#Stellar Converter

[neptunes-sol-angel]

Got on a plane to Las Vegas!

[lumenniveus]

Calling all wild witches and handsome devils: it's time to rock 'n roll.

Hey, you, wake up a new CC set just dropped! This time @mellosakicc joined me and threw in some very wicked cool goodies for you. Everything is Base Game Compatible and optimized for potato computers. Go and build your slightly haunted Memphis studio apartments.

But only after you downloaded our small tribute here: MERGED ZIP

Alternative DL on Google Drive🔗

Update: This set is making it into TS2! Well, kinda? I hope so. I'll update this if more gets converted. (pls, someone, I also don't have the know-how!)

@grilledcheese-aspiration did a stellar job porting the really pretty clutter over [Link] I love how the Belladonna looks nicer in the older game

Mid-Century's elegance meets Gothic Kitsch in Rituals, a 50 asset large set full of stuff for your living, dining and bedrooms. Every object was lovingly (help me) hand painted by yours truly (pain... the pain...!) and I hope you have as much fun playing with it as I had making it!

Read more and get a preview below the cut

As usual, here's the catalogue of the entire thing

And an unedited in-game screenshot

Highlights of this set include:

a very modular set of curtains

3D wall paneling

a vanity table

a canopy bed

vintage electronics

lots of references for you to find

buy and build items ( these walls and floors are included, yes)

I playtest to my absolute limit, but I'm a one-man-team so if you end up finding bugs I missed, please send me an ask or comment on this post. That way it gets fixed asap.

[abbessofflesh]

Inspired by this lovely ask:

Remmick’s the type of fella to feed and then come home and beg for just a little taste from your wrist bc you’re so much sweeter and he just can’t help it! 

As well as this post and this one from @mingapace. You’re converting me to sub!Remmick one beautiful fic at a time.

Thank you @fuckoffbard for brainstorming with me and motivating me to post🫶. This was originally going to be my thoughts on the topic but it escalated into a little drabble. Started sweet but my depraved mind got the best of me. Sub!Remmick (somewhat dom!Remmick at one point but not really) and blood mentioned ahead. MDNI

In Remmick's eyes, he deserves it. He’s been obedient as he can be, targeting kills that are out of town, maintaining upkeep of the house, and satisfying you after a long day at work. All while fending off that biting desire to tear into you, consume you so that you and him are one and the same, or bound together for eternity. It’s a teeth-grinding urge made difficult when you live together, rarely separated from the moment you’re in the door.

He can’t escape the scent of you. It’s imbued into the surroundings, even when you abandon him for the futile reason of a job. The lingering trace of your presence dwindles and he’s left with no other choice but to track the fading trace of it. When it reaches that learned threshold of faint that signals you’ll be back soon.

A millennium on this Earth, and he never felt time pass as sluggishly as it does waiting for you to come home. He busies himself with tasks so menial they make his fangs ache, is triggered by a boredom so potent his mind compensates with bloodied images of past hunts. Future ones, too. Namely those that are keeping you from him. Hours spent fussing over the furnishing and the less-than-stellar food options you have in your pantry.

It’s a mighty effort not to tackle you in feral excitement as soon as you breach the safe confines of the shaded porch. He’s being real good, helping you with your bag and shoes and firing off questions about your day. Didja eat? Blood sugar’s a little low.

He does care, of course. In his own way. And if it happens to butter you up enough to steal a taste before your bedtime and before his night starts, well, that’s just good luck, ain’t it?

But one day you say no. Voiced as surely as the sky is blue, inevitable in its certainty. A level of scolding in it too, like he’s a mutt that put his paws on the table.

He’ll go out after and maul and lacerate a neck that’s all wrong, not the right taste or smell or feel to it. It goes down like vinegar for wine, after he’s been blessed with sparing occasions of the delicacy that is your blood. He’ll drain his victim dry regardless, that gnawing chasm within his belly never quite sated but even less so now. He tears tender flesh off the bone in his rage. Hopes you’ll read about it in the paper and know that it’s your fault.

—

It began with Remmick's increasingly persistent requests of topping off his hunger after his nightly hunts.

You stood your ground, even gave him a light smack on his cheek when he looked keen to take his fill anyway. He’s stung by your refusal, blazing vermilion eyes going round in a way that makes your heart squeeze, before they ignite in a primal, wounded fury that’s unusual when directed at you.

