#I haven't made a render for fun in so long

[flownwrong]

chaotic ckr c6d squee propaganda (?) post

This, started half a year ago for @ds30below, was initially a general c6d short reviews post but kinda skewed majorly towards CKR's repertoire and wasn't too review-y. So I gave up on making sense and on including the non-CKR works. I don't know who the audience for this is, because I never give basic details for people who don't know about this stuff but say too much for those who do. I giffed what I could and tried to avoid what I know a lot about but haven't actually seen. Here goes.

Frank's Cock (1993)

Not much to say. It's only 8 minutes, it's beautiful and you should see it if you haven't. I won't spoil the subject, but you can likely guess. Watch it, cry a little. Then go watch some more of Mike Hoolboom's stuff, the vimeo link above is from his channel.

Two X-Files episodes (1994 – 1995)

Well, I haven't actually seen X-files since I was about fifteen and watched the like two seasons, and I remember none of it. I rewatched the two early episodes CKR appears in and they were fun. I did not watch the, the movie or whatever where he's doing the evil gay thing. But really, this one is on the list so I can show you this self-indulgent gif of him being Very Long:

Double Happiness (1994)

You shouldn't watch this one for CKR. I mean, you absolutely should see him here, looking like he's barely out of his teens and playing up the insecure act and having devastating chemistry with devastatingly beautiful Sandra Oh, but this is not why it's great. And it's really, really great. It's touching and funny and sincere. If you wanna have some feels about complicated family relationships and identity and growing up (at any point in life), you'll find them here.

Curtis's Charm (1995)

Don't regret watching it, can't recommend. Not gonna lie, I was emotionally affected. But I usually am by things as in-your-face bleak as this. Mostly, it's trying very hard to be smarter than it is, I think.

However: CKR's One Wild Curl is everything to me (see above, on the right. It was, like, actually curly. I was rendered speechless). And like two seconds of Hugh Dillon made me do a double-take, lol. Incredibly weird knowing this was shot like half a year before HCL began shooting. Feels like it must've been a decade earlier.

Hard Core Logo (1996)

I could make three separate posts about this one, so of course I have no idea what to say.

This one, you should watch for CKR, actually, he's something, but so is every single other aspect of this film. I wouldn't change a thing about it. It hits you like a 16 wheeler. Perfectly cast, unimaginably beautiful, hysterical and melancholy and disgusting and compelling.

Related recs:

A wonderfully fun article/retrospective/interview for its 20th anniversary a while back.

You should also absolutely read Hard Core Roadshow if you enjoyed the film. It's a book documenting the whole thing from conception to release. It touched me for its own sake, not just a backstage glance, full of love for the craft and the people and carrying this tangible bittersweetness about the heightened and fleeting nature of this kind of work.

(here, I feel compelled to include a quote from another c6d-related interview on Slings & Arrows, which I read after the book and went like man, it's really a universal experience isn't it.

Coyne: <...> But I also think, and this is my experience, what we were all experiencing, because we were all talking about our lives, our life in the arts — there’s something very melancholy about doing something you love, because it will never be good enough, it will always break your heart.

McKinney: Or it will be fleeting.

Coyne: It’ll be fleeting. You come together with people you feel passionately connected to and two weeks later they’re tearing down the sets.)

Quotes from the article and the book respectively include:

McDonald: So there was a kind of mutual dependency society with Hugh telling Callum, “Don’t worry, man, I got your back, I’ll tell you how high or low to wear your guitar, I’ll tell you how you should dress, I’ll tell you what you should drink…” and Callum was like, “I’ll tell you what hitting your mark is, I’ll tell you why they pull out fucking tape measures, I’ll tell you why you have to do it again, I’ll tell you about not overlapping dialogue..” and you know they clung to each other, like the other one was gonna fucking save them.

And:

A final gathering at the back of the tour bus with Bruce, Callum, Hugh, Bernie. We listen to the tape of HCL songs, all the way through, one last time. And we belt the words out. Bernie sings loudest, performing for Salerno's camera. Hugh and Callum sit back, looks of sadness. I get the sense that if they could do it, they'd chuck their lives and be Joe Dick and Billy Tallent forever. Callum leans to Bruce and says exactly what everyone else is thinking: "I don't want it to end."

There's much more to both texts than *gestures* the whatever those two had, but it certainly doesn't hurt.

And Xeriscape is the best HCL fic I've read. Granted, I read very few because it's not a source that creates in me a craving for fic. But this one perfectly matches the film's fucked up beauty with its language while also adding a quieter, more fraught layer of humanity that we only get glimpses of in canon and that perfectly fits John. 10/10, would recommend.

Anyway. Watch it. Read it. If you haven't. Otherwise, come scream with meeee! And go reblog my gifs or something. Idk.

Letters From Home (1996)

Mike Hoolboom strikes again, with another short. This goes into the "don't watch it for CKR, watch it because it's great" box. Yes, you will cry.

For Those Who Hunt The Wounded Down (1996)

Another bleak one! It sucked to watch, I mean, on purpose. There were a couple of very effective scenes. I really enjoyed the opening. They say the book is decent too, I haven't checked that out.

Actually, let's just switch back from coherent thought to undignified staring at his mouth with this one. What the fuck is that cigarette thing. I couldn't help myself.

Last Night (1998)

These gifs are not representative of the whole movie. There is more happening than CKR kissing or hugging people. He's also doing more than just kissing and hugging. It's all very... impressive.

Guess who's also here again? Sandra Oh! And say hi to Don McKellar, who is an absolute champion for writing/directing/starring. You'll be seeing more of him.

Another one for the "watch it for its own sake" box. Seriously, that late 90s indie stuff is banger after banger. It's so beautiful! Look at those colours! Look at those shots! It's very uneasy and charming and melanchioly and itself in the best way.

Twitch City (1998 – 2000)

Don McKellar is back to murder you with discomfort! Bruce McDonald lends a hand. Molly Parker is also here. And Daniel McIvor, who'd go on to direct, for example, Wilby Wonderful. It's a party. If you watched some stuff from above (or below) on this list, most faces and names will be familiar to you, tbh (another Hugh Dillon double-take happens).

If you liked Spaced, you'll love this. You might also love it because it commits to its weirdness with an admirable resolve and is genuinely hilarious. (Honestly, CKR's outfits alone warrant a watch.) The idiosyncrasy is definitely Don McKellar's doing 200%. It couldn't be more different from Last Night, but if you've seen one, you'll recognise the other.

Battlestar Galactica (2003 – 2009)

I don't think a person should be allowed to look this pretty in the sweaty-and-dying makeup in that light (this sentence probably looks very weird to those not under the CKR magic spell).

I don't know what to say about BSG because I really, really enjoyed early it initially, but by the middle of S2 it got... well, whatever that was. If you know you know, if you don't, still give it a go. You might get invested enough to suffer through it all, as I have been, slowly.

The unfortunate thing is that CKR got to be there mostly in the "what the fuck" years and not the "wow that's so cool" years. That, as you might be aware, is a pattern with him. But! When he was here, he was so genuinely, wonderfully creepy not in the typecast-baddy way, but in this slow, half-absent way, which really worked. You can also see him tortured a little, as a treat!! <3

Also, a wild John Pyper-Ferguson appears! If you're looking at him thinking you know him from somewhere but not immediately remembering, you'll figure it out, I believe in you. I was very happy to see him.

Wilby Wonderful (2004)

Another win for the put CKR in more good shit team!!! Guess who's here again? Sandra Oh! Also, Paul Gross. Don't watch it for him either though haha.

Another one for whoever wants to look at pushing against the weight of others' (or your own) expectations and growing into who you are or reconsidering who you are or finding meaningful connections with others even when you're kind of a mess and they are too.

Not nearly the first time CKR's gotten to play a queer character, but man, this one really is the heart of the in-universe community, and, through that, of the film. A rare chance to see him so far out of the prickly persona! He's just so solid and calm and there for others in this one and, and soft, ough. It's awesome.

By the way, if any of you have the commentary track or know someone who has, please drop me a line here or on discord (emotionalrisotto), I really wanna hear that.

Supernatural (2005)

I love Supernatural a lot. It was a formative experiences (albeit a very late one) and I owe a lot of my favourite stuff about fandom-ing to the buddies I met through it. I can't believe I'm telling you this (because who hasn't seen it, not because I'm reccing it), but you should really try it if you haven't. It's pretty rad.

I had no idea who this guy was when I saw that episode (the second ever one!), though. I simply cannot fathom what @nigeltde-fic felt when she first saw it. I think I personally got very lucky she didn't combust on the spot. It would've been unfortunate.

On a sillier note, CKR's character has weird tension with both Sam and Dean in this episode, which is par for the course. I personally think they should've... no, I shan't say it. You can probably imagine.

Californication (2008 – 2013)

I haven't actually seen it, lol (and I suspect I won't enjoy it, but I'm very curious and also CKR looks really really good).

The real reason for this one on the list is to share a fic rec. Really, it's a due South F/K fic featuring Lew Ashby. It's ridiculously hot and very satisfying in its romantic resolution, too (but then, I'm kind of big on selfcest. And consensual voyeurism. And pretend relationships when done like this. And sublimated yearning. Erm.)

Shattered (2010 – 2011)

I wish this never happened. I badly, badly wish this never happened. I can't turn back time, but I can warn those luckier than me: do not go there. Yes, even for this dude. You'll sleep better not knowing just what it is he was the EP on. And the only important part — the mascara — can be seen above (yes, the show does look that bad, it's not just the gifs).

Just kidding — I watched it, didn't I? You'll have fun hating it! Just prepare for industrial grade cringe, lower your expectations (No, lower. No, still lower than that. And just a bit more.) and you'll have a great time!

Star trek: Discovery (2024)

Or, as I call it, Star Trek: The Mediocre Show. Discovery S5 was... what it was, but it was a wonderful viewing experience — mostly thanks to the gang (@kittkatk and @feroxargentea especially!)

What a joy it is, to follow a show week by week, yelling and laughing and discussing the whole time. And giffing, too. I was very happy to contribute to the Disco fandom from my own little obsessive corner, and I was glad to see people adoring Rayner, haha.

He's a pretty neat character — very much a stereotype, yes, but with CKR's usual twist of odd vulnerability and weirdness. Also, I loved the ears. I miss the ears. The ears were great.

I even wrote a fic! Although it's not within my usual range to write for canons and universes I don't know well — and back then, I'd only seen S5 of Disco. It was a lot of suffering, and a lot of fun.

Closing thoughts

I'd really love the dude to get a better agent. And possibly better taste, but I realise that's a tougher ask. Seriously, it's been too long since he was in something majorly cool. I'm grateful to him, at least, for not making terrible music on the side. And I still have a lot of his back catalogue to get through, some of it even good, so there will be more insanity. Until then!

[sysig]

Tainted batch (Patreon)

[kislnd]

something more - arthurtv~

synopsis: y/n comes back from a party leaving arthur jealous and a disagreement between them leads them to question where they really stand.

notes: ahhh this has been marinating in the drafts for way too long, i haven't written fics in such a long time, please forgive the quality & lmk if you liked it and want to see more!

warnings: slight angst, mentions of alcohol & hickeys

word count: 1.6k+

masterlist

y/n unlocked the door as quietly as she could manage, bracing herself for the loud click as she turned the key. slowly, she opened the door, again trying to avoid any noise. it was two in the morning, of course, and she didn't particularly want to wake up any of her housemates, especially with how busy they had been recently. she had been at a party, had some fun dancing, a couple of drinks but now she was tired, with the onset of a headache, and already regretting staying up this late.

"where have you been, y/n?" the familiar voice said in a low raspy mumble, causing y/n to nearly jump out of her skin.

"i was at that party i told you about before, and shush, you're shit at whispering" she shoots him a small smile, not that he could even see it due to the darkness engulfing the room, and turns to shut the door again trying to make minimal noise.

