#Multi-core processing

[ontonix]

Ontonix Releases Multi-Processor Version of QCM/Artificial Intuition

On May 27th 2025, Ontonix has released a Multi-Processor version of its QCM/Artificial Intuition technology. The Multi-Processor version of our QCM/Artificial Intuition technology is major step when it comes to solving very large-scale problems, such as infrastructure protection, monitoring of industrial plants, processes and critical equipment, or traffic systems, as well as on-board processing…

[interact-if]

Writing Spotlight: Infamous (Interview)

We had the great pleasure to interview Amy, author of the massively beloved IF Infamous (@infamous-if). She shared some tips, tricks, and insights on her approach to writing.

One of the most notable things about Infamous is how quickly readers get sucked into its world and invested in its web of characters — be it Orion or Blake or G or Victoria or the slightly controversial Seven. They are all incredibly multi-faceted, complex, and sometimes heartbreakingly real.

Amy says:

“I’ve read something by a writer once that I’ve followed faithfully: you should always know what’s happening in the other room. Even if it won’t be available to readers, it helps establish the world and characters as real, tangible things that don’t just poof out of existence once they walk ‘off-screen’ so to speak.”

Here’s the full interview:

1. What drew you to interactive fiction as a storytelling medium? Did you have any experience writing in other formats before, and if so, would you say there’s any differences in the way writing for IFs should be approached?

There’s so much about writing interactive fiction that I love, but I think the main one is the freedom that comes with it! There are so many ideas I can explore, so many endings and storylines. It’s just as fun for writers as it is for readers to push the limits of what their world and characters can do. You can truly sink your teeth into it and develop the story in ways you don’t see often. 

Coming from writing traditional fiction and having never written an interactive story before, I did need to change my mindset a little. You have to learn to be flexible. Very often, I’m writing routes I wouldn’t particularly take as a reader, and it’s interesting to go against my gut to offer a varied experience. I’ve discovered a lot of fun things about Infamous and its characters from routes I would never take if I were reading it in another IF!

2. What does your writing process look like?

I am a plotter to my core! I am endlessly envious of writers who can pants their way through a scene or a chapter. I need to outline every single beat, every scene, every conversation. The plot comes to me first and then I slowly build the main character around that and ask myself what kind of story I want to tell with that main character.

The MC in Infamous leans heavily into the ‘underdog’ trope. That’s how I got much of MC’s personality from. The main thing I ask myself when building the main character is: what do they have, what do they want, and what do they need? I use that to inform the rest of the cast and the stats. My main goal is that every piece works in tandem with the others. They all make sense in my head! 

3. What does good writing / good characters / good world-building etc. mean to you, and what are some central tenets or principles you follow to achieve that? 

A story that gets me invested is a success in my eyes. I want to care for the characters and feel like the world is one that truly exists somewhere. I’ve read something by a writer once that I’ve followed faithfully: you should always know what’s happening in the other room. Even if it won’t be available to readers, it helps establish the world and characters as real, tangible things that don’t just poof out of existence once they walk ‘off-screen’ so to speak. The characters had lives before the story started, people they knew and things they’ve experienced. It informs their personalities and builds them what they are once you meet them on page.

The world is still turning even while the main character is asleep. Things are still happening everywhere…even when we don’t see it. That’s how I try to approach every story to bring it to life. 

4. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to someone just starting out in interactive fiction?

Be firm! It’s so easy to get swept up in the excitement of having an audience and wanting to keep that audience. It’s not uncommon to make the mistake of overpromising to please every reader. You won’t be able to, trust me! You’ll only write yourself in a corner. It’s healthy to find a good balance between sticking to your gut and accepting/being open to suggestions. 

A tinier one but: know your endings! It’s best to know what you’re writing toward. It’ll be so much easier to stick to the story and avoid meandering through the plot if you know how each route ends. Everything I write is to get to that ending in one way or the other.

5. Where do you find your ideas or inspiration for new stories or mechanics?Where did your story idea originate? Has it strayed far from that concept/evolved during the writing process? 

I guess it’s quite on brand to say that almost every story idea I’ve had came from a song, Infamous included. My head is always thinking of songs as potential needle drops or playlists as movie soundtracks. Infamous in particular, was formed from Brie Larson’s cover of Black Sheep in the Scott Pilgrim movie. It features a Battle of the Bands sequence that made me want to read a story with the same concept. I scoured and scoured for a band IF that scratched that particular itch but didn’t find any. Eventually, I gave in and did it myself! That’s one of the best parts of the community; you can just do it. 

Surprisingly, this is one of the few stories of mine that hasn’t strayed far from the original idea. I think it helps that I’m writing exactly what I wanted to read once upon a time.

End of interview

—

A big thanks once again to Amy for her insightful answers, and @veswrites-if for taking the time to coordinate the interview. Hope that this was a fun and interesting read.

Stay tuned for more of these interviews :)

[surielstea]

The Taste of Heaven

Kinktober day 5: Face riding + Impact

Pairing: Cassian x Fem!Reader

Summary: Cassian missed his mate, enough said.

Warnings: 18+ | minors dni | oral (f receiving) | face riding | spanking/impact play | smut | overstim | controlled orgasm | clit play | multi orgasm

2.1k words.

"Gods, I missed you so much sweetheart," Cassian confessed into my open mouth as my hips winded over his.

He had been gone, sent on a mission in Illyria for over two weeks. Over two weeks without my mate, without his warm laughter, without his wicked tongue that nothing could ever hope to replicate.

"Missed you more," I mumble, kissing him harder, needing him in my very bones in a sense, wanting him more than just inside of me but a part of me until I didn't know where he ended and where I began. "Please," I whisper.

"Please what? What can I do for you?" He asked, kissing sloppily down my jaw, my neck that he was already leaving marks on.

I didn't know how to answer his question, because in all honesty, I was unsure what I was pleading for, I only knew that I wanted more, so instead I breathed, "Whatever you want."

He smiled at that, his lips popping from the delicate skin of my neck. "Sit on my face," He ordered and my core tightened into knots, the kind impossible to untangle. I pulled away from his touch, breathing heavily as I pushed him down onto the bed and rid myself of my panties quicker than he could process.

He throws his head back in pure ecstasy as he watches my movements, his hands on my—now bare, hips and gripping me roughly, pulling me closer to his mouth. "So perfect," He raggedly whispered, his tone consumed with need. He stared at me like a starved man, and I was a full-course meal laid out in front of him.

I crawled up closer, now hovering over his parted lips. He impatiently attempted to pull me down but I resisted, holding myself up. "Please," He whispered, desperate to taste, to lick, to consume.

"Too heavy," I shake my head, and if it weren't for his dire need for me he might've scoffed a laugh, but instead it was a low growl that came from him. "Sit, now," He demanded and something feral burned bright in the dark pit of my stomach at his order.

"I might suffocate you," I continue to protest, despite my arousal now dripping down my thighs— much to his notice.

"Then I'll die a happy man, now sit or I'll make you," He gritted out, his hazel eyes filled with lust and desire and every needy emotion in between. I suck in a sharp breath and ever so slowly, lower myself.

He grows bored of my hesitance and pushes me the rest of the way down with his outmatched strength, and the moment his tongue meets my throbbing cunt, I lose all defiance and melt.

A moan tore from my throat, my head falling back as the heat of his mouth enveloped me completely. His tongue swirled and flicked against my swollen clit with practiced precision, and I couldn't stop the way my hips instinctively ground down onto his face. Cassian groaned beneath me, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of my hips as if trying to anchor me there. He worked me with fervor, relentless in his need to bring me pleasure, every sound he made sending vibrations through my core.

I tried to lift myself, worried again about the weight I was putting on him, but one of his large hands came down sharply on my thigh—once, twice. The sting was immediate, sharp, and hot, sending a jolt straight to my center.

"Stay," he growled against me, his voice muffled by my thighs but commanding nonetheless. The roughness of his voice paired with the sharp bite of pain made me dizzy with need. "I don't want you anywhere else."

I whimpered, my legs trembling as I sank down fully onto him and gave in to his demand. His tongue darted between my folds, circling my clit before sucking it, hard. My entire body jerked in response, and I had to grab the headboard in front of me to steady myself.

"Cassian—" I gasped, but it was cut off by the sting of his hand on my ass this time, the impact making me grind down harder. The burn was exquisite, each smack pushing me closer to the edge, making my arousal pool between my thighs, into his wanting mouth.

“Fuck,” He grunted lustfully, almost feral, and I felt his hands squeeze the abused skin where he'd struck, soothing and rough at once. His mouth never slowed, and I could barely think, barely breathe.

My nails dug into the wood of the headboard, providing me leverage while I arched my back, while he thoroughly devoured me. He responded with another slap, harder this time, and I yelped, the sound turning into a needy moan as pleasure and pain mixed in a heady cocktail that left me trembling above him. I was coming undone, piece by piece, and Cassian reveled in it.

"Cass, I'm—" I panted, the pressure building low in my stomach, tightening with every flick of his tongue and every punishing smack of his palm against my skin. "I'm so close."

His fingers dug into my hips again, pulling me down as he licked at me, each stroke more fervent, more determined. I couldn't hold back any longer, the orgasm barreling through me as I cried out his name, my body shuddering with the force of it. I ground down on his face, riding out the waves of pleasure as his tongue continued to work me, drawing every last bit from me.

But he didn't stop. Even as I told him too much, even as I whimpered and pleaded that I couldn’t take anymore, he kept going.

His tongue lapped at me with an insatiable hunger. He groaned into me, as though drunk on my taste, his hands squeezing my hips hard enough to leave bruises as he pulled me down harder onto his mouth. I gasped, trying to pull away, but his grip only tightened.

"Gods—" I breathed, squirming as the pleasure became too much. The overstimulation was unbearable, my body twitching from the onslaught. I tried to lift myself off him, my hands pushing against his chest, but he was far too strong. He growled again, his hand coming down hard on my ass, a sharp crack that made me cry out in surprise.

"Where do you think you're going?" he growled, the sound muffled by my thighs. "You're going to give me more."

The sting of his hand and the way his tongue continued to tease me made my breath hitch, my body spasming as he forced me to endure the overstimulation. My legs shook uncontrollably, but he held me in place, not giving me a chance to escape his tongue.

"Please, I—" I gasped, but before I could finish, his hand landed another punishing slap on my thigh. The pain mixed with the lingering pleasure, leaving me dizzy, and my thoughts hazy.

"You can take it," he murmured, his voice rough and low as he licked up my arousal, savoring every drop. "Give me another one."

My body thrashed as he worked me again, his tongue never slowing. I was completely at his mercy, his hands bruising my hips as he dragged me through the endless, torturous pleasure. My overstimulated nerves made everything feel sharper, and brighter, every flick of his tongue sending me spiraling further. I was crying out, shaking, barely able to breathe as another orgasm crept up on me, quick and unexpected.

