#I kind of do something similar

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Does anyone else in the whump community watch Brave Wilderness, or….

[mipexch]

what else would you expect a literal blood machine to gift you besides a coin lodged directly into your chest. happy holidays

[shimmershy]

Buttercups and Golden Flowers

[iraprince]

if u like listening to music while u work but find urself getting distracted fiddling with queueing stuff/finding The Perfect Playlist/etc my recent hack has been just throwing on youtube videos of dj sets

book club radio is a good channel to start w bc they usually have the overall Vibe of the set in the title (i.e. "dreamy pop mix", "energetic techno mix" etc) so u can pick the general tempo or w/e u want but then it just kind of blends into the bg and u can set it + forget it

any time i put my own playlists on i'm just too familiar w what could be coming up and i end up wasting so much time skipping/scrolling 2 look for specific songs and stuff. dj sets are like putting a post-op doggy cone on me. it;'s out of my hands

[fantasykiri5]

This one’s name is Coral (not to be confused with Queen Coral, but she was named after her) She’s Bay’s younger sister and an animus. (Her and Bay are friends with Hourglass because they go to a small school of animuses and hybrids. Bay just came with his sister. They have three more dragons in their friend group but who knows when I’ll draw them.)

[dailyloopdeloop]

loop and mirabelle. That's it that's the ask

DAY 84: enrolled in the gossip wars

[uncanny-tranny]

Niche politics tip: If you start dissociating from politics so much it starts feeling like each side is akin to a football team or a game, you might need to take a step back in order to recuperate.

When you're so caught up in politics that you need to dissociate from the humanity of it in order to engage with politics, that's not a good sign. It's especially not a good sign when we are talking about human rights

[suncaptor]

I think one thing about Eridan that is underrated is how his quadrants are dependent on his job as orphaner. like the reason why they fall apart when the game starts isn't because he changed, but because of how he wasn't as needed anymore. what he can do for others via violence is how he obtains closeness.

[raccoon-crown]

I'll always be there for you...

"...every time you see the starry sky"

...

Well, I've been thinking about this since I saw the Tails Starboy AU that @0vergrowngraveyard created (one that almost made me cry...)

If ya don't know about it, it's about what happened in the bad ending from Sonic 2 when ... Well Sonic fails to save Tails and he just appears in the stars at the end.

[oursystemblog]

since you couldn't hear anyone in the beginning, how did you learn who was who? how did you identify parts?

Not Very Helpful Advice-Wise Answer, Mostly just Rambling --

if you mean identify as in "figure out that they were Another Alter" , everyone was distinct enough that we could kind of just tell "hmm . I Am Of A Different State Right Now" -- which was always something we'd noted even before we had a word to put to it, so that wasn't really something we needed to figure out consciously. it's weird to describe it's just a Different Feeling behind the eyes

if you mean identify as in "figure out the name of" -- Most of them didn't actually have names at first so they ended up choosing one and readily wrote it down on their own while they were were fronting

i think for us it was pretty easy because at the beginning the guardian was The Only alter [aside from me , The Host] who would front with any frequency, so i Only had to identify them. this wasn't very hard because they also wanted to identify themself

we worked on that alongside figuring out communication, and it was a decent amount of time before the emotionholder [only other alter at the time] came forward so by then we'd already gotten to the stage of Basic Yes Or No Questions which made it easier

a bit beside the point but i'm adding this on because it's funny (in hindsight), i also freaked out a little bit when that happened because i went "oh i feel switchy/dissociated right now that probably means the guardian is going to front. okay that's fine, i'm used to that now" and then the emotionholder fronted instead (for the first time since we'd started figuring out the system thing) and once they were done i was like "Ok well that wasn't the guardian . That also was not me, though, so Who The Fuck Was That I Thought There Was Like One Other Person Here"

[feroluce]