"oh right.." he trails off in thought, "don't you think you should have come home a bit earlier? we have to film early-ish tomorrow." usually y/n was so organised and rarely forgot anything but her appearance on arthur's channel (as per request by the viewers) had completely slipped her mind. a sober y/n would feel guilty and instantly apologise but with the alcohol coursing through her veins and clouding her mind, she began to laugh a little, "jeez alright mum, let me have a bit of fun", she grins, setting her bag down on the sofa and reaching over to turn on a lamp.

the soft orange glow illuminated the living room, allowing her to fully see arthur standing in the doorway wearing baggy trousers and a t-shirt with majorly messy hair. her heart jumped a little bit when she saw him, to say they were completely nothing would be a lie, she could swear they shamelessly flirted with each other, but it also hurt y/n a little to think that they weren't something either. a painful silence clung to the air, she could tell arthur wasn't best pleased with her. by now he would've already cracked a joke, an unfunny one, but one that would make them double over in laughter nevertheless.

"wow, you look a mess," y/n chuckles, taking in the sight and hoping to alleviate the awkwardness hanging over them.

"no shit sherlock," he folds his arms and raises his eyebrow, "you were the genius that woke me up," he adds, "and i could say the same for you,"

"shit." she curses under her breath, jogging towards the mirror above the fireplace.

"fair play," she continues after having seen the state she was in. an unfamiliar tinge of purple on her neck catches her eye, she brings her fingers up to it as a million questions circulate in her mind. when did i get this? what is it? is it even a hickey? did arthur notice?

"what are you doing?" arthur peeks his head further out of the doorway to inspect what y/n was doing. he spots the hickey and his mouth falls open, "or should i say who have you been doing?" y/n almost expected him to laugh at his own joke as he usually would but instead his expression remained unmoving. she swore she could see a glint of anger in his eyes but she couldn't be too sure. "i.." y/n starts, "i don't even remember," - to tell the truth, y/n had never been good at tolerating alcohol, it only took a few drinks to render the memories of the night hazy.

"whatever," arthur shot back, she could tell he was trying not to be too aggressive but there was still a hint of ice in his voice, perhaps even jealousy. "you don't have to believe me, i know i'm telling the truth and that's what counts," y/n immediately regrets saying that and winces, hoping she hadn't made him more angry. it was definitely a bad idea to be having a serious kind of talk after drinking, y/n wasn't sure she would be able to filter herself.

"y/n. i'm not dumb, i can see what that looks like and you're not good at lying,"

she sighs in defeat, it was so early in the morning and there was no need for an argument, she had already woken him up and this was sure to wake the rest of their housemates up, "okay...so let's say i do remember? what's it to you anyway?"

painstaking silence clung to the air as arthur tried to find his words. "i didn't-" she starts, trying to salvage what little words she could muster. "do you even like me?" is all he managed to say, genuine pain was laced in his tone. it's safe to say that y/n much preferred the silence.

"arthur-" she felt like crying, no, she was on the verge of crying, but she didn't dare show that. she knew that she was in the wrong, with forgetting about the shoot and now her stupid drunk words adding insult to injury, she had no right to cry. her mind raced with ways to fix it, she didn't want to cause another argument but equally, there was no reason to be arguing about such trivial things - she was not even his girlfriend.

"of course i like you but i thought we weren't anything." she starts, "we have been exclusively friends this entire time, you said that yourself."

"y/n. you know full well that isn't the case," his tone tainted with frustration. now y/n stood there, stunned. how could he mean one thing and say another? "listen to me, if that wasn't what you meant then why say it?" she folds her arms, "because i have never had any reason to believe we were more than friends."

"fine. i did say that, and i did mean it at a certain point," arthur pauses, carefully choosing his next words, "but now it's different."

"are you serious?" were the only words y/n found herself capable of saying.

"god y/n," arthur brings his hands to his eyes and rubs the sleep out of them in frustration, he begins to walk forward towards y/n, "can you really not tell?"

"tell what?" a small smile forms on her face, it was honestly comical that they were somehow having a deep conversation without her even understanding half of what arthur was saying. "remember, i'm drunk," she giggles.

"ah, i had forgotten how much of a lightweight you were," arthur chuckles, any awkwardness in the air had since gone and the original cosy atmosphere of their shared house returned, "i'll put it simply for you, drunk one-" he smiles and leads y/n over to the sofa, sitting her down and taking a seat by her side. "what i have been trying to say this whole time is that i want us to be more," y/n could feel arthur physically bracing himself for her reaction. "i see how it is," y/n's previously confused expressed had been replaced by a smug one, "you're jealous." she pokes her finger into his chest, "you're jealous because i might have a hickey from someone i don't even remember~" she smirks, putting on a singsong voice to emphasise her sheer enjoyment at this.

"yeah yeah, whatever helps you sleep at night." arthur rolls his eyes playfully, trying his hardest to push down any worries about it, and both of them laugh "but can you put me out of my misery here? do you feel the same?" y/n could tell that was a difficult question for arthur to ask but she didn't feel the answer was difficult at all, she knew it would be the one he wanted to hear. "of course silly," now she was sobering up she could be sure, sure about her feelings for arthur and sure about the 'hickey' on her neck. "and for the record, this hickey is just lipstick i think. i was dancing pretty closely with my friends before so," she brings her fingers up to her neck and swipes the area, sure enough, a purple-reddish residue remained stuck to her fingers.

arthur groaned, "oh my god." he sunk down into the sofa, praying it would swallow him up, "i can't believe i just confessed my love over that, god you must think i am such a loser." y/n giggled, "don't be embarrassed," she rested her back on the sofa to lie aligned with him, "you're cute when you're jealous." arthur was grateful for the dim lighting in the room, it helped mask the dusting of pink that was beginning to show on his cheeks. he swallowed thickly, "right. bed time i think," he stands abruptly, dragging y/n up with him, "we are filming tomorrow, remember?" now it was y/n's turn to groan, "i am so sorry about that," she said, referencing her earlier mistake.

instead of replying, arthur envelopes her in a warm hug, his entire body engulfing hers, like he had been waiting for this moment, for this different kind of intimacy knowing she was willing to be with him. "i can't believe you couldn't tell i liked you," she says smiling, her words muffled by his chest. "yeah well i was scared," arthur admits, "but i do promise to ask you out properly, like with flowers and stuff because this seems pretty pathetic." y/n hugs him tighter, "thank you," was the only thing she could say in the moment, she was feeling emotional but then again, everything was amplified by the remaining alcohol her body hadn't managed to process yet.

"let's get you watered, medicated and put to bed,"

"i feel fine now, like i could take on the world,"

"i do tend to have that effect on people," arthur grins, steering y/n in the direction of her bedroom.

[blitzyn]

welcome home

leon s. kennedy x ftm!reader

request: Is it possible for you to do a Leon Kennedy x ftm reader where Leon's been away for months and it's just sweet sex? Maybe a hint of cockwarming(Leon falling asleep while still inside), loads of praise and just in general body worship stuff! - Anonymous

synopsis: leon comes back home after being months away for a mission and he's eager to feel you again

a/n -> this was actually my first time writing cunnilingus i was STRUGGLING but all in all this was exciting to do i had fun. anyways alhaitham next i haven't done him in a while. ALSO. IM SORRY I KEEP CHANGING THEMES AND USERS 💔

wc -> 2.4k

cw -> cunnilingus, fingering, praise, p in v sex, cockwarming, ftm reader - use of the word 'pussy' and 'cunt' for reader's genitalia, brief description of top surgery scars, soft leon (heart eyes), not beta read

It was silent when Leon finally made his way back home, the soft moonlight shone brightly, as if treading a path for him.

He was exhausted, wanting nothing more than to feel the warmth of your body in his arms as he held you tightly, to smell the scent of your hair, and to hear the sound of your laughter that sent butterflies to his stomach no matter how many times he's heard it.

His keys jangled loudly in the silent night as he unlocked the front door, swiftly entering the house to make his way upstairs. He knew you were asleep since the lights weren't on, as made evident by your figure covered in blankets. Slowly, he made his way closer before sitting on his side of the bed, creating a dip in the mattress. Gently, tenderly, he reached out and shook your shoulder, chuckling softly at the sight of you taking a moment to stare at him.

Your drowsy eyes lit up in instant recognition as you sat up eagerly to take him in your arms in a tight hug.

"It's good to see you again, [Name]," he said, burying his nose in your hair to breathe in your scent. "I missed you."

"I missed you too, Leon," you said, relief flooding through your veins, grateful to see him home. Reluctantly, you pulled away, watching the way his eyes darted all across your face to take in your features. "You've been gone for so long. I was so worried you'd..."

"I know, sweetheart," he muttered, cupping your cheeks to gently rub them with his thumbs. "And I'm sorry for that."

You nodded, holding onto his wrists. He took a second to gaze into your eyes before he pressed his lips against yours, cherishing the way they melded together with practiced ease. You sighed contentedly, leaning into him to deepen the kiss.

In need of air, you moved back, only for Leon to follow after you, refusing to take his lips off of you just yet.

"Hey—Leon!" You laughed, trying to tilt your head away from his onslaught of kisses. "I still need to breathe."

"Your lungs can wait," he jokingly said, chasing after your lips. You leaned back far enough to lie down, rendering you unable to resist his affection any longer. Not that you wanted to, anyway. Soon enough, he found himself on top of you, peppering kisses all over your face—on your forehead, nose, eyelids, cheeks, and lips before moving downward towards your neck.

At first, they were innocent, but when he tilted his head and sucked on the piece of flesh that pulled a moan from you, you knew then that neither of you would be getting much sleep tonight.

"Leon," you gasped out, reaching up to comb your fingers through his hair. "You just got back... Aren't you tired?"

"Honestly, yeah," he admitted, sliding his hands over your shirt to caress your waist. "But I'll be fine," he muttered against the column of your throat, pressing his lips to it for a chaste kiss before sitting up.

"The question is, are you tired?" He asked, scanning your expression for any lies you might've tried to hide. "I don't wanna push you."

You shook your head reassuringly despite having woken up not too long ago. "I'm good. Don't worry about me."

He let out an amused huff through his nose, the corners of his lips quirking up in a smirk. "No promises." He gently tugged on your shirt in a silent request to take it off, swiftly pulling it up and over your head as soon as you nodded.

"Christ, Leon, your hands are cold!" You let out a surprised yelp, arching your back in a futile attempt to get away. He only laughed, sliding his hands all over your stomach mercilessly to use your body heat to warm them up until you finally relaxed.

He leaned down again, gently biting on a spot over your collarbone as he ran his tongue over it soothingly. He moved again, kissing a trail down your sternum until he took one of your perky nipples in his mouth, rolling it between his teeth. You bit your lip, watching him toy with your chest, running his fingertips along your scars. A heat pooled in your stomach as he slid lower, finding himself slotted between your legs. He watched your face intently, burying his thumbs underneath the waistband of your pants to slowly pull them off upon finding no disapproval from you, his breath hitching at the sight of your cunt.

"Fuck..." He whispered, blowing a teasing puff of air onto your clit, lips quirking up when you shivered. "Missed you and this pretty pussy," he groaned, hiking your thighs up and over his shoulders. Electricity shot down your spine when he looked up at you and gave it a quick kiss before encasing his lips around it, sucking gently.

You sighed, reaching down to comb your fingers through his hair. He hummed in response, curling his arms around your thighs to keep your legs open, squeezing the swell of them with his calloused hands. He moved down to give your pussy a long lick from your hole all the way back up to your clit and down again, savoring the taste of your juices on his tongue. He looked up through his lashes to gauge your reaction, feeling his cock throb in his pants as he softly ground his hips against the mattress.

You let out a moan when he pressed his face firmly against your cunt, eagerly sucking and flicking his tongue up and down your clit. Pressing your heels against his back, you rocked your hips, tightening your hold on his hair as you tugged on the strands.

He let go of one of your thighs, pressing two of his fingers against your hole, swiping upwards to gather some of your wetness before pushing them inside, groaning against your nub when you clenched around them. He curled them, searching for that one spot inside you that'll have you cumming in no time.