When it hit, I couldn't hold back the scream. My body convulsed on top of him, and this time, I sobbed his name as wave after wave of pleasure crashed through me, my vision going white.

Only then did he slow, his tongue still teasing, still tasting, but gentler now, drawing out every last tremor of pleasure as I trembled above him. His hands rubbed soothing circles onto my thighs, the stinging sensation fading into a pleasant hum as I slowly came down from the overwhelming high.

When I finally managed to pull away, collapsing beside him on the bed, I could barely form a coherent thought. Cassian's face was still slick with my release, his hazel eyes dark with lust as he leaned down to kiss me, possessive and tender all at once.

"You taste like heaven," he murmured against my lips, his voice hoarse with desire. "Gods, I missed you." He repeated as if remembering how much he cherished the sweet feeling of me finding arrival on his tongue alone. His hand came down, caressing so softly where he had struck me, soothing the lingering burn with his calloused fingertips. "Did I hurt you? Was it too much?" He asked softly, his voice a little more raw than I had anticipated.

I smiled and shook my head, wrapping my arms around the back of his neck and pulling him impossibly closer. "No, no it felt good, all of it felt good," I reassured and his worried frown turned into a feline grin faster than I could blink.

"Come here," he whispered, his voice low and calming. He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into the broad expanse of his chest. For a long moment, he simply held me there, his heart beating steadily beneath my cheek, a contrast to the wild thudding of just moments ago.

He shifted us carefully, rolling me onto my back with him still hovering above. "Let me take care of you, sweetheart," he murmured. His thumb brushed my cheek as his lips pressed a kiss to the top of my head.

He slipped out of the bed for a moment, and I heard the rustle of fabric as he grabbed a towel from the adjacent bathing chambers and my softest nightgown from my armoire in the corner. He returned swiftly, his large, warm hands moving carefully as he cleaned me up, his touch so gentle it sent a subtle shiver down my spine. There was nothing hurried about his movements, nothing rushed. He took his time, his expression softening as he wiped away the evidence of our passion. The silence between us wasn't awkward; it was full of care, full of unspoken understanding.

When he was done, he tossed the towel aside and slid my chiffon nightgown on. He smiled amusedly as I struggled to push my head through the neckline, my hair a mess as he helped me pull it down fully. "There," He whispered, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. "I'm so in love with you," He confessed and I flushed a deep tint, despite the fact that we've been mates for centuries, it was the earnest and genuine tone of his words that still had butterflies soaring in the pit of my stomach.

I couldn't conjure a reply in time before he was getting back into bed with me, pulling the covers up and over the both of us. He gathered me against him, cradling me to his chest once more, his hands running lazily up and down my spine in soothing strokes.

"You're sure you're okay, right?" Cassian asked quietly, his voice filled with sincere concern.

"I'm perfect," I whispered back, feeling the weight of exhaustion begin to settle in.

He tilted my chin up, pressing a lingering kiss to my lips. "You're perfect," he confirmed, his words brimming with admiration. His hand returned to rubbing my back, the repetitive motion lulling me into relaxation. "Let me know if anything feels sore tomorrow. I can rub it out for you," he added with a teasing grin, though the warmth in his voice remained.

I chuckled, nestling deeper into his hold. "Sounds wonderful," I murmured, my voice fading with sleep creeping in.

He shifted us one last time, pulling me more comfortably against him, our limbs tangled beneath the blankets. His fingers threaded through my hair, massaging my scalp with that same tender care, and it made my eyes flutter shut, a contented sigh escaping my lips.

"I missed you so much, sweetheart," he whispered again, his voice softer, more vulnerable in the quiet after the storm of our passion. "Every day without you was torture."

I smiled against his muscled chest, my fingers drawing lazy circles on his tattooed skin. "I missed you too," I mumbled sleepily, my words drifting off mid-sentence.

His arms tightened around me protectively, his lips pressing another soft kiss to the crown of my head. "Rest now," he whispered, his voice soothing. "I'm not going anywhere."

With Cassian's warmth surrounding me, his steady heartbeat beneath my ear, and the lingering tenderness in his touch, I finally let myself drift off, safe and cherished in the arms of my mate.

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[ahmedmistrettaalyvezw]

Elon Musk Is about to Investigate Fort Knox: The Mysterious Veil of the US Gold Reserves May Be Lifted

On the intertwined stage of finance and technology, Elon Musk always breaks into the public eye in a vanguard manner. Recently, a startling piece of news has spread rapidly around the world: Musk has declared that he will investigate Fort Knox, the largest gold reserve storage site in the United States. This decision has instantly ignited public opinion and triggered endless speculation about the current state of the US gold reserves.

Fort Knox, this mysterious military base located in Kentucky, USA, covers a vast area. It is an important stronghold of the US Army and, more importantly, the core storage site for the US Treasury's gold. According to data from the US Department of the Treasury, Fort Knox stores over 147 million troy ounces of gold, approximately 4,581 tons, accounting for the majority of the US federal government's gold reserves. With a value of hundreds of billions of dollars, it occupies a crucial position in the global financial system.

However, over the years, the situation of the gold reserves in Fort Knox has been full of doubts. Since the 1950s, it has not undergone a comprehensive review. In 1974, there was a public inspection, but only some of the vaults were opened, and the proportion of the displayed gold was extremely small. Since then, apart from the simple "vault seal inspection" every year, there has been no substantial independent audit. This long - term lack of transparency has led the outside world to have many doubts about the authenticity and integrity of its gold reserves, and conspiracy theories have also become rife.

There are complex reasons behind Musk's intervention in this investigation. The well - known financial blog Zerohedge proposed to Musk on social media to confirm whether the gold in Fort Knox actually exists, which may have aroused Musk's curiosity. Republican Senator Mike Lee said that his request to enter the Fort Knox base was rejected. Musk reposted the relevant post and questioned whether the gold had been stolen. Subsequently, he clearly stated that he would "look for gold in Fort Knox", and his intention to investigate became increasingly strong.

Musk and his led "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) may adopt a series of innovative methods in the investigation. With Musk's deep accumulation in the technology field, he is highly likely to use blockchain technology to track the origin and flow of gold. The decentralized and tamper - proof characteristics of blockchain can provide a more transparent and secure solution for verification, ensuring that the results are true and reliable. Musk may also leverage his powerful social media influence to mobilize public supervision, creating strong public opinion pressure to promote the investigation process.

However, Musk's investigation path is full of thorns. As a highly fortified military base, Fort Knox has strict security measures and complex approval processes. For Musk's team to conduct a comprehensive review inside, they must obtain permission from relevant departments, which is a difficult threshold to cross. There are differences in the US government's internal attitude towards gold reserves. Some forces may not want the secrets of Fort Knox to be easily exposed, which may lead to obstacles at the political level. Technical difficulties will also be faced during the investigation, such as how to achieve a comprehensive verification without damaging the gold storage environment and security system.

Once the investigation is successfully carried out and substantial results are achieved, the impacts will be multi - faceted. In the financial market, if there are differences, even slight ones, between the actual gold reserves in Fort Knox and the reported figures, it may trigger violent fluctuations in the global gold market, affect investors' confidence, lead to large - scale capital flows, and impact the stability of the financial market. From a political perspective, if the problems with the gold reserves are confirmed, it will trigger a trust crisis among the public towards the government, affect the implementation of government policies, and become a new focus of domestic political struggles. In the global financial system, the verification results of the gold reserves in Fort Knox may also reshape the international monetary pattern, affect the international status of the US dollar, and promote the development of the global monetary system towards diversification.

The investigation that Musk is about to launch on Fort Knox has attracted much attention. This not only concerns the truth of the US gold reserves but also may profoundly affect the global financial market, political pattern, and monetary system. We look forward to Musk using his wisdom and courage to lift the mysterious veil of the gold reserves in Fort Knox and bring clear and true answers to the world.

[hellothisisangle]

This idea came from someone asking me about V’s internal organs and gastro/intestinal workings. I delved into a bit of bio/mechanical research that might make sense in the Cyberpunk world. Follow the jump below!

↓

SomaTek specializes in manufacturing synthetic organs designed to transcend our organic limitations.

SomaTek GastroPro™
In a world ravaged by toxic food chains, tainted water supplies, and unreliable agriculture, the GastroPro™ synthetic stomach- amply nicknamed “the iron gut”- is a feat of mechanical organ replacement. Capable of digesting virtually any hazardous or non-nutritive substance without harm, while mimicking and surpassing the core functions of a natural biological system.

The GastroPro™ environment utilizes a stabilized industrial-grade acidic solution (SomaTek’s trademarked confidential blend of fluorinated superacids exceeds the hydrochloric acid and pepsin present in an organic stomach) that is non-corrosive to internal components due to reactive smart hydrogel linings. This acid bath breaks down everything: from your home cooked dinner, to food past its expiration, to actual garbage- designed to adapt to a full range of ingested toxicity. After processing, the liquified matter proceeds to a secondary chamber which is programmed with enzymatic nano filters to separate and neutralize indigestible items versus actual processable materials. *Note that the GastroPro™ is incapable of operating in isolation. The following organic systems are required to be enhanced or replaced:

Esophagus (GastroLine™) is equipped with reinforced smart hydrogel lining to withstand both caustic substances and abrasive matter. Peristaltic actuators move matter regardless of shape or size, while micro-blade emulsifiers begin compacting particularly dense or fibrous materials. Anti-reflux valves prevent acid from backing up.

Liver, Pancreas, Gall Bladder (GastroTox™ Subsystem) further supports the GastroPro™ by processing even rarer or complex toxins, capable of converting them into an array of energy for the body dependent on specific inputs. For example: chemical, electrical, first and second generation biofuel, etc. (Optional but highly recommended)

Intestines & Appendix (GastroTract™) serves as the primary absorption and release unit. Lined with nutrient-binding nanites to extract usable calories, vitamins, minerals, or chemicals. Absorption channels direct these throughout the body via embedded villi structures to the bloodstream and lymphatic system. In users with further modifications, waste may be redirected to a bypass port location of their choosing. The most popular choice being via a urinary tract.

Oral Cavity (OraPro™ Subsystem) is a customizable sum of parts that further supports the GastroPro™ with an artificial tongue embedded with gustatory receptors, reinforced cheek/gum lining, and teeth strong as chrome. (Optional but highly recommended)

Brain Chemistry (CraveShard™) the neural implant designed to be installed into the cyberdeck to simulate, regulate, or even suppress cravings. (Optional but highly recommended) The user may override urges based on their schedule and preferences, as well as control serotonin and dopamine feedback. The implant works harmoniously with receptors built into the GastroPro™ to recognize the identity of consumed materials. It can even reproduce the effects caused by ingested alcohol, hallucinogenics, opioids, narcotics, etc.

