#I'LL NOT ELABORATE UNLESS YOU ASK

[ruru-me]

Oh ren, sorry about your adopted daughter you killed, you get FIVE BOOMS

First and last time hertha cried genuinely lmao

Also semester is OVER GUYS

Now back to being active and finishing comms

Today you have this

Tomorrow who knows

[laithraihan]

the guy with the yellow profile picture who ships minorei. As far as I remember you were always super against proshippers, so that's why my question. If things changed for you though its fine, I'm just curious whether you're aware

That is 1 single person, not "so much stuff from proshippers" lmfao, which I only recently discovered they shipped it after someone brought attention to a recent drawing they made. The other drawings looked fine to me and I dont take the time to dig through every single account if they dont specify anything in the bio or pinned, I just see cute art of minori and reigen and share it. I asked to clarify because you made it seem like it was multiple people in my circle when 99% of the time I retweet things, it's either my own drawings or my friends' drawings lol

[ofbardsandmen]

greetings fellow genshin enthusiasts and fanatics!! once again, i'm generously presenting and offering my most beloved mondstadt character spotify playlists, free of charge and yours to consume, if you will.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Since you mentioned this in an earlier ask, what is your take on feminist Leona? I see people saying things like "consent king" "he drinks his respect women juice" and "leona kingscholar says men ain't shit" but I think those are mainly jokes but I've also seen a lot of for example Leona x reader fanfics where he's a lot nicer to femme Yuus than masc ones. I don't play the game so I don't know how much of a feminist he really is, could you clarify and give your own insights? Ty Miss Raven!!!!!!!

[Referencing this post!]

Admittedly, I am guilty of having made “consent king” jokes but that’s mainly because I think consent + respecting others’ autonomy is very sexy important and it’s slightly funny to have a 185 cm muscular anime cat boy championing the concept. However, I try to avoid making jokes which would imply Leona puts down his own gender or thinks lesser of them because 1) canon doesn't indicate this and 2) it can be hurtful to non-femme Twst fans. Yes, most of the fandom is women--but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make this fandom space welcoming for masculine or nonbinary Twst fans.

Let's delve into a brief history of where feminist!Leona comes from! After that, I'll discuss my own thoughts and feelings about it.

The idea first came into prominence because of an exchange that occurs in Cater's School Uniform vignette. In it, Cater is trying to convince Leona to join him for a party that he's throwing for Rosaria, one of the talking paintings at NRC. At first, Leona refuses--but he quickly changes his tune once Cater mentions Rosaria is a "she/her". Leona states, "Portrait or not, I respect ladies and Rosaria is a lady." Cater then whispers to Kalim (who is shocked that Leona suddenly agreed to come along), "Leona's kingdom is all about being respectful to ladies."

It should be noted that Leona says something slightly different in JP: “Even if it’s a portrait, a woman is a woman.” JP does not have the “I respect ladies” portion; “I respect ladies” was added to EN, which may have further amplified the interpretation that he is a feminist.

Now, as we learn from that vignette, the Sunset Savanna has a culture of "respecting women". In Leona's Ceremonial Robes vignette, he elaborates that, “[Beastwomen are] already way stronger than [beastmen]." Furthermore, Ruggie states in one of his Chats that “Girls have both the grit and the camaraderie to triumph when the goin’ gets tough.” Then, in events like Tamashina Mina and late in book 7, we are told that many of the royal guards are women who volunteer for the positions and it's common for them to have learned martial arts from a young age. From this dialogue, we can glean that the women of Leona's home country are physically strong, strong-willed, and honorable.

With that being said, I think certain interpretations of Leona's "feminism" (a term not actually used by official materials; this is a fandom take) definitely take it a step too far by either assuming Leona treats woman as a special class and/or he dislikes men. Both of those interpretations (if serious and not said as a joke) are owed to a fundamental misunderstanding of what "feminism" is. Feminism is "the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women." Feminism is NOT misandry (a hatred of men), and nor is it female chauvinism (the belief that women are superior to men)... unless, of course, you're talking about very radicalized forms of thinking. The basic concept of feminism doesn't involve man hate or putting women on a pedestal.

Twst itself appears to go with the basic definition of feminism. As Leona himself states, he doesn't treat anyone special. "I ain't extra nothin' to nobody. As if [women] even need men fawning all over'em."

Leona, whom we know to be arrogant and unwilling to obey others' orders, appears to be more willing to listen to and carry out tasks if there's a woman involved. I already mentioned the case with Rosaria the painting (which proves that his "respecting women" thing extends beyond just beastwomen from his home country). In his Ceremonial Robes, he also grumpily puts on the aforementioned robes and takes a picture of himself in it upon the request of his sister-in-law. But--and this should be stressed--he's not exactly jumping for joy or eager to do so. Instead, Leona cites that "Goin’ against [beastwomen] only brings more trouble.” This indicates annoyance at having to carry out this chore, and gives the impression that Leona's only complying because not doing so would only overcomplicate things for him. He's not an idiot--he knows when to make a strategic retreat if it's going to save him time and effort in the long run. (For example, he immediately surrenders to the Ferrymen in book 6 rather than continue to put up a fight.)

I should note that, like in the earlier definition of feminism I shared, Leona does not simply bend the knee to every single woman. In the first Halloween event, he was still capable of scaring off the Magicam Monsters (some of which have distinctly female voices) without any qualms. He was still fully able to express anger and upset when Eliza, the Ghost Bride, smacked him. "You've got a lot of nerve turnin' me down over some nonsense!" He's also not above tricking the Fairy Queen and her entourage to steal back the special magestone from NRC.

This shows us that Leona doesn't just... "respect women" indiscriminately. If someone is going to be rude and selfish to him, he's going to respond as is appropriate. He's not going to turn a blind eye because of the offending party's gender.

In terms of Yuu interactions (assuming Yuu can be any gender), Leona acts pretty aggressive towards them in their first meeting. Even though it's clearly an accident and Yuu didn't realize they stepped on his tail, Leona is annoyed by the act and them walking away without apologizing or stopping to acknowledge him. He also makes it known that Yuu is magicless, and thus has no way of defending themselves from him. And you know what this man does? He says, "Well, can't say it'd be much fun to hurt someone so helpless. Still gonna do it, though." AND HE THREATENS TO TAKE A TOOTH. His wording, "No one gets to stomp on my tail and just walk away without payin' the price" + him still deciding to attack Yuu desite knowing they are weak/cannot fight back, implies to me that he may have still reacted this way regardless of Yuu's gender. (Key word: MAY. We don't know if this is the truth or not, I am leaving this up to your interpretation.)

Notably, there is a slight change between EN and JP versions for Yuu's dialogue choices in response to Leona's threat. The EN dialogue options are far more humorous, but the JP options clearly convey fear (ie Leona is being serious about his threat of bodily harm). The top option is like noises of surprise, like "Eh, eh, eh!!"; the bottom option is along the lines of, "What, I'm going to be hit/beaten!"

There are, in fact, multiple instances where Leona acts callous towards Yuu. He refuses to let Yuu stay in Savanaclaw unless they earn their keep by beating up some mobs. He constantly degrades them by calling them and others he considers weak "herbivore". He has to be goaded into helping us or taking us along on trips instead of automatically caving. It could be argued that he would be more agreeable or polite if fem!Yuu was in these scenarios. And who knows, that might be the case--but again, I don't think he would be egregiously kind. I would like to point out a more direct example of a Leona-fem!Yuu interaction. Leona has interacted with a female Yuu before: Yuuka Hirasaka, our main character for the Episode of Savanaclaw manga. There's some debate over whether or not the NRC students know that Yuuka is a girl since the topic is never mentioned once, but I assume that they are aware because: 1) Yuuka makes no effort to hide her figure or chest; she even wears her blazer open, and 2) she has no motivation to hide her gender; she is capable of defending herself if needed and has a nonchalant personality. Proceeding with the assumption that Yuuka being a girl is a known fact, Leona does not treat her any differently than any other student.

Yuuka seems to experience the same tail-stepping scene as is depicted in game, although we don't see the aftermath of it/if Leona gives her the same threat.

The more telling scene for Yuuka, however, comes when she and her friends arrive in Savanaclaw to investigate. They are confronted by a bunch of mobs that start to pick a fight with them. Like in the game, Leona intervenes (ie he doesn't stop the fight just because Yuuka is a woman) and has them duke it out in a game of spelldrive/magift instead.

And you know what? Leona doesn't hold back just because he's playing against a woman. In fact, he kicks Yuuka's ass and then some. Then he stands over her and tells her to get back up, to keep playing. Leona isn't cutting Yuuka any slack whatsoever. He treats Yuuka the same as the boys she's playing with.

This brings me to my final prominent example of Leona interacting with a woman, which I think best exemplifies what my interpretation of Leona's "feminism" is. In the JP server's 2024 Halloween event Lost in the Book with Nightmare Before Christmas, Sally indicates that she plans on making a meal using the plants from around the cemetery. Leona is at first displeased by this, but then agrees to help her catch snakes, rats, lizards, etc. as meat for the meal. This leads into a conversation about how sad Sally's home life is, which earns her sympathy from the other NRC students. Jade, Riddle, and Epel are shocked at the cruelty that Sally faces. Jade volunteers to take the doctor out for Sally, and Epel even tries to convince Leona to help him rough up Dr. Finkelstein. But Leona just smirks and tells them Sally's not in any need of their "help"; isn't she the one who slipped the doctor a "drink"? Riddle scolds him for this "ungentlemanly" behavior and Epel refuses to believe that the "kind Sally" would do something like use poison. Leona was able to smell the deadly nightshade on her and deduce that Sally slipped some to her guardian and then slipped out on her own. She's not a damsel in distress--she's resourceful. Sally used her brains and not brute force to rescue herself from a bad situation. (We know that this would deeply resonate with Leona because he has been struggling his entire life to have his own merits recognized.) Leona praises Sally for her cunning and goes so far as to offer her his arm and tell her that he's looking forward to this evening's dinner.

In this situation, could it not be said that Jade, Riddle, and Epel were the ones assuming Sally is weak that Leona was the one who saw her true worth? I'm of course not accusing anyone here of being sexist. Society socializes us to see women as the "fairer sex" in need of protection and aid--but isn't Leona being more equitable by not underestimating Sally because of her gender?

That brings me to my conclusion. Leona respects women, no doubt about that. However, that's NOT a blanket statement. He clearly knows how to separate who is worthy of his respect and who isn't, and then he acts accordingly. Yes, he is polite, slightly softer, and more willing to listen to women he knows (his sister-in-law), women who haven't offended him/are just existing (Rosaria), and woman who have demonstrated their own strengths to him (Sally). He doesn’t become a completely different character just to bend to the whims of women. Those who have acted in ways to earn his ire, woman or not, will be treated as such (Magicam Monsters, Eliza, even Yuu when they/she enters his territory and/or steps on his tail). At the same time, I don't believe he thinks that women are delicate flowers that need special treatment (as we see with how he handles Sally + the Yuus and, more specifically, Yuuka). If anything, the women from his home country have demonstrated that they can be strong and self-sufficient. Why would he feel the need to go out of his way to be extremely lenient with the women he is around?

Lastly, nothing in official materials implies Leona treats men significantly worse than women. If he seems exceedingly rude to men, it’s most likely the result of the main cast (the characters Leona most often interacts with) being guys. If we were to compare how he treats his peers and how he treats women who have irritated him, I would say the behavior isn’t that different.

I know that was a long post but 😅 Hopefully I was able to articulate my thoughts well enough… May you find it helpful in forming your own opinion, Anon!

[asce-of-hearts]

Can you do a one piece yandere sanji smut with reader who tried escaping? I don’t think you’ve made one like that unless I missed it in that case I apologize ♥️

Stupid mistake

contents: Yandere!Sanji x gn!reader smut scenario in which reader tries to escape.

more Sanji content here

TAG LIST

WARNINGS: DUB/NON-CON, YANDERE, OBSESSIVE AND POSSESSIVE BEHAVIOR, MANIPULATION, SANJI OVERPOWERS READER, AFAB!BODIED READER OTHERWISE GENDER NEUTRAL, SMUT, PENETRATIVE SEX.

"Please, don't hit me. It was a stupid mistake." You say while sniffling, clinging to yourself as an attempt to look smaller. Sanji's brows furrow.

"Why would I hit you? What are you talking abo-" His eyes widen when the knife you were hiding within your clothes falls to the kitchen floor with a sickening clanking sound. He just stares at it and then at you, the cigarette in his mouth consuming slower and slower, as if he has stopped breathing. "Ah." He can only muster, his mind blank. "Why did you have that, mon amour? Wanted to help me out in the kitchen?" He tries to play it nonchalantly, to act stupidly oblivious to your actual intentions.

"I wanted to hurt you, Sanji." You wheeze out, unable to move, trembling in place. "I wanted to hurt you and run away."

He lets out an uncomfortable smile.

"Is... Is that so?" He asks, pretending he doesn't feel hurt. The low rumble of his voice reverberates around the air that surrounds you both. For a moment there's silence, the only sound being the pan over the stove. "Why would you do that, hmm?" He asks, taking a deep breath as he turns his back towards you, continuing to cook. "I would gladly take you for some fresh air outside if you were to ask me, mon ange. You know I will never deny you such a thing; anything, really."