A subtle grin lifted his face when he saw you jerk, legs twitching, before diving back down to your clit. He was gentle but relentless at the same time—a blend that had you reeling for more.

"Fuck, Leon," you moaned, squirming. Your belly heaved as you looked down with half-lidded eyes, meeting his.

"That's it, baby," he muttered against your skin, giving it a harsh suck. "Moan my name just like that."

He pulled away slowly, his lips and chin glistening with your juices as he raised his free arm to drape it across your hip and inner thigh. The fingers inside you stopped, pressing against your G-spot while his other hand spread your pussy lips. Leaning over your crotch, he spat on your swollen clit before rubbing it in tight circles with his thumb. You shuddered, tightening around his fingers as his saliva mixed in with your fluids.

"You taste so fucking good," he mumbled, licking his lips. He began moving his hand again as he stared up at you with heat evident in his eyes, watching you toss your head back in ecstasy. "I could stay here for hours."

He curled and crooked his fingers, listening to the sounds of your sopping pussy around him, squeezing and trying to suck him back in whenever he moved away. "You're so wet f'me... This how much you missed me?"

"Uh-huh." You groggily nodded, rocking your hips against him. Your cunt throbbed—you were sure he could feel it—with the need to cum, legs writhing just a little bit more. You bit your lip, whining and gasping as you tensed, inadvertently trying to close your thighs around his head.

"No, don't do that," he said, taking his hand off your pulsing clit to hold one thigh open while his tricep kept your other one down. His arm ran across your lower abdomen, gently bobbing up and down with every labored breath you took. "Keep your legs open... Let me watch you cum 'round my fingers."

You could only nod, utterly drawn to the rasp of his voice and the undeniable authority in his tone. You whined when he latched back onto your sensitive clit, flicking his tongue up and down, eager to make you orgasm.

"That's it, baby," he muttered, giving your nub a firm suck. "You're so close... C'mon, give it to me." He groaned, grinding harder against the mattress as he moved faster, pushed deeper, until finally, you came around him with a loud moan.

"There we go..." He nearly came in his pants as he curled his fingers into the special spot inside you, helping you ride out your orgasm. "You did so good, sweetheart. Missed watching you do that for me." Sighing, he sat back up and pulled his fingers out of you to lick them clean, staring straight into your eyes.

With a grunt, he flopped beside you, turning your body so your back was flush against his chest as he ran his hands along the side of your thigh. His painfully hard cock was pressed against your ass, grinding against you leisurely.

"You wanna go all the way?" He questioned against your ear, his hot breath fanning against the shell of it to bring shivers down your spine. Even when the throbbing between your legs hadn't subsided yet, you couldn't find the need to decline.

"Thanks, baby," he said. You could hear the faint smile in his voice as he shifted around behind you, listening to the sound of rustling fabric and the jangling of his belt buckle. He tossed his pants to the floor haphazardly before swiftly pulling his cock out of his boxers. It throbbed fervently, leaking with precum and leaving your skin slick when he dragged it along the inside of your thighs.

He grit his teeth as he rubbed the shaft of his dick against your pussy, mouthing at the back of your neck before he slowly pushed his way inside you again. The two of you let out satisfied noises, savoring the way he stretched you out so perfectly.

"You're so tight..." his voice was strained as he spoke through gritted teeth, roaming his hands along your body. "You were made to take my cock like this, huh?"

"Mhm," you signed contentedly, eyelids fluttering shut. "Couldn't touch myself without you here."

"Poor boy," Leon teased breathlessly, snaking an arm under you to toy with your nipples, ghosting the tips of his fingers along your top surgery scars every so often. His free hand moved down to rest on your belly, gently pressing down to feel himself thrusting inside you. It was far too late at night to do anything intensive, but both of you were satisfied with just soaking in each other's presence. He held you close to him, whispering those sweet words that you've been aching to hear ever since he had to leave for his mission.

He was already on the verge of cumming just by eating you out, and it was no secret to either of you with the way he twitched and throbbed. He spent countless nights fucking his fist trying to imagine it was you, but his calloused hand could never compare to your soft and warm cunt.

"Fuuuck..." Leon drawled out, fucking you a bit faster. "I'm so close..."

"Already?" You laughed quietly, hissing when he pulled about halfway only to ram himself back inside in response before resuming his relaxed pace. "Okay! Sorry, sorry."

You bit your lip and let out a pleased sound when his free hand shifted itself to pat your clit before massaging it, lifting your own arm back to run your fingers through his hair again. You turned your head, connecting your lips with his passionately. You moaned into his mouth when your sensitivity from earlier began pooling in your abdomen again, earning a beautiful groan from the man behind you when you tightened reflexively.

Breaking away, you lazily pushed against him in sync with his thrusts, eyebrows furrowing in concentration when you could feel the heat burning brighter in your stomach.

"Fuck... That's it, sweetheart," he panted, tugging you closer, fucking you just a bit harder. "Cum for me again. Please, pretty boy, I wanna feel you cum." He rubbed your clit with just the right amount of pressure, brushing up against your G-spot with every thrust. He sucked and licked and kissed the skin of your neck, littering it with hickeys and shallow bites.

"Shit, Leon, 'm gonna... gonna cum again," you gasped, your hips jerking. You could feel him nod in response, but he was in no rush to get you to orgasm. He maintained the pace until he felt you squeeze tight around him and let out a loud moan, your body tensing and convulsing for a moment. The sight and feeling of you cumming sent him right over the edge as he swiftly pulled out with a wet squelch, pressing your thighs around his slick cock to fuck the plush flesh.

With an audible groan, milky white ropes of cum spurt out of the tip of his cock, landing on your skin and the bedsheets in front of you. He pressed himself flush against your body until his cock stopped throbbing and jerking before finally relaxing with a satisfied sigh.

"That was so good, [Name]," Leon praised, nuzzling into the back of your neck. "You did amazing. Like always."

"I know," you responded swiftly, feigning arrogance. But you could hardly keep up the facade, softly laughing at yourself. "But you did amazing, too."

"I know," he parroted playfully, giving you a quick kiss to the nape of your neck when he suddenly shifted to push his softening cock back inside your hole. He caressed you reassuringly when he felt you tense, explaining that he wasn't going to move. Not too much, at least.

"Now go back to sleep," he instructed, exhaustion taking root in his voice as he pulled the covers over your spent bodies. He wrapped his strong arms around you in a comforting embrace, listening to the sound of your soft breathing. "We'll clean up tomorrow."

You rolled your eyes with an exasperated huff through your nose. "Fine." Your eyes fluttered shut, feeling your body relax. "Goodnight. I love you."

"I love you, too."

cross-posted on ao3

[blkgirl-writing]

What Happened at the Moon Lit Pond PART 2

Gale of waterdeep x F!Reader smut

Summary: You and your companions finally made it to baldurs gate, well, rivington. And it's finally time to relax and have a fun day out.

TW: drinking, sex, oral, PnV, F/M sex, thigh riding, brothel, overstimulation, a bit of anal, begging, everyone is consenting! I'd love to do a public sex chapter sometime, but not today.

word count 3.3k

{part one} {part 1.5}

-

It had been a long time since that night at the pond. You had long since left the grove and past the shadows, almost to baldurs gate, actually, in the small town of rivington. It was a long and difficult journey, yes, but with ample time and opportunities to talk about what had happened. But it never came up. Instead, there were many longing stares shot your way on gales part, small flirty conversations, and even more excuses to skip away from your companions to get any alone time with Gale, practically praying to the gods he’d say something first. But Gale wasn’t the type to come out of his comfort to express his feelings, let alone such complex ones. He had been rendered speechless.

Today was different. Maybe it was the long journey nearing it's end, but everyone was ready to let loose, even if it was just for a short while. Karlach and Wyll had split up to look for some armor, jaheria stayed back at camp to care for the small child who lost their mother, so it was a smaller company than you were used to. Just halsin, Shadowheart, Astarion, and of course, You and Gale. It was really a perfect day to mill about town, the sun beaming down in warm rays of light, not too hot and not too cold out, not even a hint of rain, so the dirt paths often muddy were dry, no ruining the clothes you had just washed.

Everyone was at their happiest, though of course, the underlying anxiety and pain for events soon to come were lingering, just pushed aside for the time being.

"Is the sun usually this blinding?" Astarion hissed, shielding his eyes with his hand "I don't remember everything being this bright"

"It simply feels brighter coming out of the shadows, you will get used to it" Halsin smiled down at Astarion, slipping behind him slightly to cast a shadow around him, guarding him from the sun. "We Haven't been inside in a while, why don't we find a shop to rest in for awhile, we have some money to spare"

"I could use a new hair ribbon, My old one looks a bit strange now that my hair has changed.." Shadowheart commented, lightly playing with her hair.

You went from shop to shop, it didn't matter, stopping by everything on the way, getting food, drinks, jewlery, and other small goods, the last place you had any energy for was a small looking shop with people outside raving about their service and pleasure being a customer there., without really looking at the sign or name.

Inside was dimly lit, a dark oak, cream, and red color scheme. Easily the most expensive place in all of the town.

"this is...awfully fancy, isn't it?" Gale murmurs, eyes flickering across the room.

"Certainly. I wonder what we could get to drink, I need a good wine..." Astarion immediately glided across the hall and to one of the counters, a huge smile graced his pale face. He stood there, talking for quite a bit, meanswhile, shadowheart wandered around, peaking her head into a room, she slipped a bit more into the room, then suddenly jolted out.

"Shadowheart? you look like you've seen...a lot"

"It's a brothel!" Astarion and Shadowheart said in unison, shadowheart nearly a whisper, Astarion nearly a yell. The woman behind the desk gave them both a nasty stare for the disruption of the ambiance.

"oh of course, sorry, beautiful" Astarion cooed at the woman. the immediate reaction to his flattery and dashing smile visible as she tucked her auburn hair away from her blushed face. He sauntered over to your merry group, that smile still plastered over his face. "I got us a discounted rate on a pair very talented drow."

"Excuse me, what now?"

"I got a discounted rate for an absolutely lovely time with drow twins for the same rate as one person but five. And we will have two rooms for comfort of space. I'm just that good, you all should be thanking me."

"Thank you, Astarion-" Halsin crossed his arms, a small smirk on his lips.

"I-thank you?" Shadowheart sputtered, still looking a bit frazzled by her earlier revelation.

you were still trying to process all of what just happened when even Gale spoke up.

"Well, looks like you'll have just...four people joining you, I'd prefer the company of a good book and an ale right now, i think."Gales eyes met yours for a split second, as you looked up at him. A very distinct look. He wanted you. It was hunger, lust, but restraint. He wasn't going to stop you from having fun with your company, but god did he want you to stay with him.

"I...um.." you looked up at Gale, fully taking him in this time. Gods...He was really the only thing you wanted. You wanted his soft hair between your fingers, your thighs wrapped around his waist. You wanted to feel his tongue shoved inside of you again.

"I think I'd like an ale or two as well."

"Oooookay...Well, since i already paid for two rooms, why don't you both buy a round for the spare room while we get busy." Astarion's eye roll was quite visible and very pointed, but that didn't matter, no one would actually remember anything that was said, as they'd be wrapped in bodies and sweat, including you.

So you ordered two bottles of ale and two of a beautiful red wine, they sat in the middle of a small round table. The room itself was stunning, the walls painted a deep purple, with a golden trim at the tops and bottoms. There was a bed centered in the middle of the room, with an abundance of fluffy pillows on top and a velvet sheet to top it off. It was by far the fanciest room you'd stayed in. Everything dripped of gold and pearls, there was even a damn chandelier. If this was a side room, you wondered what the main room must've looked like.

"This is...." You trailed off, still taking in the whole room.

"extraordinary?" Gale muttered, taking no time to sit down and pour out two glasses of wine. Something was obviously on his mind, as he swirled the red liquid around, his eyes were slightly distant, and his brows furrowed. It didn't surprise, you, though, there was a lot going on, and he had the chance to end his own life to possibly save the world, and yet here he sat, already on his second glass. There must be a lot on his mind, you thought.

