#I read self insets

[cuubism]

At first Hob isn't even sure the shop is open. The tiny door inset above a few steps, the utter lack of welcoming signage, the windows packed with unlabelled stacks of books--it doesn't exactly scream come in and buy something. As Hob steps up to the door, he really expects it to be locked, or for a sign to fall from the ceiling reading, abandon all hope here, mortal.

But the door to the bookshop--the name of which he's yet to determine, again with the utter lack of signage thing--just swings open at his touch, and he steps into a narrow hallway made entirely of--of course!--books.

Dust rises from the rug as he carefully makes his way deeper into the meandering corridors. The lightbulbs overhead are dim and in desperate need of replacement. The stacks are teetering and untouched. If he learned the place had been sitting here on this winding side street, exactly the same, for the past seven hundred years, he wouldn't be at all surprised.

And now Hob's marring its mysterious mausoleum aura by opening a jaunty modern coffee shop across the street.

Whoops.

Hence why he's bringing a peace offering before he accidentally starts a war over noise or crowds or god knows what else. Most places would probably be happy about increased foot traffic, but that's not the sense he's getting here.

This is all, of course, assuming he does find an owner, and not just a skeleton manning a till somewhere in this place long gone dark.

Hob doesn't find any customers. He does find several interesting-looking side hallways labelled things like, ~ the occult ~ , Oneiromancy, and "falconry -- advanced" and has to drag himself back into focus because the only thing worse than starting a turf war with a mysterious bookstore owner on his cafe's opening day is accidentally spilling the coffee he's brought--as a peace offering!--all over some ancient magical text.

"Hello?" he calls, finally giving up on the creeping about. "Anyone there?"

No answer. All Hob finds is a rickety set of stairs leading up the next level. So he ascends.

At the top is an even more cluttered room of books. This time in disorganized, unlabelled stacks on every surface. Waiting to be shelved, maybe? And in the center of it all, sitting cross-legged on the floor with several of these books spread out in a confusing array before him, is who Hob can only presume to be the owner.

An owner who is not dead, nor ancient and decrepit as Hob had kind of been picturing. Definitely not decrepit at all. Oohhhh dear.

The lithe, dark-haired, fey thing that is the owner tapes a note inside another book and says, in a distracted tone, "Can I help you?"

"Uh," says Hob, because he came here on a mission but he's gotten really turned around, "do you drink coffee?"

This gets him a raised eyebrow, but the shop owner does turn to look at him, staring up from his position on the floor. Christ he's pretty, spectacles and all. If there is a battle over street noise levels, Hob's going to lose by dint of caving automatically to those eyes. Pathetic.

The bookstore owner looks at the coffee in Hob's hand, then back at Hob's face. "Why?"

Hob thrusts the cup in his direction. "Here."

The owner looks alarmed now, but takes the cup, gingerly, peering at it as if he thinks Hob might have given him pureed nightshade instead. "Why?" he repeats, and then, because apparently his level of self-preservation doesn't extend to things like not drinking random shit thrust at him by strangers, takes a sip, and hums in appreciation.

"I-- fuck, sorry--" Hob sits down on the floor, which only makes him look more like a maniac to be honest-- "I just-- I just opened across the street? The cafe? So I just wanted to say hi and-- holy shit, is your name actually Dream? Were you a stripper in another life or something?"

This because he's finally spotted a tiny nametag pin on the bookstore owner's cardigan-- a cat curled around a book where the cover reads, I am Dream.

"Yes," says Dream, and Hob has no idea if that's in response to the first question, the second, or both. Both is terrifying to think about. As is the fact that Hob even asked that. "The cafe, you said?"

"Mmhmm," Hob agrees, cheeks burning. Oh, he's making a right mess of this, all right.

"Hmm," says Dream, peering at him over the coffee cup. This indicates nothing to Hob about how he feels about the cafe situation.

"I just worried that more noise and stuff might bother you," Hob rushes to explain. "You seem. To. You know. Like your quiet. Is all."

"It is my understanding that cafes and bookstores frequently have symbiotic relationships," says Dream evenly, though he's still watching Hob with unnerving intensity.

Well. That was easy. Maybe Hob was just worrying over nothing. Wanting to be liked when it wouldn't have been an issue.

"Alright," he says, letting out a breath. "Well. Good!"

"Good," echoes Dream, with a tiny, wry smile.

"What is this place anyway? I've seen no signage whatsoever."

"It's called The Library," Dream says.

Hob waits for him to explain. He doesn't. "Um, but... isn't it a shop?"

Dream raises an unimpressed eyebrow. "And?"

"So..." Hob says, "it's not a library."

"Purchasing something is but extended borrowing from the universe," says Dream, like that makes any sense at all.

But Hob decides there's other things he'd rather do with a pretty goth bookstore/library/whatever owner than argue semantics. "What do you carry, then?"

Now Dream preens like a cat. "The Library contains every book in print."

Now it's Hob's turn to raise an eyebrow. "That seems... unlikely? Impossible?"

Dream's self-satisfied little smile doesn't fade. "You are welcome to browse the stacks and let me know if there is anything you cannot find."

And, well, it's true that Hob didn't really get a sense of just how far back this place goes. It looks small from the street, but he's already wandered pretty far in just to find Dream, and has yet to reach a back wall.

"I will definitely have to come back," he agrees. And get lost. Definitely get lost. He's not even sure he can find his way out. He'll probably get swallowed up in Oneiromancy.

"In return I will be sure to visit your cafe," says Dream. He says it so strangely, like crossing into a foreign land. I will be sure to visit your court. "Are you open late?"

"On Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, yup," says Hob.

"Excellent." Dream inclines his head imperiously to Hob. "Thank you. For the coffee."

Hob figures he should let him get back to his labeling. He has plenty of his own work, too.

"Yeah, sure, any time. Good to meet you, Dream."

And then he scurries away before he can make it any weirder, makes his meandering way out of "The Library," and doesn't get lost in Oneiromancy.

This time.

--

The following night, Hob looks up from the till to find Dream standing across the counter from him. He looks much the same as before, with the addition of a long dark coat over his clothes, and no reading glasses this time. He offers Hob a tiny smile. "Hob Gadling."

Gosh, he looks, if possible, even prettier in the warm lighting of the cafe than in the darkness of his shop. Though to be honest, Hob had half-convinced himself he'd hallucinated Dream's existence. He hasn't seen anyone go in or out of the shop since.

"Dream," he greets, with a smile. "Anything I can get for you?"

"It is I who have something for you." He hands Hob what must be a book, though it's wrapped in brown paper. "Consider it a return gift. Or perhaps. A welcome."

And before Hob can even ask if he wants coffee or something, if he wants to sit down, he slips back out through the crowd and onto the street like a vapor, and then he's gone.

Hob tears open the paper. And then stares at the book in astonishment.

It's the book. Everyone has one. The book once read but since forgotten in the shuffle of time; title, author, too vague in recollection to pin down. Unsearchable. Never found, for all that the heart of the story might have lodged its way in somewhere deep.

It's one of those books that he remembers in blistering detail now that it's in his hands, that he read in uni but couldn't have found for the life of him on his own, and Dream's just handed it to him over the counter of his cafe.

He runs his fingertip over the midnight blue cover, the embossed lettering. In Search of Nightingales. And it's only as he looks up again at the hidden shop across the street, that he realizes he never told Dream his name, either.

[ae-neon]

Nesta Vs ACOSF, a rambling rant

TW: mentions of sexual assault and abuse

Besides the "love" story that read like a quiet descent into domestic horror, ACOSF has one element that keeps me from being able to pick it up even just to sift through for Nesta gems: sex.

Here me out, I'm not a prude and I think we could have gotten a smutty romance but...

At her core, Nesta has always been a proud and modest person.

To be clear, with pride, I mean that her sense of self - her famous steel spine - has kept her together and unbroken even during harrowing circumstances. It's vital to her. It's so ingrained in her that - given we have no other explanation - we can assume it's what shields her mind from literal magic. However, like any trait, her pride can also be a thing that comes off as negative in the wrong situations.

With modesty, she was raised to keep a certain ideology that based her value on sex, beauty, marriage etc but it's important to understand that Nesta applied those standards inwards, at herself. (Eg In acotar, she brings up Feyre and Isaac in defence of her and Tomas, in acomaf, she is mostly upset about not hearing from Feyre or being notified that Feyre has switched courts - not about Feyre sleeping with Tamlin and then Rhys)

Now, I don't think Nesta's modesty makes her better than Feyre, in fact I was happy to get the representation of two different types of views on sex

But what I didn't consider at the time was that SJM was painting this out to be a negative trait.

In retrospect it seems obvious even though Nesta has defied her narrative destiny and become a sort of icon, at the end of the day she was still supposed to be written in a negative contrast to Feyre.

It seems funny but imagine you consumed the book the way Sarah intended, the way so many in the fandom have. The old Sarah Says rule, for my long time mutuals.

For example:

The dinner in acomaf - it's obvious Nesta is upset that she hasn't heard from Feyre only to have her come through not only as a whole Fae but bringing others and endangering their entire family.