"I want to leave." You say in a sob. His eyes darken as he stares at the meat cooking in the pan, going from red to pink and then to a soft brown in a second. He sighs, running a calloused hand through his blonde strands.

"It's not safe for you to do that, ___. We've talked about this."

"I don't care! I want to lea-" He hushes you by sticking a little strawberry right between your lips, his brows set in a frown. You feel small under his gaze in that moment, one that only made you feel unsettingly adored now was making you meek and timid, scared.

"No, ___." He says. His voice firm, commanding, but not unkind. "Quit it." He takes a deep breath, bends over to pick up the knife that was still laying on the floor. Shooting you a glare that has mixed emotions, a deep frustration as well as a hint of fear, of paranoia and panic. It softens when you avert your gaze. "I'll see when we can arrange to visit your family and friends. Just not right now, mon ange, it's not possible for me to take you there in this moment."

"Why not?"

"Because it's not safe. I've told you and I'll keep telling you. It's not safe." The pan sizzles in the background, his back facing you once again. "And don't start telling me about sending you alone. You'd die at sea before even reaching the nearest shore."

"You never elaborate on why it isn't safe. You're lying to me, Sanji." You whine. He turns off the stove, and he walks towards you.

He gets a hold of your wrist, his grip tight enough to make a statement, but not to harm you. His eyes are intense, he takes a deep breath.

"This lanky little arm, what will you do when someone grabs it?" He asks, getting closer, tightening his grip ever so slightly. He has his strength very measured, because he would rather kill himself before littering even a single bruise over your precious, tender skin. "You know I don't like telling you this, mon amour, but if I wanted to, I could break your wrist, your whole arm. I could and I would if I was a bad man," He lets go of it, his gentle hands caressing your skin in soft circles now. "But you know who are bad men? All of the other bastards out there who would not hesitate to kill you once they get you within his claws." He hisses out, his fingers pressing against your skin a little harsher. "So, spare me the pity of having to kill them before they kill you."

You try to squirm away, but he cages you with his body against the kitchen table. His fingers kneading into the soft dough of your ass, and then your inner thigh as he parts your legs open. A curly blonde bush making his cock look all the more menacing, he lines it up with the entrance of your cunt, slick and pretty, ready to take him.

"I'm sorry." You whimper, not knowing what else to say or do as he slowly rubs the bulbous, pink tip of his cock all over your clit. You gasp at the contact, his smile softening, able to get pussy-drunk with just a glance of your pretty pussy.

"There's nothing to be sorry about, pretty. You said it yourself, it was a stupid mistake, right?" He licks his lips, groaning as the tip of his cock slowly enters the tight ring of muscle of your cunt. He grits his teeth, pushing and pushing until he's finally able to bury himself to the hilt, balls deep inside you. Holding you tight against him. "I'll pay more attention to you, mon amour. I'll make sure you won't feel lonely." His tempo is slow and deep, his pace far from punishing even when it makes your head spin, feel something strange in the bottom of your stomach. "I'll make love to you every night, mon ange. I'll keep you filled up with my love. I'll cook you your favorite things every day, I don't care. Just don't get any of those stupid ideas again, alright?" He grunts out, moaning and panting and his hands wandering all over your body as he keeps fucking, no, making love to you.

grahhh i've been craving this man for a while now I love him i need him carnally

hope you enjoyed this. have a great day/night.

TAGGING: @bookandyarndragon @massivepenguinunknown @yukimitsu @staticspouse @anieluvs @goldenglow149 @lurexin @hbk99450 @stranger00001 @delicatelycraftedbambi @kitzusune @yeonieesss @3v37773 @mizzhellsingstuff @420a1lday @coolnekochan9961 @chercheryblossomsweet @florcxo @hannas16

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[yanderefarm]

yandere crime lord x sadistic male reader

cw;; torture, burn wounds, blood, gore, stockholm syndrome, yandere, drugs, kidnapping, murder, smoking, cruel reader

here he is.... my most fucked up bby girl. i wrote this a little differently than the others... i had a different vibe in mind.

achilles is the eldest son of a notorious mob family, the second most powerful in charge right under his father. he makes lots of big decisions, like his recent attempts to take over a smaller gang with cruelty and force. unfortunately being a sexy big shot comes with its own little vices, achilles likes smoking for instance. nasty habit especially for someone in his position, doesn't he realize how vulnerable he is when he's taking a smoke break? so easy for you to drug.

you flick some of the cigarette ash towards the man in question. he's on his knees arms tied behind his back and duct tape over his mouth. he keeps shooting you dirty looks. it's funny.

"such a waste..."

you run a red room service on the dark web. essentially, anyone with enough money can hire you to kidnap and torture whoever they want. some people hire you to make elaborate snuff videos with their desires all written out for you, other people let you and your audience decide what kind of torture would take place over your live streams. that's where the handsome man in front of you came from, the gang he'd been destroying had bought your services.

you had already explained that to him, as well as mocked him for his cigarette habit. now you were letting one of the cigarettes burn before your stream actually started, you didn't actually smoke it choosing instead to let him watch you waste it. his scowl was hot.

his screams were hotter. the first hour in, you had him covered in cigarette burns and his stomach flinching away from your touch. the second hour in, he had multiple gashes all over his trembling body. the third hour in, he had finally started to sob and his body was covered in lovely bruises.

"sorry guys, we can't kill him yet. but that means we get a toy for a little while!" you gripped his hair and brought his tear stained face up to the camera. "say goodbye to our friend!"

and that ended your first stream with your new toy. you cleaned him up and brought him to his new room.

"you'll probably be the show tomorrow unless I get another job. eat up." you gave him a nice dinner and pulled the duct tape off his mouth.

"... when will I die?"

"dunno. good work chilles, sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

that's how it began. the guy ended up being your show about half the week for the next two months. never enough to kill him and every day you cleaned up his wounds and took good care of him. he never cursed you or complained about his place he would ask you questions and thank you for the food. it was pleasant conversation, he was a nice companion in your otherwise drab life.

it was halfway into the third month when you got news that those gang members who hired you were dead. you'd been waiting the whole time for them to pay for you to kill achilles and now it was never coming. at least you made good money from your streams in the meantime.

"you're free to go." you stood in the doorway of achilles's room.

his eyes looked at you, slowly widening as he realized what you said. "wh.. why?"

"m gonna drug you up and drop you in front of your house. you won't know where you were but I'd really appreciate if you didn't try to come after me at all. "

"why are you letting me go? did something happen?"

"you should quit smoking by the way. maybe i won't be able to get you-"

you saw something in his eyes snap. those eyes that had been practically blank the whole time even when the torture made him lose his voice from screaming. now they were dark and hazy, significantly more threatening than he'd been before. he crawled on his hands and knees to your leg and looked up at you with tears in his eyes.

"why....? am i not.. did i do it wrong? i can be a good toy."

you were caught off guard by his reaction. "uh... well uh the guys who hired me like... they died without paying me to kill you. so like... i don't have a reason to keep you?"

"how much?"

"huh??"

"how much do you need to keep me?"

you reached down and gently carded your hand through his hair. "you don't want to stay here, dumbass."

"yes I do." he nuzzled his head into your hand.

"you really want to stay here and get tortured until you die? use your brain."

his darkened eyes looked up at you with the most pathetic look. "i want to stay with you."

"fuck" he's cute? he's cute. "ok...jesus, lets do this. you go home, get reunited with your family, try to get back to normal life. and I'll contact you so if you still want to be LITERALLY tortured over living your normal life I'll bring you back. ok?"

"you'll actually come get me, right?"

"yeah. I'll get you and I won't even make you pay."

"I'll be back soon." he rubbed his head against your leg. "please get your favorite tools ready."

[kaisensei]

hallucinations (gojo)

you visit your best friend only because you wanted to see him. but due to a sudden change of plans, you end up on top of him; which by the way, started as a challenge to prove him that you are indeed, very much real.

satoru gojo x reader (f)

wordcount; 4k

tags; friends to lovers, smut, cigarettes, drinking, oral sex (f. recieving), unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it), multiple orgasms, grinding, drunk af satoru!!

my first fic yayyy!! minors stay away, cuz I'll block you!!! please let me know what you think about this one :) it's kinda unedited and also like 9 pages of pure smut.

---

The lights seem hazy and you slouch back on the bed, your feet nudging Satoru's thigh as he sits at the other end of the bed.

You didn't mean to drink, your main reason to visit him being your urge to see him. You had come up with an elaborate reason about how you had to give him the parcel Megumi had asked you to transfer to him; smartly leaving out the part where you had bullied that poor guy to hand it to you and not to Satoru. He had smiled and invited you in, unknowingly seducing you with his voice which had indicated that yes, this guy is drunk.

"You know, you seem like a hallucination," he exclaims and you balk.

"Why would you say that?"

He blinks at you and then laughs, "I mean you in my bed? That must be my imagination."

That statement has your stomach dropping to your knees. Is he implying what you think he is implying? Why else would he be so affronted to you being in his bed? Unless…

"I can prove to you that I am very much real."

He laughs and leans forwards, towards you, his eyes, although drooping slightly, holding a challenge you can never turn down. You grin at him, your insides tingling with the need to get near to him.

You take a puff from the cigarette pinched between your index and middle finger, and then proceed to crawl towards him; your face now inches from his because of the way he leaned forwards too. You smile, the drinks you had a while back fuelling you, and grab his neck to pull him to your lips, your skin already on fire from the adrenaline and excitement coursing through your veins.

As soon as his lips touch yours, your chapped lips feel as if they were burned. The smoke that you immediately exhale forms a shroud around your attached mouths and you inhale a bit of it, a jolt spiking through your body and you push yourself closer to him.

At first he doesn't move. But, when your lips move on their own accord, his hand finds your cheek and he falls in rhythm with you. In tandem with you, like two swans dancing across the lake, performing an intricate ballet of their own – that's how your lips move together. As if they were meant to be, like jigsaw pieces fitting in perfectly.

You don't know how his eyes had widened like saucers when you first pulled him down by his neck. You don't know how his heart had stopped when your lips landed on his, the action making him feel jittery and burning his inside with need.

All you know is how blissed out you feel – and you are fucking loving it. You know the wine made you so bold as to kiss him, especially like this, but you are just glad you are finally kissing him. 

And he is kissing you back. With so much fervor that you feel you can dissolve in a puddle. His other hand also makes its way to your face and he holds you gently, but firmly. His tongue swipes across your lips and you shiver before breaking the kiss.

With a hair's breadth away from you, Satoru stares at you in a haze, hands still holding your face and lips red and glossy.

"Did you just kiss me?" 

"Now do I feel like a hallucination?" you quip and he shakes his head, thumb swiping at your cheek softly.

"Fuck. Do it again."

Gladly, you think and rush to stub the cigarette on the tray. In your haste, you stumble a bit and Satoru steadies you with a giggle, almost falling forward with you himself.

As soon as you put it out, you scramble in his hold and intertwine your hands behind his neck, climbing on his lap and straddling him. He grabs you by your waist, to steady you, and almost instantly you attach your lips again – this time with an eagerness that you both match.

He groans when your lips move against his, performing the same dance, but with added grace. His grip on your waist gets tighter and you open his mouth with yours, licking into his mouth and tasting faint traces of whiskey. It makes your mind go on an overdrive, and goosebumps spread through your whole body. 

Arousal pools at your center when he runs a finger up your spine, his other hand inching upwards, under the shirt you had on. He sighs into the kiss and breaks it.

"Oh my god, you are so soft." his nose touches your cheek and he slowly drags it all the way to your ear, tongue peeking out. You shudder when he licks your jaw, forming circles with his tongue under your ear, on your neck.

"Satoru." you keen and tug at his locks, pulling him closer to your skin – which is absolutely on fire. His lips meet your neck and he kisses your skin slowly, taking his time to savor your neck.

His hand on your waist works its way around it, and he grips you tighter, and before you know – you are being picked up and tossed on the bed with a soft thud.

"Ow." you groan and Satoru's eyes widen and he hovers over you, sparing no time.

"Oh my god, I am sorry. Are you okay?" his round eyes meet yours, face way too near for you to function. In his haze, he doesn't realize that even if you were hurt, your face would have been intact, and you giggle.

"Yes." you sigh out and pull him down to join your lips again. He almost crashes into you, but braces himself with his forearms. His tongue enters your mouth immediately, relishing in the flavor of bubble gum and making you moan as his tongue does wonders.

"Wait lemme-" you break the kiss and shift upwards, so you are not in the middle of the bed, dangling off the edge. That makes Satoru crawl upwards too and once you both have settled, his mouth finds your neck and your hands find his hair.

His tongue finds a spot on your neck, which gives away how fucking sensitive you are, and he groans into your skin when you whine. Your hips buck upwards and he pins you down with his, with perfect pressure that keeps you in place, but doesn't hurt you.

"Satoru, I want more." you moan his name and he ruts his hip against yours once, grinding down on you so you can feel him. His semi hard length rubs against your center, and even through the barrier, you feel overwhelmed by it.

"You want me?" he teases with his mouth at your breastbone, dragging your shirt down so he can see the top of your breasts.

"Yes."

"Say what you want, baby." 

You whimper in his hold. If he called you baby again, you might actually die.

"You, all of you."

"Fuck you're making me go crazy." 

You get hotter at this, goosebumps erupting across your whole body. As if you were any better? As if you weren't crazier?