You had dragged him out by his collar and told him not to come back unless he was going to behave.

You shook from the moment you denied him to when you marched him out the door. A tremble that was almost imperceptible rattled throughout every nerve ending, and you felt it weaken your knees, your resolve. All it would take is one fatal bite, one of those taloned hands fastening around your throat to subdue you, remind you of the low-ranking spot you occupy in the food chain.

Those thoughts fumbled around in your frazzled mind. Holding your breath with each step as you waited for his patience to fray and snap.

But it never did. He took the chastising with a startling amount of disconsolate acceptance. Returned with his tail tucked between his legs just before the sun rose.

For the next few days, Remmick will be in a mood. A cantankerous, foul, shitty mood. If the sun didn’t threaten to reduce him to ash the moment he stepped outside, you know he’d have stormed off during the early hours of dawn. Now, he evades whatever room you’re inhabiting at all costs. When you go to the one he’s in, he lifts his banjo, cradling it from you like you’re a plague victim from the thirteen hundreds, and brushes past you with his nose lifted high in the air.

For a brief, stupid moment, you were worried he’d leave for a hunt and not return. He always crawls back though, often staying in the yard as long as possible before he slinks back into the door you hold open with a sardonic smile. Wincing as the beginning strands of light creep over the horizon and tear into his flesh. 

And then the emotional homeostasis of your home is disrupted. He’s uncharacteristically quiet, even in terms of singing. Halting a soft tune when you’re in his vicinity, hoarding the lilt of his voice like it’s God’s gift to the world and you’re an unworthy sinner.

You’d very much prefer spewing and raving over this abnormal silence.

So you begin the long, arduous process of pacifying a petulant vampire.

“Remmick.”

Silence. He fiddles with the pegs on the banjo even though you both know he just finished tuning it.

“I’m sorry you’re unsatisfied with our arrangement, but you’re free to leave at any time.”

Remmick acts every bit of his fourteen hundred years, ignoring your presence and mouthing lyrics to himself like he’s the only one in the room.

A fond realization blooms warmth in your chest as your words aren’t interrupted with the twang of a banjo. He would never disrespect you in such a way, though he’s certainly pouting, but he still hangs onto your words even in his crotchety sulk. It’s quite literally the bare minimum for your allowance of him using your domicile as a safe haven, but still. 

“I work, Remmick. I need all the blood in my body so I can keep a roof over your dead, pasty skin-”

“I told you I’d provide for you.” He doesn’t look at you as he says it. Mumbles it to the neck of his instrument. Still fiddling with those damn strings. “Jus’ won’t let me.”

And that will be your conversation for the day.

You’ll both carry on with the newfound stilted routine. Saying the truth feels akin to swallowing glass, but your mind screams it anyway, unbidden.

You miss him.

You’ve been more than a bit ornery, too, with his absence and the thick tension permeating the atmosphere whenever you catch each other in the same room. You miss him curled around you in the sheets, fiercely entangling his limbs with yours, leeching the warmth from your bones almost desperately. Wholly selfish, in the way you’re learning vampires to be. Getting up in the middle of the night for any reason is easier said than done, since Remmick deems himself as your much needed escort to get around your own house.

You wear your best lacy lingerie—the one you frequently have to wash gallons of drool out of—and the one that usually has him pawing at you like a dog, panting into your stomach with his cheek pressed against the cool, satin material. You still feel the soft, ghostly tickle of his lips as he peppers kisses onto your belly, the slip sneakily lifted to expose you to him while you’re pleasantly distracted.

Yes. You need to make amends with him.

And you do so by presenting a sight to him that would have stolen the very breath from his lungs, had they still worked. The delicious image of perfection he’s been depriving himself of. He’ll soften, sensing the unsaid apology for what it is. You will coyly ask if he still thinks this outfit on you is the best thing he’s laid eyes on.

“Course I do. You’re a fuckin’ stunner.”

You will let him choose where to take you, how to take you, this time. Remmick doesn’t let the opportunity go to waste, bending you over the nearest surface–your couch–and fisting your hair in his grasp. A taste of the torment you so frequently enact upon him. He’s feral with it, drunk on power, your warmth, your taste, your pliancy. He forgets himself a few times, going to gnaw at your neck before barely restraining himself with frustrated grunts. Pulls at your hair more as he does it, the stinging ache a retaliation you will allow.