Really, he just wanted the courage to make a big move, and a bit of liquid honesty couldn't hurt. While you drank, he tried not to stare, but it seemed to be getting harder and harder. He wanted so badly to reach out and devour you. He wanted to taste you again, grip your thighs with his hands, leave hickeys across your whole body, he wanted everyone to know how much he could pleasure you. He couldn't help but look at his drink, look at you, and the bed. he kept repeating 'just tell her' Tell you what? He wasn't sure what to even tell you?

Was he madly in love with you? Likely. Did he Lust for you? Always. Of course he did. Out of all the worldly and otherworldly beings, things, concepts, you were the most perfect. He Would year the night sky apart to see your smile. Commit crimes to stare into those eyes endlessly.

"They're certainly making some noise," The drinks were certainly kicking in, your voice was a bit shakey, but your head still fairly clear, clear enough to hear the moaning and grunts from the other room, even some....weird god kinks, you weren't sure and didn't care to be that snoopy.

Gale chuckled, nodding his head. "I would bet 5000 gold I could get you moaning louder than all of them, combined."

"Is that the wine talking?" You tried to blink away the disbelief and shock you clearly wore on your face, Gale was an upfront man, but this was on another level...

"Only to help say what's been on my mind." His deep brown eyes looked at you with incredible lust, more than you'd ever seen before, It was hot, searing, intense. "You have always been on my mind."

You got up from your chair, legs weak not from the wine, but from how this charming wizard looked at you like you were the entire world, right in front of him. "Is that so?" You wanted nothing more than for Gale to wrap his arms around your waist and take all of you til night passed and morning arose.

Your legs slotted through his perfectly, your knee nearly grazing his crotch. In one big gulp, you downed the rest of your drink, and leaned over Gale to set the glass down on the table, not very subtly getting closer to him, and even though your chest was practically in his face, he was still looking into your eyes.

"it would be such a waste if we didn't use such a beautiful bed. We're not often afforded those luxuries.." You took one more small step closer to him, reaching out to the hand free from drink, guiding it to your waist. "And we don't want to be wasteful..."

"Certainly not." Gale took one last sip of wine, licking the small drip that fell from his lips. He stood from his chair, his obvious hard on graising your hip. A small gasp left your lips, gods, you had forgotten how badly you'd wanted him, how big he felt...It was all returning to you. Your face flushed with heat as you remembered his tongue deep in your pussy, your lips wrapped around his cock.

Gale was emboldened by the wine, tipsy off of lust, his mind racing with all that he wanted to do to you, sweep you off your feet and into the weave. but that would have to wait, the here and now, right in front of him, you practically offering yourself to him yet again, he'd be a fool not to take it. "Come here, beautiful."

You let out a sigh, biting down on your lip as you sat down on his thigh. He wrapped his hands around your hips, squeezing slightly, almost reassuringly. He guided your hips back and fourth, while pressing you down further onto his thigh. your dress rode up to your waist, only your thin underwear creating all the friction you ever needed between your pussy and his thigh, getting ungodly close his his bulge yet never quite close enough.

His pace was slow and hard, Still clutching onto you like you absolutely needed it, which, was true, as the longer he rocked you the more wobbily your legs felt. You breath started to get heavier and heavier. Your head fell to his shoulders, the pleasure wracking through your whole body.

"No no, beautiful, look at me when you cum" Gale's hand inched its way to the back of your neck, pulling your head off his shoulder and holding you steady as you looked into his eyes,

It was all so much, his needy eyes begging for you to cum, your throbbing pussy, the small wet stain now on his pants from how gods damn much he turned you on, it was hard to keep his stare but you did, as you moaned his name, gasping as pleasure kept pulsing through your body. "fuck..." you chocked out. He let go of your neck but kept his hand on your shoulder, still keeping a firm grasp on your hip as it was clear you weren't exactly stable.

"I...That was..." You nearly whispered, still shuddering from the orgasm. You were so flustered, something that wasn't too easy for you, yet, he made you. His intensity with a smile had you dizzy. "Do you want me to return the favor?"

He raised a hand back to your jaw, tilting your head to look at him fully, to stare into his eyes.

"Let me make love to you-" Gale cooed, soothing you with his charm. "Sit back and let me give you everything."

"Yes, please-" you practically begged. Gale used his fingers to tilt your head slightly, leaving room for him to trail kisses and love bites down your neck, sucking on your skin, leaving you with shivers down your spine. You leaned into his touch, your hands nearly shooting up to grasp his soft hair, pulling him even closer.

"you're so beautiful-" He muttered between hickeys, breath getting heavier as you pressed your hips against him, feeling how much he wanted you, straining

You pulled away slightly, grasping his hand and struggling a bit to get up, turning to lead him to the bed. Although your eyes were set in front of you, you felt his gaze scan your body, how your hips swayed as you walked, he wanted to take all the time in the world to explore your body, learn it more than anything he'd ever read.

"just lay down, beautiful." He pressed his hand to your chest, pushing slightly, letting you fully relax into the bed, his body hovering over yours, his steady and strong arm next to your head, the other making quick work of unbuttoning your dress.

"Take those off for me," he looked down at your panties, slipping a finger at the band of your underwear and pulling it back, snapping it against your skin. It took a moment to register, there was so much distracting you, but you somehow managed. Completely bare and laid out, displayed like a work of art for him to admire. Gale took a moment, sitting up on his knees, to take you all in. His fingers traced along your stomach, lowering slowly, with such a light touch you could barely tell if it was him or a chill.

It shouldn't have been surprising but when he slipped his middle finger inside, you gasped, letting a moan escape your lips as his finger curled in and out of you, working in a slow and consistent pace. His index finger grazed your clit every time he pumped in and out, lightly, still taking you down from the high of riding his thigh, him knowing you'd still be sensitive, to not overstimulate.

"Come here" You pulled him in by his hair, now slightly tosseled and looking frankly unfair. "kiss me."

He didn't need to be told twice, quickly pressing his own lips to yours. He tasted of the sweet red wine, with hints of caramel and clove. He was delicious , addicting. You licked his bottom lip, opening his mouth to allow you deeper into his mouth. While you explored his mouth, he slipped another finger deep inside you, pushing in further than he had been doing before, quickening his pace.

His lips left your own, slightly panting, a bit out of breath. He then trailed down your neck to your breast, looking back up at you, asking permission to suck on your skin. You nodded desperately, gods you needed anything he would give you. His lips attacked to your nipple, sucking and licking, bobbing his head with every pull, it was all building up.

"I'm gonna cum, gods, Gale please I'm close-" You begged, yet he pulled back quickly, you let out a disappointed groan, why would he stop now? It didn't take long to get your answer, he wanted your cum on his mouth. He moved fast to move his mouth to your pussy, not relenting in his speed with his fingers and now, tongue. It didn't take long for the wave of bliss to wash over you, uncontrollable sounds coming out while he rode our your orgasm with one less finger and slowing down with his lips. It wasn't until your hips stopped shaking that he drew out his fingers, moving them to his mouth where he sucked them dry, letting out a small moan when they were clean. "divine.."

His clothes were stripped off, yours now completely tossed aside, the cool air hitting you both, but neither of you really noticed. You were focused on his hard cock pressed against your pussy, grinding againt your lips, getting slick with his spit and your cum. It would be so easy just to slide it in, but he drew it out, teasing you til you begged, pleaded, please, you needed it, you wanted him so desperately. Yet still somehow a fraction of his need for you the past weeks.

Gales restraint was shocking, even to himself, but the sight of you underneath him, begging for his cock, glowing from the orgasm he brought you, was enough for a lifetime, though he hoped there'd be many more lifetimes of this.

One more whimper is all that it took for him to shove himself deep inside you, all the way to the hilt. You felt him pressing against your cervix, a small but sharp pain from the sudden sensation , a good pain, that meant you were taking it all, and so well for him too. He had waited too long for this to stop, he kept pumping inside you, at an unrelenting pace, fast and hard. He switched between sucking on your neck, your breast, and biting your lip, keeping eye contact whenever he could. He wanted to see how much you wanted him, and he wanted you to know how much lust he had in his soul, just for you.

Gale held your neck with his hand, grasping lightly, as he came for the first time, shoving his cock even deeper into your pussy as he slowed his pace down, nearly whimpering in your ear as his head fell to your shoulders, biting down on your skin to keep from some more sounds he found embarrassing, but was so very sexy. You expected him to lay down and rest, after that, but he kept going.

"Flip over for me." He asked, giving your earlobe a small nibble as he spoke. You couldn't move fast enough, laying down on your stomach as he held down your waist, fingernails digging into your skin, leaving small crescent dents. You shoved your ass down on him with every thrust, wave after wave of orgasms wracking through your body, it felt endless, overwhelming. When it all felt like enough he kept going, adding more, rubbing your clit as your ass bounced on his cock, his thumb slipping in and out of your ass, him completely exiting you and only coming back in when you came from his words alone, sweet talking you into more orgasms. Or stopping completely to finish you off with his mouth again, you'd squirted in his mouth more than once, and he came once just from that. Maybe the stopping and starting was also so he himself could keep going as much as he could muster, but that never crossed your mind.

"You take it so well-" and "I want to see you need me" and "You're just too beautiful when you cum, I can't help but follow."

You went until your bodies gave out. Too sweaty, too raw to take anymore.

Gale fell beside you, out of breath, tan skin glistened with sweat and cum, his cock still leaking a bit, though even he was shocked there was anything left in him. You laid there for minutes, maybe longer, it didn't matter. It didn't click that the room next to you had fallen silent until you'd finally caught your breath. Actually...you remember the screams and moans ending a while ago. you notice Gales eyes had also turned to the shared wall, probably coming to the same conclusion as you.

"Do you think they heard us?" You asked, a small smile forming.

"Most definitely."

_

A/N: Well that was a lot huh? This took probably 20 hours straight of writing if not more, so please tell me if you liked it! It would mean a lot to me. Requests are always open but slow, as i'm not a fast writer haha. Thanks for following along! My gale fics have done better than I ever expected, I've gotten about 1k new followers from them I believe, so thank you all!

__________________

Tag list, tell me if you want to be added!

@shyminnie07 @makers-breath @claryvoyantfray @black-sapphic @fapqueen

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[cho-aaacho]

Nemophila ~Baby blue eyes~

Masterlist

Tags : Fluff, Romantic Fluff, Couch Cuddles, Cuddles, Kissing, Multiple Kisses, Soft Gojo Satoru, Living Together, Gojo needs a hug.

Summary : Someday, the water will tell you the solution to the summer. Someday, you'll know that the only thing I care about in this world is you.

"Satoru-kun, what's wrong? Are you okay?"

You sprinted from the kitchen to the living room, where Satoru lay surrounded by a mountain of paperwork. A pen gliding and a spillage of water on the floor witness how much chaos there is now. He gently gripped his soft silver hair as if it were the source of his main problem.

You find your dear boyfriend surrounded by a veil of frustration, feeling himself drowned in a fragile state. Hair stroked in frustration, grunting in discontent. Guess he had a busy day; having a double workload at once is no fun.

If only he could split his body into two, maybe he could resolve his main problem.

"I fell," he murmured while collecting the scattered papers. His voice was a bit hoarse.

"Maybe you should take a break? I could negotiate with Gakuganji—"

"NO, you can't do that. You know what that old man is like. He's the worst."

You sighed in frustration, hinting that you couldn't convince him. "But, Satoru-kun. I fear for your well-being. If I am correct, I haven't seen you sleeping these days."

You glided and handed him a glass of milk, hoping to soothe him down, encourage him, and make him comfortable enough with your presence. A humble smile curls on your lips as you touch his shoulder, sending a million loves to his heart.

He still feels the warmth between his shoulders, the love you share with him, and your kindness towards his heart.

You could tell by the glimpse of his eyes. There was nothing but a sparkle in them. The sparkle you've always seen whenever he gazes at you or when he is in love with you.