Your back arches when his lips brush your nipples through your bra, making your pussy clench around nothing. His hand pushes your shirt upwards, rubbing patterns on your skin with the gentleness of a feather, soft but tingly. You arch a bit more, instinctively, when he tries to remove your shirt – and you let him, meeting him halfway. Your shirt goes flying somewhere in the dimly lit room, and you don't care.

Satoru has a different air around him, one that makes you succumb to him, with everything inside you. Your hips push themselves upward, for any kind of friction and he looks up at you from your chest. As soon as he does, you inhale a sharp breath and wish to die for him.

His hair frames his face beautifully,  like the prettiest ocean. His eyes are deep, and beautiful, and his eyelids droop scarily, hazily, as he watches you with a glint in his eyes. His lips are wet and bruised, and his tongue pokes his cheek, before he speaks.

"Eager, are we?" 

Oh God.

"Yes." you sigh, and you think you see him smirk, if only for a second. You are restless, you are crazy and you want everything, all at once. And he is making you run hills for it.

He kisses your stomach, and makes his way southwards. Your toes curl when his hands brush over your core and reach to unbutton your jeans.

"Can I?" he looks up at you, and even if his voice is a whisper, you hear it clearly, and you nod,

"Of course, 'toru." 

He grins at this, and undoes your button, your zipper the next. You lift up your hips to help him pull down your jeans, and in a few tugs, you are lying on his bed in only your underwear.

He looks at you with a glimmer in his eyes, filled with lust and haze. There's adoration that you make out, and you return it tenfold. The ever changing lights from his lamp frame his body, making him glow and you pant as you beckon him to you.

"You are so beautiful," his hands toy with your band and he kisses your core through the material, making you arch your back, your hands flying to grab his hair.

"Oh fuck," 

He slowly tugs your underwear lower, as if he has all the time in the world and you whine impatiently. You need something, and your cunt is restless as you try to shimmy out of the piece of clothing gracing your ass.

He grunts at the sight of your bare pussy. You arch your back, pushing your hips upwards and he bends down, eye level with your naked core, as he caresses the side of your hips.

Your mind buzzes, the fog sitting down heavily. You already aren't coherent enough, and the feeling of lust drives you to another level of high.

"Shit." you hiss quietly. It feels so good when his hand cups your pussy, making you squirm your hips and tighten your core due to the sudden action. The laugh he lets out is hoarse, deep, and the utter desire to have him drives you with ease.

Your eyelids flutter shut when he starts leaving feather light kisses on your lower stomach, dangerously near to your center. The soft action amidst the heat of the moment has you curling your toes, hands slowly reaching up to his locks.

"Satoru," you sigh and he grunts into your skin, his voice muffled by the rising of your body, with each ragged breath that you take. You are gasping for air, trying to take in his essence, his scent, all of him. It won't be wrong to say that you are so fucking pathetic, so gone, that he hasn't even technically done anything, and you are already incoherent.

"Can I taste you?" 

Your hold on his hair tightens at this, and you mindlessly nod. Of course, you would like him to taste you. Your pussy is aching with need – crying for whatever that is offered. Yes, that's how pathetic you feel.

His breath hits your quivering cunt and you shudder when he parts your folds with his fingers. They then find your clit and he rubs circles around it, making your legs shiver. You quietly whimper when he skillfully traces a line to your cunt. One of his fingers plunges in and your arousal coats his hand, merrily.

Even though you know how real this is, you still can't believe you are here with him. You close your eyes in a state of utter bliss, heightened by the faint noises he lets out right at your center.

"You are so fucking amazing," is his word before his nose touches your folds, parting them. You think he sniffs – and moans – right in front of your pussy. The sudden vibration makes you go haywire and you gasp out loud.

"Stop doing that." you warn him and he chuckles, making you run for your breath – again. You don't know how he can be the cause of your misery and pleasure, all at once.

"It's like I can live here." he says and you get a bit bolder – maybe from the high? or maybe from the frustration?

"If you're only gonna talk, then find some other place." you grumble and it's as if a switch flips inside him.

He pulls you down by the hips, burying his nose between your folds and swipes a path, almost hungrily. His hold on your hips is firm, not hurting, but also not allowing you to squirm. You faintly register his tongue peeking, but before you have the chance to react, it fully assaults your poor pussy. He licks between your folds, making your legs shudder, and moan in pleasure. His hands creep to your inner thighs and he pushes them wider, allowing himself to stay comfortably in between them.

"Mhm. So sweet, baby."

You whine at the pet name, and pull at his hair. His tongue works skillfully, and he lets out little noises of pleasure which drive you mad. His hair cascades down the side of his face, and faintly tickles your thigh, while framing his face beautifully. You can feel your high wearing off, the lust taking place instead. Your back arches when his tongue finds your clit.

"Satoru, that's.. yeah." 

His laugh is devastating, and your toe curls. You open your eyes to a sight that makes your breath hitch, and your other hand goes to the sheets, gripping them for any kind of anchor.

With his eyes closed, his jaw works heavenly. There's a slick sheen of sweat covering his forehead, and his eyebrows are drawn taut in focus. He hums and his finger rubs circles on your skin, leaving fire in their wake.

"You know," he looks up at you with a lopsided, lazy grin, and eyes drooping low. His lips are red and wet, and there's a blush spreading across his neck. His lip curls and he bites down on his lower lip to stop himself from laughing, especially after seeing you ragged and gasping for breath, looking at him with your head tilted and eyes pleading, "You sound like pure fucking sin." he completes and you thrash your leg, for him to say such a thing.

"Please, don't." you sigh and he snickers.

"Don't what? That's the truth, baby." 

You roll your eyes and it doesn't take him longer to get back to your cunt. This time as soon as his tongue flattens on your bundle of nerves, the tightness in your core starts to nudge you. His finger parts your folds and his tongue twirls in circles on your nub, making you gush like a fall.

You can feel the mess you are making, and his affirmative hum just makes you curl your fingers more.

"I'm, I'm close. Please don't stop"

He shakes his head and increases the pace of his assault, making you gasp out loud. The squelching sound of your juices has you rolling your eyes back and gulping. His tongue flicks over your already sensitive nub, and that being the last straw – you break for good.

Your orgasm washes over you in waves of haze, which has you moaning out loud for heaven's sake. The stars that Satoru's lamp forms on the ceiling seem so very much real, that it has you reeling for a second. You try to take in as much air as you can, taking in the smell of sex. As your breathing turns normal again, you register his tongue still on your cunt. He laps at your juices deliciously, and you arch your back painfully – especially because of the pain your nub feels, sensitive and gone.

"Stop no." you rasp out, and he stops immediately.

He looks up as you gasp for breath, and his face is drenched – covered by your cum. His tongue peeks out and he licks his lip, tasting your cum again and you almost shudder at the sight. His thumb presses into your skin and he leans ahead, sniffing once more.

"I love you so fucking much."

Time stops and your eyes turn into saucers, your heart flying out from your body. 

Did he just say he loves you? Is this real? Is he real? After being a moth to his flame for literal fucking years, he tells you that he has been no better. Heaven rushes to you and your eyes brighten with glee. You want to grab him by the neck and shout at him that yes, you love him too, but somehow those words die on your tongue when you look at him looking up at you with those eyes. So, you just nod; a gesture which seems to translate perfectly well to him, for he smiles wide.

His eyes, crinkling at the edges, catch sight of your hardened nipples from your bra and he fucking groans. Soon, he is hovering over you – the motion so quick that it gives you whiplash. He wedges his thigh between yours and rests his weight on his forearms, as he sets them beside your face. He is quick to attach his lips to yours, and you sigh into his mouth. The taste that sits on your tongue is yours, and even though you inwardly cringe, you find it so fucking hot. His tongue presses down on yours and you gasp when you feel his teeth on your lip, almost bruising you.

The vigor of his kiss drives you, and you moan when you feel his hard length poke your abdomen. You mindlessly shift your body and he grinds down on you, detaching his lips from yours – only to moan at your lips. His head hangs low as he works his hips a little more, and you help him with little whimpers and shifts of your own.

"Let me ride you." you sigh out and he pauses, looking up at you with a furrow in his brows.

"Are, are you sure?"

Even though you can't actually feel your legs, you know you are sure.

"I want to ride you. I need to." you assure and he groans.

"Fuck, baby."

He climbs off of you and stands beside the bed, unbuttoning his pants. His eyes glaze over your eager form on the bed and a jolt strikes through your body, pooling at your center. There’s a slick sheen of sweat on his naked chest, and you get the sudden urge to wrap your arms around his wide frame and pull him as close as possible to yourself. He rids himself of his pants and you almost moan out loud, loving the sight of his nude thighs, practically inviting you to sit on them.

Satoru nudges you and you shift, letting him settle down on the bed beside you. Immediately, your hands are on him, and you trace his form with your fingers, your lips on his jaw trying to savor each and every inch of him. He groans under your ministrations, leading you to push yourselves onto him, finally on those thighs you have always thought about.

“You are so hot,” he sighs, his hands finding solace on your waist. 

You will your hands to leave his pecs, and direct them to his cock, standing tall with need. You fist it once, the man under you keening with pleasure. You look him in the eyes, your gaze challenging him as you continue to drag your hand over his length slowly, making him bite down on his lip and tighten his hold on your waist. His touch burns you, his fingers digging into your bare skin. The pleasure and his voices drive you, and you bring your other hand to your back, successfully unbuttoning your last piece of garment. He audibly moans when he sees your boobs and your insides flare with need.

“Baby, please,” he pleads, and you understand what he asks of you. Your actions are swift as you hover above his length, directing it to your aching pussy and slowly sit down on it. You throw your head back, syncing your moans with his as your walls cover his needy cock, filling you full. You brace yourselves with your hands on his abdomen and he guides you lower on his length, your pussy tightening around him and covering him with your slick arousal.

"Ah shit," he hisses, his eyes glazing over with lust. Your ass hits his thighs, and you bite down on your lip to stop the insensitivities from spilling out of your mouth. You lean towards and start moving your hips, your fingers inching up his abs and pussy sucking him in deliciously.

The stretch of your walls hurt you, but you can't even complain because that's what you wanted. Soon, you are riding him with ease, your hips rocking as his fingers dig deeper in your skin. The pleasure is so crazy that you see spots in your vision, your body hot with need.

He whines under you and you moan his name out, increasing your pace and leaning back on your palms, as they rest on his knees. You close your eyes and he thrusts his hips upwards, meeting you halfway. Your tits bounce as you move, and the man under you groans at the sight.

"'toru, you feel so good," you whimper, and miss the way he bites down on his lip. His eyes drink your sight in, and rather than see it, you feel the heat of his gaze on you, goosebumps erupting in its wake.

Your core tightens and your pace gets sloppier, his thrusts taking you to levels never seen. His eyes screw shut and you try to train your sight on the beauty of his body, white spots filling your vision from the pleasure that courses through your body. You are terribly close, leaning towards him in need to find his lips on yours.

"Angel, I," he begins and breaks the sentence with a deep thrust upwards, "I have never felt so fucking blissed out before."

Oh god, you almost cry out at this, slipping closer to the edge. You tell him so and he nods, a grin etching on his face.

"Let's slip together," he brings his hand to yours and intertwines his fingers with yours. Butterflies rise in your stomach and your throat almost chokes up at that action, a lovely feeling encasing you.

He loves you.

And you love him.

That fact combined with the way his cock fucks into you so sweetly, you topple over the edge, your orgasm washing over you in waves of pure bliss. You see stars behind your closed lids and stop moving, not being able to feel your legs or your knees or your hands; only and only his presence.

It's a few seconds later that he spills inside you, his hold on your hand tightening and a deep groan making its way past his lips. His cock jerks inside you once, and he brings you closer to him, your name the only word on his lips like a mantra.

Your boobs press up against his chest and he gushes at the feeling, his nose nudging yours, a similar smile on both of your faces. He pulls out with a grimace and wraps his arms around your form, locking you in his embrace.

"You said you love me?" you sheepishly suggest and he lets out a full belly laugh.

"Yes, yes I do. I'm in love with you, and I can no longer deny it."

Oh, straight to your heart. You get all giddy like a teenager at his proclamation of his love for you.

"Do you…?" he trails off, a shadow of doubt passing over his face.

"Of course, I love you."

He grins, relieved by it and leaves a chaste kiss on your lips, giving you the chance to chase it if you want to. And of course you want to.

You'll always want him.

---

© kaisensei. do not repost or claim as your own.

>>> please let me know what you think of this by reblogging, leaving comments or sending asks :) I'll love it!!

[anarchotolkienist]

you’re attacking that neopagan kind of birthstone post about druid plants, but could you please elaborate or at least clarify the explicit trope that is being used that has been historically weaponized?

I used to spend about a good third of my time on this godforsaken website attacking that idea, but sure, I'll do it again. This will be a bit of an effortpost, so I'll stick it under the readmore

There is a notion of 'celts' or Gaels as being magicial and somehow deeply in touch with nature and connected to pre-Christian worldviews that the people who decided to make up the "Celtic tree astrology" used. This is also why Buffy used Irish Gaelic as the language of the demons, why Warhammer uses Gaelic as Elvish, why garbled Scottish Gaelic is used by Wiccans as the basis for their new religious construct, why people call themselves Druids to go an say chants in bad Welsh in Stonehenge, or Tursachan Chalanais, or wherever, etc etc. This stuff is everywhere in popular culture today, by far the dominant view of Celtic language speaking peoples. Made up neopagan nonsense is the only thing you find if you go looking for Gaelic folklore, unless you know where to look, and so on and so on. I could multiply examples Endless, and in fact have throughout the lifespan of this blog, and probably will continue to.