“My girl. Mine.”

“Oh?” You meant for it to come out authoritative, stern at the bold declaration. It punches out of you more like a gasp. You wince at the bruises you feel forming on your hips at the fervor of his thrusts. The ruined words cause the corners of your lips to lift, no doubt encouraging bad behavior, but you can’t help it. Not with what he just revealed, has been showing you with his choice to remain here. Remmick has attained a level of intimacy with you that he never once experienced in his eternal life, and he has no desire to seek out that feeling again.

“That’s right. Let me use you, you precious thing. Lemme have you.”

The emotional vulnerability laid bare to you made you want to taste and touch all of him. Unknowingly, inevitably, he meets your desires with claiming kisses that bloom in varying shades across your shoulders. Drowns you in his scent and coats himself with yours, a needy blend of want and vitality.

Breathe. You have to remind yourself.

He’s still pounding away at you, and you’re going to be there for a while.

—

Your apology is a two-parter, it seems, because after he cleans up the mess he made–with his tongue–you guide him towards the bedroom with gentle, penitent fingers. Sit yourself on the edge of your mattress and present a knife, glinting in the light.

Remmick swallows hard. Kneels, and you don’t need to tell him to. Strong arms cage around your legs, a confinement you can break with a simple command.

The sting of the cut is negligible against the sight in front of you. Each drop of crimson paints around his pretty mouth, intentionally missing the mark so that more of those guttural sounds claw their way up his throat. His tongue lolls out in hopes to catch the essence that solely belongs to you, that none other compares to. Trembling fingers dig into your plush thighs, dimpling the skin but not as hard as he’d like because he can’t retain his claws. They scrape against your skin, flexing in lapses of sanity. All the monstrous parts of him are on display when you keep him this deprived.

All you see now is a dog desperate for attention.

Eyelids flutter around pupils that are rolled to the back of his head, and you can still feel the faint whisper of them as they beat against your neck when he rutted into you, a steady string of please and can’t take it no more going ignored more often than not. Whether he’s begging to come or bite doesn’t really matter. What matters is the sweet way he weeps into your shoulder after, unsatisfied and shivering, chasing the touch of your fingers as you pet his curls.

You felt a faint sting of pity for him, then. As you do now.

As delicious as his tears are, his satisfaction has grown on you in a similar manner that he did; unwanted, persistent, and inescapable.

It has you squeezing blood onto his awaiting tongue, the muscle twitching uncontrollably, excitedly at your mercy. He whimpers, flinching as the first drop hits.

Pink-tinged strands of drool seep to the floor. You’re inclined to order him to clean it up, watch him squeal out desperate little yes ma’ams and lave at the floor until it’s spotless. Remmick would like it, more than that if the previous neglected hard-ons he’s sprouted were anything to go by, but you’ve been real mean lately and this is supposed to be an olive branch.

Instead, you simply swab up the spit and push it back between his lips with a chiding mark about wasting it, watch him render himself stupid with his effort not to bite. It’s cool against your fingers, slides down easily with its low viscosity and smarts against the shallow cut of your palm. A bloodlust settles over him, attempting to pull away from those fingers to lap at the place he needs most, but you don’t let him go until you’re clean.

You adore that bloom of warmth across his cheeks, pink staining his nose to the tips of his ears. Adore his pleading and his whining and the endless fire of irritation and fondness he ignites in you. Your beloved.

You wind your fingers through the silky, damp strands on his head, lifting his head up enough to look at you. 

“Don’t you stay mad at me.” A command and a plea.

“Nuh-uh.” He shakes, closes his eyes in prayer. “Can’t. Never was—need this, dont’cha get it? Need you, darlin’.”

It doesn’t appear to bother him that his sense of reason is compromised, nor does it matter that the woman who holds his dignity and respect in her hands can be torn through as easily as paper. His lips move, mouthing around words that fail to escape the confines of his mind.

Remmick tries to voice all of his thoughts at once — fumbling the articulation of the pleas and demands that permeate the hazy, ravenous expanse that is his hunger.