"I don't want milk."

"Why? Milk used to be your favorite. Is there something else you want?"

His gaze fixed on the glass, scanning in disinterest. Some people might think he was disgusted by that milk, but he just has a bad mood. Those dark circles are still there, even if you are trying to get rid of them with a kiss. But his timeless beauty never fades. His classic beauty still lingers on him.

He is gazing toward you, locking his azure eyes in silence.

"It's helping you to have a good night's sleep, Satoru-kun," you offered with a gentle smile. Trying to convince him one more time. 

"But it's only temporary! Now, tell me, Satoru-kun, how I can help you. I know you need me."

He chuckles, pinching your cheeks and shaking his head as if amused by your words. "I'm sorry, sweetheart, my love, sweet baby. But... you're so cute when you worry about me!"

He pats the couch, and a smile curls on his lips. "Come here. Sleep with me on this couch. Perhaps we could have a cozy cuddle before we sleep; how do you say?"

You smiled warmly, settling onto the couch, your giggling floating in the air, gliding nearer to him. His arm wrapped around your waist, drawing you snugly against his chest like a kitty cat, where you could hear his cute heartbeat.

Satoru's touch reveals a warm sensation, a comforting charm entwined with the sweetness of his breath, blending with longing and desire as he leans in closer to you. 

He placed a kiss on your head, down to your cheek, rendering your skin with his lips. All of these treatments made you giggle in amusement. He leans in closer, kisses your lips multiple times, biting your lips gently with his, and smiles.

Yet, the aroma he carries wraps around your presence, comforting you to stay with him longer. Your affection for him is beyond the bonds of memory, making you love him even more... than you could remember.

Despite his stressful days, he is trying so hard to dress properly, using the same cologne. A masculine fragrance always lingers in the air—an aroma that becomes your own favorite. You've never asked him about its brand. You left it a mystery.

Your love for him transcends the limits of human understanding.

"Your smell is so good," he teased, kissing your nose, and he continued. "Please stay with me until I get a good night's sleep."

[unclewarwick]

i am making this an art blog now, so i thought i should actually start posting my art here. i finished this drawing today and the rest of the art in this post is from newest to oldest. this post is most of my batman-related art since the last time i posted a big amount of batman art (which was december 2022).

i have a heavy preference for drawing batjokes but am trying to draw more and more of the rogues gallery. i have my own vague storyline ideas that include both batman and the joker being trans men, but in my story he is called bruceman/bat wayne.

2024-07-10 -- i do an annual redraw of this meme. this was the fifth version. the first time i drew it (in 2021) was the first time i had tried to properly draw either of them, despite having a deep batman interest for a long long time, and drawing for even longer.

2024-06-28 -- i spent 41 and a half hours on this one. my first big attempt at pixel art. it was from a bad chronic illness week so it was meant as a purposely ugly and simple drawing but it spiralled out of control.

2024-07-05 and 2024-05-11 -- my concept art for the scarecrow.

2024-04-22 and 2024-03-21 and 2024-02-11 -- the joker taunting bat wayne, an argument with alfred, a community meme redraw that i didn't like the end result of but was unwell while drawing so i give myself a break.

2024-02-08 and 2024-02-06 -- the riddler being desperate for attention on social media, my two-face concept art

2024-01-27 -- my take on the oft-parodied the amazing spider-man #601 cover art.

2024-01-18 -- joker thinks he's being sneaky but doesn't know he's with the same person twice.

2024-01-11 and 2024-01-10 -- catwoman being fun and sillie (from before i redesigned her weird mask and goggles that i originally tried to give her)

art from 1 and 8 december of 2023 that i posted on here

both from 2023-09-10 -- a couple of quick low effort drawings from when i was feeling funky

2023-08-06 and 2023-08-13 and 2023-08-18 -- mini comic where you can see the comic formatting skill developing in each part.. just a small story idea i had revolving around a double joke about bat wayne's Identity. and still figuring out how to draw the riddler.

2023-08-02 -- my first depiction of riddler & first drawing of har-lee (my name for harley quinn) out of costume.

2023-06-18 and 2023-06-15 -- my first drawings ever of har-lee; i did not stick with this costume design for her because i fixed it and made it actually look good and make sense at all a whole year later (character design is my weakness), and also just a simple meme.

2023-06-15 -- i don't have an animation program, so making this was a real struggle.

2023-04-28 and 2023-04-23 -- bruceman picking up tampons in the middle of a fight, bruceman and joker "fighting".

2023-04-04 and 2023-03-21 -- Earring Magic J, joker being the autistic, gay, trans dad of autistic, gay, trans pee-wee herman (including muffin the cat from batman: legends of the dark knight #50)

all from 2022-11-14 -- a comic Not about being trans, no, not at all...

2022-11-27 -- a fully rendered version of the last panel.

there's more that's not included here because of the 30 image limitation, but those are mostly further concept drawings of har-lee that i didn't like, and lower quality joke drawings. one bigger thing i've left out are stills from an animatic/animation project i started quite a while back (it's not even my only WIP of that kind) and haven't continued progress on for a while. i would prefer to share that all at once whenever it's finished.

[wavesalwayscrash]

Hello!! If you don’t mind me asking, what’s your process for making backgrounds (if you have any process in particular!) They’re one of my favorite parts of the comic, and I’m interested to hear how you decide colors and stuff!

I sadly don't have a lot to say about this bc half the time i just raw dog the colors. I rely on complimentary colors (primarily orange/yellow and blue/purple, which is a fun secondary effect since Lain and Mariner are also yellow and blue) but if I want a very specific vibe I will often colorpick from pictures since I have a bit of trouble straying from my love of desaturated colors a lot of the time LOL.

These were some scene preps I did for a couple of later scenes! I tried to find some where I made a couple of moodboard pictures to get the vibe down but i guess i deleted all of those whoops.

as for drawing them, i don't have a lot of tips on the actually RENDERING part (i'm a very bad teacher) but here's a breakdown of how i generally draw the bgs in wac

bgs in comics are really an important aspect to me personally. the way I treat and approach bgs is to not treat them as just window dressing but instead treat them as an additional character. What is the bg conveying, whether it be a specific location, a vibe, or in terms of a den or a room or whatever, what can it tell us about the character it belongs to? I will admit I haven't done this as much as I would've liked to in WAC so far, but I hope that as the story progresses I can strive to put more life into the backgrounds. It's a little bit trickier since they are kitties living in a nature environment and not humans in houses, but I still hope to create that same sense of importance.

and I know backgrounds are often seen as "the worst part" of art, but I wholeheartedly believe you just need to figure out how YOU enjoy creating backgrounds. I love drawing them! I used to paint backgrounds for years before realizing I hated it so bad. Now I prefer this much blockier style and I love lining bgs. I highly recommend just sitting down, and doing some studies of photos of landscapes, of cities, or whatever else you want your bgs to be. appreciate the little details, figure out how to simplify them for yourself, think about the big picture of things, and it'll go a long way.

[nostalgebraist]

Here are some fun / amusing / potentially-interesting facts about the process of writing and plotting Almost Nowhere, if anyone's curious.

Major spoilers for the whole of Almost Nowhere under the cut.

(There's really no way to spoiler-censor this material without rendering it incomprehensible. If you haven't read the book, do that first before reading this post.)

(1)

A large fraction of the book's eventual plot emerged from my attempts to patch a single, in-some-sense trivial continuity error I made while writing the very first chapter.

The Mooncrash section of that chapter ends with this sentence (emphasis added):

All parties were used to stillness, now, for the Mooncrash was nearly four years old.

And a few paragraphs later, in the opening of the Academy section, we get this (emphasis added again):

For (as everyone knows) the Shroud is upon us and while it tolerates the Academy — as it presently is, as it has been for the last eight years, a chrysalis, preparing itself step by minuscule step [...]

So: The Mooncrash is 4 years old. The Academy crash is at least 8 years old, and indeed older.

Yet the Mooncrash is also as old as the crash system itself! It was made by humans, during the period between the discovery of the anomalings and the mass-crashing of the human race. (This is only shown in the second chapter, but I had it in mind before then.)

How long has the human race been crashed, then? At most 4 years, and at least 8 years? How could that possibly be?

It would have been easy enough to just edit the chapter, but that's not how I do things. Restrictions, famously, breed creativity. I enjoy attempting to solve puzzles I have inadvertently created for myself, and many of my best ideas have been produced through this process.

It would also have been simple and easy to merely say: "OK, I guess time elapses at different subjective rates, in different crashes."

Amusingly, I ended up doing that anyway! But for some reason, this avenue didn't occur to me at first. By the time I started asking myself whether to include this kind of effect, I already had a different solution in mind.

I spent a lot of time beating my head against the figurative wall, trying to resolve the 4-vs-8-year issue. The early parts of my AN notes are full of this stuff.

----

At some early point, I came up with the idea that the anomalings/shades would deal with troublesome crashes by "rebasing" them, rewriting their histories.

I didn't intend, initially, for this idea to take over the plot as much as it eventually did. It was just a fun idea that underscored the huge power differential between the anomalings and their captives, and felt in line with the Cartesian/Wachowskian themes of transcending a "fake"/illusory world, radically doubting one's own perceptions and memories, etc.

But, having stipulated that "rebases" were a thing, I hit upon the idea that they could be used to modify the total quantity of past (subjective) time inside a crash -- turning 8 years into 4, or vice versa, or whatever.

So, I could fix the problem by stipulating that one -- or both -- of the problematic crashes had already been rebased, in this way.

But why? And by whom?

----

Now, at this early stage, I also had the idea in mind that the character "Anne" would eventually escape from her crash, and that she would have a hand in various major events in the story -- including some events that had already occurred, relative to the "present" of the textual PoV.

But I didn't know, yet, what these interventions actually were.

(I put "Anne" in quotes, here, because in the very early stages I casually assumed that only the PoV Anne introduced in Chapter 1 would be a major character, and that her sisters were merely background material for her personal narrative, like the tower itself. Of course, in the process of thinking through the details of things, I realized that this assumption was needless and indeed counterproductive.)

As often happens when I'm plotting a story, I found that two unknowns slotted neatly into one another, each one providing a potential solution to the problem posed by the other.

We need something for "Anne" to do in the past. Something consequential, something that shows off her newfound agency -- but also something that obscures her role from view. Ideally, something kind of weird, esoteric, "advanced"; something that feels buried inside the deep, dark center of the backstory, which the reader will only "excavate" at the end of a long, strange journey.

And we need someone to rebase the Mooncrash.

That answers the "who?" question. But again -- why?

Well, it was already in the plan that Azad would join forces with Michael, when Michael went in search of his lost Anne. That Anne would meet Azad, as a result, and that it would be Azad who persuades her to return to Michael's crash.

I didn't, at the time, have much else planned for the Anne-Azad connection.

As originally conceived, the "Azad convinces Anne to return" scene was about Azad's uncertain loyalties, and about Anne's lack of exposure to other human beings (and to the power of words, as deployed by human beings with access to real human culture). That is, it merely served specific, separate purposes in the sub-stories of these two characters. There was no intent to set up, or develop, a thread connecting these sub-stories, making Azad a major character in Anne's arc and vice versa.

But that seems like kind of a shame, doesn't it? Why go to the trouble of preparing these characters, and bringing them into contact, if I didn't have anything for them to do together?

Anne and Azad.

We need someone to rebase the Mooncrash.

We need Anne to learn about real human culture, somehow, before she leaves. I knew that, already, though I didn't have a mechanism in mind.

(I also knew, by this point, that causing Azad's appointment as translator was another one of "Anne's" consequential moves. I had conceived of this, at first, as a relatively impersonal act, done only for its historical significance. Indeed, that would have been enough -- but the more the merrier, theme/motivation-wise.)

Problems paired up, interlocked, and became each others' solutions.

(1b)

As is obvious from the above, I didn't have the scenario planned out in very much detail when I wrote the first chapter.

At the time, the story had been gestating in my head for a while, but only as a bunch of vague inklings and intentions.