But imagine it as a one dimensional reading and suddenly the "I fuck" dialogue is a girlboss moment of feminism giving a fuck you to the strict patriarchy of the "mortal lands" let's ignore how the Fae are actually more patriarchal and the Illyrians even more so than that

So understand that Nesta's modesty is being directly contrasted with Feyre's sexual freedom. The reader - at least from sjm's perspective - is supposed to agree with Feyre and disagree with Nesta in a sort of win/lose, yes/no, black/white dichotomy.

And because sjm is consistent and boring and a self-inset author, this dynamic doesn't change even when the protagonist does.

Only now sjm and her feminism has changed from fuck-whoever-I-want girlboss to kinky-but-only-with-my-husband tradwife

So Nesta can't be prudish and cut off because 1) it's not as conducive to the breakdown of self and buildup of a dependent and abusive relationship and 2) it's not in direct contrast with Feyre's current monogamous, traditional family values character.

So Nesta starts drinking and sleeping around and it's not because we're going to explore the unraveling of the pride and modesty at the core of the character as part of her transformation or as a result of her trauma

But because it's supposed to be a bad look, degrading, it shows she's failed, it makes her a loser

All of that is already insane. And even more so when taken with the context of her assault by Tomas and the sex centred relationship she has with Cassian

Now add to that the fact that in the book, Nesta is an object of desire for 2 villains and undergoes assault and drowning AGAIN

Sjm literally gives less than 2 fucks about SA, that much is obvious even from the way she inflicts and then disregards the experience of both Feyre and Rhysand respectively. It's a tool for her, a quirky story element

But to have Nesta experience such a similar thing - especially when the experience of being Made can be read as a sort of rape allegory on its own - and all for the sake of "romance" fantasy??

Even Nesta's reading habits are sexualised, to be clear I don't think there's anything wrong with reading smut, but the scope of her intellect and reading is narrowed down when we're suddenly made to believe most of the books she reads are smut.

This is someone who likely taught herself economics and investment within months in order to not just pay off the debt, upgrade her whole family's way of life but also rebuild the family fortune. Someone who, having stopped schooling at around 14/15, did the math needed to calculate the feasibility of the evacuation of a small country.

Someone who's verbally stated life goal was to see what a woman could make of herself in the world.

Even her love of reading is used as a stepping stone for how horny she is, instead of it being a result of her deeply ingrained need for escapism

She reads smut because the only thing she has in common with Cassian and the IC is sex. Because sjm thought one of the core elements of a friendship between 2 SA survivors and a disabled woman from a culture that mutilated her for being born a woman would be their desire to fantasise about men.

All the while the male love interest treats her like garbage.

We could have had a smutty book filled with sex where each scene could have been the growth of Nesta's trust and love of Cassian through intimacy. It could have been a sexual relationship that involved and explored kink - which explored vulnerability and the negative impact of how Nesta's pride became a source of stress and strain.

It could have been an exploration about the complicated relationship with desire and oppressors that many survivors have. But it isn't.

It's hahaha horny, so RELATABLE

Even when it comes to the abusive situation Nesta grew up in, it's just hung up like decoration on the character. Not explored, let alone healed. I don't wanna hear that sjm explained or explored Nesta's abuse when we don't even get her mother or her grandmother's names

We don't get

The complexity of being a trapped and abused woman who came from a trapped and abused woman who came from a trapped and abused woman

Or the complexity of a dysfunctional family

Or even the journey of recovery from addiction and self-harming behaviour

Now, not every aspect of Nesta or any survivors lives have to boil down to how it relates to their experiences but SJM is praised for her "recovery" and so much of this book is about sex and abuse but has no depth

It could have been a less-deep, fun experience of sex and desire and kink. But no

Nesta has sex with many faceless men because sjm is condemning her as a failure. Sex is her punishment, it makes her dirty and unworthy and cheap.

Then, through her "healing", she becomes a sex doll for the right guy. Sex is her reward, it makes her hot and useful and appealing.

Sjm writes not just like a man but like a particularly talented misogynist so it's the way sex is used that really puts me off

Edit: ultimately I think the sex and romance should have interacted with and evolved her pride, modesty and past experiences, rather than those things being demolished to turn her into a sex doll

[wanderingoff]

Challengers Fic Recs!

I've completely fallen down the Challengers fic rabbit hole since I saw the movie a second time in June, and I'm surprised I haven't seen any Challengers rec lists floating around! I've read what feels like half the tag at this point, so I decided, hey, I guess that one's on me. I've been really impressed by the overall quality of what I've been reading, so these really feel like the creme de la creme and I hope even if you haven't read Challengers fic before, you give some of them a shot! (I will say, I'm not sure this is the best fandom to read without having seen the film, but the movie is SO good, just watch it and then come back) (Also, I don't read Reader inset fic which seems really popular in the fandom, so no shade to any of those authors, just not my bag!)

I wrote these little summaries cuz this post was so long! Without further ado, in order of length so I didn't have to obsess over that too:

let it once be me by wastelandbaby - 4444 words, M, Post-canon, Throuple, Getting together. Summary: An immediate post-match threesome can't fix what's wrong with them. Tashi and Patrick are texting and Art's crippling insecurity won't let him see what's directly in front of his face. Art POV. Rec: This fic is so short and un-sweet; I want to say it speedruns the beats that make so many throuple getting together fics work except it doesn't feel rushed in the slightest, and the ending is completely unique and honestly took my breath away.

open heart / open container by comosum - 5106 words, M, Post-Canon, Getting together Summary: The throuple is getting together, but Art and Patrick have to have a conversation first. Art POV. Rec: A large portion of this is one conversation and the dialogue fucking slaps. It does an unusually good job of having Art and Patrick directly/explicitly address each other's queerness before initiating sex, managing to thread the needle of "he would not fucking say that" and "it's actually not totally unrealisitic for these guys to be moderately self-aware at least of themselves."

give it a hand, offer it a soul by thcscus - 6493 words, T, Post-Canon, Established Throuple Patrick is playing his best for Art and Tashi. Patrick gets injured. Patrick doesn't know if it's the tennis that's over, or everything. Mixed POV. Rec: In the Exquisite Agony fandom, this is possibly the most Exquisitely Agonizing fic I've read. It's horrific. It's shocking how short it is compared to the rest of this list, but within the first 400 words my heart was in my fucking throat and it didn't come down for the remainder.

a romantic fool by spqr - 10300 words, E, Canon-compliant, Established Throuple. Lily is Patrick's. Art loves her for it. Art POV. Rec: Hands down, the fic that inspired this list and one of my gateway drugs into Challengers fic. I want everyone to read it.

this monstrous fire by kithmet - 10672 words, E, Post-Canon Throuple Getting together. An immediate post-match threesome can fix what's wrong with them. Along with some eavesdropping. Art POV. Bonus: kithmet made an incredible Challengers playlist not specifically for this fic, open relationship Rec: This is the closest thing to a fix-it on this list (it's very far from a fix-it), and I think convincing me these three could possibly figure their shit out in the short timeline of this fic is incredibly impressive character work.

neverland by ameliepoulain - 14079 words, E, Post-Canon, Art/Patrick, Getting together. Patrick quits tennis and moves on. Art quits tennis and does not. Patrick POV. (The second part of the series, second star to the right, is Art POV, pre-throuple, and essential.)(Bonus! Comes with playlist!*) Rec: Of all the fic on this list, I think this one takes the biggest swing on its set-up and for me that completely pays off. The two parts of the series also do an incredible job of demonstrating how opaque these people are to each other and do SUCH a good job of differentiating voices/experiences).

wishbone by a__peach__tree - 18375 words, E, Post-Canon, Throuple, Getting together. An immediate post-match threesome can't fix what's wrong with them. Patrick buys a ticket to the US Open, and waits, and tries to get his life together. Patrick POV. Comes with playlist*! Rec: This author does the most convincing Patrick-trying-his-hardest I've read; the action becomes so interior over the course of the fic and the tension ramps up so high I caught myself talking to the characters out loud, literally begging them to do the right thing.

american doubles by sticky valentine - 19166 words, E, Post-Canon, Throuple, Getting Together. An immediate post-match threesome won't fix what's wrong with them. Art invites Patrick to follow them to Cincinatti. Tashi thinks she knows what's going on. Tashi POV. Rec: I'm SO glad I found this fic before sending this post to press because we need Tashi POV and I think this does a great job of drawing back the curtain on her machinations and leaning into how human, fallible, and confused she is.

make it all look painless by sundaymournin - 20277 words, M, During-canon slight AU Or, this author outright rejects that these three had the self-control to actually stay away from one another. Art POV. Rec: Another true Exquisite Agony fic; it interlaces with canon beautifully and addresses Art's obvious anxiety more directly than anything else on this list, along with his self-loathing. This is the fic that takes the "none of them can stop hurting each other or themselves" to it's logical extreme without like, actual extreme behavior that would break character or make canon events impossible.