Claws scrape against the wooden footboard, slivers of wood embedding themselves under nail and skin alike as he holds himself at bay. It makes you wince sympathetically at the phantom sensation afflicting you, but Remmick doesn’t seem to notice. He isn’t attuned to that ache, only the one you inflicted on him.

With that, you surrender your bloody palm to him for as long as he wants it.

He leaves none of his suffering to the imagination, emanating barely coherent high-pitched whines about how good it tastes and how much he needs it you know are intended as more manipulation for the next time you think to deny him.

God, he’s pathetic, you think. Awful and conniving and latched onto you. Lets a little mortal put him through this when he can so easily take what he craves.

But that craving is you, in its entirety. Unafraid, bold around both claw and fang, around blood and hunger staining a home that was once tranquil and barren. He’d like to keep you as you are, until the looming dread that is mortality digs at him a little too deep, haunts him just a little too long. You’ll learn to fear him then, for a moment so brief and devastating it will plague him for the rest of his days. And then you’ll never feel any dismay caused by him ever again.

Every kiss against your palm now is an apology for events yet to unfold. A promise of a hurt that isn’t yet felt.

You are none the wiser, and he lets you tame him in a way no other has been able to. For now, he will whine sweetly into your thigh, accepting any scraps with an open mouth and an enthusiastic display of his gratitude.

[mad-c1oud]

IM ACTUALLY CRYING DUDE THIS IS OH MY GOD IM SORRYTHIS IS THE BEST THING IVE EVER SEEN I HAVENT STOPPED LAUGHING FOR THE LAST 5 MINUTES I LOVE THIS I LOVE YOU IM ON THE F L O O R

@madc1oud

anyway live the fic <3 I made traditional art while reading yesterday but it actually looks like dog shit so yeah 👍 I'll work on that one for you lol. never been a starcicle shipper but wow I think you converted me

[madamofthestars]

A lucky wish| streamer au castorice

💜Castorice was excited yet nervous for your banner, for she was on a fifty-fifty but still wanted to get you for you were one of the characters she was excited to pull for.

💜She showed off her tickets she converted from her stellar jades from finishing the quest, as well as the tickets from the daily login.

💜Her pity on the character banner was 35 pity.

💜Castorice's chat were supportive of her, hoping she gets her goal along with the teasing comments, but the general atmosphere was supportive.

💜Castorice started the pulls as she got some encouragement from some of her friends who were watching the stream and showing their support.

💜The pulls leading up to the five-star were average until she is now near 70 pity.

💜The singles leading up to the five-star was getting close to the wire.

💜Then at 76 you saw the golden ticket, and it made Castorice take a deep breath as she saw the symbol of your path and then saw your splash art.

💜Castorice shows a level of excitement for your character is one she can relate to, and you became one of her favorites.

💜and with a few tickets left over, she decided to go to get your light cone, and she was surprised by the ealry pity of the light cone pulls/

💜She imeadently begain to start leveing you and your lightcone on stream.

💜As she spend the rest of the sream testing you out and even finshing up the events.

[eclipsellium]

Messier 66 taken by Hubble Space Telescope on January 28 2021

In this picture, it showcases the star forming regions of the galaxies, which can be seen in red. Star forming regions are vulnerable to disturbances, which can cause the gas in the interstellar medium to collapse into dense clumps of material. These are called protostars.

During the formation of these protostars, gravitational energy is converted into thermal energy. If there is enough thermal energy produced, it is enough to spark nuclear fusion. The star then joins the main sequence.

Due to nature of the star forming regions, it often yields the creation of star clusters, since many stars are being created in close proximity. Large stars especially can emit radiation and produce stellar winds, which pushes the star away from these regions.