Connecting dots tonight (didn't connect shit, I've connected them, etc) because of this post about item descriptions to do with Sampo I saw a few days ago and! I feel like there are so many interesting things that could be implied from this!! Because the recipe for the High-Tech Protective Gear is given to you by Bronya (before the IPC invaded Belobog!), who says this little interesting tidbit about it:

This is an item from before the Eternal Freeze, 700 years ago. Even to the rest of the universe, it would be SORELY outdated. It cannot be made in Belobog anymore due to the loss of entire eras. It is effectively useless; this recipe had to be somewhere gathering dust, kept around solely for archival purposes. There is no reason for Sampo to know about this item or have any idea how it works and yet. AND YET. He's just running around selling knock offs!!

He shouldn't even know how to make these, but the fact that he does means Sampo either

had the blueprints from off-world before he came to Belobog (most likely but also most boring answer)

broke into Qlipoth Fort and copied down the blueprints (completely plausible - he's possibly shown doing exactly that in his splash art)

found another copy out in the ruins of the old world (also completely plausible - Sampo is astoundingly resilient against both the Fragmentum and the cold, as noted by Lynx haha)

Meanwhile, the Inferior Protective Gear recipe comes from an NPC in the underground, and when she gives it to you, she talks about building robots and the robot fighting scene sorry about the quality I didn't have screenshots for her dialogue so I had to use wiki

Which makes me feel like it's safe to say that the inferior gear is mostly being used in the underground, especially by the vagrants and their robots for fights, because...well, who else would use it? Cocolia has made it illegal to explore too far into the Snow Plains, and besides, it's way too dangerous for most civilians even WITH gear. The Silvermane Guards are funded by official sources, they have no reason to rely on Sampo for armor. So it makes sense for an underground mechanic to know the recipe; there's probably not as much market for it up in the overworld.

And if you look at the descriptions, you can see why this probably wasn't something that could be made in Belobog anymore; it requires a charging system of some sort.

We know it's not a problem with the basic materials because all three ingredients can be found right in the administrative district. But the underground only has two of them; somehow, despite being in the planet's crust, and literally crawling with robots...there is no metal down there. It isn't found anywhere, sold by anyone, or dropped by anything. And metal just so happens to be the one ingredient Sampo replaces in his knock off version.

The Inferior Gear uses trash instead, something which, going by the words of that same mechanic, is MORE than abundant in the underground- any good quality parts are extremely difficult to come by down there.

Anyway, all his shadiness aside, I love the implication that Sampo is smart enough to be able to take this item that no one else on the planet probably knows anything about, and was able to figure out what he could replace, and how, and with what, in order to make it easily accessible to the people of the underground, even without access to overworld resources. Because his version DOES work! It literally gives you the exact same amount of defense boost as the IPC one!

Someone should absolutely still knock him around for it, though, world's most slappable face fr fjkdsjfdkjafk

[revvethasmythh]

ngl, "I'm the only one who understands [x] character" or "only ten people actually get [x] character" is like the #1 biggest red flag to me that a person probably will have an inaccurate interpretation of a character. because if you've decided that you understand that character in a uniquely objective way over others, you inherently wall yourself off from alternate opinions by deciding they're wrong on the basis of simply not being the exact same as yours. if you can't incorporate or even just ponder other people's perspectives, people who have lived different lives and are approaching the content through different but potentially very useful lenses, you might miss out on some extremely enlightening and fascinating interpretations. building yourself an insulated echo chamber is probably the worst thing you could do when assessing a character like that

[mitchellpete]

Kinktober Day 16 - Begging

pairing: pete “maverick” mitchell x f!reader

cw: established relationship, unprotected sex, teasing, begging, penetration

word count: 1623

kinktober masterlist here.

18+ ONLY | MINORS DNI

-

You knew Maverick before your relationship blossomed. You knew the kind of man he was. You had known his peers more, had heard their stories about his arrogance and his ego. That was all before he’d finally approached you one night at the O Club, a smirk on his face like he’d already swept you off your feet from the first hello. It was proven to you instantly, how much of it was true. He had been so sure of himself that night, so convinced he was gonna take you home. And he had. There was nothing you could do to prevent yourself from liking him.