To make a long history extremely brief (you can ask me for sources on specifics, or ask me to expand if you're interested), this is directly rooted in a mediaeval legalistic discussion in Catholic justifications for the expansionist policies of the Normans, especially in Ireland, who against the vigourous protestation of the Church in Ireland claimed that the Gaelic Irish were practically Pagan in practice and that conquest against fellow Christians was justified to bring them in like with the Church. That this was nonsense I hope I don't need to state. Similar discourses about the Gaels in Scotland exist at the same time, as is clear from the earliest sources we have postdating the Gaelic kingdom of Alba becoming Scotland discussing the 'coastal Scots' - who speak Ynglis (early Scots) and are civilised - and the 'forest Scots' (who speak 'Scottis' (Middle Gaelic) and have all the hallmarks of barbarity. This discourse of Gaelic savagery remains in place fairly unchanged as the Scottish and then British crowns try various methods for integrating Gaeldom under the developing early state, provoking constant conflict and unrest, support certain clans and chiefs against others and generally massively upset and destabilise life among the Gaels both in Scotland and Ireland. This campaign, which is material in root but has a superstructure of Gaelic savagery and threat justifying it develops through attempts at assimilation, more or less failed colonial schemes in Leòdhas and Ìle, the splitting of the Gaelic Irish from the Gaelic Scots through legal means and the genocide of the Irish Gaels in Ulster, eventually culminates in the total ban on Gaelic culture, ethnic cleansing and permanent military occupation of large swathes of Northern Scotland, and the destruction of the clan system and therefore of Gaelic independence from the Scottish and British state, following the last rising in 1745-6.

What's relevant here is that the attitude of Gaelic barbarity, standing lower on the civilisational ladder than the Anglo Saxons of the Lowlands and of England, was continuously present as a justification for all these things. This package included associations with the natural world, with paganisms, with emotion, and etc. This set of things then become picked up on by the developing antiquarian movement and early national romantics of the 18th century, when the Gaels stop being a serious military threat to the comfortable lives of the Anglo nobility and developing bourgeoise who ran the state following the ethnic cleansing after Culloden and permanent occupation of the Highlands (again, ongoing to this day). They could then, as happened with other colonised peoples, be picked up on and romanticised instead, made into a noble savage, these perceived traits which before had made them undesirable now making them a sad but romantic relic of an inexorably disappearing past. It is no surprise that Sir Walter Scott (a curse upon him and all his kin) could make Gaels the romantic leads of his pseudohistorical epics at the exact same time that Gaels were being driven from their traditional lands in their millions and lost all traditional land rights. These moves are related. This tradition is what's picked up on by Gardner when he decides to use mangled versions of Gaelic Catholic practice (primarily) as collected by the Gaelic folklorist Alasdair MacIlleMhìcheil as the coating for Wicca, the most influential neo-pagan "religion" to claim a 'Celtic' root and the base of a lot of oncoming nonsense like that Celtic Tree Astrology horseshit that started this whole thing, and give it a pagan coat of paint while also adding some half-understood Dharmic concepts (three-fold law anyone?) and a spice of deeply racist Western Esotericism to the mix. That's why shit like that is directly harmful, not just historically but in the present total blotting out of actually existing culture of Celtic language speakers and their extremely precarious communities today.

If you want to read more, I especially recommend Dr. Silke Stroh's work Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imaginary, Dr. Aonghas MacCoinnich's book Plantation and Civility in the North-Atlantic World, the edited collection Mio-rún Mór nan Gall on Lowland-Highland divide, the Gaelic writer known in English as Ian Crichton Smith's essay A real people in a real place on these impacts on Gaelic speaking communities in the 20th century, Dr. Donnchadh Sneddons essay on Gaelic racial ideas present in Howard and Lovecrafts writings, and Dr. James Hunter's The Making of the Crofting Community for a focus on the clearings of Gaels after the land thefts of the late 18th and early 19th century.

@grimdr an do chaill mi dad cudromach, an canadh tu?

[likelysobbing]

GIRLLLL YOURE FILIPINO???? can I request a kk Arnold x filipino! gf! reader 🙏🙏

#bakla

𖥻 ATE OR ATE ?! kk arnold x filipino!npc reader

synopsis: kk arnold dating a … *gasp!* filipino!npc reader ?!

notes: hey… hey y’all… been a minute… and also hi nonnies, AND my first ever 😸 nonnie hehe YIPPEE!! welcome! i decided to combine all your requests as they were general enough to use as simple prompts! i’ma be real, kk would probably? not really mind your roots? i lowkey had big writing block doing this so the length’s kind of bad but it’s made with a lot of love i promise!! but also its kind of ass. and also, thank you so much for the kind words my loves. i prefer interactions being sent to my ask box so I'll be able to properly get to them.. . but just know I truly appreciate it. you lot are so sweet. #bakla!!!

cw: kk being notoriously bad at pronounciation, paige n ice make a cameo but don’t really have dialogue, i’m posting this sleeeeeepy deepy eepy… goodnight.

THANK YOU FOR THESE REQUESTS you are both geniuses. assuming that you’re talking about a filipino npc gf, i’m just going to automatically assume you’re like fresh from the philippines. maybe you have a student visa, or you just moved here a couple months/years ago and youre still getting used to it, but the point is you’re fresh off the soil of the MOTHERLAND 💪

the way you met + got close was the same as what i wrote in TRU-LY FRU-ITY. the pen-returning first meet, the epiphany at the game kk had, the pining—all of it is the same. There’s no need to elaborate more on it besides the fact that if you have an accent, it made kk’s eyes quirk up a bit—not because she minded it, or that she recognized it— but because it was so uniquely yours. whenever you spoke over her, she was pouty, yeah, but she couldn’t help but notice your voice (again)— and how pretty it sounded overlapping hers. dare i say you’d make sweet music together .. . hahahaha. js kidding. that was a bad innuendo

kk doesn’t outwardly show interest (may or may not be a direct lie)— that is to say, she doesn’t ask about things unless they spark her interest. the problem is, everything sparks her interest. kk in actuality is a very curious person—she’s going to definitely be interested in your culture, but she’ll do it in a way that is lowkey and … #nonchalant.

kk tries to be as lowkey as possible when it comes to her curiosity about your language, but sometimes its hard when hearing your voice— that filipino accent along with it— is such a significant part of her routine. she’s so quietly fascinated by the way your voice sounds like speaking tagalog–to the way your voice sounds like in general– and she finds herself simply exchanging words with you for no real reason other than to hear your voice. she like absorbs information during times like these, don’t get her wrong, but lowkey in the middle of your ramble she just goes off into dreamland and your voice lulls her deeper into it.

“my day was okay,” you begin, kk’s head on your shoulder and her eyes closed as she listens. “yeah?” she replies, “what happened? talk about it.” she insists, snuggling deeper into your neck. you laugh; an airy thing, and you feel kk’s hand on your arm tighten. she curls herself smaller into your space, kissing your shoulder. you raise an eyebrow, “you promise not to fall asleep?”

kk pauses. opens one eye. “girl, don’t start.”

when she sees you reading through tagalog websites, blogs, etc. she cranes her neck slightly down at your device just to see how words are intertwined in your language. she definitely tries to pronounce some words in her head.

you weren’t doing anything, really.

there was a new post from your favorite newsletter— it just happened to be typed out in tagalog, and you were reading it. despite being so far away from home, you tried to keep up with your country’s current events. It wasn’t born out of anything—just curiosity. Your eyes scanned the site, not noticing the looming kk behind you, staring at the screen and tilting her head as if trying to sound the words out.

“mag…” she began, startling you out of your zone as you looked back at her. you looked between her and the screen, leaning back a bit, challenging her to read it as a smirk began to form on your lips. “mag—“ she repeated, butchering it efficiently, “ingat?” she murmured, before saying it out loud again. “ingat.” eenjat.

loud and wrong.

“po kay-o.”

you laugh into your hand, shoulders shaking, and she just stares—trying to sound out the next sentence.

she tries! she’s a huge tryer. not a very huge successor but sometimes she gets it with enough coaching! however, half the time, she focuses more on your voice rather than what you’re actually pronouncing. you’re trying to teach her how to pronounce ‘mahal’ and she’s just staring down at you and your mouth moving. my girl is NOT absorbing anything you’re saying she just thinks you’re pretty

“kk, are you listening?”

“yuuuuup.”

“to what i’m saying, kk.”

“nooope.”

she’d be interested in filipino trends— think the budots craze, for example. we all know kk loves her tiktok dances, and so simply peeking over your shoulder, watching a video of someone completely eating up the dance, would send her into an intriguing phase of . … how u say …. DIGGING.

she ends up learning the tiktok dance herself, doing it, posting it, and not realizing that filipinos have lots of pride. she opens her phone to comments that are literally just ‘UYYY PHILIPPINS🔥🇵🇭’ but in different fonts. she’s actually JUBILANT about it. she even shows you!

“bae-bae!” your head perks up, and you slowly blink as you turn your head to a very happy kk. she greets you with a big smile, presenting her phone to you as if it were blessed by God, holding it up simba style and all—all to show you a …. a tiktok comment section? “kk, what?” your eyebrows furrow, leaning back as if to see better even though you’re not even registering whatever’s being shown to you at all. kk pushes the phone closer to you, “look at these comments!” she giggled, “i got em welcoming me and stuff…”

on the topic of social media… i did say that she didn’t necessarily hard launch you, but she would make it known she was taken. under the assumption that you have a filipino surname, you’d immediately get attention considering filipinos are EVERYWHERE . i am serious . maybe you make a cameo on live, speaking tagalog, or maybe you make an instagram post with a plate of kakanin (yum❤️❤️) at your side, or maybe kk posts you too much (while still trying to stay nonchalant & totally chill about you) and lowkey has people curious enough to stalk you a bit … respectfully. point is, you get outed (is that the right word) as having filipino roots and suddenly everyone is, once again, like: “UYYY PHILIPPINS!!!”

likely every one, and i mean every one of kk’s fans begin to call you ate (big sister). it was started by a filipino portion during a live, and ever since then, you’ve been referred to as ate by kk’s fans. or literally the entirety of uconns fanbase.

SPEAKING OF LIVES ACTUALLY… heres how the usual live goes between the team and you:

kk positioned the phone on a makeshift stand, perching it up on her bedroom wall as paige & ice began to gather around it—with ice pushing you forward to get closer, too. it wasn’t pushing, actually. more so gentle beckoning that felt like a push because she was a D1 basketball player. you digress. kk greeted the live, smile wide as she waved— “hey y’all! it’s beeeeen a minute…. i know, i know, y’all missed us?” she grinned, watching the comments pile up. “we missed y’all too! anyway, for today’s live…” she paused, “i actually don’t really wanna do nothing big.” she shrugged, before shrugging again but this time emphasizing it so as to add comedic effect. you stood stiff as a board behind her, and regardless of whether or not you dressed to make a statement, comments began flooding in.

“who dat in the BACKKKKK”

“i think there’s a statue behind u kk”

“can we get a bueckers cameo” (paige peeked her head into the camera)

“ice brady i love u”

“is that ate?”

“hiii ate!”

“baby, they saying hello to you,” your girlfriend giggled, and you waved. “hello,” you said back, grinning at the comments as they seemed to increase. in complete spirit of spontaneity, kk asked: “actually, is there a hello in tagalog?”

“Tagalog lessons with ate!”

“HEHEHEHE uyy philippins🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭”

“🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭MOTHERLAND🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭🇵🇭”

“it’s just hello kk 💔”

“that comment.” you murmur, pointing briefly at it. “they’re right. literally just ‘hello’, kk.”

“oh! so like, kamusta…”

“when did i ever say that—“

it’s legit just kk asking you to ‘rep the home country’ and you blinking confused into the camera. and then the comments are like “i love you both . adopt me”

KK IS SO CURIOUS . but she doesn’t want to seem too overbearing. BUT SHES SO CURIOUS. but she’s nonchalant about it.

her curiosity comes in what she thinks of as ‘slick remarks’, pointing at things like tables and microwaves and asking you “yo, what’s that called in philippines? is it like different or something?” — of course, you satiate her desires. you respond. this comes, also, in the form of sharing your snacks with her.

i feel like kk would fw mik-mik— it’s like, this sweetened powder that boomed mostly in the 1990s. once you tossed kk a pack, she ended up hooked on those little fuckers. she downs them like they’re crucial to her existence.

“kk.” you called, hands already working to untangle a long chain of the mikmik packets—tearing one off and tossing it to your girlfriend, who already had her head perked up like a very curious puppy that loved you to a degree that was concerning. she caught the packet, hands clasping around it as she blinked. “what’s this?” kk asked, despite already tearing open the packet.

“just eat it.” you ordered, simply. she blinked again, and then because you were her girlfriend and she practically worshipped the ground you walked on, she obeyed!

she dipped the powder into her mouth, letting it soak before her eyes widened in awe—as if she were a renaissance artist, discovering anime for the first time. she looked at the packet in awe, lips parted, and you broke into a grin.

“yo, get me some more of this!”

despite your culture not playing a significant part of the relationship, kk notably acknowledges and adores it as what makes you you—and so, one might say that she loves you even more—but she already loves you the most she physically can.

so she loves you all the same.