Bonus AU: it's getting better by spqr - 9025 words, T, No injury AU Let Art and Patrick be shlubs! Reckon with painful truth of a life in service to a single, unloving dream! Let Tashi find her way back to them anyway! Tashi POV. Rec: For me, the appeal of Challengers is how well crafted the movie is, so I've shied away from the handful of AUs. But a) ALL of spqr's Challengers fics are shockingly good, and b) out of all the fic on this list, this is the one I can most easily hear the dialogue in the actual voices of these characters & their actors, which is a high compliment from someone who does not have a very concrete imagination.

*I made these Spotify playlists based off text lists of songs in the author's notes of these fics.

[atlasdoe]

Unpopular Marauders opinions

i'm bored so here are some opinions that i'm too scared to say on any other platform

Deciding that Pandora Lovegood had to be from a death eater family (Rosier, Malfoy, Lestrange) was the worst thing this fandom ever did to her character

The fannon characterisation of Marlene McKinnon gives me massive self inset pick me vibes and i hate every part of it (and i really mean every part of it)

This fandom isn't misogynistic y'all are just too demanding and expect the fandom to be the exact same as any other where we have a hardcore cannon source for every one of these characters and ships. we do not. we know more about Barty Crouch Jr then we do about Marlene McKinnon, Mary MacDonald and Dorcas Meadowes combined. it's unrealistic and stupid to expect everyone to care about the same characters and ships to the same capacity as you do when we are not watching/reading the same thing. (if any of that makes sense)

Barty Crouch Jr, Evan Rosier and pretty much every single other death eater were villains. it's okay to like them and want to expand on them but stop trying to make every bad guy secretly good

We cannot keep blaming Dumbledore for everything. Dumbledore had nothing to do with half of the deaths that you are accusing him of. blaming Dumbledore and headcannoning that he obliviated Mary and turned Regulus away and all that takes away from everyone else's characters, sacrifice and choices

The Marauders weren't child soldiers. They had a choice on if they wanted to join the Order or not and they chose to because they're Gryffindors and they're The Marauders and probably thought of themselves as some invisible hero's. They don't need to be seen as victims to Dumbledore for them to be tragic

There is a cannon and you cannot be mad at people for wanting to stick by it

Similarly Fannon Sirius is against cannon. Sirius is one of the primary adult characters in the Harry Potter series. He is literally the title character to the fan favourite book/film. We have so much information about how he acts and "oh Remus i'm your little bitch please let me sit on your lap because i'm only small" ISNT ONE OF THEM

Death to alpha male Remus. DEATH I SAY

This fandom is so obsessed with making every character tragic that the word has lost all meaning. It is possible for Mary to be happy yknow???

Someone in the fandom: "hey look at this cannon character who seems quite interesting" The rest of the fandom: "how can we make this character have some kind of relation to every other character that we already care about??" IM SO SICK OF IT!!! NOT EVERYONE HAS TO BE DATING EVERYONE

Stop trying to change the name of the Slytherin Skittles. Yes it's a stupid name but it's somehow stuck and you're not changing that. just let it be

I ship Remus with anyone who is not more then a year younger then him and i mean literally everyone. Give me Remus and Voldemort fanfic for all I care

I've already said this before but the prank is overrated

Leave my girl Emmeline alone. Why are y'all shipping her with Barty?? Why are you making her the other women to Marlily?? Why are you making her anything but a Ravenclaw?? Do you hate her?? She hasn't done anything to you😭😭 (no but seriously tho i get that headcannons are headcannons but Emmeline is my girl and i have been expanding on her character since 2019 when no one gave a rats arse about her so seeing her shipper with BARTY ruined my life)

That's all i can think of for now please don't hate me but if you wanna talk send me an ask or reply cause i love talking about this kind of stuff :)

[cozyhatchling]

Ooh could I maybe request hcs for zhongli as a baby regressor? I know most people hc him as a cg but he's so tiny to me 🤏

Absolutely! Thanks a bunch for the request~

Baby Zhongli Headcanons!

I usually write about older regressors, so this is a really interesting one for me!

Zhongli doesn't regress very often, but when he does, it comes on pretty quickly

He's usually able to put it off until he's home and safe and able to indulge himself~

He doesn't have much gear specifically, but he does have things that bring him comfort when he's feeling small, especially some old, well-loved stuffed animals (his favorite is a big fluffy lion)

He usually doesn't have a carer and doesn't necessarily feel like he needs one; even when regressed, he's fairly self-sufficient

His favorite thing to do while regressed is snuggle up in a big blanket nest and put on a little device he has that projects stars and planets on the ceiling

The one and only regression-specific thing he has is a pacifier that he had custom-made. It's inset with onyx and yellow diamonds, and it's so beautiful~ He loves looking at it, though he hides it well when he's not using it

One of the only times he feels the stress of life lifted from his shoulders is when he can cuddle up in his softest clothes and fluffy blankets, sleepily watching golden stars float across his walls with his plushies and binkie~

Ahh, I'm sorry if this is a little short! Zhongli deserves his baby time, poor guy needs to relax...

If you'd like to make a request of our own, please check out my info post!

Thanks for reading!

[20dollarlolita]

An absurdly and unnecessarily over-the-top and thorough breakdown of using my embroidery machine for a cosplay piece.

Part 1) The piece:

Many iterations of Princess Zelda from the Legend of Zelda series has this tapestry front piece. I've looked for a technical name for this piece as well as extant examples of it from our history, and my research is indicating that it's just a fantasy piece and doesn't have a name.

So we're calling it an apron. IDK. "Heraldic apron," sounds fancy enough.

One of the things that's been a bitch through all cosplay of all time is custom textiles. Since the early days of cosplay, we've been looking for ways to handle this at home. Back when I got into cosplay and took it really seriously, Worbla hadn't been invented, there was no Friendly Plastic, Wonderflex had to be purchased in 15-yard lots, the Glowforge and home 3D printing was just a fantasy, and Cricut machines ran off cartridges and couldn't design from your computer. Also, when I was cosplaying seriously, I was a college student with no job and a $100/month allowance for food (which I spent on cosplay, mostly). We didn't do fancy shit. You know what we did?

We had fuckin' hand-traced and hand-cut stencils. Mother fuckin' freezer. Paper. Stencils. Now, this version of Zelda that 2009 Me is cosplaying up there does have a much simpler heraldic apron than Ocarina of Time Zelda does. However, since I've gotten access to embroidery machines, I've had this great need to remake this sort of concept with adult me's current budget and skill set.

Now, there's a few issues from the start about making this. The notable one is that the in-game textures for the apron do not completely line up with the official artwork. When you start looking at the 3DS remakes, they re-textured the apron, giving us yet a third canonical way that this thing might be laid out.

Obviously, the easiest thing to do is to get several references, and then to slap them next to each other and compare. I've got GIMP pulled up here, and have several versions here. I adjusted color levels until the pattern in the garment was as clear as I could make it. There's horizontal guide lines going across to divide the apron into sections. We'll call those sections thusly, top to bottom: Triforce, Eyeball, Bird, 8 Rectangles, and V.

***

This is going to be long and boring. I have my reasons for writing a long and boring post, but sadly, I'm not able to share them without becoming un-boring, thus defeating the purpose of this work.

***

I forgot to label them, so that reference image is, from left to right: N64 screenshot, 3DS screenshot, N64 character model, small inset at the bottom is 3DS, official artwork that was released alongside the N64 game, a heraldic tabard, some official rendering of the Hylian crest, and another 3DS screenshot.

Some are pretty self-explanatory, and some are more open to interpretation. Notably, let's take a look at the Bird section. The official artwork and the 3DS remake both distinctly have the Hylian Family Crest there. The N64 version has a very distinctly different bird thing.

So, I had to decide, which one do I put on my apron? I had to consider several things, but one of them was the process of how game textures from the N64 era were made. Textures for this game were very small image files, smaller than your 2009 cosplay.com forum avatar. The reference art would be made and then other people would be in charge of turning that art into a usable texture file, so there was artistic license involved in adapting that. This game was released before the Hylian crest had been used in multiple places across several games. Therefore, we can justify making the assumption that the texture artists didn't have an understanding of how important it was to keep this part the exact shape it was, and turned "stylized bird" into "stylized bird" in a way that would read clearly on screen at 45x100 pixels. We can assume this to be the case, because, when Grezzo did the 3DS remake, their texture artist used the Hylian crest instead of the OoT bird thing.

***

Sorry for all the embroidery stuff in the past few days. I've attracted the attention of a couple people online and embroidery seems to bore them, so we're doing that for a little bit until I stop being interesting.

,***

Cosplay has a spectrum of screen-accuracy to full-nonsense. In some things, you can do screen accuracy very well. Screen-Accurate Princess Leia from EpIV is pretty easy to make look good. Sometimes, you can do full nonsense pretty well, too. Princess Leia, but in if Star Wars was steampunk, also pretty easy to make look good.