You’d expected your little fling to last maybe a week or two, had it already set in mind that he’d probably play you and then immediately move onto the next girl he laid eyes on at the bar. Or according to Slider, maybe replace you with Iceman, what with all the weird eye contact and all. 

Maverick was good looking; had a sweet, crooked smile and sharp eyebrows and the biggest green eyes. The kind of face that just drew you in. A lot of people looked at him. It wasn’t like he was gonna be yours to keep.

Except he totally was. 

And, as the weeks passed, you came to realize how much of his demeanor was simply a facade. Maybe not entirely, but to a certain extent. 

Frankly, Maverick was just extremely well-guarded. As he told you more and more about his past—years and years of foster care, not getting into the Academy like everybody else, his ongoing grief for the family he’d lost—you understood very well why he behaved the way he did. His defiance was freedom, invincibility. Something he could hold onto. 

He had you now too. 

With you, Maverick was able to let his guard down. Easily. He confided in you in ways you wouldn’t expect. He preferred your company over the San Diego nightlife. Skipped out on volleyball games and nights out drinking to cuddle on the couch watching shitty rentals and eating pizza with you. Simplicity went a long way for him, and you quickly grew accustomed to that side of him.

Maverick was still Maverick, however. Unfolding himself for you didn’t mean that that mischievous little glint ever left his eye, nor did it mean he’d let you off the hook when it came to his games. He was the sweetest, most attentive boyfriend in the world, and somehow the most frustrating, too.

It’s almost humiliating, how desperate you get under his touch. He relishes in the excitement that courses through him every time you murmur a please. In fact, he loves it so much that he’s made it tonight’s little game; he’s not gonna touch you unless you beg him. Out loud, everything you want him to do to you. You nearly doubled over and groaned in frustration at his stupid demand. Maverick simply grinned at your exasperation. 

“I’m not begging,” you retort. “That’s humiliating.”

Maverick tsks with a slight tilt of his head. Theatrical. Toying with you. “Looks like we got naked for nothing, then.”

Unbelievable. 

Your clothes are indeed discarded on your floor. Maverick pretends to reach down to grab his shirt, and you stop him. Pulling his arm, you manage to roll him towards you. He hovers over you, a tantalizing smirk on his face. 

You pout and try to bat your lashes at him, hoping he takes pity on you. 

“You want me to pass you your clothes, dear?” he mocks instead, ignoring your pleading face. He wants words. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” you groan. “Maverick, please.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Please what?”

Your hand wraps around the back of his neck, and you eagerly pull him down for a heated kiss. He lets you, moving his lips against yours with enthusiasm that only deepens your desire for him. You almost think you’ve got him as the kiss escalates, lips turning into mouth and tongue and teeth too. You’re wrong though, your eyes opening mid kiss when you feel the fabric of his shirt against your bare torso. He’d reached for it in the midst of the kiss, bunched it in his fist so that you’d feel it and then feel compelled to actually fucking beg before he pulled away to slip it on.

You push at his chest, lips disconnecting. “Maverick,” you whine, reaching for the shirt. 

He grins again, moves it out of your reach as you squirm around trying to grab it. 

You reach and reach and he moves it, up above your heads, to the side beyond your grasp. “Can you—stop it!” 

He tosses it to the ground again, leans down closer to you. “All you have to do is tell me what you want.”

You stare at him. Fuck. 

Fine.

“Please,” you whisper. “I want you to fuck me.”

You watch the intrigue in his eyes. He responds at an equally soft volume, “How bad?”

Your desire pools in between your legs, a small buzz beginning in the pit of your stomach. “Badly. Now.”