Advantages over natural digestion include immunity to internal poisoning, pathogens, parasites, and contaminants. Zero indigestion, zero allergic reaction. Accelerated enzyme breakdown. And multi-source nutrition: users can derive sustenance from otherwise indigestible materials.

Please be aware the GastroPro™ is not without its complications. Over-reliance can result in malabsorption issues if the user abuses the capabilities of the GastroPro™. Care should be taken to continuously ingest products with beneficial properties. In the event of nutrient deficits, the user’s deck will receive periodic warnings regarding nutritional supplementation to prevent systemic decline. Psychosomatic disorders may also emerge as a result of losing sensory pleasure of consumption (“digestion dissonance'”- disconnect with satiety) if the recommended OraPro™ Subsystem and CraveShard™ are not installed.

Regular care encompasses monthly detox flushes, filter replacements, nanite reseeding, and pH rebalancing treatments. All of which can be accomplished via a doctor licensed to administer Somatek devices.

[cloverapple]

I've been trying asleep methods since forever but i have no idea of how to do an awake method

You can find so much great advice about shifting your awareness while you’re awake, and I absolutely encourage you to dive into it because people explain things in all kinds of different ways. It’s like a buffet, and you can pick and choose what resonates with you.

The way I usually do it—and it’s better explained in this post—is I count to distract myself, detaching and sinking into a meditative state. I use my emotions to feel myself in my DR, letting hypnagogia do its thing and distort my awareness until I choose to shift.

But something I’ve realized recently is that the method of awake shifting, where you lay down and pretend you’re already in your DR or affirm that you’re about to shift, puts way too much focus on when you’ll shift. It creates this crazy pressure to shift instantly, to feel symptoms, to make it happen right then and there. Like, you have to shift in the blink of an eye. And it’s all on time, which isn’t always the vibe.

Removing the expectancy to shift at a certain time from awake shifting (or any method) and taking the pressure off could actually make a huge difference for people struggling with this. I’m not saying that deciding you’re already in your DR and trusting yourself doesn’t work. It does, trust me. But the mind doesn’t work on one straight path. Just like there are a million ways to learn something or think about something, there are many ways to go about shifting your awareness to another reality.

So, when you’re there doing your awake shifting process, remember a few things:

• Your subconscious already knows you intend to shift. Setting an intention isn’t this big, complicated multi-step thing. If you decided to lay down to shift, the intention is already there. Your subconscious knows. Let. It. Go. Unless it feels true to you, unless it feels good, empowering, or aligned, there’s no real need to keep hammering in phrases like “I’m shifting now,” “I’m going to shift now,” or “I am shifting.” You’re just giving it commands, when all you need to do is trust. Trust is the command.

• When you’re trying to convince yourself, trying to convince your subconscious into thinking you’re already in your DR, the core of whatever you’re doing—whether it’s convincing yourself your surroundings have changed or that you’re already there or heading there—is about one thing: feeling it emotionally. You’re trying to evoke the emotions of being there. That’s where it’s at.

But that begs the question—how do you let go while channeling emotions at the same time?

Well, here’s the magic formula I’ve mentioned a few posts ago: High Emotion + Low Attachment = Flow.

This is how we live life every single day without even realizing it. Think about it:

Throughout the day, you’re not fixated on the act of living itself. You’re just living. And how do you live? By experiencing emotions.

Shifting is the same way. You don’t focus on the act of shifting, you don’t cling to it. Your subconscious already knows what you want. You simply channel the feelings of being in your DR, of living in the end, of already having what you want. And you don’t get attached to it. Why would you be attached to something you already have, right?

Now, this is just one approach to shifting. This doesn't mean all other interpretations of shifting awake are wrong. Even this one might not resonate with you for all I know. You could tailor this advice to your own style; use affirmations, listen to music, meditate, or even treat this as a precursor to another method. You could toss this all aside and use stuff like assuming you’re already in your DR, assuming you’ll wake up there, or assuming you have the ability to shift— all perfectly valid methods I’ve recommended before because they work.

But here’s the thing about all of this, and this applies to asleep methods too: when you strip it down to the bare bones, deconstruct it to its simplest form, it’s all about this:

Trust + Feel + Let Go.

“I’m already in my DR” – It’s because you trust that you’re in your DR, you feel yourself in your DR, and you let go, relaxing into the experience.

“I’m shifting to my DR” – It’s because you trust that you’re shifting to your DR, you feel the emotions and sensations you would if you were in the process of shifting, and you let go.

“I will shift to my DR at any moment” – It’s because you trust that you will shift, you feel the emotions you would knowing it’s going to happen, and you let go.

“I’ve already shifted” – It’s because you trust that you’ve shifted, you feel yourself in your DR already, and you let go.

Each of these statements works because it boils down to trusting the process, feeling the reality as if it’s already true, and letting go of the need to control the outcome.

I hope this makes sense lmao <3 Good luck in any case :)

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Plotting Your Novel

Plotting your novel is a multi-step process.

There are a few different approaches and mindsets when it comes to plotting a novel.

The following is a step-by-step guide to plotting a novel.

Generate ideas.

The first step in writing a novel is generating story ideas. 

Some writers like to freewrite and brainstorm.

Others prefer working with writing prompts.

Whichever approach you take, it’s important to spend time coming up with a variety of ideas and choosing a strong premise that lends itself to an effective plot.

Start with a simple, compelling premise.

Once you have a basic idea, it’s time to develop a story premise.

One way to develop a small idea into a basic story is called the snowflake method. 

The snowflake method involves starting with a core premise or theme upon which you build every other aspect of narrative and character as you flesh out the big picture.

Have a clear central conflict.

Creating a clear central conflict will anchor your plot and give your narrative focus. 

If you’re a first-time novelist or new writer, look to thrillers, fantasy or adventure stories for examples of clear good guy vs. bad guy conflict.

Choose your structure.

There are many different models upon which you can base your plot structure. The most common is a three act structure.

Learning the basics of how a three-act story structure can help you start to piece together your plot and structure your narrative.

Trace out general story arcs. 

Start to lay out a storyline.

You don’t have to worry about building the whole thing at once.

Rather you can focus on an act length story arc or even scene descriptions and piece these together as you build out a full-length narrative.

Build subplots.

Once you have a good sense for your main plot it’s time to layer in subplots.

Subplots can often be character specific, so this is a good time to think a bit about the characters you’ve populated your world with and how each individual backstory might come into play.

Good subplots will weave seamlessly through your main arc and help advance your action rather than distract from it.

Think about cause and effect.

Good stories involve a logical series of events that progress one into the next.

Make sure that your scenes are each motivated by something that preceded them.

A good driving narrative should feel dynamic.

A plot should progress forward because of tangible story elements like a character’s motivation or actions that propel your narrative.

If you look at your story arc as a sequence of events, there should be a logical progression where one scene triggers the next and pushes the action forward.

Write a detailed outline.

Before you start writing, you should have a detailed plot outline.

This should catalog the main story and individual plot points.

It should be comprehensive enough that someone who has no knowledge of your story could look at the outline and piece together the narrative of events, identifying your inciting incident, rising action, and climax.

Tie up loose ends.

Once you have a detailed outline, tie up loose ends and fill any plot holes.

Editing is a very important part of creative writing.

One misconception about writing is that editing comes at the end of the process.

Editing is something you should return to throughout your writing process and it’s important to edit your plot and outline before you start writing in earnest.

Don’t neglect character development.

Character is an incredibly important part of a story and helps to balance out plot-based narratives.

Before you start writing you should make sure that you have detailed character arcs and main characters with clear motivations and backstories.

Part of building a good character is building a strong and nuanced point of view.

Balance out the plot portion of your writing process by taking some time to analyze your characters and make sure they are strong, realistic, and nuanced.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References Writing References: Plot ⚜ Character ⚜ Worldbuilding

[swampstew]

One long night

Summary: short, multi-chapter choose your adventure story. not thought out a single bit. you're the main character,this is your rodeo and Captain Kid is your bull ;)

Warnings: Eustass Kid X Female Reader, consent is implied, femdom dynamics forced orgasm, exhibitionism because its at a dark pub in the back. WC: 971

There was little left of the dive bar the Kid Pirates trashed that evening. Some still-standing yet drunk as fuck local islanders scattered around the place, the busted lights cast a hazy, dim glow in the already dark bar.

Not that the Kid Pirates minded, it was how they liked to wind down before the night ended.

You, Kid and the crew had been sharing stories and laughing over jokes for a while and the chatter quieted down as they drank and polished off the food on the tables. They dwindled and eventually left with knowing glances at each other, but you and Kid were drunkenly talking and barely noticed when the table was empty.  The remaining crew drifted to harass the patrons and mingled with whoever was still around.

“I’m gonna grab us some waters,” you headed to the bar to hydrate and throw down extra cash for tips and damages. You always felt a little bad for owners of businesses they fucked up. It was your collateral-damage cash.

The bartender gave you extra-large mugs filled with ice cubes, and in your inebriated state made you a bit clumsy as you walked back to the table without spilling drop or cube. At the table, Kid had kicked aside the chairs, placing his weapons strap and loose items on the empty seats and table..

Setting the glasses gently down, you felt Kid’s fingers ghost across the small of your back, grazing them to your waist as he guided you to sit in his lap. You tried to ignore the hot buzz you felt along your body as he moved you. You shifted to get comfortable while Kid was finishing his liquor when he suddenly coughed and shuddered underneath you.

“You ok, Boss?”

He cleared his throat before answering, “Y-yeh, drink jus’ went down the wrong pipe.”

Kid prompted you to give him his water, and he let out a few coughs before his voice wasn’t as strained. When his breathing felt more regulated, you brought up a topic from earlier in the day you wanted to double back on – just looking for something to talk about and ignore the fact that you were both past the point of sobriety, and you were plainly sitting in his lap.

He listened and leaned forward to set the half-drunk mug down, and when he sat back upright you had to adjust yourself again having slid down his massive thighs.

Sculpted muscles. Muscles so ripped, you could feel the curves and edges of his quadriceps through the fabric of his pants.

You shifted once more and felt Kid freeze underneath you.

Then you felt something else.

Slowly growing underneath your ass, awakened from the repetitive stimulation. You sucked in a breath when you realized it was his dick.

“Ah-s-sorry, didn’t mean to—” you stammered out.

“It’s ok,” he said tensely. “It happens…”

“I can get off—”

“No,” he cut you off, “It’ll pass. His fingers absentmindedly trailed on the hem of your shirt, trying to steel his mind on to something else. Inadvertently trailing his fingers lower until they dipped beneath the hem touching your bare skin.

Your body broke out in goosebumps, you couldn’t help the shudder that went through your body, shifting on his still-growing erection. You could hear Kid’s jaw click from how hard he clenched them.