Some things aren't as easy to make look good when you're doing screen-accurate. Sephiroth's hair in most of the Final Fantasy games stands up off his head by like 30% the height of his face. If you math that out, you have a wig with 5" antennas swooping up in the front. When you put that on a head, it looks silly. Do you want your Sephiroth to look silly? No? Then you need to do something about that hair.

My cosplay rule that I try to stick with is this: If you need to make a decision between what is "accurate" and what looks good, you pick what looks good. As long as the character reads as the character when you're done, it's better to look good than to be accurate.

And this is why, instead of just tracing any of these aprons in my embroidery software, I broke out a pen and drew the whole thing out.

Actually, I drew half of it out. The left half to be specific. I know that I'm going to mess with this later on my computer, and I know that I want the thing to be symmetrical, so let's save everyone (mostly me) some trouble and just do half of it.

Why was it important to me to draw it full size? Remember, that texture we're referencing is less than 100 pixel wide. The final piece is going to be full size, so there's a lot of things that just don't scale up easily. We're basically going from a texture the size of my thumb nail to something that has to be more high-def than 8K. This basically meant that I needed to redraw it from scratch to get that resolution. Lots of little details are going to have to be added, and I'm much better at adding them with a pen than I am just guessing while I'm digitizing the file to embroider.

So, I took it, pulled it into GIMP, and made some adjusting. I mirrored it so that I have both a left and a right side to work with. I changed the contrast so that I could see the lines better. I didn't like the Hylian crest that I drew so I just plopped the official SVG onto it and dragged it around until it fit.

And then, and this is kind of important, I cropped the image so that it's the exact proportions that I want the final thing to be. My whole design is in this file, and there's no outside image. This is important, because I'm going to use this as a template to trace in MySewnet, and the easiest way to get the background to behave properly is to pre-set it to the exact size you need in another program. Good thing this software isn't stupid absurdly expensive, or else the fact that you needed to do that would be really annoying.

The digitizing process:

Okay, so the first thing that I do is to make a custom hoop the size of the finished project. There's no way that I can actually stitch this out this big, because a 25" long hoop doesn't exist anywhere, but it's way easier to design all of it and then split it up than it is to design in pieces and then fit them together. I open the hoop in the digitizing software and load my template as the background.

Digitizing from a technical viewpoint is really simple: you click points all around the area you want to make a shape, and then you hit "make this thing", and then it renders the thing. You can then give that thing a different kind of fill or line. Easy.

So instead, I'm going to go into the art part. Because yes, I've already drawn this whole template, but I haven't figured out how to fill each of those shapes. This isn't like a coloring book where I can just fill a shape with color. Embroidery means that I have to pick how exactly I fill all those areas.

First up, I have the legendary Golden Triumph Forks. The Magical Eating Utensils. I wasn't super sold on how this was rendered in the official art. We can vaguely see how, in the game art, it looks a little more like a red outline with corner flourishes, rather than what we got in the artwork. I probably should have looked up some historical flourishes from time periods in world history where technology matched the apparent technology of the world of the Legend of Zelda, but I just kind of picked a random frilly shape.

The Triforce is one of the most important symbols in Zelda, so I knew that I wanted it to be a bright shape. This meant that I wanted to fill the shape with stitches in such a way that none of the purple backing is showing through. In embroidery terms, this usually means either a full pattern fill, or an applique. I picked applique, because this is an easy shape to applique. I knew from the start that I was going to use metallic tissue lamé. Lamé's great for a lot of things, but it's weak and shows creases. To avoid that, I wanted to put in a fill stitch to support the fabric and prevent damage, as well as hiding any big creases. I picked a big and open motif fill that will still show a lot of the applique fabric.

Eyeball:

So this is, specifically, the Sheikah Eye. It's an important symbol in the series. The Sheikah stick this eye on pretty much everything. However, it's not a fancy, gaudy, ostentatious symbol.

I grabbed a motif line at random from the list of motif lines, and happened to like it. It's a very heavy stem stitch that goes over each stitch 4-6 times, making a big, raised area. To make sure the eye was visible, I filled in the iris, teardrop, and eyelashes. I picked an opaque spiral fill, because it's a circle and these general shapes are circles. A while back, I bought some metallic white "iris" thread, and thought that a subtly-iridescent white would fit nicely.

Those little eyelashes at the bottom that aren't there in the art? Well, there's there in the game render juuuuust a little bit, and also they fall into "if it looks better that way, it's the correct way" mentality.

The Hylian Crest.

Fuck this thing.

All you need to know about this is two things: 1) I just traced the SVG that I found on the Zelda wiki, and 2) I didn't plan on stitching it out with black outlining. That black outline is just there to confuse my software into doing what I want.

Since this is as important as the triforce, I knew I wanted to do it in silver lamé. That means all of this is an applique. Quick tip: if you're going to be breaking a design into smaller segments, don't do any applique so big that it has to be spread over two segments.

Ask me how I know.

I originally had this filled with the same chain stitch that I used on the Triforce, but it made things look very samey and very mushy. I later switched it to a triangle-shaped spaced fill. I selected the triangle as the correct shape by clicking every shape one at a time and seeing what they looked like. Since this was going to be a running stitch on a shiny applique background, the fine details don't really matter. You actually can't see them normally, which is why I had to change the color here.

The outline there is the same stem motif that I used in the Sheikah eye. I found that it's wide enough to cover an applique edge without having to look like a satin stitch.

Squares, Triangles, and the Face Thing.

I have no idea what that face thing is supposed to be and apparently neither did anyone else on the internet. Since it just kind of looked like a scribble, I just rendered it as a scribble. I used a satin column so that it could have line weight similar to a drawing with a paint brush, and the shiny satin line would look like wet ink. Also known as phoning it in.

The triangles are filled with a contour fill that just traces the edges of the shape. I left some space between the lines so that the purple background can show through. This gives is sort of an optical illusion of movement. The outside of this was originally that same stem motif line from before, but after I stitched it out, I realized ti was too heavy. The final version had the same motif, but smaller, and with fewer repeats of the stitch.

I'm so damn proud of those fucking gold boxes. Okay, so, let's look at the design. Why are there gold boxes? What do they do? What do they mean? Do they represent the eight dungenons in the original game? Nope, because there were nine dungeons in the original game. Are they the eight sages? No, because there's seven sages. Is it what happens when you average the number of dungeons and sages out? I don't know. Anyway, they looked stupid just being little gold boxes, so I gave them blunted corners. I did another contour fill because I wanted them to lie flat on the finished apron and not draw any attention to themselves. As for the little tail, folks, I discovered a technique and I'm FULLY READY to abuse the heck out of it. So, I traced the lines with a satin column, ready to try to mess with the spacing to see if it'd lie flat with enough work. I hit "convert to tapered motif" by complete accident, and it was kind of cool. So, then, I went through the various motif options, found some cool looking scrolls, hit "fit to line" and slapped those in there. And I think that the little tails being written in some weird language I can't understand is SO COOL. I love how this part looks and I will not be taking other opinions on it at this time.

The V.

I didn't like how either of them looked in the original, so I just kind of winged it. I was getting bored at this point so I took a pattern fill that was supposed to be linked chains, and then I twisted it around until I was the least bored I could be with it. Again, I went with the smaller stem stitching on the outside.

Those little tails on the circles there are also filled with the scroll as tapered motif thing. If you go for this, don't forget to run the "delete short stitches" filter or else there'll be like 1100 unnecessary tiny stitches in your motifs. Ask me how I know.

Now, we learn by making mistakes, and the best way to make mistakes is to just jump in and wing it. On the left, we have the first version of this that I tried. On the right, we have the second version, which is the one I'm going to use. I've made a couple of adjustments to the file since that final version, so if I make it again, that'll be just a hair better.

So, for starters: backing fabric. I liked the movement and texture on this subtle dot tonal better than a solid purple, so i used that for both my test and my final project. The main drawback with using a printed tonal instead of a dyed solid is that the back of the printed fabric is still white. On some things, specifically the area around the satin stitching on the ink face thing, you can see subtle white haloing where the stitching's displaced the background. I don't like it. No one else seemed to notice or care.

I knew that I'd be doing this in my endless repositionable hoop, but I hadn't taken into account that I'd be doing it in the endless hoop sideways. The endless hoop expects you to go from top to bottom, and my design goes left to right. This means that I have to fight the fabric around the clamp of the hoop. The endless hoop also doesn't hold things as tightly as a regular hoop does. Because of the way the fabric is moved through the hoop, a fusible or sticky stabilizer has to be applied to the fabric before, instead of being hooped with the fabric. All of this meant that I just didn't get the support that I needed on the first go around. You can see this in the way that the fabric has bunched up around the 8 boxes. For the first round, I used some fusible no-show mesh stabilizer. It wasn't wide enough, so I had to cut it in chunks and apply it sideways. For the second round, I used two layers of Power Mesh (same stuff but different brand) as well as a layer of light+tacky paperless sticky tear-away. I really hate that light+tacky stuff so ti's exciting to finally use it up.