@likelysobbing.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

do you have thoughts on the recent trend of stopping on the street to film police interactions? i have been generally and ambiguously in favor of it, because of the talking points around privileged (especially white and upper-class) people recording police actions being a deterrent for violent escalation. but your points about filming human rights abuses more broadly just made me stop and think about the topic, and i realized i am not sure if i have the education to figure out if there should be a distinction or not. the things you said definitely seem to apply to a traffic stop or harassing a houseless friend as much as anything by ICE, so i am reconsidering my assumptions.

(psychosis acting up, probably missed a few words here or there or replaced them with sillier ones, if you need me to clarify i will send a follow-up ask!)

This is actually a really great ask and I'm going to do two things here.

1) I am going to give you the answer I have vultivated for myself as a white person in racial justice and police abolition spaces

2) I am going to tag in my wife @loreofthejungle who was instrumental in my ability to reconcile the tensions of this question. For a while, she consulted with the union organizing against Alphabet on their policing/protest practices around this, as well as having a lifetime of experience as a black person in a racist police state. Mi vida, can you add anything to this that you feel I did not cover or that needs expansion?

So. My answer is gonna come in bullet point fragments, and I'll try to synthesize the point at the end. Let me know if it brings up more questions or if there is anything you'd like me to elaborate on!

My wife and I pretty equally split the work of handling police interactions. It just depends on the risk factors. Typically, I take over under one of two conditions: 1) there are a LOT of cops [an example would he the day a shot-recorder summoned a fully armored SWAT team to our house], or 2) there is something about this interaction that poses a serious safety risk if things fully go sideways [once, when we were squatting in the swamp, a statie showed up to interrogate us about things of ours that had ended up on private property, and I kept him focused on me because he walked up to us already prepared to charge and remove us by force, and wasn't listening to anyone non-white when they presented our authorization to be on the nearby property]

On the other hand, for your average traffic stop, my wife has actually explicitly asked me to never step in without her directly tagging me in. This is because, as long as certain circumstances are still present, she is simply better equipped to stabilize the situation than me. This is based on the same logic as "don't jump in and berate an abuser you see hitting their partner on the street unless you know FOR SURE that you can keep their victim safe from their retribution, including getting the victim's consent" but sized to scale for an entire police force. Imagine the violence of sitting in a car while lights flash behind you (did you know that police lights can trigger seizures? Did you know we once had a cop admit to us that he was pleased I had a seizure in the passanger seat because he made us sit and watch the lights for 45 minutes?) and you have to keep your hands visible on the steering wheel, you have to ask your seizing spouse to hand you paperwork because their jerky movements are still safer than your careful ones. You sit and you smile, and you say yes sir and no sir when the cop asks questions, you say that you were just taking your spouse home from classes at the local college, you tell the cop where you live because he asked even though you Do Not Want To and Shouldn't Have To, and you know the whole time, that if your spouse finally loses their temper and snaps or gets defensive of you, the bullet will go in YOUR head, not his. You ask yourself if it's worse to die for something someone ELSE did. You ask yourself if your spouse will be able to live with being responsible for you getting murdered in front of them. Your knuckles go white on the steering wheel while the cops make you wait and wait and WAIT running your license. They come back and give you a citation, and you say thank you sir are we free to go? The cop doesn't say anything. Just walks back to his cruiser and pulls back onto the road. Once you can't see him, you take a deep breath and drive home.

Like, I used to think that it was my responsibility as the white person in that situation to stand in the way. And don't get me wrong. Sometimes it IS. But it should never be thoughtlessly done because IT WON'T BE ME WHO SUFFERS FOR IT

I do not film police interactions anymore. Ever. This is not because I do not believe it is could ever be valuable. It's because I know that my most effective role in yhat moment is NOT cameraman. It is interventionist. I'm licensed, I've spent most of my career as an EMS/first responder, I am big and difficult to move around, and when I talk, I know the words to use to make the cops just worried enough to shift their attention to me. If someone else is equipped to film, that is technically their choice. But it is ESSENTIAL that people be willing to take stock of their capacity.

I think filming became a popular idea of what anti-racist action looks like specifically because if you don't know much about filming political actions, it seems like it should be easy to do

It IS easy to do. But it is INCREDIBLY TECHNICALLY CHALLENGING to do it safely and effectively. This is a terrifying gap between perception and reality

Consider what happens when I intervene. My role is not a de-arresting one. Technically, I never do anything illegal. This has NOT stopped cops from threatening me before. Filmed interactions rarely end up exonerating the people abused by cops in a court of law. And the court of public opinion isn't the sandbox some of yall think it is.

If someone is filming the cops while I am intervening in an arrest/abuse sitaution, then they are also filming ME. Take a minute and really think about what the consequences of that could be for me. What happens if I put hands on a cop, even without violence, and it's now documented in your recording? What if they arrest me during the altercation? What if I or the person originally being abused is injured or killed in frame? What about the possibility of being doxxed after? Did you know that medical licenses in some states require you to publicly post your full legal name and contact information on a publicly accessible database, sometimes including your home address? My photo isn't attached to my license, but my workplace is, and my photo is on the staff page as required by ethical standards. It would take all of five minutes of googling for chuds to go from a film of me intervening to knowing where I fucking live. The people who doxx activists can do more with less. Don't underestimate the risk, not just of state-sanctioned retributive violence, but also of vigilante retributive violence.

Why are you actually filming? This is ultimately the most important question in the world. If you don't have a plan for what you're going to DO with the film after, then WHY in GOD'S name would you put yourself in the position of having to scrub that data later or of being harmed/harassed by cops yourself for filming???

Even if you're SURE it's morally the right thing, if you don't know what the video will be for, you will not be able to proactively block your filming such that you are being protective of the risks involved. You will simply be recording, and odds are good that includes a LOT of things that should NEVER be committed to video, even for a good cause.

Yall know the cops kill cameramen right? All the time. Like you GET that part of why it's important to know what you're doing is that you could get other people killed, but part of it is also that Race Traitor is a very real category of person you can and will be slotted into if you do this kind of thing often enough. I have a complicated relationship with local LEOs because on the one hand we maintain a professional relationship for a number of reasons I don't have immediate control over, but on the other hand they are VERY aware of who I am and what I do, and that means they can and have acted on that knowledge in the past. I cannot emphasize enough that I am not speaking from THEORY when I tell yall these things, I am speaking as someone whose entire family has been on the federal government's radar since the 1930s. My childhood home was wire tapped more than once, and in my adulthood I have been made aware of surveillance efforts, both dragnets and targetted. This is NOT unusual in the communities I come from, and in fact my family was largely unmolested by comparison [after all, the secret service haven't been by since my uncle stopped printing counterfeit cash for his engineering projects, and lets be real the FBI and Homeland are fucking cowards who wouldn't approach unless they knew they outnumbered and outgunned you]. I know the phrase "learn about COINTELPRO and other invasive disruption operations" is a cliché on this site, but I remain unconvinced anyone actually LEARNED about these things rather than just reading some quippy posts or listening to a few youtube essays. This is inadequate. Yall need to read the wire tap transcripts, the court proceedings, the jailhouse letters and memoirs, the civil suit allegations, and so many other first hand records of what happens when LEOs decide they want to disempower local activists. And not just for COINTELPRO. Learn about the overlap between the operations wielded against marginalized residents of the so-named United States and the operations wielded against foreign liberation movements. Why do you think Black liberation and Palestinian liberation movements are so tightly woven? They have been since LONG before this most recent acceleration of violence in the Levant. The reciprocity between the IOF and their intelligence branches and OUR military and intelligence branches runs deep.

Not everyone needs to be able to be an activist or perform direct action. And no single specific person should ever feel compelled to do so against their wishes or safety needs. But if you know that you cannot be involved, you need to ACCEPT that you cannot be involved. That your power fantasy of saving the day and being exhaulted for your moral fortitude is in fact a fantasy and you have no fucking business complicating the actions of the people who DO know how to do this work and are able and willing to act on this knowledge.

It should not feel insulting to people for me to tell them that if they cannot be thoughtful and strategic about their interventions, they should simply not fucking intervene. But it does. Why do we take it more personally that we need to step back than we internalize the harm our selfish desire to be included in the moment may do to ourselves and others? What shame are we inflicting on ourselves to elide the truth that by leaving the work to the people who can perform it effectively and safely we ARE making a measured and proactive approach to activism and interventionism?

Is it possibly because this would require you to acknowledge that you are either unable or unwilling to DEVELOP the skills that you would need to act in this way? Or maybe because you feel that you are only a good person if you are seen to actively be a good person? Maybe you simply feel helpless and desperately need to do SOMETHING but are struggling to manage your fear and stress enough right now to actually follow through on that? Whatever it may be, sit with the answer. Wrestle with it. And maintain the guardrail the entire time that you need to know how to not do harm before you can act on political/direct action and intervention.

Shame will not help us right now. We need to be thoughtful and evidence-based.

This got long so I'm going to wrap here, but TLDR:

There is no single answer to whether or not to film in the moment, which is why it is so important to understand not a hard rule but a conversation and process of decision makingnfor yourself that is considered and planful.

Mi amor, please add what you need to.

[novankenn]

Card Trick (2)

Jaune was asleep in his room, when Glynda left to speak with Headmaster Ozpin about the initiation that was happening tomorrow morning. While it was mostly arranged, one could never be too careful. So while everyone slept, Ozpin and Glynda would have one last go over of the planned event.

Ozpin didn't look up from the elaborately edged playing card he held between his fingers, when the elevator to his office dinged. He knew who it would be at this late hour. It would be Glynda, and they would have one more review of tomorrow's planned activity before each of them called it a night.

"It's been eleven years." Glynda commented seeing Ozpin with the card. A card that was found clutched in Jaune's tiny hands in the aftermath of the disaster that was Orleans.

"Yes, it has, and this still puzzles me." Ozpin commented as he turned the card over. "There is a residue of magic with in it. Old magic, but also foreign."

"You've mentioned that before."

"I know, but I'm starting, after all this time to wonder..."

"About what?" Glynda asked.

"About..." Ozpin set the card down on his desk, blank side up. "why there is no image on this side. It is a finished artifact, but yet the face is blank."

"Did you just call it an artifact?"

"I did, because that is the only word I can use to describe it." Ozpin admitted, before turning the card back over to display the intricate designs on the reverse side. "But enough of this curiosity."

"So initiation. You still want to go through with the... launching plan?"

"I do. The applicants will love it." Ozpin replied. "How do you feel about this year's hopefuls?"

"Ms Xiao Long, Ms Rose, Ms Belladonna, and Ms Schnee are going to be a headache."

"Really? How can you tell?"

"Educator's instinct. Though I won't rule out Mr Ren or Ms Valkyrie from that list."

"And Ms Nikos?"

"IF she causes any problems, I'll by a hat and eat it." Glynda chuckled. "Though I have a feeling she's going to have... issues."

"I agree. Even this far from Mistral she'll still have the phantom of fame separating her from her peers." Ozpin commented. "We will do what we can to assist them."

"And coral them." Glynda laughed.

"That too."

"Now. Initiation." the mirth left Glynda's eyes, and lips. "I have concerns. Serious ones."

"The Deathstalker."

"Yes. This year is way to close to it's den. What if one of our hopefuls rouse it?"

"It's been inactive for twenty years, but I understand and Peter will be on standby on a bullhead if it does emerge."

"I would feel better if we moved the whole site further away, to prevent if the chance of someone walking near it." Glynda grimaced. "Why do we even leave it alone? I mean it is a serious hazard to not only Beacon but Vale."

"You know as well as I do, that while it is serious threat, it is also a great deterrent for other alpha grimm." Ozpin offered. "And in the case of Alpha grimm... better the devil you know than the one you don't."

"Will Peter have any support?"

"Yes. I have our top 4th year team shadowing him." Ozpin answered. "So unless there are any other concerns, I think we should call it a night."

Glynda nodded.

As Glynda and Ozpin were finishing up their meeting, a lone figure sat brushing her ankle length purple hair, while staring at the mirror attached to the back of Jaune's door. Behind her, Jaune's bed was empty. The covers tossed aside.

"I know Jaune." the young woman whispered. "I wish we could both be out at the same time, as well... and we'll figure it out one of these days."

The woman stopped brushing her hair and giggled softly.

"Of course you can take me out for ice-cream when it happens."

[ PREVIOUS / NEXT ]

[pudding-parade]

It's the tutorial that no one asked for! And I blew my entire day on it, so you better appreciate it! :) No, seriously, this is as much for me as for anyone else. I don't do this process often, and when I do, I have to re-remember the steps, and sometimes I forget some of them and have to figure it out again. This will save future me from having to do that.

Even if you aren't me, if you're interested in being able to place diving lots in most any world you like and that has ocean, this will be relevant to your interests. Unfortunately, it is a sometimes fiddly process to get a working lot at the end, and I went into a lot of detail, so the tutorial is long, but please do follow it closely because if you skip a step or mess anything up, your lot will be wonky or it might not work at all, and I don't want to hear your whining. :)

Note that this is a tutorial for placing a new, empty diving lot, which is the first step in placing a downloaded diving lot or one that you yoinked from another world, but this tutorial doesn't cover how to get such lots working. This just shows you how to place an empty lot, which I'm assuming for this tutorial's purpose that you will then build/decorate yourself. Frankly, I've discovered that building your own is much easier than trying to ram square pegs into round holes, which is what placing downloaded dive lots often feels like, even if you know what you're doing. It can be as time-consuming, if not more time-consuming, to get a pre-made lot placed and working than it does to just build your own.