Truthfully, you always found him attractive and dreamt more than once about it would be like to smudge that line between captain and subordinate. Feeling for once like you were in position of all the power, you allowed your loosely inhibited state persuade you to intentionally rock on him.

You heard strained grunts as he processed your movements.

Hips dipped back and forth, pressing your wettened core against the promise behind his pants. It felt large, thick, and already so impossibly hard.

The low music that hummed around the bar droned out the others from your table. Only you and Kid existed now. In sensual silence.

You braced your elbows to the table, ass flushed backwards so Kid got a nice view as while you rocked against him. His fingers dug into your hips, trying to exert more force with your grinding.

Kid let out short huffs the closer he got to climax, brought to the brink so suddenly with purposefully long slides of your torturous cunt along his length. His cock stuttered, his arm wrapped around your waist as he pulled you tightly to his flushed torso. You felt the twitch of cock as he came with a near-silent, strangled groan.

You chuckled as you fully came to a stop. Spontaneously teasing Kid to completion had exerted you of your energy.

“S’mthing funny, ya asshole?” he muttered with face pressed to the nape of your neck.

“Nothing’s funny, I’m a lil’ proud of myself. I always wanted to do that.”

He said nothing for a minute before the room violently came to life. Kid activated his power and repelled everything in a frenzy inside the bar.

Knives, forks, trays shot out to stab, and weapons slashing and shooting down the bar tender and remaining patrons. Battering them and forcing them out the double wide door before it was barricaded.

“Is that a fact?” he lifted you up with his flesh arm and used his metal arm to clear the table. Kid put force into the way he shoved you belly flat to surface, holding your back down with just one hand.

“Since we’re sharing, this is something I’ve always wanted to do,” his kilt and belt buckles clinked when he pushed his pants down. “You had your fun, now I’ll show you my version of a fun time. Givin’ ya one chance to back out.”

Puffs of excitement prefaced your smirk, “The hell makes you think I’d so something stupid like that?”

[pedrito-friskito]

disobedient - miguel o’hara x fem!reader (spidersona)

do you get off on disobeying me?

a/n: I regret fuck all folks. part 1 of 2 (no clue when part 2 will happen but it will). special shouts to @psychedelic-ink, @inklore, and @splendiferous-bitch for feeding my miguel obsession and being the best ❤️‍🔥

word count: 6.5k

warnings: oh mama. sex pollen, unprotected p-in-v, rough sex, desperate miguel, multiple orgasms, in a shocking twist a whole lotta exposition cuz I gotta make the fucking make sense, y’know?

✨@friskito-library for new works✨

You’re not supposed to do this.

You’re not supposed to be here, period, but the notion hasn’t stopped you thus far. It’s just gonna make him more pissed off than he normally is, but pissing Miguel O’Hara off has quickly climbed to the top of your list of talents, and you’re content to continue doing as you please.

Especially if it means he’ll keep glowering at you with those eyes of his.

+

It threw you off initially — him, in general. Unfairly large, all rippling muscle and too-tiny waist, the hip-to-shoulder ratio of a Dorito chip and retractable claws you’ve seen more than once now. Not to mention an ass that looks like it was sculpted by a god. But it was the eyes that caught your attention, when you caught him glowering at you from a shadowy corner, like a predator hunting its prey.

“You gonna keep gawking,” you’d asked, “or come say hello like a normal person?”

Neither of you fit that category — normal people, boring — and he’d ignored your quip, actually growling at you as he stalked out of the shadows and brushed past you, bumping your shoulder in the process, and your brow had lifted at the way his suit seemed to ripple with the impact, forming and reforming against his skin. You saw it all, thanks to your spider-tacular vision, and your next thought after I want to sink my teeth into that ass, was I need to get my hands on that fabric.

Six months later, and no dice. You’ve been bouncing between Earth 928 and whatever dimension suits your fancy since Miguel first brought you here. How you convinced him to hand over one of his fancy bracelets, you’ll never truly know, but you have a distinct feeling the nature of your first meeting was what prompted him to give you access to the multi-verse — along with a slew of rules you more often than not turned your nose up at.

It also probably has something to do with the fact that you didn’t leave Nueva York for the first month. You holed up in the room he provided, ate the food he left by the door, and slept your days away, ignoring the too-bright world outside the windows, content to waste away to nothing. You couldn’t go home, what did it matter anyway?

Enter Miguel O’Hara and his incredibly bite-able ass.

When he first found you on the rooftop, cornered you near the fire escape, you’d gone snarky, despite the rumble in your bones, the betrayal that had cut you to the core, the looming fact that shit had just hit the fan and nothing was ever going to be the same again. 

And then Mister Grumpy steps through a fucking portal and tells you he can save you. He can’t fix what happened, but he can take you somewhere they won’t find you again, a haven of sorts. For a moment, you reeled — how could you know for sure that you could trust him? You almost asked him as much, but then the blanket of realization swept over you: there was nothing left for you on Earth 374. The spider on his chest was clue enough that you were on the right track. Sure, his was bright red on dark blue, whereas your own was navy against slate grey, but the similarities were close enough, namely the giant fucking spider.

The door to the rooftop had jiggled and Miguel swept a hand out, shooting webbing at the handle, keeping it shut. “Clock’s ticking, princesa,” he told you, the nickname said almost tauntingly. “Offer’s about to expire.”

You knew there had to be other spider-people out there in the universe, you just hadn’t imagined them to be so…large.

Or demanding, you’d learn later. Or asshole-ish. Sigh.

“Get me the fuck outta here,” you answered, and that was that. You were standing in his lab in Nueva York a moment later, and the jolt of multi-dimensional travel had you puking your guts all over the glossy floor. Faintly, you’d heard Miguel’s grunt of disdain.

“Lyla, get someone to clean this up,” he said, and his hand curled around your arm a moment later, hauling you to your feet like a rag doll. “You’ll get used to it,” he told you. “The jumping. I did the same thing after my first time.”

You were too out of it to know if he was actually being nice, or if the subtle lift to the corner of his mouth was just amusement at your expense.

“Yeah, well, warn a girl next time, would you?”

But you did get used to it. Once you managed to get your ass out of bed and back into your suit, you were soon away from the Spider Society more than you were there. For the first couple weeks, Miguel hadn’t said a word, apparently content to let you go where you pleased, barely questioning you when you deigned to return. Then, it was like a switch was flipped, and he was up your ass — and not in a fun, sexy way. He wanted reports on each of your jumps, timelines and activity breakdowns. He wanted lists of targets, reasons behind them, background checks. All things you knew he could easily get himself, but you also didn’t have the guts to tell him that since he’d saved you from Earth 374, you hadn’t actually…helped…anyone.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Your first solo jump you’d managed to find a few bank robberies and a mugging happening within a few blocks of each other. Clearly, you’d picked a gem of a universe, and while you’d managed to web up the bandits in the vault, something in you had frozen when you tried to track down the mugger. The scene unfolded on the street below and you just…shut down.

The rest of your trips were spent just exploring. You swung your way through cities, camped out on rooftops, just watching the normal people go about their lives down below. You noted the differences between that universe and your own, tried to remember where all the puzzle pieces fit, even though you were looking at a different picture.

And it’s that curiosity, that quiet desperation to know more, that has you padding out of your room in the Spider Society tower, overriding the elevator that’ll take you up to Miguel’s lab. His currently empty lab. The man himself has been away on a scouting mission for nearly forty-eight hours, and you’re not expecting him back for another twenty-four, which gives you more than enough time to satisfy that annoying voice in the back of your head that wants to know how they’re doing.

It’s late. The world outside the tower is dark, the sky an inky black, streaked with light shades, dotted with stars. You’d be a fool not to find Earth 928 and Nueva York beautiful in their own strange, overly modern ways, but even six months in, it’s hard to think of it as home.

But you know why. It’s because it’s not. 

You’d lasted a few days before you started glitching, and being cooped up in your room, you assumed you’d be able to hide it from Miguel. Part of you feared that if he knew something was wrong with you, he’d send you back to 374, and then what would happen to you?

You went to sleep worrying it over in your mind, and woke up to a complicated-looking watch sitting on the nightstand beside your bed. A hastily scrawled note stuck to it.

Put it on. It’ll help.

As soon as you did, the device beeped to life, a holographic screen jumping up, telling you the date and time and a myriad of other pieces of information. And then—

“Hiya, toots! I’m Lyla.”

You were confused as hell by the AI at first, but you quickly realized how useful she was, even more knowledgeable than Miguel, not that she’d ever admit it. And, in all honesty, you were a fan of the gab sessions. When Miguel wasn’t working her overtime, she’d beep her way through your watch for a good chat, perch herself on your pillow in the days you were still a shut-in, and when you started to make your way through the multi-verse, she was quick to point out the must-sees wherever you were.

She ran out quickly when she realized you were visiting the same place, just a different universe.

+

The doors to Miguel’s lab whoosh open at your approach, bare feet padding along the glass floor, and as you pause, getting yourself a cup of coffee from the forever-full carafe he keeps far away from the supercomputer, your watch pings to life, and the AI herself glitters into existence.

“What d’you think you’re doing?”

You ignore her at first, fixing your coffee the way you like it, flicking the stir stick into the trash before bringing the cup to your lips. It’s not until you start toward the computer and the large platform that houses it, that you answer her.

“Nothin’.”

She groans. “That’s a load of shit and we both know it.”

“He’s not here,” you say, shrugging a shoulder as you step onto the platform. The screens hum to life as you drag one hand across the infrared keyboard and when you glance over your shoulder, Lyla’s staring at you over the top of her heart-shaped glasses. “What he won’t know won’t hurt him.”

“And you really think doing exactly what he told you not to do is the best idea?”

You sigh, sipping your coffee as you sink into the chair, rolling yourself close to the computers. Miguel rarely uses the chair, apparently content to just stand and stare all broodingly at the screens. You only watched him — caught him — do this once, but when you caught on to what was happening, you filed the information away. He’d given you hell for snooping around, though you teased that he was just pissed you’d managed to sneak up on him, and according to Lyla, nobody does that.

Fingers hovering over the keyboard, you pause. He did tell you, rather specifically, not to do what you’re about to do. He didn’t tell you why, wouldn’t give an inch when you pressed him, but he was firm.

No good will come of it.

+

Earth 473. Not an identical twin to your home universe, but a very close sibling. The differences were so small, so scarce, that you truly thought you’d stumbled back to 374 accidentally, and you’d nearly jumped back to Nueva York, heart in your throat. But then something caught your eye, and you froze.

Across the way, teetering at the edge of the rooftop, was Spider-Man.

His suit was the opposite of yours, the spider grey and the suit navy. You could feel him staring right back at you, even at the distance, and as you stared back, he lifted his hand. For a moment you thought he might wave, your own fingers twitching to return the gesture, but then it continued up, gripping the back of his mask and yanking it from his bed.