My first trial was mostly to see if I could make the endless hoop work like I wanted it to. In this trial, I learned a lot of things. I kept the computer nearby to make changes as I noticed them. When I was done, I looked at what I'd made. I didn't like all the proportions in all of the design, so I dragged some stuff around in the file. This was when I realized that the heavy stem stitch motif everywhere was looking clunky, and reduced or removed it from several places. I changed the fill of the Hylian crest to the triangular fill. shout out to anyone from That One Anonymous Message Board who made it this far in this post to try to prove how deranged I am. You've got a lot of time on your hands, don't you? I completely changed all of the instructions to tell the computer how to do the applique on the Hylian crest (which I STILL got wrong), and added some aligment stitches to help with the applique process. This was when I changed the color of the outline in the software. Ideally, you should now be able to lay the applique down as one fabric, let the machine sew the whole thing, and then trim it. This is important, because that applique spreads out over two hoopings, so it's kind of a mess. The secret to making this work is for hooping #2 (eye and top half of crest) to stitch out the eye BEFORE the applique, so that the whole fabric can be placed over the completed eye. We learn.

Once it was all combined and digitized, it's important to render all the digitized elements as stitches, and then do a bit of cleaning up.

Notably, I really needed to take those tapered motifs and run the stitch optimizer program. The stitch optimizer's job is to remove stitches that are too short to stitch out nicely. When looking at the 3d views in the software, I can't tell which of the samples is the before and which is the after. If I zoom up really close in illustration mode, I can see it, but remember that this is like a 1" wide strip of stitching. The basic rule is that any time the software wants to remove 3300 stitches and you can't see the difference in the stitch-out, you REALLY WANTED to remove those 3300 stitches. That's not 3100 stitches from all over the design, BTW. That's just 3100 stitches from that one section.

I go over my test swatch, section by section, and make sure there's nothing that I forgot to put into the software. I also just delete every jump cut and then make the software add them all back in. The program that adds cuts automatically tends to be more judicious wit them than the digitizing program is when you make the design, so it's a way to make a design stitch out a lot smoother with just two clicks.

So, once all of that is done, we can just run the design splitter program. The design splitter says it has "intelligent splitting" settings, which is an absolute joke, but I use inteligent setting anyway. It's not necessarily any better at picking where to split than a straight line is, but our eyes are trained to see straight lines. The allegedly-intelligent splitting does at least split at random points, making it harder for your eyes to pick out what's a splice and what's a continuous line.

So, in addition to "intelligently" splitting the design apart, the program adds two color blocks to each split piece. One is before the stitches, and it's four stitches long. This just does one stitch at each corner of the design area.

The second block it adds is at the end. This block stitches a corner marker at each corner in the design. In this picture, the before line is green and the after line is red. I offset them by a little bit so that you can see what's going on, but they do happen directly on top of each other.

This is important, because you're trying to lay your design out so that every section of the split design lies perfectly next to the other ones. When you re-hoop your fabric, you can step through the first four stitches. If you've placed your fabric correctly, then those stitches should perfectly touch the markers that were sewn in the previous blocks. If they don't line up, you can just re-hoop over and over and over and over until it lines up.

In theory, you can line up an entire design just using these markers and the alignment stitches. You can just keep rehooping forever until it lines up. It's great. On the other hand, if your embroidery machine has literally ANY KIND of design placement setting onboard, that can help a whole lot. The astute observer will note that, on that picture way up at the top, that machine isn't my Topaz 50. That's because the T50 has some nice basic design positioning that will let you place within a certain range, but it won't let you tilt the design if you hooped it crooked. I did the first attempt at this on my Topaz, and it was fine, but there was a lot of re-hooping. So I might have taken this to work, to do this on the machine that's a step up from mine. (While I was there, I used a sit-down Bernina longarm to "hand"-baste the stabilizer on. That's not the intended use of the machine, but if you set stitch regulation to like 1 stitch per inch, and then you just pull the fabric straight through from the side, you get perfectly straight basting lines. If you're not feeling like dedicating an entire room in your house to having a free-motion machine just to baste straight lines, most mid-tier sewing machines have a fake hand-basting setting in them somewhere). Anyway, if you don't already have a bunch of hoops from HV, you can get that kind of positioning setup on Brother and Baby Lock for much less than the cost of the machine I was working on. If doing big multi-hoop projects like this is a priority for you, ask your salespeople about machines that make this really easy.

You now also have the great trade-off: the smaller the hoop, the tighter the design will hoop, and the less stabilizer you'll need. However, the bigger the hoop, the more you can shift the design around in the machine without hitting the edge. The tighter the hoop grabs, the less stabilizer you need, but the harder it is to shift the fabric that's already being held in the hoop to get it where you need it to go.

I handled this by just fucking throwing a shit ton of fucking stabilizer at it like there was no tomorrow. There's three layers on this bad boy.

You might be saying "Why didn't you just use a heavier cut-away?" and you'd be right, except for two things. 1) if I use two lighter layers, then I can trim the stabilizer away in layers, avoiding the stabilizer showing through and 2) my store didn't have any wide fusible cut-away in stock so

Anyway, here it is, time to make it into the actual apron. I'm very excited for this project. I'll probably break out the repositionable hoop again to do a border on the outside of the completed project, but I don't know for sure exactly what that'll look like.

[yourkimjaejin]

Getting All The Info

"So there's just one more thing you guys need to know about know that you're offically NCT members." Juno walks over to her bag and retrieves a book with a laminated cover. Tossing the book into Sion awaiting hands, Wish's leader turns it over to read the title.

"The NCT Codes??" Sion glances from the book to his fellow leader, confused but curious. His other members scoot closer, all of them closing in to get a good look at the book too.

"The NCT Codes. We didn't have a legit book up until a couple of months ago but the leaders and I figured it was better to give you guys a guide to how we operate." Juno took a seat in front of them and grabbed the book from Sion's hands.

"NCT is a group of 30 people with complex personalities. Sometimes its hard to share what's going on, you don't feel like talking and you want everyone to leave you alone for an hour or two. That's what the codes are for. It signals to every member what you want or need." Juno flipped to the the first page before handing the book back to the boys.

"You don't have to memorize all of them cause they're are alot. But the first three or four pages have the most relevant ones that you all should know." Instead of going back to practice, Juno took time to explain some of the codes the boys asked about

Code: Missing [inset item here]

"Between the thirty of us, there's a ton of places where items can get lost. This code just lets the members what to look out for. Make sure if you use it to send the code with a description or picture of the item."

Code: Eminem

"This is for anytime you wanna hang out with the members after a long day. This usually leads to a big movie night with a bunch of junk food so just be ready for that."

Code: Knights Of The Round Table

"A special code for the leaders and their second-in commands. This one if used frequently to go over scheduling so everyone knows where the others are. Sion-ah from now on, we'll both be attending these meetings together."

Code: Parental Supervision

"Whenever your doing something but you want one of the leaders there with you, use that code and whoever's free will show up. I want you all to remembers there's no shame in using this. A lot of us use Parental Supervision when we have to deal with managers or show runners we'd rather not be around alone.

Code: Sick Leave

"Self-explanatory but if any of you are sick, please tell us so we can help if we can.

Code: Alone Time

"Use this anytime you want a moment alone. There's also another code to use when your ready to be around people again."

Code: Wardrobe Malfunction

"If your unsure or uncomfortable in any wardrobe choices the stylists have made, Use this code. One of the leaders or a hyung will get everything sorted."

This kept going for a while, The boys asking about codes while Juno explained their uses. Some were funny, painting a portraits of the moments that lead to it creation. Others were more sobering. Those ones showed the new members what their older members had been through to get to the present.

"Ane, Did you write this last one." Sakuya flipped to the back of the book. The last six pages were blank except for some familiar handwriting . Sakuya could tell Juno's script anywhere. No matter what language she was writing in, it always looked pretty and polished. Ryo looked over his shoulder to see what was written.

"Code: Ane? What's this for?"

"Code: Ane is a NCT Wish only code. That's what the blank pages are for. Every group has their own book where they can write down codes specific to their sub-unit. These blank pages are for us and I figured as leader, I'd come up with the first one." Juno moved closer to the boys taking a seat between Ryo and Riku.

"Code: Ane is for any of you to use whenever you need me. You drop the code and I'm gonna come running as fast as I can." Even though they haven't been together long, Juno's top priority was reminding her boys they can trust her. That they could lean on her.

Trust was something Moxy fostered quickly with the members of AG. The tight knit relationship Moxy cultivated between the four women was why Juno looked up to her a leader. She wanted at create a space where the boys could rely on her but also joke and play around with her like little brothers do with their sisters.

And she planned on proving it every day.

"Alright, enough reading. Lets get back to practice." All the boys whined enjoying having a break but they still got back into their places. They had a debut to prepare for.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

MORE WISHxJuno CONTENT!!! I'm so excited for their debut. I'm considering getting the SMTown Tokyo beyond live so I can see their debut!!! We better get NASA as well.

Also, New Juno header!! I knew I had to redo it as soon as Wish was confirmed. I think I'm gonna keep the other one to use anytime I write about Juno with the Boss!Unit.