So, here we go.

Step 1: Pick Your Poison. Choose the world/save you'd like to plop a dive lot into, open it, and go into Edit Town. You can use any world you want, EA or custom, so long as it has accessible ocean in it. (More on that in Step 3.) I'm going to use Sunlit Tides, just because many people want to put dive lots in it yet can't always get them working.

Step 2: Cheats! You need some cheats, so open the cheat box by pressing Control+Shift+C and then enter these three:

testingcheatsenabled true buydebug on enablelotlocking on

Note that you need to enable testing cheats first because the other two aren't available otherwise.

Step 3: Placing the Lot. Go into World Editor and in the Lots submenu of it choose the lot size you want:

As far as I know, a dive lot can be any size you want from the minumum 10x10 to the maximum 64x64, any of the EA standard sizes or any custom size you might add using this mod. If you are bound and determined to try and place a downloaded/yoinked lot, then in my experience, it's best to make the new lot a little bigger than the lot you want to place, if possible, so that you have some wiggle room to get it to fit better. But, I'm assuming you're going to build your own here.

If you plan to do lots of terrain sculpting on your dive lot, bigger is better. That said, unless you're going to do something really elaborate, it doesn't have to be 64x64, the largest possible size, either. Smaller will mean that your prospective lot will fit in more places on the map. So, it's up to you. For this, I'm just going to place a 30x30 lot, because I'm not going to build/decorate it or anything.

Now, it needs to be said that not every world will be able to have diving lots. The world must have ocean, obviously, and that ocean must be routable or else sims won't be able to get to it. The ocean also has to be deep enough. Generally speaking, "deep enough" is if the water is dark blue. (Or green, or whatever color the lighting mod you use might make it.)

For instance, in Sunlit Tides here, it's pretty obvious where the deeper water is:

But you know what? I'm going to place a dive lot in some of the shallower water, anyway, because I/you actually can, within reason. And if you're interested in doing this in Sunlit Tides, I'll warn you that the deep spot in the pic above has a very uneven bottom. It's really not a good place to put a dive lot. And I'm not sure what the deep water on the outskirts of the map is like, but the good news is that much of the deeper and flat-bottomed shallows, as I've noted, work well.

So: With your chosen lot size selected, move your cursor around in the ocean where it seems to you that the water is "deep enough" until you come to a spot you like and where the lot grid is green. If the grid is never green, then the ocean likely isn't routable at all and you won't be able to place diving lots in that world. I have never run into that, myself, but I also haven't done this all that often, so it's certainly possible. Anyway, I'm picking here:

My advice would be to not make your lot too far off-shore even if you can do so, or else it will take sims a long time to get to it. Especially merfolk, because they always swim out to dive lots rather than take a water taxi, and they swim much more slowly than a water taxi moves. Once you find your spot, go ahead and place the lot. Doing so will create a square island, not a sunken lot. That's fine. We'll fix it in a moment.

Step 4: Change the Lot Type. Click the lot's icon and change the lot type to community and then choose "Diving Area" as the subtype:

Note that this option will only show if you've enabled lot locking. So if you didn't enter that cheat up in Step 2 or if you entered it incorrectly, rectify that situation now so that you can set the lot type.

Step 5: Sinking the Lot Enter the lot and flatten it with this tool in build mode:

This will submerge the lot so that it's level with the sea floor rather than being an island. You can now move the camera down under the water and have a look at your potential diving area, like so:

In particular, check the edges of the lot to see if there are any huge drop-offs or other great differences between the level of your lot and the surrounding terrain. Whether or not this will happen is world-dependent. Some worlds have very uneven/jagged underwater areas, which is what will make you end up with drop-offs, while others, like Sunlit Tides here, are (mostly) pretty flat.

You can see in the above pic that this lot is a little sunken along two of its sides. That's fine; that small amount of difference can easily be smoothed out with the terrain sculpting tools. If there are steep drop-offs or upward slopes, you can sculpt the lot to try to blend it with its surroundings, but be advised that 1) Interactable objects like dive caves can't be placed on uneven terrain and still be usable and 2) If you end up really deep down, the camera goes wonky and it's frustrating-to-impossible to build or play the lot. So, if you've got a huge drop-off and/or a steep upward slope on one or more of the edges of your lot, I'd recommend just trying a different spot. But, it's up to you. If you feel you can work with the uneven edges in some way, have at it. You are braver than me.

Step 6: Save that MFer. Once you have a lot you're satisfied with, this is a good time to save. So, go back to Edit Town and do that.

I recommend saving often during this entire process because, I don't know about your game, but sometimes mine will "hang" or even crash when moving between Edit Town and Build/Buy, especially if I do it a lot. And with this process, you will be doing it a lot, not to mention exiting out to the main menu and then going back into the save a few times. Since getting a dive lot placed can be a fiddly business, it sucks to lose a lot of progress to a hang/crash. So, in my opinion, you can't save too often, but in this tute I'll only prompt you to do it when you must.

Step 7: Exit Stage Right Remember long ago in the last step how I said you'll be exiting to the main menu a few times? Yeah, the first time is now. You do this because, for whatever reason, the game doesn't register changes made to the "structure" of dive lots without exiting and re-entering the save. So do that. Once it's reloaded go back into Edit Town and then back into the new diving lot. Because now it's time to place a dive buoy.

Step 8: Deploy Buoy The dive buoy is located in the debug items, so if you haven't turned on access to that yet, do so now. Then, go into the buy menu, sort it "by function," not the default "by room," and you should see this question mark here:

Click that, and then I recommend that you go to the filters on the right-hand side of the menu and choose just Island Paradise objects. Because you'll be going into the "Misc. Objects" tab and, especially if you have all EPs/SPs, there's a crap-ton of objects in there to sort through. So, filter, then choose the "Misc. Objects" tab, and you'll see this much-more-manageable selection:

Choose the dive buoy, as indicated, and place it anywhere on your dive lot. It doesn't matter where because (spoiler alert) this one's going to be deleted, anyway.

Step 9: Ogle That Shapely Buoy Once your buoy is placed, move your camera down to the ocean surface and have a closer look at it. Like so:

See how the ball part of it is just sitting on the surface of the ocean? That's bad. If you were to leave it like that, you'd have sims (and sharks, if you place a surface shark spawner) swimming/snorkeling in the air, if the lot would work at all. But don't panic! We can fix it. We just need to shift the entire lot down a l'il bit, so let's do it!

Step 10: Copy the Lot to the Library Go back out to Edit Town. Check to make sure that your lot designation is still "Diving Area." (Because during this process, it will sometimes change.) Then, save the lot to your library. The game will give you a warning about cancelling all sim interactions or something. That's fine. Just put a copy of the lot in the library. The thumbnail in the community lot catalog will look like a blue square.

Why are you doing this, you ask? Because now you're going to bulldoze the original. Why? Because we need to move the entire lot down a little bit, and you can only do that by placing a fresh copy of the lot. And you may need to do this several times until you get it at the right depth, so having a copy of the lot in your library is necessary. You can delete it out of the library once you've got your dive lot in the right place, if you want.

Step 11: I'm a Steamroller, Baby Once you've got a copy of the lot safely in your library, bulldoze the original lot you placed. Once bulldozed, the game will change the lot designation back to "No Visitors Allowed," so you'll need to change it back to "Diving Area."

Step 12: Go Down on That Lot To move the lot down when it's placed, you need this cheat activated:

setimportedterrainoffset -0.1

The value at the end can be whatever you want, as many decimal places as you want. A positive number will move the lot up, and a negative number will move it down. (You can use a larger negative number to make deeper a lot that's too shallow, and it can also be helpful if you're intending to try to place a downloaded diving lot on this lot so that it might better match the depth of the water in whatever world it came out of, but this won't always have the effect you want. For one, your lot will be down in a hole.) For the purposes of this tute, all I need to do is move the lot down a teeny bit so that the dive buoy on the lot is sitting IN and not ON the surface of the water. Hence, the -0.1 value.

(Now, I should mention that other tutes I've seen will have you just lower the terrain right under the buoy to sink it a little bit rather than doing this bulldoze-and-replace-with-a-whole-lowered-lot thing I do. This method can work, but I don't like it for various reasons that I won't go into for brevity's sake. I'm just telling you what I do, which has worked every time I've placed a dive lot, including shallow-water ones like this one.)

Step 13: Re-Placing the Lot Go into your library and place your saved lot back where it was. DO NOT ROTATE IT or else things will get screwed up. (Namely, your lot will become an island again and resinking it won't really work.) Just click "Accept." And then check its lot designation and change it to "Diving Area" again, if necessary, which it probably will be because stupid game.

Step 14: Ogle that Shapely Buoy 2, Electric Boogaloo Now, enter build mode and move the camera down to the ocean surface again to check the dive buoy. Ideally, it will now be sitting IN, not ON, the water, like so:

If it's still sitting on the surface, the lot needs to be deeper and therefore moved down farther, so go back to Edit Town, bulldoze the lot again, change the value of the imported terrain offset cheat to a larger negative number (Perhaps -0.5) and try again. Be aware that, as I said, once you get to larger numbers (as in greater than -5 or so) you start ending up with your diving lot down in a hole, which may or may not be workable.

Now, there is a marker on the buoy, the little black rectangle I outlined in the pic above. If the ball part of the buoy is at least partly in the water but that marker is still above the water, as in the above pic, the lot will still work, but there will be a "hop" (and sometimes a pause) when a water taxi or a swimming merperson crosses the boundary of the lot. The higher the marker is above the water line, the larger that "hop" will be. (Because, if you haven't figured it out yet, the dive buoy is what tells the game where sims can swim, vertically, on a dive lot.)

If such a hop doesn't bother you, you can leave the buoy as-is. If you're a perfectionist like me, you go back to Edit Town, bulldoze the lot, and change the value of the terrain offset cheat to try again. Do this as often and with as many decimal places as your level of perfectionism demands. :) I'm not that fussy, so I usually just move the lot down in increments of 0.1 until the marker is at or below the water line but the ball of the buoy is not completely underwater because you don't want the ball completely underwater, either. At least some of it needs to be above water. So, fiddle as much or as little as you feel you need to.

(For reference/scale, the gap between the marker and the water line in the above pic would probably be fixed by an offset of about -0.15 instead of -0.1. But it would also be fine as-is unless a little hop at the lot boundary will bother you.)

Step 15: Bye-Bye Buoy! Once you have the lot so that the buoy is where you want it, DELETE THE BUOY. I repeat: DELETE THE BUOY. Yes, DELETE THE BUOY. For whatever reason, dive lots drawn from your library that contain buoys won't work. I don't know why. They just don't. You need to place a fresh buoy. (I'm pretty sure this is why lots of people can't get downloaded dive lots or lots that they pulled from other worlds to work. Sometimes the answer is simply to delete the buoy, if the lot came with one, and place a fresh one.)

Step 16: Exit Stage Left Once you have DELETED THE BUOY and only once you have DELETED THE BUOY, go back to Edit Town, check to make sure the lot is still designated as a diving area (and change it back if necessary) and save. Why? Because now you need to exit to the main menu and reload the save again. So do that.

Step 17: Fresh Meat Buoy! Once the save is reloaded, go back into Edit Town, and check to make sure the dive lot is still designated as one. Redesignate, if necessary. Then, go into build/buy and place a fresh buoy, just as you did before. This one will be staying permanently, so place it where you actually want it to be. (Which really doesn't matter; aside from defining the vertical space of the diving lot, it just designates where your sim "enters" the lot.) If you want the lot to generate sharks on the surface, you can also place surface shark spawners now, too, as few or as many as you want, and because you have properly adjusted the height of the lot, the spawned sharks will not be swimming in the air. The spawners are also in debug mode, under the fish spawners. (There is also a spawner for underwater sharks. Do not put that one on the surface. Make sure you only put surface shark spawners on the surface.)

Step 18: Set the Lot's Skill Level You set the required skill level for the diving lot by going to buy mode (if you left it), making sure the hand tool is active, and then holding down control and shift while clicking on the dive buoy. Choose the option "Set Required Diving Level…" from the menu that comes up:

…and then from the resulting options under that choose a NON-ZERO number. For some bizarro reason, buoys default to level zero when placed, and a diving lot set to skill level zero is inaccessible even if a sim has level 10 scuba skill. (Good move, EA! Why is zero even an option if it doesn't work??) So, pick whatever skill level you'd like, so long as it ISN'T ZERO. (I suspect that this is another reason why people can't get downloaded dive lots that they place in a world to work.) Once you have the skill level set, go back to Edit Town and save.

Step 19: Test And now you're pretty much done. All that's left is to test the thing to make sure the lot works before you bother with building/decorating it. So, return to the game and send a victim to your new, empty lot and see if they successfully arrive (with or without a "hop" at the lot boundary) and successfully get themselves underwater. (My advice, for testing purposes, is to just give the sim you pick enough diving skill to use the lot. This can be done with NRAAS Master Controller.) Don't bother with doing anything further with the lot until you make sure it works.