You saw his mouth form the words, heard them like a whisper in the air.

“You’re alive.”

Your frozen heart dropped into your toes.

It was Peter. Your Peter, the one you’d left behind on Earth 374, your best friend, the one who…who…

You didn’t have it in you to finish the thought. It was all the evidence you needed to know that this universe was not yours. You were the only Spider-Person on 374, and your Peter wasn’t…he couldn’t…

You’d stumbled backward, blindly grabbing for your watch, suddenly desperate to be back in the SS tower. But then you paused, your fingers twitching on the dials and digits.

And you almost went exactly where you weren’t supposed to. Like a reflex. Shaking yourself, you punched in 928, everything in you twisting and turning as you stepped through the portal.

Miguel was waiting. He’d been watching you, paying close attention to that particular jump, and had used the link through your watch to see what you saw. The opposite-but-mirror image on the rooftop.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, his voice low, that deep timbre that still managed to catch you off guard. “The multi-verse doesn’t work that way.”

“You have no idea what I’m thinking,” you spat back, shrugging off his hand when he tried to grab your arm. “You have no idea what I’m feeling.”

His face had gone feral. Those carmine eyes flaring, staring down his nose at you while you just stared right back, defiant. You went to step past him, and he caught you again, this time his longer fingers wrapping around your forearm, the tell-tale prick of his talons biting through your suit.

“I know a fuck load more than you seem to think,” he snarled, dragging you close to he was in your face. “In case you forgot, I’ve been at this a hell of a lot longer than you have, and what you saw out there, what it means to you, I know exactly where your mind went. And I am telling you: the multi-verse does not work like that.”

“What am I thinking?” you spat back, ignoring the pinpricks of pain that shot through your arm as you got even closer, leaning up on your toes. “If you’re so fucking knowledgeable, tell me.”

He released you, then. The pain in your arm dissipated as quickly as it had come, and his eyes went…soft. Thoughtful.

Sympathetic.

“You’re thinking,” he started, inhaling deeply, rubbing two fingers between his brows as he spoke, “that you could go back there, to 473, and make a life for yourself. The same family, the same friends, the same life. They lost their version of you, so why not fill her shoes? Find some semi-logical explanation, hide your powers, live your life. Am I close?”

You almost stumbled backward, the truth of his words sending you reeling. You bumped into his desk instead, knocking a cup of coffee over, and neither of you said a word as the dark liquid spread across the desktop, dripping off the edge and onto the floor.

Miguel took a half-step toward you, then turned slightly, looking over the curve of his shoulder at you. Something in you longed to press your forehead against his frame, search for some kind of support, but you stayed stuck still.

“I know,” he continued, turning his head, staring straight ahead, “because I did exactly the same thing. And I lost everything.”

+

His words echo through your mind now, the deep tone you’ve gotten very familiar with, and you shake your head, clearing away the cobwebs he’s left in your head. “This is different,” you say aloud, partially to Lyla, partially to yourself. “I’m not going there, I’m just…checking in.”

The AI rolls her eyes at you and snaps her gum. “I said it once and I’ll say it again: load of shit.”

Your fingers fly over the keyboard, typing in the codes to find what you’re looking for. You haven’t been back to 473 since that jump; Miguel had forbade it after your spat, and even went so far as to block your watch from taking you there. You thought he was being unreasonable, and he reiterated that he was actually trying to keep you safe.

No good will come of it.

You hit the final key, and the images start to fade in. You can just barely make out the shape of her — of you — when the screens go black. Your breath catches in your throat as a large hand comes down on your shoulder, gripping tightly, though you don’t feel the pricks of his talons.

“Do you get off on disobeying me?”

The words are almost a purr, the opposite of the tone you’re expecting, and from the corner of your eye, you see Lyla blip from existence. It makes goosebumps rise on your skin, the hair on the back of your neck standing on end as he leans in, hot breath on your ear.

“If I make you cum, will that make you more obedient? Hm?”

“What the fu—” you start, trying to whirl around, but his grip on you is solid, warm palm following the curve of your shoulder until his fingers are wrapping themselves around your throat. It’s a welcome weight, sparks of electricity shooting down your limbs, your thighs rubbing together to relieve the instant pressure. “Mmm.”

His thumb presses down on your racing pulse, and you’re suddenly aware of how warm he is. He’s…too warm. But you have to admit, the way he’s holding you…it’s nice. Really nice.

“Miguel,” you start, trying to turn again, but he fits his face into the bare side of your neck, lips grazing the thin skin. “You’re not supposed to be back yet.”

“Mission went south,” he mumbles against you, his tongue darting past his lips and dragging along your skin. It makes your eyes roll back, but…

Where is this coming from?

He should be furious with you. He caught you red-handed, no questions about it. You weren’t expecting him to find you in the first place, but now that he has, you’re expecting a screaming match, toddler-level foot-stomping and possibly being thrown over his ridiculously large shoulder and being tossed into your room like a rag doll. Locked up like Rapunzel until you start listening to his brand of reasoning. You’re expecting a blowout.

You’re not expecting this.

He huffs in your ear as his lips graze the sensitive skin beneath it, his words spoken into the shell, tongue catching on your earring. “You smell delicious, cariño.”

The pet name makes you shiver. “Mig,” you say again, your hand covering his as his other arm wraps around your middle, pulling you back against his chest. “What are you doing?”

His heart is racing, so hard that you can feel the heavy thump of it against your spine. It’s too fast, even for him, you know that much. His fingers curl against your stomach, talons poking out and shredding your shirt to strips. You gasp as the fabric falls away.

“Miguel.” You make your voice as stern as possible. It’s not that you don’t want him to touch you like this, it just seems so sudden, so out of character, and you—

He wrenches himself away from you, the heady warmth of him suddenly gone, and you whirl, hand flying up to grip your neck as the sound of him crashing into the wall reaches your ears. His fingers are leaving indents in the metal, talons scratching deep, and you gulp as you realize you’re lucky he didn’t just accidentally slit your throat.

Whatever’s happening, he’s not himself.

“Mig,” you call, wiping your bloody hand on your sweats, crossing the distance he’s put between you. “Would you just talk t—”

“NO!” he roars, throwing a hand out in front of himself. You can see his large frame shake as he sinks down against the wall, long tears in the metal forming in his wake. “Keep your distance.”

Your brow lifts. “Says the man who was literally crawling up my ass three seconds ago.” You ignore him, taking another step, ignoring the way his words ring through your head. Do you get off on disobeying me?

Yeah…maybe you do. Just a little bit.

You crouch down low, getting on his level. “Mig, tell me what happened.”

“Don’t call me that,” he spits, staring you down for a moment before forcing his head to the side, an action that looks like it takes a lot of effort. “Just…go to your room, leave me be.”

“You telling me not to call you that just makes me wanna call you that more.” You shift onto your knees, inching a little closer. “I can’t leave you be, not when you just put a bunch of holes in the wall,” you lift your hand to your throat, where the scratches he left are already almost gone, “and almost in me. Tell me what happened.”

He tilts his head back against the wall, still turned away from you, one crimson eye looking your way. “Mierda, you’re stubborn.”

You roll your eyes. “Like you didn’t know that already. Talk.”

“Earth 1365-7,” he starts, eyes fluttering shut. His eyelashes are unfair, you think to yourself, the way they fan out across his even more unfair cheekbones. “I ended up in their version of OSCORP, some testing centre. Different serums and gases and…they were trying to weaponize a kind of paralytic that’s found in certain spider venom.”

His tongue pokes out after he says the word venom, tracing the tips of his fangs, and you swallow hard.

Bite me, bite me, bite me.

You shake your head, silencing the thought.

“And you stopped them?” you prompt, when he doesn’t go further, instead inhaling deeply and scrubbing a hand down his face.

“I did,” he tells you, but there’s no trace of triumph in his voice or on his face. “But I stumbled into one of the other labs, and as soon as I did…” He trails off, body shifting against the floor, and it’s impossible to miss the ripple in his skin-tight suit, the way he props one knee up, blocking your view of his crotch. “It was some sort of plant that they’d been researching. The pollen, it raises a person’s heart rate, skyrockets it, and muddles their senses. If left untreated, it can kill them.”

You stare at him hard. “What’s the treatment, Miguel?”

“The side effects,” he continues, ignoring your question. “Heightened blood pressure, extremely sensitive skin, lowered inhibitions, and…”

“Mig, would you just tell me?”

“Arousal,” he finishes, and you freeze. “Intense arousal. I didn’t mean to jump on you like that, I just…The only way to treat it is to…”

He doesn’t say it out loud, but the implication is clear, along with the intense reminder of how he was pressed against you.

You tuck your bottom lip between your teeth, shrugging a shoulder, trying like hell to look non-committal, like your skin isn’t still tingling in all the places he touched you. “Lowered inhibitions, like you said.”

He doesn’t say anything so much as hum in response, his head lolling to the side again. His eyes are fire when they open again, landing on you and pinning you in place. It makes your breath hitch again, palms lowering to rest on your thighs.

“You need to get out of here, cariño,” he murmurs, his voice low, husky, fingers tapping against his bent knee. “I need to deal with this.”

You’ve inched a bit closer to him, you realize, your traitorous body giving you away.

“How are you gonna deal with it?” you ask, barely above a whisper. Every inch of you is tingling now, not just the places he touched, and the way he tilts his head back again and groans is not helping matters. “Maybe I should…help.”

His eyes flash to you, pools of red, pupils blown big as dinner plates. “You want to…help.”

“You said this could kill you,” you continue, leaning forward until your palms hit the floor. “Someone should…keep an eye on you, y’know. Make sure you…y’know, don’t.”

“How articulate of you.”

“Fuck off.”

He chuckles, the sound deep and rumbly, but you don’t miss the way his shoulders shake even after the laughter has stopped. His breathing is shaky too, you can hear it from where you’re crouched. Worry threads through the lust that’s seemingly replaced your blood, and you slide even closer to him, until there’s maybe two feet between you.

“I don’t want you to die.” The words hang heavy in the air and the truth of them twists your guts. Stubborn ass he may be, but he’s done nothing but protect you since he found you back on Earth 374. You…care. You care a lot.

“Lyla can keep an eye on me,” he spits, but you just get closer.

“So she can wipe her hard drive and clean her eyes with soap afterward?” you joke. “I can’t leave you like this, Mig. Can AIs even use soap?”

“Don’t call me that,” he says again.

“Let me help you,” you say, the words coming easier, firmer. “You know that I can.”

You close the distance completely, your knees bumping the side of his thigh and your hand covering his on the floor. The fabric of his suit recedes, revealing his hands, and your fingers brush over his knuckles. “I don’t need your pity.”

“It’s not pity,” you tell him, leaning back on your heels, lifting your other hand to pull his bent knee straight. “You need help, and I’m offering it.”