I decided to make the NCT Codes and official thing in this universe. At first it was something fun to throw in but now they feel more important to AG's universe. I'll probably weave in more codes as time goes on.

Anyways this has gotten long, I hope you have a great day and happy reading ~ Author Izzy

Taglist: @alixnsuperstxr / @1-800-call-ria / @sophrodite / @sunflower-0180

[ericvelseb666]

Hihihihihhihihi so I've been super into the VanHelsing AU even though I know nothing about Van Helsing and I made a sort of self-inset/oc for it- If it's out of canon Van Helsing lmk

This is Monty, a sort of moth monster. He's not a monster hunter and the trenchcoat is mostly for warmth. Kinda similar to Howdy being similar to a bug

He works as an artist, he's a close associate with vampires due to him having to have spent most of his life with them. The vampires had kidnapped him and let him stay in their castle if he promised to paint for them. He doesn't know of the hunters just yet but he does occasionally sneak into villages disguised as a human to buy himself food and supplies. That is what I've got for now I might think of some more lore later hehejeehrakhfdsa thx for reading :DDDD

That's pretty good and awesome!

[snek-panini]

So a while back I took up bookbinding so I could have print copies of my favorite fics. I don't usually post about that on here, but one of the authors whose fic I bound reached out to me asking to see photos of the finished work, so here they are. I'm not a photographer, these were taken on my phone, and I'm still fairly new to bookbinding so please excuse some of the messiness. The fic is The God Below by @kreauxlighe and it's in the Good Omens fandom. Give it a read if that's your thing, it's awesome!

The front cover. I don't know how to do fancy titles yet so I wrote it in by hand with embossing powder. It's inset into the cover--title is on paper, main cover is book cloth. This was my first time using book cloth and all the tutorials were correct, it's so much easier than the scrapbook paper things I was using before that. Edges of the cutout are more rounded than I wanted, but for a first time it's not bad, I think. Before this I just left the covers blank.

Edge view. Embossing powder doesn't work that well on book cloth (it sticks but the metallic shine doesn't show up) so the spine is blank. I might try to get fancy on it in future if I figure out how, but I might leave it. It's a first try and I like to see the progress. It is very square and I am SO proud of that because previous books I'd made came out wonky. It was the longest thing I'd bound at the time, with the thickest spine.

Top view. Again, very square, very proud. It has a ribbon bookmark and glued-in end bands. I thought ribbon bookmarks were Fancy Luxury Features that would be very hard to do, but it turns out they're easy, you just glue a piece of ribbon to the outer part of the book block before you put the end bands and cover on. Everything I make is going to have them now.

Page edges. Less proud here, they are very ragged. I was trying to trim the edges to make them even and the internet said I could do it with a craft knife. The internet was lying. It was hard to get them looking even this good. After this I sprang for a small book plow, which is what professionals use to get those nice flat even edges, and it was expensive but so very worth it.

Interior view, with bonus second shot of the bookmark! I typeset everything in MS Word, which I'm told is not very good for this but has the advantage of I don't have to pay for it because I already own it. Fancy capital letters are courtesy of the author, I pulled them from Ao3 when I copy/pasted the fic. Typesetting is hard, guys. Most resources online about how to make books don't bother to cover it, and searching for how to typeset a book usually results in lots of pages saying "don't do that, pay a professional to do it." Which is what you should do for self-publishing, absolutely, but I wanted to make one copy, for me, of a transformative work that I didn't write, so it was not useful advice in this case. This is something else I'm still learning, cobbling together the info by trial and error, but I'm still proud of what I accomplished with this one.

So that's it! I hope you like it, Jace! (I saw that on your blog, I hope it's ok to call you that? If not let me know and I'll edit it out.) I'll get started on your author copy once I finish the project I have ongoing, which is another fan binding but it's almost done.

[m0r1bund]

This thing’s a mile long, so the rest of the image captions are enclosed under the cut. Continue reading below or at m0r1bund.com ▶︎

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[Image: A big ‘ol sketchpage of funny little centaur-spider-beetle guys. From the waist down, they are mostly hexapedal, with thick carapaces and stocky limbs that are equal parts ungulate- and insect-like. Their upper bodies are more humanoid, with two arms and an upright posture. Their chests and shoulders are enclosed in large, collar-like shells, and their heads are covered by a carapace forming a hood. They have a vaguely avian profile, with large, blunted beaks and oversized mandibles inset into their jaws.

One of them, Rho, hangs out with area human and research assistant Reyes. Rho is bipedal instead of hexapedal, with segmented satyr-like legs and a short, stubby carapace ‘tail.’ Her left arm and leg are mechanical prosthetics, as well. She watches Reyes shred on a makeshift hoverboard that they probably ripped off of a hunk of Imperial junk. In another doodle, Rho rides an old Imperial motorbike through the wastes.

Her cohort Oeste is a battle-scarred old woman with kind of a puckish, sanguine energy. He is missing his left arm. He’s variously drawn hoisting a basket of fish over his shoulder and getting up on his back legs to reach some fruit at the top of a saguaro arm. One drawing shows him carrying a scrongled-looking Reyes on his back, while he comments ‘This seems demeaning, somehow.’

There are some drawings from his not-so-distant past, too. He is shown contending with a space marine-lookin’ soldier on the fields of war. One drawing depicts the fateful loss of his left arm to a brutal cleave of the soldier’s longsword. In another drawing, he returns the favor by firing a mortar point blank at the soldier’s shoulder.

Only later does he learn the soldier’s identity. The Chief immediately identifies Oeste by his arm, and vice versa. It plays out like a reenactment of the ‘same hat’ meme, with the two of them pointing at each other and saying ‘The same arm!’

When the impulse to run away and self-isolate gets the better of Chief, Reyes insists ‘You should at least apologize.’ The Chief looks like she would rather die.

When she does finally sit down on neutral ground with Oeste, getting the apology out is like pulling teeth. She digs her sweaty palms into her knees and says ‘There is no way to rectify this but. I’m sorry. forcuttingoffyourarm’

To his credit, Oeste is very forgiving, if blasé. He says, ‘Oh, it’s no trouble! I think we both learned our lesson. It is very bad to flock like that! What a terrible delusion we have all suffered!’

The Chief strains. She says ‘There isn’t… Some kind of human hivemind… I did that.’

Oeste looks at her blankly and says ‘I fail to understand how that correlates with anything I have said.’

All at once, it finally clicks for the Chief. Geometry and trigonometry overlays converge with sentence fragments about imperialism and settler-colonialism to arrive at the final conclusion, captioned ‘Military industrial complexes is the same’]

◆◆◆

Thinking about my old buddies Oeste and Metahei Rho and [these] [guys] again. There was a time when they were called the Suhti, but  ‘Suhti’ feels exactly like something I would conlang in 2013, so I’m also thinking of renaming them. Nixthi? Nixtli? Nithi? Who knows. Anyway, it was only a matter of time before they found a home bullying the Empire.

Noodling on this sketch page made me realize I was sitting on more ideas than I thought I was. These guys have been living in the back of my brain for all of 9 years, so I guess that’s typical. There’s like 9342345245 separate threads that are coming together in a way that’s hard to untangle, so I’m just going to start writing and hope for the best.

Oeste is the chipper-looking hexapod who’s missing an arm. He’s a former agent of the ‘old guard,’ who gave up the gun and dishonorably discharged himself. He’s considered a kooky old lady with an air of death around him, but is ultimately well-meaning and tolerated. Put a pin in that thought.

Rho is the biped and Oeste’s understudy / one of few people who really trusts him. She and Reyes have some history, where the ashrunners in Reyes’ family regularly met with the wasteland scavengers in Rho and Oeste and co. They’re like family friends. Put a pin in that thought, too.

Trying to describe the, I guess, thesis of the Nithi is hard. I am very leery of the way fantasy+sci fi interacts with the concept of race and especially nonhuman race. If it lingers on biology for too long then I get kind of freaked out, so it’s hard to imagine in that space, even though I love to think about nonhuman cognition + the interior worlds of plants, animals, fungi, etc. But I’m trying! God Do I Try.

Lately I’m drawn to solitary animals who seem to get a genuine kick out of the company of other animals, e.g. octopus interactions with humans. I think that’s so fun to extrapolate on. Allergic to the company of your own species, but hanging out with the funnie primate? Oh Yeah. That’s Good. Put a pin in that thought x3.

One of my bigger bones to pick with 40k is that you really don’t need to narratively justify the dumb shit the Imperium does with some kind of outside existential threat, whether that be Bugs of Unusual Size, or aliens, or Actual Demons. Giving the Imperium a “reason” to exist just feels dishonest about how empires come to be and how they perpetuate themselves. On the flip side, this is a great lesson in how empires construct narratives about themselves. Reading 80% of the 40k lore as wartime propaganda about the ‘other,’ intended to justify this atrocity or that, is what keeps me sane in the trenches of the wiki.