The proximate cause of writing-the-first-chapter was a sudden and unexpected burst of inspiration. I was riding the bus to a social event, and suddenly my mind was awash with crisp, never-before-glimpsed details about Anne and her tower, the Mooncrash, the Academy, Cordelia's blue dress -- all the stuff of Chapter 1. It felt like a crucial message was being beamed into my brain, VALIS-style, from the Muse / Higher Power.

I had an urge to bail on the social event, turn around, ride back home, and start writing immediately -- what if the magic went away, as suddenly as it had arrived? I resisted that urge and made a perfunctory appearance at the event, but then went back home and wrote as much as I could before falling asleep.

So, when I was writing that chapter, stuff like "four years" and "eight years" wasn't based on any single coherent picture, just vibes and vague inklings.

(I think 4 years probably sounded like the right amount of time for G&A to have been in the Mooncrash, character-wise. Meanwhile, Hector's ascension from the Academy had to be long enough ago that there would be no direct overlap between Hector and any of the current students. The "Bad Old Days" had to feel like something you'd only hear about in rumors, or from authority figures who probably weren't telling the full story.)

(2)

Like TNC before it, Almost Nowhere was originally conceived as relatively simple and straightforward story, only to become something much weirder and more complicated as I fleshed out the details.

As I said above, I only had a very vague "plan" at the outset of the writing process. But I kinda knew where I was going with it, in very broad strokes.

The original arc, insofar as it existed at all, was something like:

The bilateral / anomaling tension is introduced.

The bilateral PoV characters come to an understanding of their situation.

Many of the bilateral PoV characters join up with Hector Stein, who is already trying to defeat the anomalings and free humanity from the crashes.

Azad temporarily sides with the anomalings, and Anne temporarily returns to her captive state. But both them "come around" eventually.

Anne eventually triumphs over Michael, delivers a dramatic monologue castigating him for imprisoning her (etc.), and mounts a successful escape.

Shortly after Anne's escape, some (TBD!) resolution to the main conflict is achieved. Whatever it is, it is proposed/spearheaded by the bilateral faction (and specifically Anne herself), and it somehow exemplifies "the bilateral way of thinking/being."

The humbled anomalings conclude that "the bilateral way of thinking/being" has its advantages, both practically and morally.

So the story, as originally conceived, was much more straightforwardly about the "good" PoV humans fighting back against aliens.

It unabashedly took the bilateral side in the conflict, and it ended with a "beauty of our weapons" sort of moment in which the bilaterals are both victorious and righteous, and in which these two kinds of success are closely linked and almost merged.

I have to imagine that, even in counterfactual worlds where some things went differently, I never would have stuck to this version of the story all the way through.

Because, one way or the other, I would have eventually realized that.. like... this version of the story kind of sucks, right?

I mean, why go to the trouble of introducing these aliens, and trying to make them interesting, only to say "nah, actually these guys were just wrong, it's us and our existing 'ordinary' pre-conceptions that are right, and that's what the story was about all along"?

It would have been "inventing a guy to be mad at," as the saying goes.

Not a great foundation for a story. And the least interesting possible direction to go in, given this kind of setup.

It also presents a seemingly unresolvable tension, for the writer, about how to portray the distinctively "bilateral" nature of the bilateral side in the conflict.

If "bilateral" is as broad a category as the anomalings say it is -- if you and I and all of us, whatever other qualities we possess, participate equally in this sin -- then it's hard to strike a note of emotional triumph around the quality of "bilaterality" that doesn't feel wrong, vacuous, or bloodlessly abstract.

"Woo, yeah, humans are great!" I mean, are they? All of them? You don't get to say "well, only the good ones," here, or "in their ideals if not always their acts," or anything like that. Everyone is included in the relevant category, except for the guys-who-aren't that were invented for this specific story.

It's difficult to make this land properly, in the same way it would be difficult to write a story that inspires "carbon-based life pride" or "having-DNA pride" or the like in its reader.

So this version of the story was dead on arrival. And indeed, by the time I was thinking through the stuff chronicled in (1) above, this version of the story felt like a provisional placeholder, at best, in my mind.

Nonetheless, there are various echoes of it in the story I eventually landed on.

For example, in the original version of "Anne's" escape -- conceived in a much more straightforwardly positive way -- I had Anne reading "real" books in secret, drawing moral strength from them, and then including a bunch of literary quotes in her big dramatic monologue to Michael. (I took inspiration, here, from John the Savage reading Shakespeare in Brave New World.)

And I had the idea that "Anne," being an autodidact, would read omnivorously without making culture-bound distinctions familiar to you and me; that her selection of quotes, in the monologue, would put low culture alongside high culture, infamous books alongside famous ones, etc.; and as a particular case, that it'd be fun if -- before going on to quote Shakespeare and co. -- she began the whole thing by quoting Ayn Rand.

And that one idea stuck, even if the rest of it didn't.

(Or, consider how the idea of "a powerful move in the conflict that exemplifies the bilateral way of thinking/being" actually crops up multiple times in the finished story, right up to its last scenes. One can see traces of it in the "trick" that obsesses Michael, in the use of autobiographical writing to build up nostalgium, and in Annabel's improved crash design.)

(3)

I came up with the Mirzakhani Mechanism relatively late, in between writing Chapter 13 and writing Chapters 14-15 (in which the MM is introduced).

The MM was a product of looking back at the sci-fi elements that already existed in the story, like crashes and rebases, and trying to invent some single underlying explanation that covered all of them in a relatively parsimonious way.

This basically "worked," I think -- it certainly worked better than I had been expecting, after playing the dangerous game of "write a bunch of weird stuff and hope you'll be able to explain it all later." (I remember talking to one reader who was shocked that I hadn't had the MM in mind from the very beginning, which was flattering.)

It also had unintended consequences that kinda took over the story, but largely in a good way.

Earlier, I had planned to have the post-rebase crash timelines "screened off" from the outside world somehow, so that rebasing a crash wouldn't mess up the timeline of the outside world. But, once I'd fixed the idea that "rebasing is an MM event" in place, I realized that this wasn't consistent with the way MM events were meant to work. Instead, the exposition in Ch. 15 directly implies the stuff about rebases that Grant realizes much later in Ch. 41.

Once I'd noticed this, it was obvious that it was extremely important, and I re-incorporated it into the broader plot.

On a related note, I eventually decided that the account of the anomalings "going backward in time to our era" in Ch. 15 didn't really make sense. This meant I needed a different, more viable way anomalings and bilaterals to exist at the same point in time.

This line of thought, along with several others (like "what happened to all the nonhuman organisms?" and "which parts of the MM multiverse are real?"), eventually led me to invent Everywhere-Heaven and the beasts.

That happened right at the start of 2022, between Chapters 21 and 22.

It quickly became clear that the E-H/beasts stuff could be put to a lot of valuable use in story's third act, which was largely a worrying blank space in my head (even at this point!). From thereon out, I worked on fleshing out the third act behind the scenes while writing the second.

Not coincidentally, Chapter 22 contains a ton of E-H-related foreshadowing, and also some hints that human scientists (like Aidan in Ch. 15) had never fully understood the anomalings.

The use of Maryam Mirzakhani, a real (and recently deceased) mathematician, was a weird choice and arguably one in poor taste. All I can really say in defense of it is that it came to me suddenly, and had a number of properties that fit the vibe of the part of the story in which it appeared, and I have a policy of "going with my gut" when it suggests such things to me.

I felt similarly about this choice and another thing introduced in Ch. 15, the nuclear attack intended to kill scientists. Both of these things underscored the fact that the story took place in an alternate reality. And both felt sort of "edgy," "too dark," "too close to the real world" compared to the tone of the story so far. But I wanted to take the story to new places in the coming acts -- "darker," "more real" places -- and something felt right about introducing these elements at this exact point, as signposts providing an indication of where things were headed.

(4)

The phrase "NOWHERE TO HIDE" was originally "NO MERCY," in my notes.

And the abbreviation "NM" for "NO MERCY" was used throughout my notes for Nowhere-To-Hide related stuff, e.g. "NM Annes."

This wasn't the product of much thought, just the first thing that came to mind that had roughly the correct vibe. I almost immediately concluded that I'd have to replace "NO MERCY" with something else in the work itself, since it would seem like an Undertale reference that I didn't intend to make.

"Moon" was originally just a placeholder name -- a shorthand for "the 'NM Anne' who rebased the Mooncrash." But I liked the idea of actually using it, once it had occurred to me.

The corresponding placeholder name for A11 was "Ling," as in "linguist" (but also an actual name).

(5)

I went through 3 different outlines of the third act.

Really, there was a first outline, which was really bad, and then there were two slightly-different versions of a very different outline that mostly corresponds to the finished draft.

The first, bad outline was amusingly titled "notes-satisfying-ending.txt", because I explicitly used this post about "satisfying endings" as a guideline while writing it.

(To be clear, I don't think the linked post was to blame for the badness of that first outline. I didn't ultimately find the post very helpful as writing advice, but the "satisfying ending" outline wasn't even a "satisfying ending" in the post's own terms, and was also bad in unrelated ways.)

I don't want to go into much detail about the bad outline. It was really bad, and also really different from what eventually occurred. It's honestly a pretty embarrassing document.

A lot of the key ideas were there (E-H, etc.), and the very end of the story was roughly the same. But it had a ton of needless flaws that I later corrected. Various existing character arcs and motivations were dropped and never picked up, or suddenly diverted in some new and unfruitful direction; way too much time was spent on getting characters and objects from point A to point B, or otherwise sort of rambling about in a way that didn't matter in the end; it included a lot of whimsical "fun ideas" that weren't necessary and would have added clutter to an already very full canvas; etc.

I never got to the point of building a chapter-by-chapter version of this outline, but I'm sure it would have much longer than the existing third act, also.

The existing third act is pretty long, but it was actually the result of an aggressive pruning and tightening process.

If the "satisfying-ending" outline had a single greatest flaw, it was terrible pacing. Lots of slack, lots of empty space, and when big things did happen, they came out of nowhere, not really prompted by what came immediately before them.

The next draft of the ending resulted from taking the raw materials of "satisfying-ending," purging all the dross, re-thinking all the obviously flawed stuff, and then trying to rearrange the pieces in front of me in a way that was maximally "tight" and interconnected, with questions and tensions introduced and then resolved in a rapid-fire manner, and without any major thread "sitting around in the background" long enough to feel stale, or get forgotten.

That outline was in a file called "notes-good-end.txt."

Much later, I tightened up the plan even further, merging some things that were originally in separate chapters. This was in a file called "notes-true-end.txt", and -- true to its name -- was the version reflected in the book itself.

So there was "satisfying-ending," which sucked; "good-end," which was good; and "true-end," which was slightly better.

(I realize the multiplicity of the ending, and the account of deliberate "tightening" etc., is in apparent tension with my recent account of working by direct inspiration.

There are a few things I can say about this tension.

For one, it really is true that the third act of AN was more deliberately reasoned-out, and less directly-inspired, than some of the earlier stuff. This is kind of inevitable: you don't get to do anything after an ending, that's what an ending is, and so you have to deliberately try to make the final act of a story fully work as a thing unto itself, rather than writing checks in the hope of cashing them at some later point.

And separately, I do think the final version of the ending feels "more real," "more true to the work" than the satisfying-ending draft.

I think I was aware, even while composing "satisfying-ending," that it felt off and wrong in some ways. But it was only after going through the exercise of creating a complete ending -- some sort of complete ending -- that I was able to look back and say "OK, this fits, but this doesn't fit," and distill something that actually felt right.)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

One more from (mostly) climate journalist David Roberts:

"I haven't written much about politics since the debate, mainly because I'm so overwhelmed by disgust & contempt toward this country's media & commentariat that it has rendered me inarticulate with rage. Twitter probably doesn't need more rage. I do just wanna make one point tho.