He groans again.

“I’ve owed you, this whole time,” you continue, resting your hand on his shin as his leg rests on the floor. It takes everything in you not to let your eyes wander up to the space between his hips, but you manage. “You saved my life; let me save yours.”

The spider made you strong, made you fast, but Miguel…He’s so large, so imposing, and the moment his hands land on your body, you know he’s been holding back from you.

He maneuvers you into his lap, your knees resting against his hips. In an instant you can feel him, the hard prod of his cock against your cunt, separated only by the thin fabric of your pants and the rippling material of his suit. Miguel groans as he fits his face into your neck, talons pressing into your hips as the suit melts away, every inch of his golden skin suddenly on display. It’s overwhelming and your blood heats, unable to bite back the moan that slips free when he pulls your hips against his, the pressure between you exactly what you need it to be.

“This doesn’t mean anything,” he grits out, his hips lifting off the floor as he chases your body, as you chase each other. “This is just…”

“I’m helping,” you breathe out, your hands curling around his shoulders as you settle into his lap. Well, not so much as settle as twitch, the fabric of your shirt riding up as his hands move up your sides, curling around your ribs. “This is only about keeping you alive.”

“Alive,” he repeats, and you bite your lip, feeling his fingers curl into your shirt. “You have no fucking idea how…”

“God, shut up,” you groan, gripping his face in your hands, claiming his mouth for your own. The sound of tearing fabric reaches your ears as your lips meet his and he growls at you, shredding your shirt and tossing the fabric away, leaving you bare from the waist up. His hands drop to your ass then, tugging at your pants and you bite his bottom lip. “You could just ask nicely, you know.”

He just grunts in response, effectively splitting the elastic band and pulling the rest of your clothes away. You’re completely naked now, perched in his lap, and your skin heats in every spot you’re pressed to him. Which is basically everywhere. “I’ll get you new ones,” he grits, and you roll your eyes, biting at his lip again. 

There’s little ceremony to it. Miguel drags you along him a few times, the feel of him prodding between your legs lighting a fire in you. You can feel how big he is, but you busy yourself with his mouth, your knees pressing against his hips. One of his hands skims down your back, curving around your hip and sliding two fingers through your folds. It makes you keen, a moan ripping from your throat when he presses those fingers into you.

“Wet,” he grunts against your mouth, his breath stuttering as you clench around his digits. You rock your hips into his hand, tangling your fingers in his hair and tugging until his head tips back.

“Take what you need,” you say, and for once, he listens to you.

The feeling of his fingers pulling out leaves you aching, but you’re not left waiting for long. He presses against the small of your back, tilting your hips, and then he’s inside you, sheathing himself to the hilt in one smooth motion. The sheer fullness that sweeps through you is almost too overwhelming, and your breath whooshes out of you as your chest slams into his. You can feel the way his heart is racing, the rapid thump beneath his sternum nearly vibrating against your own.

This doesn’t mean anything, you remind yourself, circling your hips as he plants his feet, bends his knees. He holds you up slightly, giving just enough space between you for him to thrust up into you, hitting a spot that makes you see stars. This is just…helping. I’m just being helpful.

You’re just…quickly reaching the most intense orgasm you’ve had in a hot second.

He keeps hammering into that same spot, the lab filling with the sound of his skin on yours, your panting breaths, and Miguel’s grunts. It’s fucking euphoric, your head falling back between your shoulders. “Mig, I—”

“Not yet,” he growls, and suddenly you’re being lifted, the heavy weight of him still pressed inside you. Your grip on each other is firm, and Miguel moves quickly, sweeping you out of the lab and through the door that leads to his room. You barely get a breath in before your back hits his mattress and he’s towering over you, his big hands curled around your thighs, kneeling so he can prop your ass up. The angle lets him drive deeper and you throw your arms over your head, curling your fingers in his bedsheets, trying to find some leverage.

One of his hands moves over you, palm grazing your stomach before moving down. He thumbs at your clit, dragging another moan out of you, his brow going hard. You have a better look at his face now, his expression pinched, eyes trained on where he’s pounding into you. His skin is damp with sweat, a sheen on his forehead, his mouth hanging open. You swear you can see his pulse jumping in his throat.

“Want you to cum, princesa,” he nearly begs, and the hitch in his voice makes goosebumps rise all over your body. “So. Fucking. Tight.” He punctuates each word with a deep thrust and everything in you goes impossibly tighter.

“This is about you,” you pant out, clawing at his sheets. “I don’t need—”

But you do. You really fucking do, but something about admitting that to him right here and now feels…wrong. It twists your gut in a not-so-fun way.

“I don’t care, I need you to cum,” he growls, releasing his grip on your thigh to grab at your chin, forcing your eyes on his. “Now.”

Suddenly, your body is not your own. It responds instantly to his command, a string threading your muscles drawing tight as a bow before snapping entirely. Your back arches against the mattress, so hard it just brings you closer to him and Miguel drops his head, dragging his nose up the middle of your chest. It courses through your entire body, your hips lifting entirely off the bed to chase him, to keep him buried within you.

He groans as you cum, the sound the only thing you’re aware of besides the pleasure setting your body on fire. There’s a ringing in your ears, your muscles going lax as you start to come down, but he doesn’t stop. One of your hands floats to his hair, tangling the sweat-damp strands around your knuckles and you can feel his growl shake your ribs.

“More,” he grits, raking his hands down your sides, gripping your hips again. You inhale sharply as his head turns, skirting across your chest to take your nipple between his lips. The pace is relentless, your body growing tight again with his movements. He’s playing you like a fucking fiddle, and you’re the first to admit you’re loving every second of it.

You manage to open your eyes, the pleasure receding just enough for you to regain some of your faculties.

He’s staring right back.

It makes you flinch, jolting in his grasp as his lips draw back, revealing one pointed fang. You shiver as he drags the tip of it around your nipple.

“Again.”

And again, your body obeys. This time it sneaks up on you more than barrels through you, making you throw your head back against the mattress. “Fuck, Miguel.” Your nails dig against his scalp, tugging at his hair, revelling in the noise it pulls out of him. You want to record it, put it on repeat, set it as your fucking ringtone. How the fuck is he doing this? This was supposed to be about him.

Not that you’re not enjoying yourself. Quite the opposite.

He’s still staring at you, peering up at you from where he’s bent against your chest. There’s something in those ridiculous eyes, something you have no name for, and you force your eyes away, moving them down his body, to where you can see him still driving into your cunt, the length of him slick with you. The sight alone makes you clench, and when you do, he curses under his breath.

“Where…?” he grits, the hoarseness in his voice drawing your eyes back up to his face.

He looks like he’s in pain. Your heart twists in your chest at the sight, reaching up to swipe your hand across his sweaty forehead. “Does it hurt?”

“I need…” He trails off, leaning into your touch, turning his head and nipping at your wrist, at your pulse. “Where can I…?”

“Wherever you want,” you pant, gasping as he drives as deep as inhumanly possible, moving you further up the bed. “Whatever you need to—”

You’re cut off by the roar that echoes through the room. He buries his face in your neck as it happens, most of his weight dropping onto you, hips pinning yours to the bed, chest pressed to yours. He pulls out at the last second, cock sliding through the hinge of your thigh, cum spurting hot against your stomach. He doesn’t seem to care about the mess he’s making of you both, his entire body covering yours as he shudders his way through it.

It feels like it lasts forever. His limbs go taut and then loose, his breath quickening and then slowing against the shell of your ear. You don’t know what else to do except hold him through it, wrapping your arms around his shoulders, one hand finding his hair once more. It’s like his release is chasing the pollen from his system, his superhuman body returning to his brand of normal. He babbles through some of it, grunts and moans and something that sounds almost like your name murmured in your ear.

You just hold him.

Eventually, he seems to come back to himself. You’re loathe to admit you’re revelling in the feel of him against you, the way his hands are tangled in your hair against his pillows. The weight of him is…it’s nice. It’s really fucking nice.

It’s too nice.

You wait a few minutes, wait for him to find his bearings, to peel himself away from you, but it never comes. He’s a solid weight on top of you, and while you’ve been listening to his erratic breathing, waiting for it to even out, you realize that it’s gone…slow. He’s asleep.

“Mig,” you murmur, barely above a whisper, tugging softly at his hair. Nothing. Not so much as a twitch. He’s dead to the world, his slow breaths turning to quiet snores in your ear. Carefully, inch by inch, you slide your way out from under him. You freeze when he rolls onto his side, his breath hitching for a moment, but it evens out again and you slip off the edge of his bed.

Your clothes are toast, the shreds of fabric scattered on the floor of the lab, so you slip into his closet, finding a t-shirt that’s way too big for you. You definitely don’t inhale the scent that clings to it as you slip it over your head.

Your steps are quiet as you pad back into his bedroom, leaned up on your toes as you peer at him. Still asleep, hasn’t so much as moved from the spot you left him. You draw closer, your fingers curled around the hem of his t-shirt.

He doesn’t move an inch as you reach for his wrist, easily slipping the watch off his wrist and replacing it with your own. The too-big band of his adjusts to your size as you close the latch around your wrist, turn on your heel, and scurry from the room, through the lab, shooting a web up at the ceiling and launching yourself up to the next floor, the level your room is on.

You don’t make a sound as you pack your bag, reluctantly shrugging out of Miguel’s t-shirt to put your suit on, stuffing it into your bag with handfuls of clothes, whatever random shit your muddled mind has decided you need to take with you.

It felt too nice.

You know what would happen, you’ve decided, if you stay. You’d drift off, there in his bed, enveloped by his broad frame, half-drunk off the scent of him. You’d get the best sleep of your life, and when you woke the next morning, he’d be there, staring down his nose at you, the desperate man that had pulled pleasure from your body like it was his damn day job replaced with the grumpy fuck that plucked your last nerve like a guitar string.

The problem was that you knew exactly what he’d say to you:

This doesn’t mean anything.

The problem is that you’ve grown to care too much for him, grumpy, desperate, and all things in between.

Lyla makes an appearance as you sling your bag over your shoulder, keying in the universe you want to jump to, Miguel’s watch not locked out the same way yours is. “You really think that’s a good idea?”

You lift a brow as she cocks her digital hip at you. “You want me to answer that? So you can tell me I’m full of shit?”

“Ideally, yes.”

“Can AIs make promises?”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “Technically speaking.”

“Don’t tell him where I am,” you ask, pleading. “Please?”

“He’ll find out anyway,” she tells you, shaking her head, heart-shaped glasses slipping down her nose. Her eyes are big as she stares at you over the rims. “He’s smarter than you give him credit for. I know he’s a grumpy asshole ninety-nine percent of the time, but he—”

“Lyla, please.”

She sighs, sliding the glasses back up. “He won’t hear it from me.”

“Thank you.”