I also just think it’s more fun if the ‘existential threat’ is a fabrication of the unceasing machine of Propaganda ™ in the face of an empire’s own terminal* existence. Legitimate only in that, strictly speaking, it could pose an existential threat to the empire, but an existential threat to an empire =/= an existential threat to its citizens or even humanity, even though a very concerted effort has been made to conflate those. Put a pin in that thought x4.

*Did yuo know? the average empire lasts about ~250 years, which raises some funny historical revisionist headcanons for 40k, but we can’t get into it. gotta sell figs war somehow.

ANYWAY. Speaking of the unceasing machine of Imperial Propaganda, I am always looking to bully the Empire in fun new ways. I think it would be very funny for the Empire to encounter a people who are, like, categorically asocial around their conspecifics and only societal with other sentient species, because Bad Things Have Happened whenever they organize among themselves at scale. And the Empire misunderstands this to mean that they assimilate into some kind of violent hivemind when they gather en masse, but the actual reason they refuse to associate societally is because they’re living out the dying throes of their own collapsed empire. When the Archive describes the Nithi as a monolith ‘so monstrous, a force so bloody and singular of purpose that humanity shivers at the touch,’ that’s just them taking a look in the mirror and not liking what they see. The shots are coming from inside the house.

Of course, it’s great to have some kind of alien ‘other’ for the Empire to justify its existence and lionize its endeavors abroad. Every effort has been made to drive a wedge between the citizens of the Empire and Nithi at large. Probably because if they realized they had more in common with each other than the Powers That Be, as two peoples carrying the baggage of two shitty empires, they would unionize. And That Would Be Baaaaad.

… Which brings me back to Oeste. He is an ex-soldier who fled to wasteland Earth to dodge the high price of desertion, i.e. execution. He had great timing, given that the collapse of whatever dominion was lording itself over the Nithi came right on his heels.

He carries the ‘old troubles’, or wartime knowledge, that most people, Nithi or no, are wary of. But as the Empire trains its eye on Earth, this raises some very real and difficult questions about the right of sovereign Earth to defend itself, and how. Among Earth’s Nithi in particular, this is an existential question of coming together and doing a rare and terrible thing for some sort of greater good. There is enough continuity between ‘old guard’ veterans like Oeste and armed guerilla resistance in the Empire’s frontier that the Empire perceives no meaningful difference; opposition is the same, whether it comes from another empire or a scrappy resistance force. The Archive is still operating on the hivemind hypothesis, so… not likely that they’re going to grasp the intense political landscape of Nithi mutual-defense accords any time soon.

It sucks. But the silver lining is that they get to heckle Imperials with ooky-spooky hivemind jokes. And fool them into thinking they’re acting of much greater numbers and coordination when they are… absolutely not!

Anyway, Oeste came to Earth to ‘get away from all that’ and keep an eye on the youth, e.g. Rho. He hasn’t been asked about his war wounds, and he’s perfectly content not offering his opinion about them unsolicited. (At least, not when it isn’t funny.) Probably there will come a day when that will change, but he hopes not.

Of course, these things have a way of coming back to haunt a guy. Oeste doesn’t talk about his arm for the same reason that the Chief doesn’t talk about hers, or most of her past deployments. Military trauma that you can’t even pretend to be proud of. They met once on the fields of war and left a, errr, marked impression on each other. Who struck first? … That’s between the Chief and Oeste.

Seeing each other in ~peacetime causes a little bit of a situation, but they’re kindred spirits. Oeste has a lot to impart to the Chief as someone who is much further along the whole ‘deprogramming and reintegrating into normal society’ process, and who is perhaps more familiar with what Imperial programming looks like than others. Besides, someone really has to tell the Chief that the Archive might have been wrong about a few things. A lot of things.

Reyes and Rho are just happy to see the old geezer (and Irene, lbr) make a friend.

Other napkin scraps:

Dunno if the hexapod / biped variants are morphs, or lifecycle phases, or if Rho is just a special case.  

Hexapod Nithi have two major gaits—they can walk in an ‘alternating tripod’ gait like an ant or a bee, or in an ungulate-like fashion with an extra set of forelimbs taped on (with all relevant gaits like walking, trotting, cantering, galloping, etc.) The joints connecting to the femur and tibia of the hindmost legs are very flexible, and can shift to accommodate the tripod gait (by facing backwards) or ungulate gait (by facing forwards.)  

It is extremely bad taste to get on someone’s back like a horse why would you do that. (Oeste has no shame though.)  

Probably both an exoskeleton and endoskeleton going on in here, so full-body armor is redundant except where soft tissue is exposed (upper arms, joints, etc.) Clothing and other adornments happen at leisure. Carapace carving, painting, and piercing is especially popular. Rho gets to wear pants because she physically can and because she thinks they’re fun.  

Don’t ask me if they still have stingers or can spin silk or not. I don’t know. I don’t know. it would be very funny to hock a sillystring loogie, though.  

After years of research, the Archive has documented many aspects of Nithi biology that make them such confounding and lethal enemies, including:

Their bulletproof carapaces (true.)

Their venomous bite (false.)

Their ability to regrow limbs (false.)

The fact that they pop out of the propagule fully formed and able to defend themselves (false.)

Their ability to communicate in subaural vibrations (true, but this is only a small component of several larger somatic language families.)

Their keen thermoreceptors (sort of true, they are coarser and more imprecise than the Archive thinks.)

Their ability to smell fear (false.)

Their inability to feel pain, remorse, or any emotion at all in a way that matters (buddy what do you think.)

The Archive is very good at science and would never lie to you.

[mcytblrconfessions-but-bad]

i keep thinking your avatar is the crying troll face. Anyway i sent this to another confessions blog before reading their very obvious"don't send controversial topics" rule so I'm sorry to them whoopsiesssss

But I just find it so insane when people get super defensive when you say you're uncomfortable with cwilbur. Like you can like cwilbur fucking fine. But i personally don't like watching known abusers edgy self inset repeatedly show similar behaviour to what he displayed irl. - And this has been a forever hatred because god knows this was common before shelby spoke out - but cwilbur is abusive too. Obviously! he grooms and emotionally manipulates ctommy and soooo many people act like they're so happy ladida and not literally just. extremely toxic

and then KNOWING that tons of William Gold's content was "parodying" abusers snd misogynists in an attempt to separate himself from them. The same way the nice guy trilogy feels super creepy or you can't not feel dirty listening to your boyfriend was right I cannot in good faith engage with any of his art without feeling guilty including his character.

And people calling him just cwils "actor" is insane. He wrote and directed most of the first arc of the dsmp and was very dedicated to his character, you can't remove the influence ccwilbur had from the character.

And I'm not like asking people to never enjoy cwil again I'm literally just saying stop being weird to people who are uncomfortable with him which is such a NORMAL REQUEST. WHY IS THIS HARD TO FOLLOW????

anyway I'm going insane thats my confession. Trigger tag cwilbur.

.

[high-queen-feyre]

I see people going batshit insane on each other's reblogs and it always makes me concerned and baffled to read the eminence hate people have over something that doesn't even exist.

This is more prominent in the people who self insert themselves in a character and can't handle any different opinion on the character.

Sometimes I see opinions that I don't like, and I want to say, "Well, I think..." but it's better not to honestly, it's their opinion and they can have it.

There is a difference in relating to a character and self-inserting, it's seeing something that reminds you of you, and with self inseting, believing that a character is you and anything someone says about a character they are saying about you.

So instead of going crazy, take a chill pill and remember that these characters you are defending don't exist while the person you are threatening over them does.

[kittenofdoomage]

Hey I like ur style and ur way with words, hell the whole way ur mind works even. Would love to read more of ur work, but I've never really liked self/reader insert fics. I was wondering if u have any fics that aren't? Where can I find them if u do? And if not would u ever consider maybe writing any? I think u would be masterful at it and would gobble them all up. Not saying that the self/reader insets u write are bad, they are excellent. They aren't my cup of tea really. I've never been able to really get into them. Would love to read more of ur writing though! Anyways, thank u for what u do for us. 🫶🫶🫶🫶🫶

I'm afraid you might not like my answer :(

I started off writing OC's many many many moons ago, but since 2014 it's pretty much been exclusively reader insert. I'm not saying I'd never be open to it again, they've just never been well received when I have done it, and it would have to be something I'm very interested in. The only one currently in existence, is an unfinished OC x Castiel longfic that's so old, it's on fanfiction.net.

That being said, some of my third person reader inserts are more OC than my regular second person reader inserts. I'm actually writing a long werewolf!Bucky fic (I saying writing, I've been slogging over this thing for three years now lol) where my main character, who would have been a third-person reader insert, is turning into more of an OC the more I write her. It's pretty much a case of giving her an actual name and physical attributes.

Boy, I'm rambling. I'm not saying I'd absolutely never write them, if it was the right idea, I'd definitely think about it. I'm no stranger to an OC, you should see my unfinished novels ha.

[phantom-of-the-ruckus]

Some more Hello puppets headcannons

The not related post. like I said before it will take quite a long time to complete due to being busy thinking about our arguments and digging evidence + I am working on some drawings that I owed that got a bit delayed due to a wrist injury.