Here is evidence that my lot, though shallow, works:

If your lot doesn't work, then something went wrong somewhere. Most likely, you missed a step or did a step wrong. I know there are a lot of words here, but they're all necessary to (more or less) guarantee a working lot in the end. So, try again. It's possible that you will have to pick a different location and start over, but I've been able to get a lot working wherever I've placed one, so long as it was in deep-enough routable ocean.

Step 20: PROFIT! Assuming that your lot works, "all" that's left is to build it! :D I'm not going to go into detail about that. It's all up to you. You can sculpt the terrain, paint it with whatever terrain paints you want, place objects, whatever. If you're in shallower water, any objects you place that are tall enough to stick out of the water will just be chopped off at the water line; you won't be able to see the rest above water. The corals and stuff are in debug mode under "Underwater Objects," but if you don't want the tropical look, so long as you have moveobjects turned on, you can place (almost) any object you want down there, aside from things like walls and fences and other build items that can't be drawn underwater. Rocks, plants, trees, columns, and anything from the buy and debug catalogs are all good. If such an object has a function, sims won't be able to use them, though. They'll just become deco. (So, no underwater basketweaving sculpting. Sorry.) So, go to town. Have fun. For this tute, I'll just mention a couple objects and their settings and we'll finally be done.

Miscellaneous Objects:

First, treasure chests. Like the dive buoy, they're located in the "Misc. Objects" of debug mode. There are two versions, one for land and one for water. Obviously, on a diving lot, you want the water one if you want any at all. If you do want to use them on your lot, place down as many as you want, and then set the diving skill level necessary to open each one and designate the treasure each one will hold. You do both by holding down control and shift while in buy mode with the hand tool active and clicking on a chest, just like setting the skill level of the lot on the buoy. This brings up this menu:

The "Assign Treasure" option gives you eight different treasures for the chest. You simply pick the one you want. The "Set Required Skill Level" option allows you to assign the diving skill necessary to open the selected chest. You can choose any number you like from 0 to 10. (Yes, zero is OK for this purpose, even though no one with zero skill can scuba dive, so…Yay EA.)

Then there's the dive caves. I think they are in the "Underwater Objects" section of the debug catalog; I'm not sure because a mod I use moves them to the regular rock section. Anyway, there are two styles, which you're probably familiar with, but they both function the same way. If you have more than one of them in the world, even if they're all on the same lot, your sims can travel between them, much like a subway. Unfortunately, I can't show you how to set this up because that mod I use to move the caves to the rock section also makes them recolorable, but it breaks setting up this functionality and I don't feel like hunting the mod down and taking it out. But it's pretty easy. You Control-Shift-Click on each one, give them a name, and then you can connect them by using the names you give them. Again, it works much like subways. It's pretty self-explanatory.

Finally, there's the fog emitter. If you're unfamiliar with this object, it's a base game object located in the "Misc. Objects" section of the debug catalog. The thumbnail in the catalog looks like this:

And it looks like this when it's placed:

They can be used on any lot, they disappear in live mode, and they can generate not just fog but many, many different effects. Literally thousands of different effects. You place the emitter where you want, and then control-shift-click on it and choose "Set Visual Effect" from the resulting menu:

When you click on it, you get this:

In that window, you type/paste the code for the effect you want. Of course, you will need to know the code for the effect you want. For your convenience, I've uploaded my list of effect codes, which is complete and includes the codes from all EPs, here. It's just a text file, and the codes are in alphabetical order. Since the list is all-EPs, some of them may not work if you don't have the EP the effect comes from, but if that's the case, then any such code you enter simply won't do anything.

The most relevant effects for a diving lot all start with "ep10," but there are others you could possibly use, too. Some of the names of the codes are more helpful than others in terms of knowing what it will do. Generally, you need to experiment. But, you can add schools of fish, single (but non-catchable) fish of all kinds (if you want catchable fish to spawn, you need to use the spawners, not the fog emitter), sharks (non-interactable), light rays, bubbles, glows, fog, all sorts of things, if you're patient enough to go through the list, look for interesting possibilities, and try them out to see if they will work for you. There are whole tutorials dedicated to the object, if you look for them. There's also a mod that makes them shiftable, which can be very useful, here.

One final suggestion: If you go through this process in a world that you know or even just suspect that you'll want to use again and you'll want the dive lot(s) you made in that future save, for the love of pie keep a copy of this save file somewhere. That way you won't have to go through all this crap again. Because even if you save a copy of your finished lot, unless you manage to place the empty initial lot in the new save in the exact spot you placed it when you built the lot, it's not likely to be quite right. So beware.

And with that, I think we're done here. If anyone has any questions, or if you decide to try to make your own diving lot and have questions along the way, feel free to hit me up and I'll do my best to help. Just keep in mind that I'm not an expert by any means.

[pages-and-stages]

Kondad Carze(pronounced kondad cares)

Have another Konrad fic, this time he finds this random child in an alleyway. Once again, I hope this is fairly in character, and I also hope y'all enjoy

The tiny, shrill screams drew him closer to the alley. For a second, he was willing to drag the attacker out into the street, flay them alive, and leave them on display. But…there was no attacker. Nothing to cause the shrill screams, and nothing making them either. Unless…

He dug around in the boxes, listening to the screaming grow louder. Now that he thought about it…

A baby. There, under the cardboard and filth that people threw away, cast aside like the small infant had been. The cries quieted, and he lifted it up, blinking slowly. The baby looked at him, sucking on its- her hand. He bared his teeth, making a clear threat.

With a gurgle, she laughed, waving her tiny fists around. He did it again, listening to her shrill voice cackle in delight. With another bare of his teeth, he settled the still laughing infant into his arms, crouching down low and letting her gum on a claw.

Konrad glanced around, looking for any sign of her parents, before he leapt off into the night.

. . .

His sons had been curious, at first. It wasn't often Father brought something new, something this young. And it was never the case that he barred them from laying so much as their eyes on this newest toy.

She was certainly cute, gurgling happily every time they snarled at her. Soft curls of ebony hair stuck out on her head, and some of the newer, softer Night Lords liked to stroke it, cooing at her softly.

She was the gem of the legion, it seemed. Even Sevatar liked her company, when Konrad was too busy for her. Which was almost never. He rarely let her be alone around his sons, despite their constant promises to take care of her.

He hadn't named her yet, content to let her crawl around his room. Hell, he'd even taken the bodies down when he noticed how it frightened her. But a name? He was the Night Haunter, terror of Nostramo. He did not…name things. He still wasn't sure she'd be kept.

No, that was a lie. He was sure. She'd be kept, raised as his own. For once, his vision devastated him. Watching that sweet girl…he'd named her Senka.

Senka…the name felt foreign on his tongue, but it fit her. Yes. His little Shadow.

. . .

"Daddy!!" Konrad kept his footsteps light, as to not scare her. She sounded frightened enough already, he didn't need to add to it. Senka had been having nightmares, almost weekly now. As slightly annoying as it was, he'd rather make sure she was alright, than leave her to cry.

He nudged the door open, looking around the room. Senka wasn't in bed? Before he could take another step, small arms wrapped around his legs, and a tiny head pressed there, the small form shaking with sobs. "Hey…" he whispered, bending to her level. "What's all this about, little shadow?"

Senka hiccuped, still crying. Snot and tears ran down her face, and one of Konrad's claws reached out to wipe them away. "I had-," she tried, breaking down again. "I had a nightmare!"

"Again?" he asked. They were becoming almost nightly now. As much as he didn't want to consider it, he would take her to the apothecaries in the morning, just to see if it was something they could handle. "What was it about?"

"You died. You left and you died and you had forgotten about me!"

His heart tugged. He would die, of course. Not long after her, but he would still die. The fact Senka had dreamed it…was she like him, in a way? "I won't die for a long while yet," he comforted. "And I'll never forget about you." Picking her up, he carried her back to the bed. "But that wasn't all of it, was it?"

Senka buried her face into his shoulder, shaking her head. She refused to elaborate, small hands curling around his shoulders. "You don't have to tell me," he promised. "Not until you're ready. Do you want me here tonight?" She nodded. With a soft sigh, Konrad laid her in bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. Selecting one of the many books he had grabbed from the alleyways on his adventures, he laid down beside her, letting the small child clamber onto his chest and curl up.

"Once upon a time…"

[avatar-anna]

Already Over

A story told through text!

Your ex (don't pick up!): So...same time again next weekend?

You: No.

You: That was the last time.

Your ex (don't pick up!): You said that last time

Your ex (don't pick up!): And the time before that...

Your ex (don't pick up!): Come on babe, when are you gonna drop the charade?

You: Three texts in a row? Someone's desperate

Your ex (don't pick up!): You drive me crazy baby. You always have.

You: Sorry. I'm serious this time.

Your ex (don't pick up!): You're really going to let THAT be the last time?

Your ex (don't pick up!): You didn't even get to sit on my face!

You: I'll live.

Your ex (don't pick up!): I won't!

Your ex (don't pick up!): And what about your tits? I need to say a proper goodbye

Your ex (don't pick up!): Please baby I'm aching for you

You: In the two years we were together I think that's the most ridiculous thing you've ever said

Your ex (don't pick up!): You're really going to be satisfied with that being the very last time? I just think we can do better

(five minutes later)

Your ex (don't pick up!): You're not answering because you know I'm right

You: I'm not answering because I'm not entertaining this conversation anymore

Your ex (don't pick up!): Because you know I'm right

You: We. Are. Not. Together. Anymore.

Your ex (don't pick up!): See you say that but then Saturday night rolls around and you're asking if I'll come over

Your ex (don't pick up!): But don't worry baby I won't judge you I promise. I'll even let you sit in my face even though you've been so mean

You: Don't hold your breath

(five days later)

You: You busy?

(six minutes later)

Your ex (don't pick up!): Already on my way

*.*

Ames👯‍♀️:: Seriously?

You: What? Did something happen at work?

Ames👯‍♀️: No...

Ames👯‍♀️: You're really gonna make me say it?

You: What are you talking about?

Ames👯‍♀️: I saw Harry sneaking off to his car this morning

You: It was the last time I swear!

Ames👯‍♀️: This wasn't the first time?! Y/n!!

You: I know I'm weak :(( We just have a lot of history and he just knows me so well and he's hard to resist when he wants something

Ames👯‍♀️: So are you back together then?

You: No of course not

Ames👯‍♀️: So you're just sleeping with him? I thought that wasn't what you wanted

You: No I swear that was the last time. It was just for closure or whatever. He's just...we have a lot of history you know?

You: And not to get into dirty details but he's just...so good you know?

Ames👯‍♀️: Yeah please don't elaborate

Ames👯‍♀️: You have to stop seeing him babe

You: I know. I think I got it out of my system

Ames👯‍♀️: Next weekend we're going out to take your mind off him. We'll get dressed up, go out the whole thing

You: Good idea!

Ames👯‍♀️: Try not to sleep with Harry until then

You: You have my word!

*.*

Harry: Hey I think I might've left a couple things last time I was over. Mind if I swing by?

Baby🍒: What did you leave? I'll get it together for you

Harry: You don't have to do that. I'll be quick I promise

Harry: Unless...

Baby 🍒: Unless what?

Harry: ;)))

Baby🍒: I already told you that was the last time

Baby🍒: And don't even start because it was a great last time

Harry: JUST great? What do I have to do to make it excellent?

Baby🍒: I'm not answering that

Harry: Sooo there's an answer??

Harry: Let's see...maybe riding my thigh? You've always had a thing for my tattoos

Baby🍒: Stop

Harry: Reverse cowgirl?

Baby🍒 is typing...

Harry: Reverse cowgirl in my shirt?

Baby🍒: I don't like this game

Harry: That's because I'm right

Harry: Oh I know! We didn't do it in the shower

Harry: Let me and the showerhead make it up to you. Please???

Baby🍒: Swing by in an hour. I'll have your stuff for you

Harry: And...

Baby🍒 sent an image

Harry: Fuck baby

Harry: I don't think I can wait an hour. I'm calling and you better pick up

*.*

Your ex (don't pick up!): Baby...

Your ex (don't pick up!): You're killing me

Your ex (don't pick up!): Posting a picture like that just to tease me? That's mean

Your ex (don't pick up!) sent an image

(ten minutes later)

Your ex (don't pick up!): Don't ignore me now baby. Let me know when you're back I'll come over

You: Not your baby Harry

Your ex (don't pick up!): Oh come on don't be like that

Your ex (don't pick up!): And since when do you call me Harry??

You: Leave me alone

You: I'm finally moving on from you

Your ex (don't pick up!): Really? So yesterday was the last last last last last time?

You: Yes. We broke up for a reason. I'm not falling back into old habits with you

Your ex (don't pick up!) is typing...

(one minute later)

Your ex (don't pick up!): That sounds like some shit Amy would say

You: You caught me. I confiscated Y/n's phone for the night. She's having fun and meeting new people that aren't you. Maybe she'll even go home with one of them

Your ex (don't pick up!) is typing...

Your ex (don't pick up!): Bullshit

Your ex (don't pick up!): She was in my bed last night. I'll spare you the details but I don't think she's interested in going home with someone else

You: Maybe she will maybe she won't. It's her choice. You two are broken up. It's time you start acting like it

Your ex (don't pick up!): What if I don't want to be? Y/n is the one who broke up with me out of nowhere

You: Because you took your relationship for granted! And she doesn't want to wait for you to grow up Harry. Let her find someone who deserves her

Your ex (don't pick up!): Fine. Whatever.