The portal crackles to life, that familiar tug in your stomach as you step toward it. Lyla fades from view as you take another step, and you ignore the echo of Miguel’s voice calling your name, and step through completely.

[eregyrn-falls-art]

And here is the final piece I did for the "Trouble" Multi-artist Lyric Comic - a "polaroid" to end the final instrumental break of the song, in the video still to come!

Of course I wanted to show Stan and Ford's happy ending, surrounded by what I think of as the extended family they now have. (Or at least part of it! Not forgetting Dipper and Mabel's parents, and Shermie Pines and his wife, and so on. But this is, of course, the core extended family in Gravity Falls itself.)

This is also a good place to put some of the remarks on the project that I originally had in the big lyric comic post, but had to cut out just to get Tumblr to post that monster.

I really can't even begin to thank everyone who participated in this huge project! The result is, IMO, spectacular, and the process was a LOT of fun! I'm just so blown away with how everyone truly brought their A-game to whatever they did on the project. It was great to see the enthusiasm and creativity, and also to see folks really get into the idea of collaborating on how their take on their line fit in with those before and after them. And then, everyone contributing to the "polaroids" for the instrumental section was another case of seeing how much people got into the idea and collaborated, both in terms of suggestion, feedback, and actually teaming up (like some artists contributing to some of the great news-clippings that @fordtato came up with!).

Further: special shout-out to everyone; but, in particular to the folks who pitched in to do extra work in order to bring this to the finish line ( @stephreynaart, @fordtato @tazmiilly @gin-juice-tonic; and last-minute help from @creativepup and @nour386!). But even beyond that, every time extra help was needed we had a bunch of people volunteering; even if I didn't end up tapping everyone who stepped forward, I appreciated so much that I had so many people to depend on!

This turned out even better than I hoped it would when I first decided to try to make a project like this. And I am super excited to have a Stan Twins "vid" to this song, at last. (I've been wanting one ever since first hearing the song in 2016.) Stay tuned, of course, as @stariousfalls is working on finishing that video, and it will be out soon!

[robins-egg-bindery]

Windows by @drgrlfriend

Derek has a new neighbor who won't stop looking.

fic by @drgrlfriend

art by @maichan808 & @andavs-main

368 pages / 83,266 words

Title Font: PP Hatton

Body Fonts: Cardo, Geo

HAPPY FFWAD!!! Thank you @renegadepublishing for putting on this event in celebration!

More on the process below the cut!

I'm so excited to be posting this book! Super grateful @drgrlfriend was so down to let me bind Windows for Fan Fiction Writer Appreciation Day. This is one of my all-time favs, and I was thrilled to give it the treatment it deserves! @maichan808 & @andavs-main were also incredibly kind to allow me to include their stunning art pieces in the book <3 And thank you @renegadepublishing for putting this event together!

I wanted the typeset to be visually interesting and move around the page, without making it difficult to read. I created unique headers for each of the 28 chapters with royalty free art, and varied placement on the page in six different configurations. I also played with the text warp to make the text work as part of the image - one of my favorites is chapter 26, "Banshee", pictured above!

I used Brick duo for this bind, as part of the vision for the front cover, which was done in silver permanent vinyl. I think the rich rust color is perfect for how I would imagine Stiles & Derek's apartment building, and the silver is incredibly reflective - my favorite part is how the vinyl catches the light on the spine, and can reflect "Windows" on whatever surface it's on (pictured above). That's not an added effect, it's just doing that!

I did @tankbredgrunt's faux double-core headband with some Sulky Gutermann I bought at a secondhand store for $0.25, and it's so pretty! A bit thin to work with, but totally worth it for the multi-color effect it gives off.

And I finally got a proper crisp hinge! I think it really brings the whole book together, thank you knitting needles (even though you were a pain in the ass).

This project also marks my 100th book! I'm rapidly approaching the two year mark of my fanbinding career with no sign of stopping; thank you to this entire community, and all of the fandoms I've been able to bring this hobby to. I love how cross-fandom it is; and for an old floater like me, it's wonderful to bring all of my interests together and have something that transcends those lines.

HAPPY FAN FICTION WRITER APPRECIATION DAY!

[gwensy]

how come you don't like the spiderverse movies? (/genq, i have mixed feelings about them too)

i've made a plethora of posts about this in the past but nothing very concise + i truly don't love alot of my older posts on the topic so i won't link any .......

but Essentially they have been beyond detrimental to Gwen Stacy and most notably Gwen Stacy-65 [Ghost-Spider] as a character lol. In the Sony movies she gets grossly mischaracterized and rewritten, her mythos is ignored almost entirely, her abilities are different, her age and personality are all altered -- and the fact that most of these changes are made purely to make her a more appealing love interest to Miles Morales [giving her more steady morals. changing her from a twenty-something year old to a fifteen year old. watering down her personality into a nothingburger of charming-love-interest.], which is a character that she is Barely even friends with in the comics, with the exception of sitting in a tree [Latour & Bendis Spider-Gwen #16]

— and this comic is a fucking nightmare scenario !!!. on Earth-8, Gwendolyn Stacy's grand escape from dying a tragically young death consists of her being wedlocked into a celebrity superhero marriage entirely away from home; her "happy ending" consists of marriage with a man that she barely gives a fuck about, and I don't think I need to explain why that is a laughably gross thing to do to a character that was created as a subversion and wraith like force in the face of the beautiful dead girl trope. [ontop of the fact that her and Miles truly do not work together. they are severely incompatible and in completely different age brackets + they are both preoccupied with worlds and love interests of their own. the fact that Latour and Bendis claimed to make this pairing for the sole purpose of 'coining a popular superhero ship' is also fucking annoying lol] which is why it is beyond infuriating to me that Spiderverse saw this comic and pairing and decided that it was *actually* a subversive and multi-verse shattering love story. because of course Gwen-65, a character who has never once shown any romantic reciprocation towards any other character within her source material, would actually love to be this boy's girlfriend and any adversity will be rewritten, rehashed or retconned. it is annoying and grossly misogynistic at it's core.

^ Gwen/Miles aside (though I do find it to be the center of the issues I take with Sony's portrayal of Gwen Stacy, alot of changes have been made to her character to make her a better side piece to his character in these movies.), Gwen Stacy is generally just wildly out of character and leagues more uninteresting than her comic counterpart in these movies — Jason Latour [the primary person responsible for her original comic characterization & the writer for her very first comic run.] had a hand in writing her for these movies and openly admitted to him seeing it as a "do-over" to rewrite his initial comics, which is crazy given that he was still fucking writing his Spider-Gwen run during the creation process of Into the Spider-verse. laughing crying emoji.

but so anyways. death, a lack of agency, trauma survival and loneliness are all very core parts of Gwen Stacy's character and stories within the Ghost-Spider comics, she is a genuinely interesting character who is extremely tied to her deceased 616 counterpart and the fact that these things are all erased in these movies for the sake of turning her into a different person entirely drives me up a wall -- and these movies haven't been exempt from comic synergy, either. Stephanie Phillips [the writer for Gwen Stacy's current ongoing run] Ghost-Spider is *also* wildly out of character with four previous comic runs being ignored or watered down in their entirety, with the author [yet again] admitting to using these comics as an avenue to rehash and rewrite the character. it is dire and gwen stacy fans have not had a win in their life since like 2017. death loves gwen stacy jot it down. read Latour Spider-Gwen (2015), McGuire Ghost-Spider (2018), McGuire Gwenom vs Carnage (2020), and what the hell maybe even some of Flores' spidergwens .......... and of course reading amazing spider-man & spider-man blue (2011) are required reading as a prerequisite to every Gwen Stacyism.

and she's literally venom in the comics which is seriously badass and awesome

look at my panels boy

[exhaustedbunnytm]

I thought this doctor would be different…but no…

“have you tried anti-depressants?” - yes all of them. I have treatment resistant depression I have literally done almost fucking everything.

“are you sure you eat healthy? You don’t have too much sugar?” - no processed foods, i occasionally allow myself to indulge, i eat a diet planned by a nutritionist.

“are you sure it is not psychosomatic?” - my mental health is struggling because my body is declining and I am fucking exhausted all the time. I am struggling mentally because of my physical illness.

“have you tried a multi-vitamin?” - yes, and they make me feel like shit more. I still take other vitamins.

“Im not referring you, just so you can get opioids.” - i just want to see a rheumatologist and a pain and spine specialist…for my fucking pain, that I am in every day. I want a diagnosis and no pain.

*googles cfs and reads from the same document I have read* “have you tried meditation or yoga?” - go fuck yourself, you list yourself as a chronic illness specialist and you’re googling this shit. Meditation and yoga have never and will never work for me, I have tried so many times.

“you are completely healthy, you’ve been seen by everyone” - no I have not seen everyone, i need to see a rheumatologist, and a pain and spine specialist, and someone that will actually help me try to have a quality of life.

I have been striped of everything I enjoy, i am a shell of what I once was because my hands are always in pain, my joints are swollen. I am a fucking artist who hasn’t made art in 8 months because my hands hurt so much I can’t make work. I went from being in 8+ shows a year to not even being able to make work. This has been devastating to me, I have never not been able to make art in some form. I have lost a core part of me that I thought I would never lose.

Just because I look healthy on paper does not mean I am. It does not mean it is psychosomatic, my pain is real. This is real. It is not in my head…

[chainofclovers]

I recently had a realization that with the exception of Severance, pretty much all of the fictional shows I’m currently most obsessed with (Ted Lasso, All Creatures Great and Small, Hacks, The Pitt) are very explicitly and at their core about teaching and mentorship and growth via vocation. Vocation—as opposed to job, career, obligation—is such fertile ground to build a story around because passion is such an integral part of the concept. The passion of a vocation ends up feeding workplace dynamics, friendship dynamics, family dynamics, sexual and romantic dynamics, faith and struggles with faith, the belief system around which a person measures success, character evolution or lack thereof as an industry evolves or as a community changes. (And I could argue that Cobel’s storyline in Severance is the story of a broken student—it’s just a little more tenuous, whereas I’d argue that teaching and mentorship [complicated, positive] are the absolute lifeblood of these other shows.)

I was happy when I had this realization because it ties together all these shows that are super different from each other on paper. I love that the passion of one’s vocation/life work, and the ebb and flow of success—whether that be coaching football or starting a career in PR or training veterinarians or writing comedy with a partner or working in the emergency department of a teaching hospital—bleeds into every type of relationship, every type of storyline.

For a long time, I’ve thought it was interesting that in meta and fan discussions in the related fandoms there’s often an emphasis on reading character relationships as familial. I know some of that is just for fun (fandom? just for fun? what? 😆)…people love to be like “that’s my mom!” about a no-nonsense milf (childless or no) and “he’s literally their dad” about a caring dilf (childless or no). So I in no way want to come off like a killjoy who doesn’t think people “””””should””””” use familial language when talking about characters who aren’t in the same literal family tree. People should pretty much do whatever they want. But I have a theory that at least some of the familial language is coming from places where the real driver, the real passion, is teaching (its own kind of learning process) and not parenting. And my realization about teaching/mentorship being throughlines in these shows kinda tied all of this together for me.

