’d like to propose one tweak, which is to further subdivide tier 1b. Specifically, I’m keeping Sanders and Buttigieg in 1b while demoting Warren and Beto O’Rourke into a new tier, 1c. That isn’t a huge difference, but that’s how I’d bet.

I have mixed feelings about this exercise. On the one hand, ranking the candidates without a model or some other rigorous methodology is exactly the sort of thing that can get me in trouble. On the other hand, I have a mental list of candidates and tiers in my head at all times, and I feel like I owe y’all an occasional, explicit glimpse into that thinking rather than forcing you to guess.

But this is a tricky race to diagnose. Most primaries either take the form of a follow-the-leader race where everyone is chasing a single clear front-runner (say, Hillary Clinton in 2008 or 2016) or a free-for-all in which there’s no obvious heir apparent (say, Democrats in 1992 or 2004). This year is somewhere in between; there are two sort-of front-runners (Biden and Sanders), but for lots of reasons (age, lack of support from party elites), they’re much less formidable than someone like Clinton. I feel reasonably comfortable comparing Biden and Sanders to one another — I have Biden higher because he’s polling quite a bit better than Sanders — but comparing them to the rest of the field will be a challenge until other candidates become better known.