*.*

(the next day)

Harry: I didn't take my relationship with Y/n for granted did I?

Niall (Whore)an: ...

Harry: Seriously?!

Niall (Whore)an: not for granted but...

Niall (Whore)an: but you went out with her less and less in the last year

Niall (Whore)an: and to be honest even i had a hard time figuring out what the whole situation was between you two

Harry: So because I didn't want to suffocate my girlfriend I'm a bad boyfriend?

Niall (Whore)an: i didn't say that! need i remind you you came to me for help

Harry: I know I'm sorry

Harry: I just don't want her to move on. What do I do?

Niall (Whore)an: maybe stop sleeping with her and actually talk to her.

Niall (Whore)an: and don't bother pretending. i know you're still hooking up

Harry: I'm taking what I can get man. It's the cold shoulder unless we're fucking

Niall (Whore)an: don't. you need to show her you're more than just a late night booty call

Harry: You know I've never really done the whole relationship thing before. Y/n was the first and I clearly failed epically

Niall (Whore)an: what do you want then? a relationship or a situationship?

Harry: With her I always wanted more, but I don't know how to BE more

Niall (Whore)an: start with no more hooking up. she'll never see you as more if you keep giving in or offering yourself to her that way

Harry: What if that just pushes her away for good?

Niall (Whore)an: it won't

*.*

Baby🍒: Come over?

Harry: I can't. I promised Niall I'd be his wingman tonight

Baby🍒: You can come after? Amy's spending the night with her girlfriend

Harry: Must be nice

Baby🍒: What's that supposed to mean?

Harry: Nothing. I just can't tonight.

Baby🍒: You haven't come over in forever

Harry: Like you've said a hundred times, we're not together anymore

Baby🍒: When has that ever stopped you?

Harry: I guess I realized I want more

Harry: I know now that I wasn't the best boyfriend, but I want to be

Baby🍒: What are you saying H?

Harry: If you'll let me, I'd like a second chance. I want to take us seriously. I know I wasn't the best boyfriend in the world the first time around but maybe we can talk about it? Lay all our cards on the table and figure out where we go from there?

Baby🍒 is typing...

Baby🍒: I don't know if that's what I want

Baby🍒: We did this whole back and forth thing for two whole years and you're now realizing you're ready for a relationship? I just think that window is closed

(four minutes later)

Baby🍒: H?

Harry: I get it. I'm sorry I couldn't get my act together soon enough for you

Harry: I hope you find someone who gives you exactly what you need

Baby🍒: Thank you

*.*

(one month later)

You are typing...

You are typing...

You: Hey

You: It was nice seeing you last night

Harry S.: Yeah. You looked good

You: So did you

You: Sorry if this is awkward I feel like I don't know how to talk to you

You: Maybe I shouldn't have said anything in the first place

Harry S.: Why did you?

You are typing...

You: I don't know

You: That's a lie. I know exactly why but it's embarrassing

Harry S.: What is?

You: I saw you

Harry S.: I know I saw you too

You: No I mean I SAW you. With another girl

Harry S.: Oh

You: And I guess I just got jealous which is totally stupid

You: But I think it made me realize what we could've had

You: And that sucks because I still really care about you even though I tried to pretend I didn't. I just didn't want you to hurt me anymore than you already had

You: You were ready and I pushed you away when maybe I shouldn't have

Harry S. is typing...

Harry S. is typing...

(five minutes later)

You: And...I've definitely scared you off. Or your girlfriend saw this

You: I'm sorry I shouldn't have said anything

(twenty minutes later)

Harry S.: Where are you?

(ten minutes later)

You: What?

You: Sorry I just got out of the shower

You: Is that you banging on the door??

Harry S.: Yes!!

Harry S.: Come answer it it's freezing out here!

You: I thought you were with that girl

Harry S.: She came up to me at the bar

Harry S.: I haven't been with anyone since we broke up. I told you I was serious baby

You: You waited for me?

Harry S.: Of course baby

Harry S.: Now can you let me in so I can confess my undying love for you in person?

You: Coming!

Harry S.: You will be ;))

[crumb-crumblet-s-crumbington]

hello! i’m love your post and arts so much! I look at your posts after a hard day and my mood immediately changes to excellent. can I ask a couple of questions?

which pairing with Ethan do you prefer?

and… can we get to know you better? a little biography?

Thank you for your time! I'll be waiting for new arts! (sorry if i made mistakes, my english is not so good. im russian)

i like basically every ship with ethan! it mostly depends on the mood im in, but if im being honest, mithan, winterfield, and wintersberg gets frustrating to think about because they all dont treat ethan well canonically... lethan is fun because they have never met and i can make my own assumptions!

i used to like wintersberg the most and i still do like it, i just have expanded my horizons to other ships as well...., its mostly like a punchline to me though. they have the funniest potential which is why a majority of their posts is just joke comics. i do not like how people try to erase how karl is arrogant and egotistical tho. thats like removing the flavor.... the way karl acts is just very funny to me, hes so lame in a good way and i like how everytime he talks to ethan it sounds like hes twirling his hair and kicking his feet. canonically speaking, karl was very much in the wrong for trying to use rose and not elaborating and i will die on this hill. ethan is not in the wrong for being disgusted and angry that karl would ever try and propose that in the deal. karl is very arrogant so when ethan says no to him it makes him mad and he tries to use fear to get ethan to take his deal (kicking his chair and warning him) i like karl, i like how messed up and arrogant he is but i dislike how people try to portray him as a nice guy. however, in a AU where everythings the same except he doesnt try to use rose i do enjoy the dynamic they could have, especially if the teamed up (not with the deal where they use rose. ethan wouldnt agree unless karl never involved rose in the first place). karl is just a very entertaining character and i like him a lot, hes funny and his personality can be extremely hilarious

mia and ethan is pretty tragic and thinking about it too much makes me a bit sad, imo in a reality where ethan survives re8, he needs to divorce mia. im not saying ethan needs to hate mia and never talk to her again i just dont think they should be so intimate together because of her behavior... please do not take this as anti mia. they loved each other dearly but it wasnt healthy. their relationship was kept afloat by lies and mia doesnt change even though she deals with the consequences of her own actions in re7. she actively tries to hide her past from ethan and is mostly focused on trying to move on and have a normal life even if ethan will have to live the rest of his life in the dark.

she loves her family so much, shes very afraid of them leaving her so she hides all the bad things in the hopes that they wont leave. its selfish, its human, its real, her character is so amazing and i love her. she doesnt learn from re7 and hides important information from ethan again. i geniunly think they should have gotten divorced after re8 if ethan had survived. its tragic and its sad but they love each other so much. it sad because they both geniunly love rose so much but they themselves shouldnt be together. its just sad to think about it. whenever i draw them it usually takes place before re7. they should have divorced on good terms and shared custody of rose.........

ethan and chris is also frustrating to think about... chris is a major jerk in re8, whenever i draw it, its under a unspoken AU that chris did not behave the way he did in re8. his weird behavior in re8 is probably for a meta reason imo. capcom wanted to set up a twist villian so they make chris very vague and unesscarily cruel. while its frustrating that they turned chris into a jerk for the sake of a twist, it still happens in canon and i will forever roll my eyes whenever i see him on screen. he did what he thought was best but imo, execution matters more than the intentions. same applies to mia. they both did things that hurt ethan because they thought it would be the best but in the end they just hurt ethan.

all the ships ive discussed with people ethan has met canonically just makes it look like i dont even like the ships... LOL ... ethan just has horrible luck with the people he meets i guess... but i do enjoy the ships and drawing them, but again all of them come with the canon baggage that ends up making me sad because everyone treats ethan poorly whether they had good intentions or not

which is why leon and ethan is the most fun to draw without getting stressed... LOL... they have never met but just drawing what i think their dynamic would be like is very fun.

please dont take this post personally, this isnt a post declaring why ur fave ship sucks, this is just my own personal preferences and in the end i draw all of them anyways

if i had to rank the ships based on drawing silly comics it would be

wintersberg

mithan

lethan

winterfield

wintersberg has the funniest potential just because of karl and mithan can be funny if u water it down to "i love my wife so much" and said wife comes home with suspicious amounts of hard cash

i enjoy making joke comics far to much

if i were to rank the ships based on how healthy they would actually be for ethan it would be

lethan

winterfield, mithan, wintersberg (no particular order)

sorry 😭

leon and ethan have literally never met but imo it would still be the healthiest because ethan gets to start new

the three other ships r all unhealthy in some way, at least canonically without changing much about the characters (i do like winterfield but just because of how chris behaved in re8 it knocked them down)

i cant even rank them on personal preference because my opinion changes so often 😭 it changes based on discussions i have with my friends or recent art i see that inspires me... me and my friends recently had a discussion about mia and ethans relationship which made me very frustrated and sad with mia so i defiently wouldnt be drawing them anytime soon... meanwhile i hvae been talking to a friend who really likes winterfield often so the conversations we have give me art ideas and i end up drawing it more. if a friend of mine really enjoyed wintersberg or lethan and talked to me about it often id probably start drawing it more, the joys of being a multishipper

it changes a lot based on how im feeling and if im in the mood to draw something funny or something serious

sorry u asked a really simple question and i responded with a essay

and a little bit about myself is that i go by crumb, i am 18 and i go by all pronouns and prefer it/its

im vietnamese and live in texas

i made this tumblr acc solely so i could post my ethan art and im a re7/re8 girly so if ur here waiting for me to draw the re1-re6 characters im sorry u should probably expect nothing

i also make personal animations sometimes which u can find here

thanks for the ask and sorry for the rant!

[windvexer]

Potentially you gotta stop making all those substitutions to the spells, witch bestie.

If you're trying to learn magic and have chosen to do so through other people's published instructional manuals, and the magic isn't working, consider asking yourself if you are actually following the rituals provided.

I've been speaking with multiple people lately who are all struggling with the same thing, so perhaps a post on this topic is germane.

Unless you understand the tradition you're working with and why certain things have certain meanings, you probably do not have the background required to make effective substitutions.

Working within someone else's established tradition is not the same as working within your personal eclectic path.

Imagine you go into a working group which is super into bioregional practice and they've developed elaborate rituals which always work for them.

They give you a purification ritual which calls for a red apple, wild-harvested cotton, and local mulberries to be worked over during a full moon.

They do not tell you why each of these things is included. They just give you the list.

We're going to substitute a store-bought cotton ball, obviously, and what to do about the mulberries? We can google "mulberry correspondences," find out they're related to "healing" which is the closest thing we can figure has anything to do with a purification ritual, then pretty much figure that since chamomile is associated with sleep and purification, and sleep is a Lunar thing, right, that we can just use a sleepytime chamomile tea bag, and there you have it!

What the working group has failed to tell you is that this entire ritual is based on local mythology where the cotton wight fell in love with the mulberry dryad and they got married under the full moon by sharing an apple, and the entire ritual isn't based on sympathetic container magic, but is a heirophany which recreates the marriage of local sacred spirits, each of whom has sworn to heal and purify those who honor their love.

A heck of a lot of witchcraft authors do not break down why every single step is taken.

And if you apply contemporary witch-lite logic to everything ("cotton is white so I'm going to relate that to color correspondences and substitute a white candle for purity"), you can end up immediately canceling out a spell.

Not understanding or connecting with certain spell/ritual steps is not a good reason to change them.

You had mulberries once as a kid and they gave you stomach cramps and now you personally associate them with hexing and sickness, so even though there is a ripe mulberry tree outside, you are going to go get a container of blackberries instead, which you personally associate with purification, and -

(You get the drift)

The spell calls for making a paper box, within which you hide the wild cotton and mulberry. Then, at a crossroads at the full moon, you unfold the box to reveal its contents, and offer an apple to the correspondences.

Which would mean we'd have to learn how to make a paper box (fun!) but also like, why this unfolding thing? Nothing I've read so far in my witchcraft books has explained the magical meaning behind opening a paper box. This is basically a container spell, right? I'll just use a glass jar.

(The plant spirits who informed the local coven about this spellwork specified an opaque, degradable container)

If you're using other people's work, you're more or less sacrificing yourself to the reality that they probably are not explaining everything to you, and that your assumptions about what makes that magic tick could be so far off base that even your most educated guesses will fall short.

Yeah, using other people's traditions can mean you don't have what's required to do everything, and that's kind of just the way it is.

I'm not trying to be Mr. Just Go And Buy Stuff You Moneybags, but I guess I am being Mr. If You Can't Do It Then You Can't Do it.

And no, I'm not saying that it's impossible to figure out substitutions.

I'm specifically referring to a situation where a practitioner is trying to figure out magic, hasn't been able to make strides, and then it turns out they've been radically modifying and altering spells from specific traditions to a point where the spell is obviously functionally DOA.

At one point I was learning some slightly advanced bit of coding. I downloaded a set of files from a code library and installed them on my website.

The thing was, at that point in my education, I had enough experience to basically understand what was going on with each file. So, I edited them as I went, modifying them to my custom specifications.

Wouldn't you know it! When I launched the code it was broken. DOA, if you will.

I went back to the code library, and the top comment was,

INSTALL THE FILES AND MAKE SURE THEY WORK BEFORE YOU TRY TO CHANGE THEM. Everyone keeps changing things before they even test launch it and then they come back here and complain that the code is broken. IT ISN'T BROKEN.