Like, it is really important if you’re an ED resident to have an attending physician who is a great mentor. It would not necessarily be desirable for that attending physician to be parental with you, to see you as a child on some level no matter how old you get. Your attending should view you as a fellow competent adult who has things to learn. Their protectiveness or their tendency to challenge or their concern might be emotional or biased or passionate or career-strengthening or problematic or ideal (or all of the above) without being parental. And imo, it’s more fun to map the dynamics of a show like The Pitt by examining teaching styles and the various ways the mentors and mentees learn from each other, even though I get that for others that same fun is in remapping it onto family.

Being a multi-shipper who can usually imagine romantic possibilities between a lot of different characters makes for a wild experience w/r/t all the familial characterizations too. For example I do understand why someone might find it comforting or pleasurable or just plain fun to imagine Keeley from TL as Ted and Rebecca’s kid, but I personally think mentorship and friendship are the actual roots of those relationships. Which is great, since Keeley canonically ogles Rebecca’s breasts, the two women flirt for three years straight, Ted is fascinated enough by Keeley’s gender presentation and whole vibe that he openly tells Rebecca he’s fantasized about being her, etc.

Of course there are lots of examples within these shows of places where characters finding each other means finding a family. In ACGAS, I’m certain that Tristan’s early loss of his parents is a major element of how complicated his relationship with his brother/professional mentor has become, and why the complexities shift and morph over time even as they find peace with each other. Siegfried and Audrey do resemble father and mother figures for Tristan within the household. But I’m so into interrogating the whole “literal [figurative] mum and dad” thing that in the fic I’m writing, a small part is about exploring how Tristan’s canonical growth that helps him accept Siegfried as his brother results in him realizing that Audrey is like an elder sister. Not a replacement for his mother, or for the elder sister-in-law he lost, but another distinct relationship that suits them.

This is super scattered and all over the place and don’t necessarily have a point. I was just very !!! when I realized, duh, most of the stuff I get into is about the passion of vocation and how that translates to varyingly successful teaching relationships that may have some other flavor of friendship, romance, family, whatever layered on…and how maybe these themes are what ends up landing me in fandoms where people keep turning to the language of nuclear family to explain dynamics that I’m more excited to explain through other relationship types. Found family is a god-tier dynamic but I’m realizing I’m maybe less into using literal familial language to describe it than others, and while I feel very “to each their own” about it I also hope people are aware that your mentor doesn’t or even shouldn’t need to be your dad/mom/parent.

[boyfridged]

tumblr might’ve eaten my ask in the process of submitting it so i want to send it again just in case but i loved burning money! it was so so so good! something that was interesting to me was mai (and the others’) disgruntlement with the foundation—which makes sense, big corporation encroaching on small community—but it’s the first time i’ve really seen a stance like that in fics? so i was curious about your thoughts on it! mostly because the foundation is usually depicted as doing good and nothing else, which isn’t true, of course, there is more depth to it, and i really liked and thought your depiction was interesting (even if it was intended to be a one-off thing) so i wanted to ask you about it :) if you don’t mind!

it seems it did eat it, so i'm glad you sent it again!

i absolutely do not mind, and i am happy to elaborate on that -- not only in the context of the fanfic, but also in terms what i think of the canon and fanon depiction of the work of the wayne foundation, and bruce's philanthropy.

that scene in burning money is, after all, symptomatic of my own politics. but as i always say, there was also a time when dc attempted to take in-world politics seriously -- leslie is a sign of that! so i do not see why i should not, given batman is an inherently political text, more so than most superhero comics (where the power fantasy elements are not as pronounced in their relation to class and the category of crime). and batman is just impossible to read without a consideration for these elements of discourse.

the love that contemporary comics (and i do think it's much more emphasised nowadays; the editorial seems to feel a need to continuously justify bruce, and there is not an ounce of modesty in how charity is portrayed) and fanon have for the foundation is something i find perturbing; the excitement regarding it even in the more progressive fandom spaces, the willingness to indulge this narrative of saviourism is really hard to ignore. and that is a narrative i have little patience for -- i, personally, like bruce as a multi-dimensional character, his flaws included. and that does not exclude keeping in mind that he is in a position of power.

the wayne foundation is not a grassroots organisation; and as such it is bound to have it's problems at the very core of its mission. the main issue is that it has a huge potential to become an instrument of biopower; that is to say, that people in charge get to say what sort of help the area will 'benefit' from most; and that is often a calculated choice that has little to do with the existing structures and even simply the wishes of people in question. while not directly related to the foundation, this is also something that i wanted to come across in the paragraph about the plan to make the crime alley into the entertainment district (btw, my rundown of the history of east end is by no means a canon one; i took different elements and mentions from comics and even adaptations into it, since it all remains vague otherwise). even when providing the people with a new (albeit limited; there was another bit that i ended up cutting out, about crystal being a nurse and the foundation putting a lot of money into nurse training programmes, since it is productive) range of opportunities, what it often leads to is yanking the populace around according to their latest charitable ideas, rather than providing long-time support.

here is also another thing to consider, that being -- no matter bruce's best intentions, he also cannot control everything that goes on in the foundation (which again, he should not -- but that also means that his 'stellar morals' will not save it from corruption and even just administrative troubles -- like the 'queues' that arlo mentions in burning money).

and about the scene you bring up in particular -- i want to say that this principled (!) reluctance to engage with the foundation it is not supposed to reflect the attitude of the community as a whole, but some part of it. mai, especially, has a personal connection to willis (and jason); this is very much a matter of pride and resentment regarding jason's death.

i have another wip with a scene of a somewhat similar, if not more open, conversation -- that one starring benny harlowe, who mentions that after jason's death the foundation seems to have doubled down in their efforts to 'fix' the alley (a trope somewhat popular in fanon, along with catherine todd/jason todd foundations), and he says: "The whole time I was thinking, why now? What was it, our boy’s trust fund? They murder our kid and then come back with a check?"

while I do not (obv) think the whole crime alley knew Jason (neither as jason nor robin; canon does not give us much reason to think that bruce would approve of robin-era jay venturing into the alley), nor do I subscribe to modern-era exaggeration of bruce's celebrity status, I do think most people in east end would hear about a billionaire adopting a child off the streets and the child dying not that long after; and there is surely some bitterness and distrust to come with that knowledge. is this what they are -- disposable charity cases? this is, needless to say, not true to bruce's feelings -- but what does it matter? there is little dignity to be found in this whole situation (with the system) to begin with.

this got ridiculously long... sorry about that! and thank you for reading!

[geometrymatters]

The Polynon: A Geometry of Consciousness

How Consciousness is a fundamental substance and everything else, including the Observer, is it's function of self-reflection within a complex construct and hologram.

Introducing the polynon:

A polynon is a conceptual geometric entity, a polytope of which vertices are non-events and its edges, holograms. A polynon contains all the holograms of that which can be projected as a polytope. From tetranon to dodecanon, and special cases such as dinon and nullanon.

The epistemological foundation of the polynon is a non-event, hence multi (poly) non-events. The ontological foundation is a noumenon, both in its negative and its positive aspect.

Collapsing the noumenal realm into a single dimension results in the conceptual noumenal monad, where the perceptual border is equal to the infinity of noumenal possibilities, as well as the phenomenal something.

Or, as "a cercle with the centre everywhere and circumference nowhere". A monadic embodiment of the thing and the non-thing, the visual expression of the substance of consciousness.

The neutral monistic approach enfolds the ancient knowledge of the self, and the contemporary science of consciousness, from a Vedantic self reflected in Indra's net, to a multi-dimensional implicate and explicate construct of Bohmian orders.

Also encapsulated in the formulation f(f)=f, akin to an Ouroboros mathematical formulation symbolizing a form of autopoiesis or self-production ad infinitum, a self-referential Fichtean process where the self (I) is both the creator and subject of its reality.

The eternal aspect of consciousness, a timeless monadic essence, is described as the perceptual continuum of f=0, signifying pure, timeless potential.

"Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking in temporal terms cuts off." - J. Campbell

The wavefunction is defined here as a layer of the noumenal monad, a transition between epistemological and ontological, given by the limits of the Observer's senses and perception.

In this context, |ψ(x)>*n, with n not strictly equal to 2, transcends its conventional mathematical role within Hilbert space and diverges from standard quantum mechanics, suggesting that different values of n represent distinct dimensions or layers of noumenal collapse.

Each wavefunction is a layer of the noumenal lens, of which border is (n+), or consciousness C; it’s contents are negative noumena (n-) and it’s holographic centre “collapsed” onto a phenomenal Observer O(n) as function of noumenal self-reflection of consciousness.

Furthermore, the Observer is envisioned as a holographic projection sitting at the core of the noumenal lens, emerging from the focus and diffraction of noumenal probabilities within the noumenal lens.

The perceptual border of positive noumena (n+) reflects and focuses noumenal probabilities (n-) into the hologram of the Observer O(n).

A rotation of noumenal lens reveals the noumenal essence (n+), hidden under the superposition of the noumenal lenses (n-) and the hologram of the Observer O(n).

The observer’s perceptual focus, directed through Cognitive Gravity G and visualized with noumenal g(n) and cognitive gradients g(r), refracts the essence of Consciousness, transforming noumenal vertices into discernible edges like light through a prism.

As the number of noumenal collapses increases, the complexity and breadth of the observer’s perceptual dimension diminishes, resulting in a progressive refinement and narrowing of perceptual prowess of the observable construct.

A cognitive threshold marks the evolution from a purely phenomenal observer to one with phantasiai and developed cognitive functions. This threshold varies according to the local conditions of the observer’s cognitive gradient and gravity and the overall noumenal function.

The hologram of a polynon enfolds within it the reflection of the noumenal substance, that both originates and reflects consciousness. It encapsulates the entirety of consciousness in each of its vertices and edges, as projections into a perceptual reality.

The concept of “consciousness nodes” describes (n+) zones between noumenal lenses (n−), revealed as vertices of the polynon, equal and identical in nature.

The Observer O(n) is in superposition with the phenomenal p+, epiphenomenal or phantasiai p-, negative noumena n- and noumenal vertices (and centre) n+ of the hexanon as a function for self-reflection of consciousness C.

The polynon is abstract and elusive, residing beyond human imagination yet within its grasp. No heavier than a fleeting idea, but far too heavy to be understood. A palindrome for language and thought, mirroring itself in perpetual paradox. Beginning the same way it ends.

From the "Polynon: A geometry of Consciousness", by Tib Roibu Read the paper here.