To be clear up front: I don't give one tiny hot fuck who the Dem nominee is. I truly don't. Biden's fine. Harris is fine. A warm puddle of vomit is fine. *There is no conceivable resolution to the nomination fight that could change the basic calculus of this race.*

Preventing a fascist takeover of the US is my top priority--as a journalist, as a voter, as a human. If it isn't yours too, you should feel bad about yourself. If you haven't made the stakes of this election clear to everyone within the sound of your voice, you should feel bad.

But I'm not gonna rant. [breathes deeply] Just gonna make my one point, which is this: the idea that that the process of jettisoning Biden & choosing someone else will go well -- will be *allowed* to go well -- is a deeply deranged fantasy.

The idea that Dems will do this & will end up feeling unified, that Harris will come out popular, that "the dynamics of the race will shift," all of that ... fucking deranged. Deranged in such a perfectly characteristic Dem way.

"This person/policy/slogan/approach has been irredeemably slimed by Republicans & a hostile media -- let's throw it overboard!" That's the Dem way. Always with this starry-eyed hope that they can reset, start over, get it right this time.

Just as one example -- other people have aggregated these -- there have been "calls" for every Dem nominee of the last 30 years to step aside. Dems practically delight in abandoning their own people, policies, & principles in response to bad-faith pressure. They f'ing love it.

But, as I've been saying for, oh, 20 years now, the situation is structural. The current situation is an outcome of a particular incentive structure & that structure will remain exactly the same if Harris takes over the ticket.

For centrists, journalists, pundits, *even Dem electeds*, the way you prove you are a Reasonable, Serious Person in DC is by shitting on Dems. For the left, the way you prove you are a true radical is by shitting on Dems. For the right ... well, obviously.

Everyone's professional incentives are to shit on Dems. Dwelling on Trump & his fascist movement -- however justified by the objective facts -- just doesn't bring that juice, doesn't get the clicks & the high-fives, doesn't feel brave & iconoclastic. It's just ... no fun.

So, say Biden stepped aside in favor of Harris tomorrow. How long until the vapid gossips we call political reporters find something wrong with her, some alleged flaw they just have to write 192 stories about? How long until the hopped-up mediocrities we call pundits ...

...find some "counter-intuitive" reason that the new Dem ticket is flawed after all? How long until the irredentist left gets over the temporary thrill of its new Harris memes & remembers that she's a cop & turns on her? How long before the ambient racism & misogyny in the US...

... lead center-leftists to conclude that, sure, they'd support a black woman, just not *this* black woman? In other words: how long before everyone reverts to their comfortable, familiar identity & narratives?

About 30 f'ing seconds, is my guess.

Dems uniting, feeling good, telling a clear story, receiving credit for their accomplishments--all of that is *impossible* in the current environment. It won't be allowed. Dems can punch themselves in the face all they want, abandon whoever they want, apologize all they want...

... they simply will not be allowed to turn the page & start fresh, because everyone's incentives remain the same. If they did that, elites, including media elites, would have no choice but to openly & frankly grapple with Trump & what he represents & they *don't want to*.

Everyone feels comfortable shitting on Dems -- it's just a cozy professional space. You get to feel brave & independent (just like all the replacement-level pundits around you) with zero risk.

Yes, it's abysmal, contemptible cowardice on a genuinely embarrassing scale ...

... but it is what it is & we should have no illusions that it will change with a change in the top of the ticket.

As @whstancil has been trying to tell you people (good god how he tries), the information environment is thoroughly corrupted.

@whstancil For some reason, left pundits are pathologically averse to acknowledging that fact. And so they grasp at these straws -- if we could just get rid of Biden, we could have a reasonable conversation! Yeah, sure. You absurd summer children.

@whstancil This election is not a choice between two individuals, it's a choice between worldviews, between futures. Do we want to continue down the path to multiethnic democracy or do we want to impose a white patriarchal Christian autocracy?

@whstancil At stake is the entire federal civil service. The machinery of state built since WWII. Freedom & dignity for millions. Yes, democracy itself. That's not an exaggeration. Yet this country's elites have utterly failed to convey those stakes to the populace. A *grotesque* failure.

You can not look at this extraordinary media freakout this last week and not psychologize, not see all kinds of displacement. They can't or won't be serious about Trump & so they are fucking *giddy* at having permission to scold Dems again. Their safe place.

Anyway, my point is just: none of this will change if Harris replaces Biden at the top of the ticket. The idea that the media -- with these soulless careerist court gossips in charge -- will allow it is just fantasy. They *need* Dems in disarray & so they will engineer it.

The US is right on the precipice of falling into bona fide fascism & *the vast majority of the voting public doesn't even know it*. That speaks to a deeply diseased information environment. Until Dems do something about that, all their self-flagellation will buy them nothing.

Not knowing what else to do, Dems shit on their own

(Rebecca Solnit)

[syddsatyrn]

Chapter 1 ⛤ Chapter 2 ⛤ Chapter 3 ⛤ Chapter 4 ⛤ Chapter 5 Masterlist

⛤Pairing: - Eddie Munson x FemReader

⛤Warnings: Swearing, drinking, smoking, fluff, friends to lovers, drug use

⛤Words: 2k

⛤Song: "Photograph" By Def Leppard

⛤Summary: Moving away from Hawkins was the biggest mistake of your life. You left your best friends and forgot to stay in touch. Years later, you decide to hit up your good friend Steve. Its time to make a plan and make amends. The one thing you didn't expect was feelings to resurface when you saw your old highschool crush.

⛤Notes: This series is 18+ Minors scram. @hellfiremunsonn is my trusty beta reader, go check out their fics! They are so good!

⛤Chapter 3: Reunion Eddie unlocks the front door of his apartment, he's trying to be extra careful not to make any noise. He looks over at the couch and quickly notices Dustin snoring away. He slowly shut the door behind him and carried on down the hallway. Upon entering his bedroom, he flipped the light switch, and nestled in his bed was Y/N. A figure he did not anticipate whatsoever. “....Y/N?” He almost thought he was dreaming. You sat up quickly, entirely shocked by the sight in front of you. You exchanged glances, the air was filled with so many unspoken questions. Eddie is trying to mentally make sense of the sight before him. His face starts to turn red as he slowly realizes his high school crush is sleeping in his bed. “Eddie?!” You are so confused, Steve said he wouldn't be back for a couple of days. Is this some kind of setup? Goddammit Steve. “I am SO sorry.” You frantically roll out of his bed and stand there, searching for some kind of expression on Eddie’s face. “Steve must have been confused, he said you wouldn't be home for a couple of days. We made a plan and I came out to surprise you guys.” “Well…I’m certainly surprised.” He says as he sets his bags down. He approaches you and immediately wraps his arms around your shoulders. “It's so good to see you, Y/N.” He says, just barely above a whisper. You were rendered speechless, your face was pressed against his chest. He kisses the top of your head, something he always used to do. You wrapped your arms around his midsection and it took everything in you to fight back those reunion tears. It was a long hug, one that had to make up for years of physical and emotional distance. He finally lets go, and you meet his gaze. “It’s good to see you too, Eddie.” You say with a smile, he hasn't changed a bit. His hair is a little longer, but he still wears the same ripped jeans, leather jacket, and silver rings. “I’m the one who should be sorry, I came home early. My last show was canceled due to bad weather.” Eddie explains, “I should have called but I didn’t have time to use a phone.” He snags one of the cigarettes off the bedside table and lights it. “No it's cool, I’m really happy to see you.” You say as you sit back down on the edge of Eddie's bed. “How was your tour? I heard your band is doing well nowadays.” “We are actually! I feel like we’ve made a serious breakthrough in the industry. The tour was fun, I got to see New York. The food was amazing, the fans are a blast.” “Oh wow, so you’re like a big celebrity now, huh?” You tease, Eddie smirks and takes a drag off his cigarette. He walks over to his bags and puts his guitar in the empty guitar stand. “Hardly. How have you been? I haven't heard from you in forever and suddenly you end up in my bed?” He inquires, still holding on to that prominent smirk. “Things got pretty intense when we moved, it was like everything in my life came crashing down around me. I feel really bad about not keeping in touch with you guys. When I planned this with Steve I knew I would have to make some apologies.” You finally admit to him that you could have done better. Every time you didn't call or stay in touch it made you feel guilty. After some time it felt like a stupid, awkward thing to do. So you tried to forget about it, a big mistake on your part. It was time for you to explain yourself and make up for being so detached. “It's no big thing, sweetheart,” Eddie says as he sits next to you on the bed. “You can sleep in my bed, I can take the floor.” “No! I would feel terrible. Just…Just share it with me. It's fine, there's plenty of room.” You can feel your face getting warmer. It’s a pretty big bed so it probably won't get weird, right? “Well…if you’re sure.” He replies, noticing how exhausted you look. “You should get some rest, we can talk more in the morning.” “Thanks, Eddie, you’re a saint.” You crawl back under the covers. “Not even close, darling.” Eddie loosens and kicks off his boots. He walks over to his closet and changes into sweatpants and a fresh T-shirt.

You honestly tried to not glance at the metalhead's slender figure but failed miserably. He has new tattoos you’ve never seen before and he’s gained a bit more muscle in his arms. Eddie pulls a hair tie from his wrist and wraps his hair up in a messy bun. You didn't think Eddie Munson could get any hotter, but he did. Eddie flips the light switch and crawls into bed with you. You turn to face him and he faces you. This feels familiar, like deja vu.

“If this is too weird let me know.” He says, barely above a whisper. “It’s only weird if you make it weird, Munson.” You respond with a giggle.  ------------- The morning sun beams through the window, you can hear the sound of cars driving by the apartments. You open your eyes and gaze at the soft yellow glow pouring into the room.  The bed was so warm and comfortable, you never wanted to leave. You roll over and immediately realize you’ve curled up next to Eddie rather close. He’s You hear a couple of knocks on the door and Steve calls your name.  “Hey Y/N, I brought you a cup of coffee, open up.” You roll out of bed and open the bedroom door. Steve hands you the cup of coffee with a smile. “Good morning sunsh–” He trails off after he sees Eddie reluctantly sit up and rub his sleepy eyes. You could see the gears turning in his brain as he put two and two together. just snoozing away like nothing is happening, completely unaware of the fact that he was nearly spooning you. 

“When did you get home?!” Steve asks, a puzzled look on his face. “Last night.” Eddie yawns, “How come I don't get any coffee, Harrington?” He jokes with a sleepy grin. Steve gives you a look that immediately translates to “That didn’t take long”. You follow Steve to the kitchen and prepare a cup of coffee for Eddie.

“So did you guys–” You cut him off and he snorts. 

“No! Of course not!” Your face gets red and Steve can't stop laughing at how flustered you’re getting. You try to keep your voice down because Dustin is still sleeping like a rock on the couch. “Why would you say that?!” “Okay okay! I was just asking.” He says feeling satisfied by your unsettled expression. You take the coffee to Eddie’s room and Steve finishes up the bacon and pancakes.

Eddie is sitting upright, still trying to wake up. He smiles at you when you hand him a cup of coffee. “Thank you, sweetheart.” he says and pats the spot next to him, asking you to come sit.

Steve walks in with three plates of food. He hands one to Eddie and he practically scarfs it down. How long has it been since he last ate?? Steve sat on the floor in front of you and began cutting apart his pancakes with his fork.

“So, what's on the agenda today?” Steve asks with his mouth semi-full. 

“I’m not sure yet, I just got here.” Eddie replies, “Isn't Robin coming by?”

“Yeah but who knows when that will be.” Steve answers and shrugs.

The knock at the door was so on cue it was amazing. Dustin rolls off the couch and opens the door. 

“Hey kiddo, you’re still here?” Robin asks. Dustin gives her a drowsy nod and she laughs. You could recognize her voice and hopped up off the bed and rushed out into the hallway. Robin sees you and stops dead in her tracks. She's completely floored, her eyes are wide and her mouth is agape. Suddenly, without any warning you both start screaming and running towards each other. “Oh my god, you are here?!” She shouts and you scream “I am!” Robin wraps her arms around you and you do the very same. She squeezed you so tight you might explode. She is still as energetic as ever. Robin has been your best friend since middle school. You’ve missed her so much you almost start to cry.