One of my friends asked me if @dolly-royal and I had more headcannons, so I am making more headcannons based on what I got from both games. I did ask her about her headcannons on a Tumblr ask, but it will take a bit since she doesn't enter the app as much as I do.

So, into the list of headcannons! (I apologize if some headcannons were repeated. I can't remember them all)

Owen identifies as an Aroace man, so he doesn't feel any romantic or sexual attraction towards anyone. This was something that didn't reflect on the puppets themselves (since there is evidence against if that translate into the puppets) I just don't think they got everything from Owen.

In show, Riley has always been the sarcastic type of character that will break it to you in the fun comedic way. Mortimer is usually the one that calms her down. This sorta happens in the game but it's less friendly

After the takeover, Mortimer ordered the handemen to clean up the studio to get rid of the cattle stuff (as humans are considered cattle ) that is not used to them. Nick was begrudgingly cleaning until he discovered some art books which help him develop his style.

Daisy suffers from Anxiety and most likely from multiple personality (as I think the game implies Owen developed too) so she has a hard time dealing with her danger alter ego until Riley helped her accept her. Now they are friends.

Although Daisy seems sweet and overly nice, Daisy feels a pressure to constantly be nice towards others out of fear of getting Mortimer's anger but also due to her steem issues believing no one will like her. Innerly Daisy is more of a wine aunt and actually curses. Danger represents Daisy's repressed feelings

Daisy tries to avoid conflict because she will not be nice and will prop have a rude attitude (Which is part of her real self ) + it estresses her out

My personal headcannon for Riley's sexuality is that she's a demiromantic ace (a bit of self inset since I'm also demiromantic but not an ace) but has no interest in relationships

Nick is very touch starve that he would melt into affection he receives. Mortimer refuses to be touch unless he lets you momentarily do so (prop just Riley, although is just to hold hands) Riley is quite touch starved but she gets overwhelmed by affection, so she doesn't let anyone approach her. Daisy will break your back and rips due to hugging so hard. She's a hugger

Daisy loves sewing as Riley taught her how. Now she makes tiny costumes for the pupidge and sock puppet rats because they might get cold :]

I think this was established and confirmed by Andrew (main writer of both games) on the official discord server, but Riley has a personal hosts of her own to do work but uses Rosco as a method of transportation because she takes bonding with the good boi very seriously

In the human world /no game (heavily inspired by Delly's works) Mortimer and Riley spent some time reading together and they sometimes hold hands for closure. (Up to your interpretation, I intend this as a cute platonic thing)

When discussing plans, Riley excitedly listens to what Mortimer has to say. Nick is bored and Daisy is prop staring blankly at the whiteboard. Riley is the only one that makes suggestions and cares for the plans

Riley is actually a very neat and organized person when it comes to her labs only, she tends to be a bit careless when she experiments outside the labs

Nick tends to not care about messes since it's artistic value and Daisy insists on cleaning after everyone much to Rileys irritation.

Nick as much as he's a hopeless romantic and an over the top romantic type man/puppet he still have some momments of being slightly a perv (just an itty bitty it. Like a miniscule atom) after discovering some magazines before burning them away after realizing what they were. He felt so bad but the damage is done and now he has a slightly blush in rare occasions by thanks to that.

The puppets got their books from hosts they captured, so that's sorta why Riley got the "Lord of the Rings" books. The puppets figured a way to decodify the human language (just some know how to translate it) Daisy got the hoeswife magazines, we all know Nick is the one who owns the romance books. Riley has science fiction and research papers. Mortimer owns a collection of history books and Machiavelli's the prince (Phantom will never let go the fact that they had to read the damned book! She hates it so much lol. PS. : I use she/they pronouns)

Taking from the previous Headcannon. Mortimer spends some time with Riley translating the history books as she's the most proficient in reading and translating the host written language. They go into long discussions and lectures over what they are reading.

Machiavelli and history where some things that helped Mortimer get ahold the idea of Kings and ruling. He also reads psychology books and Shakespeare. He also read animal because I also love animal farm xd (I really wanna read 1984)

Thats all I have for now, folks

[procrastinatorproject]

So, I was just mercilessly roasted by @regionalpancake, and it reminded me that I had opened tumblr a couple hours ago to write a post about the exact same thing she roasted me about -- but then I was good and put tumblr away because i need to do SO MANY UNI THINGS 😱

But now that it's come up again, I'm gonna just write this and then get back to Productivity™

Basically, I have this huge collection of semi-finished, mostly plotless Star Trek: La Sirena whump stories. And I do mean huge! On the order of 200k+ words, in fact. None of which I ever intended on sharing, because it's all daydream-adjacent and OC-centric (because my daydreams are pretty much exclusively self-inset. 'tis how the brain rolls, and always has).

If I ever wanted to share any of them publically, first of all, it would require a whole bunch of editing and/or added context to gloss over the parts where you'd need about ten years of daydreamt worldbuilding to understand what the fuck they're even talking about! And even with that smoothed over, there is still the issue of having a non-established and somewhat non-descript original main character, which can really put people off. And while I primarily write for myself and only secondarily for my friends, if I put something out into the world for others to see, I do wnat it to be semi-decent, so I do think about these things a lot.

But I've been rereading these stories, and goddamnit, there is some excellent writing in there! And some of it has already showed up in some of my main feed fics, but a lot of it hasn't, and actually, I really want to share it!

So, now I'm faced with a conundrum, because my choices basically are:

Only slightly edit the existing stories to smooth over the bits that really need additional context to make sense to a reader who hasn't lived in my head the past decade, but otherwise leave them as-is

Only take the best bits and pieces from the existing stories and create new original stories out of them that feauture canon characters (or maybe one or two OCs but make them fully-fleshed characters by including the required establishing passages to bring new readers on board)

Search-and-replace the OC with a canon character and do the required editing to make it work.

And I'm honestly torn 😅 Because I've been attempting approach 2 over the last few years, and nothing has been happening. Approach 1 is the "Fuck it, I write for myself and have a right to archive those stories, too!"-attitude I aspire to, but it's also fucking scary 🙈

But coincidentally, I was re-reading one of these stories earlier, and my brain kept going "Hm. If you shuffle these characters around a tiny bit and then make Agnes the main character, you'd only have to do some minor editing here and here for it to work really well for her, actually 🤔"

And just now, when I lamented to Pancakes that I really want to write more Agnes, her devastatingly accurate reply was: "Just search replace some of your whump with Agnes! That should fit, right?"

(Which... There is a reason I identify with Agnes so hard it makes it difficult for me to actually write her 🙈🙈🙈)

So yeah. That's what I've been mulling over this fine November day.

Serious question: Would you read a story that is fairly clearly marked as "OC main character with minimal establishment" if it containted characters and tropes you enjoyed? Or is that a huge No-no for you?

And second question: can you tell me why you feel either way? Is it nice to have a more-or-less blank slate to slot yourself into? Does it feel too personal if you suspect you're reading a writer's self-insert, whether they confirm it or not? Do you not care as long as the characterization of canon characters and the whump are good? Is it "I'm going to fanfic so I don't have to do the hard work of connecting with new characters"?

And if it were a properly established OC, i.e. not just "this person exists, already slotted into this crew, don't worry about it", but "this fully fleshed-out character has a backstory and a history of how they met these characters and they will be introduced accordingly" (like, say, Xyr in A Night at the Opera), does "OC" still make you think "must be self-insert and thus must be shit?" 🤔

[granolawriting]

Commission rates!

To anyone who even chooses to read this, I thank you dearly. Writing is a passion of mine and as I work separately to fund a room and board as a young adult it means the world that some of my writing is to merit someone aiding in my savings to stand on my own two feet. With that being said, here are my current rates!:

500-999 words: $3

1000-1499 words: $7

1500-2000 words: $10

2000+ words: $15+

Rules and possible add-ons:

you are welcome to choose from any fandom you like, be it one I know much about or otherwise, as long as you explain the characters personality to me in the way you'd like it depicted, I'll gladly fill in the peices.

That being said, with comissions the main thing that differs from a request is how specific you can get with it.

you can be as intimate with detail as you like, anthing from where you would want it to start, how you want it to end, an what kind of smut/romance/shift in story you would like it to have. You give me the vision, and I meerly just put it into writing.

things I am okay with writing:

>any kind of NSFW that does not consist of snuff/anything insanely illegal (can be discussed more in detail situationally)

>any kind of relationship/s; be it multiple characters at once, through a series of events, or if it is just one character with another, and even you and another character/s

>any kind of alternate ending or alternate world fiction. Even ones including you as a member of its world that gives it means to be alternate.

>any kind of romance be it slow burn or enemies to lover, I can write any and every genre.

>I can use any name you wish instead of y/n if you request a self inset fic

DM ME ABOUT PAYMENT!

If you have any, and i mean any questions about my comissions, please feel free to dm me and ask. I would love to provide you any insight I fail to do here <3