Maverick complies immediately, arm reaching in between your bodies to grab his cock in his fist. He squeezes around himself, groaning slightly at the feeling. Your hands gently cling onto his arms, but your nails dig into his biceps when he rubs the tip against the slick of your folds.

“Tell me again,” he hisses.

“Please,” you reiterate. “I need you now.”

“Hm.” He shifts to his knees, palms on either side of you, dog tags dangling above your face. He reaches down to stroke himself a few more times before aiming his dick against you again, pushing in slightly with a shallow thrust of his hips. 

You groan, eyes closed, feeling him stretch you open just an inch. 

You expect the sting to increase—there hadn’t been much foreplay, which was fine; you were aching for one another—but it doesn’t come. You open your eyes to the sight of him staring down at you, lips parted in shallow pants. Waiting. 

You exhale, frustrated. “Fuck me.”

Another shallow thrust of his hips, stretching you a bit more. He halts again, his other palm returning to the mattress on the other side of you. 

The buzz inside of you heightens, your breathing growing heavy. “Maverick, please. Please.”

Content with your pleading, he moans, allowing himself inside of you another inch. You can’t wrap your head around his persistence; how he’d gladly deny himself just to toy with you. He’s aching to fuck you hard into the mattress, but he’s taking his sweet time instead just to hear you beg. 

“Please, please,” you murmur under your breath, both hands squeezing around his arms. 

“Okay. Okay, sweetheart,” he breathes, pushing his hips forward in a swift motion to bury himself inside you entirely. 

You cry out, nails digging into the flesh of his arms again. “Oh, fuck.”

He leans down to capture your mouth in his, kissing you languidly as his hips meet yours. You inadvertently grab at his dog tags, keeping him close even when he pulls apart. Forehead to forehead, he hisses again, your tight heat enveloping him sweetly. Your legs come up around his waist to trap him there, to make sure he doesn’t back away and torture you further, but you realize he still wants to hear you when he remains situated inside of you, unmoving.

“You want it?” he asks.

“Yes,” you gasp, hips sputtering. An attempt to feel him move. “So bad.”

He moves slightly, eliciting a little happy sigh from you. Your body feels frozen from his relaxed, unhurried pace, and anything, any movement, feels like a burst of flames inside of you. 

It sparks a restless urge in you, and you suddenly remember his demand to know your every want. How that alone will fulfill you.

“Need you to cum inside me,” you blurt out, strained and shaky, back arching off the bed.

Maverick moans, your words edging him on, and he responds with a sharp slam of his hips. 

That does it, and he can hardly hold back anymore. Sudden hard thrusts take you by surprise, your heels digging into his lower back as he makes it his mission to give you what you’ve asked for.

You cry out again, and more and more as he fucks into you with the fervor he’d been holding back all along. He’s got his own limits, after all. 

He leans down entirely at one point, off his palms and onto his forearms instead to cup your head in his arms and kiss you. His mouth is sweet against yours, tongue prying at your lips to slip inside. His tongue against yours only adds to the overwhelming parcel of sensations coursing through your body. 

When he feels himself close to the edge, he grunts against your mouth. “Where?” he pants. “Where do you want it?”

He knows. He just wants to hear you say it again.

You whine, loud and unstable. “Nngh—inside,” you wail. “Please.”

Maverick’s sounds get stuck in his throat, and the sight of his flushed, dazed face pushes you over. It’s when he cums too that a string of repeated moans and whines spill next to your ear, intensifying your orgasm. It’s shaky and feels incredibly overdue, your body releasing tons and tons of tension from the torturous prolongment. 

Your throat almost feels dry from having begged and cried for him, but the glowy aftermath leaves you content. 

Maverick eventually pulls out, his release dripping out of you. He takes a 2 minute breather, collapsed beside you with an arm thrown over your waist, and then gets up to clean you up. 

You smile warmly. You love both sides of him.

[driftingballoons]

Some creatures are more difficult to perceive than others

[front-facing-pokemon]

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.