“I can't believe you are here, I thought you dropped off the face of the planet!” She says and you laugh. “Honestly, I was just really depressed.” You reply. “I’m sorry for being a bad friend.” You sit back down and finish your breakfast, Robin leans against the doorframe. She gives Steve a suspicious look, “Is this why you wouldn't let me come over yesterday?” Steve almost chokes on his food. “I mean, yeah but we were planning a surprise! We are all going to hideout tonight to celebrate.” “I’m totally in, but do you think I could steal Y/N for the day?” Robin looks at Steve and Steve glances at Eddie. Why is Eddie suddenly your keeper? “As long as you wash her and bring her back.” Eddie chimes in and you laugh and gently shove him with your shoulder. “Hell yes! Let's go shopping. I need new shoes.” Robin cheers, and you giggle at Eddie's dumb comment. You grab your duffle bag on the floor and take it to the bathroom with you to get dressed. You grabbed a black t-shirt, and a pair of ripped jeans, and topped off your look with classic Converse. After adding silver rings and chains to your look you smooth out your shirt and look in the mirror. You add a touch of makeup to cover up the fact that you didn't get much sleep. After all the preparation, you meet Robin at the door. “You ready?” She asks as you grab your jacket and your wallet. You nod and wave at Eddie, who finally made his way to the kitchen for a second cup of coffee. “I’ll be back later, guys!” You announce. All three of the boys say goodbye in unison, which ultimately makes you laugh. After deciding to take Robin’s car, you both hop in and buckle your seatbelts. “Okay okay, tell me everything.” Robin says while pulling out of the parking lot. “Oh god, where do I even start?” You let out a groan, “Okay, first of all, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I abandoned you guys, that was really lame of me. I missed you all so much.” “Apology accepted.” Robin said. “I was never mad at you, I figured life had gotten in the way. I almost wanted to track you down and show up on your doorstep.” She laughs and you smile at her. “I would have totally been cool with that.” You reply. “Where are we going anyway?” “To Starcourt mall.” She finally tells you. “That place still exists?!” You ask. Robin and Steve used to work at this ice cream shop in the food court. You would visit them during their shift almost every day. “I know, I am just as surprised as you are.” Robin replies with a laugh.

[sammy8d257]

I love your Mad King AU

So I made a human version

Hope you like it Sammy.

whooooooaaaa

WHOOOOAAA

OH THEY LOOK SO SICK??

I love the scales creeping into their skin

Oooooo its so nasty /pos

Fun fact!

I actually do have a human design for MK!Purple I haven't done a full render yet but here's a quick sketch of them:

Purple with long hair my beloved

[bluecolty]

Oh boy, my model and rig for Xeon are finally done! I've got a lot of info in this post, because dang it's been a journey haha.

Over the past month and a half I've built this lad, rigged him, put him into VRChat, made a 2D background to showcase him, and shot him out of a rocket in spite. Well, not really, but oh man sometimes I wish I could have. *wheeze*

The Xeon rig and model features a new rigging system, a better model, better organization, and a whole host of improvements over my last model of Medea. And dang, I'm excited to dive into em!

First up is the lil fun showcase. Using the new rigging system, I did lots of fun poses! And I'm super happy with how the toon shader looks too. For his model, I focused on refining the topology and making the weight painting better. Noodle arms also helps a ton too! These improvements really helped get it looking as not 3D as possible hahaha.

Keep reading for more of the behind the scenes stuff!

Yes, this is a 2D background! Way back in the day I used to make backgrounds to showcase my finished models... but I kind of strayed away from that. With Xeon though, I decided to get back into making backgrounds, and instead of doing it in Blender- I drew it!

This is the first ever one I've publicly published, and only one of 3 I've ever done. I first laid out the perspective in Blender and the lined/colored it in Clip Studio Paint. The model of Xeon was rendered in Blender on a separate layer, then I dropped him in the CSP background.

There's defintiely some wrong things with my 2D background, but for the first colored one I've done, I'm pretty happy with it. Its all about practice, and as I gain more experience I hope to better refine the Blender perspective to 2D pipeline.

This time for Xeon, I wanted to massively push my rigging skills. So with the help of Rigify, I've done just that. The rig for Xeon features a very advanced and customizable rigging system that allows me to pose him in so many different ways.

Oh and also, noodle arms and legs! That was a thing I've been meaning to add to my characters for so long, I just haven't known how to. But now with the new rig I can do just that!

As you can see below, the rig is also very user friendly. It's definitely complex, but it should be a lot more standard and a lot more user friendly.

I can't wait to add this rig to all my future models as well!

That's all I have for ya'lls today, I hope you all enjoy him!

[stickbug-made-entirely-of-spite]

Long time no see, friends!

Recently I've had an all-you-can-eat buffet worth of responsibilities and struggles on my plate, so I haven't been able to (or had the energy to) post or talk to anyone, let alone make art TTvTT

But with ArtFight came excitement, and with excitement came motivation! So I'll be posting everything I make for other participants on here, with their permission and credits of course ^-^

Starting right now!!

This, my friends, is my take on a human version of Grief (owned by 8atwix on ArtFight), who can be found through this ToyHouse link! :]

I had so much fun experimenting with the unusual skintone, and figuring out how I should render it! In the end, I think it turned out really good ^-^

Grief seemed like a really playful, miscievous character, so I hope I was able to portray that in my art as well!

I'm still not entirely sure of what I'm doing when I'm rendering people, but I definetly feel like I've made really good progress so far!

Awesome character #1 and art progress aside, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day ^-^ 🧡

Yours truly, Stickbug 🪲

[storyofmychoices]

For @choicesfandomappreciation's Countdown to 2024.

There are so many talented artists in this fandom. I could never pick only four. I am seriously in awe of all of you and your talents. You truly make this fandom a more beautiful place. We are lucky to have you all.

In no particular order

💛 @hydn-jpg: I absolutely adore you and your talent. I can't thank you enough for the beautiful creations you've made for me. I just adore your style. I'm glad you are doing better. I've loved seeing your art on my dash again. Thank you for sharing all of your beautiful visions with us.

💛 @cashweasel: What can I say?! I absolutely adore you and your art. You've created some of my favorite Mal pieces and you gifted the world Valen. How can we ever thank you enough for that?! Valen is everything, but I adore Gideon too!

💛 @oh-so-youre-a-nerd: I've only been following you for a few months but ohmygosh you are so freaking talented. Like how?!!! I absolutely adore seeing your art on my dash, no matter the subject matter, each piece is just stunning. Your use of light is unlike anything I've seen. You are amazing.

💛 @artbyalz: Your art is so much fun! I LOVED your 12 days of Christmas art series. You gifted the fandom so many beautiful and unique pieces. I absolutely adore all you've created, and ohmygosh how can I even thank you for this gift you've given me?!!!

💛 @cassie-thorne: GAH your art!!! The recent art with Astrid is still living rent free in my head. She is so gorgeous! I truly admire and adore all of your work, though I'm a little biased toward your CoP art! I can't wait for the next book to see how you tackle all the new content we get!

💛 @baldwinboy5ive: I've absolutely enjoyed all of your art and memes from Blades. They were simply fantastic. Your work always puts a smile on my face!

💛 @fairymatchmaker : JOY!!! You are just so so lovely and amazing, and your art is brilliant. I know you haven't been able to draw as much as you'd like to have recently, but please know we are here waiting patiently for when you can. Your art is just brilliant.

💛 @violentinecrl: I am still absolutely in love with this gorgeous gift you made for me. I never expected anything like this and genuinely treasure it. It lives rent free in my head always.

💛 @callmebeem: I only discovered your art this year, but I am so in love with it. I love the 3 commissions you've made for me so far (even if I'm still holding on to one of them) but I absolutely treasure each and know I will be back for more soon! Thank you for them!

💛 @rosefuckinggenius: what can I say about you and your art besides you actually are a fucking genius. Your talent is amazing and I'm grateful for all the times we've worked together!

💛 @bayleedraws-sometimesx: you are an absolute delight! You are a sweetheart who creates such lovely art for the fandom. I love your minimalist style. You bring so much love to your work and it shows.

💛 @erixafleur: I've loved seeing all your gorgeous Blades art throughout book two. I can't wait to see more. Your style is lovely whether it's fully rendered or the sketchy style.

💛 @sazanes : Your art is so beautiful! I love seeing all the gorgeous stuff you create for the various appreciation weeks. I truly look forward to seeing all your works. You can see your care for each piece in every stroke.

💛 @twinkleallnight: you write, you do art, what don't you do? Thank you for sharing all of your many talents with the Choices fandom

💛 @mydemonsdrivealimo: Jensen is an amazing character and your OH art is so lovely. Thank you for the Valentine's doodles you made for my Bryce and Olivia. I truly treasure it!

💛 @gaiuskamilah / @talasintahan: your art is simply brilliant. I haven't been following you long, but I'm loving seeing all your gorgeous work.

💛 @weetlebeetle: You're technically not in our fandom, but you've created so many amazing pieces for me and so many others, you might as well be. Thank you for sharing your talent with us! We are so lucky to have you

💛 @hashiedraws (I know you're no longer active in the fandom, but I will always adore and treasure your art!

There are so so many amazing artists in this fandom, just mentioning a few more:

@somewillwin , @garlickk , @myautumnrose , @rainesenator , @ellezelindraws, @totojo2 , @choices-ceri , @crowlion ; @gremmiie ; @cpt-indigo , @mavidraws , @javsarts

This list is by no means exhaustive, please know that it was not intentional if you were left off!

[quohotos]

Okay so there are some things I really miss about reddit...

You don't really miss it until it's gone, but (at least using a third party app) it was really easy and immediate to control exactly what you saw. The process of blocking a tag on tumblr is a little bit clunky. I have to go into a sub menu in the settings and then type out the tag I can't just right click and filter it out.

It's really difficult to modulate how much horny content you want to engage with here. I don't think reddit users were any more or less horny than tumblr users, I just think it was easier to keep the separated. Obviously everyone's experience is different, but it was really easy to feel out the tone of a community and sort them into categories of horny and not horny. When something was a little risque or inappropriate it was very easy for the poster or moderator to mark it as such. I felt safe browsing reddit on my laptop in class because I knew that as long as I didn't click on anything marked as such I wasn't gonna get any weird looks from the person behind me. I'm not trying to be puritanical about the morality of horny content or anything like that, I just liked being able to very clearly chose how much of it I wanted to engage with. If I wanted to seek it out, it was easy to find, but it wouldn't come to me when I wasn't asking for it. Maybe with time and experience I'll figure out how to do that here, but it's still something I miss.

The third party app that I used didn't render profile pictures. I thought it was pretty neat to not have much of an identity. Idk, I'm a shy jealous person and seeing all these pretty talented people is very intimidating. I didn't mind being a nobody when it felt like everyone else was a nobody.

I do not know where to find the good memes here. I'm sure they exist, but I don't know where they are. There were just some amazing injoke shitpost subs that I really vibed with and I haven't found out an equivalent here.

I thought of some more things so I've edited them in

I miss having an easy distinction between NSFW blur and spoiler blur. It made discussing media so much safer, I felt like I could participate in am evolving discussion without risking ruining the surprises. You could also use it creatively for memes, like making osha violations be tagged as NSFW and blurred so you'd click on it expecting to see some ass but instead it's like dude standing on a swivel chair.

Putting tags (well, they were called flairs, and you could only have one) up front on a post was so nice. When talking about a show I could immediately see what seasons were being discussed before even reading the title. It could also serve as a hint about what was actually behind a spoiler/NSFW blur. The tags on tumblr are so much fun, and are very versetile but I feel like they're an addendum to the actual post content, whereas reddit flairs were a heads up.

On the whole though, people have been nice and helpful here, and I'm really grateful for that. Hopefully I'll learn to adapt and feel as at home here as I was there... but man I just keep staring at my dash and thinking "you're not my real dad".