[kentocidal]

OPEN UP AND SAY "AHH..." .txt

USERS: dentist!kento nanami x fem!afab!reader

WARNING! THIS FILE HAS BEEN CORRUPTED WITH THE FOLLOWING MALWARE: dubcon, oral inspection, gloves, medical malpractice(?), oral (m!receiving), spit, dacryphilia, choking/gagging, power imbalance, oral fixation, ask to tag

NOTES: something happened to me while i was writing this. anyway, here you go. ~3.2k words.

the dentist’s office was one of those medical buildings that was clearly a house before it was an office. built in a cape cod style with a tiny parking lot that had been added far later. you had found this place online, after it had gotten some stellar five-star reviews that you trusted enough to schedule a consultation and a cleaning. 

it wasn’t one of those gimmicky, commercialized dentists either. it didn’t have a tooth for a mascot, or a commercial with a jingle that never left your head. it was simply a dentist’s office. the page on google came up as “kento nanami, d.m.d., dental practitioner and surgeon.” 

something about the blandness of the webpage, matched with the homey feel of the office, dissuaded your nerves. you had finally found an office you felt comfortable going to get your cleaning at.

you took a breath in as you stepped through the threshold, and found that the home had absolutely been converted to a medical building. the hardwood flooring, the almost sickly yellow lighting, the stock paintings on the walls of oceans or some tropical place. it would almost be tacky in any other place, but it felt right for a dentist’s office such as this.

the girl at the desk, clearly some part-timer, popped her gum as she looked up from her phone when you approached. “do you have an appointment?” “ah, yes. at twelve-thirty?” you nodded faintly, eyes glancing over the girl’s nametag. ‘k. nobara.’ perhaps she was studying under dr. nanami.

she hummed softly as she clicked around on her desktop for a moment, then nodded in agreement. “i see it. here, just fill this out, and i’ll send you right back.” she flashed the barest hint of a bored smile at you as she placed a teal clipboard on the desk with a pen, and you thanked her before going to sit in one of the padded chairs.

name, address, insurance information, when you had your last cleaning, reason for your visit. standard paperwork for a new patient. 

how did you hear about dr. nanami?

you wrote in: online. all positive reviews! :) 

you filled out the rest of your medical information before walking the paperwork back up to nobara, who took it from you and popped the bubble she made with her gum. she barely even looked at it before taking it to the scanner and making a copy. once she finished her own side of the paperwork, she looped around the desk and opened a door to lead you down a tiny hallway. “just this way, please.”

she brought you into a small room retrofitted to be an examination room. the dentist’s chair was in the middle surrounded by all of the necessary equipment. there was a television mounted to the wall, displaying what was on the computer monitor in the corner, there to reflect x-rays and other important images. nobara moved a little table filled with sharp instruments on it over to the side to allow you space to sit in the chair. you sat, taking a breath and sitting back. the leather squeaked under you, and it wasn’t the most comfortable place to be, but it was to be expected.

nobara made sure you were settled before grabbing a piece of blue medical tissue and a thin ball chain with clips on either end, leaning over you to place it around your neck as a bib.

“dr. nanami’s just finishing up with his patient, he’ll be right in for you.”

you nodded and thanked her again, to which she smiled softly before leaving and shutting the door behind herself.

it was quiet outside of the ticking of a clock behind you and faint music playing from another room. it didn’t take long for the music to be turned off, footsteps to come down the hall, muffled chatter to be heard as who you assumed to be the doctor’s last patient gets checked out.

you shift in the seat and lick your lips, nerves returning. you didn’t really like the dentist (who does, anyway?), but you couldn’t find a reason to be so worried about it outside of superstition and online horror stories. 

just as you buried yourself into your head, there were two rapt knocks on the door behind you before it was pushed open. “ms. l/n?”

“ah,” you turned your head and peered over the back of the chair the best you could as the doctor entered and shut the door behind him, “yes, that’s me, hi.”

“nice to meet you.” he was tall, broad, curt; his hair was perfectly styled atop his head, wearing a blue polo and khaki slacks rather than scrubs. the only dentist-ish thing about him was the surgical mask that was pulled under his chin. 

brown eyes met yours and his lips quirked up into a cordial smile as he approached. you smiled back, feeling heat rise to your cheeks; he was far more attractive in person than he was on his medical profile.

“nice to meet you as well. thank you for squeezing me in, i-”

“it’s no problem. there was an opening. it made sense to get you in here quicker rather than make you wait.” he shook his head as he grabbed the rolling stool from under the nearby desk and took a seat, dragging the computer stand over with him to start typing away. 

“you’re here for a consultation, yes?”

“consult and a cleaning, yeah,” you breathed, fingers curling into the fabric of your pants. “it’s… been a while.”

“when was the last time you had a cleaning?”

“three years?” you smiled sheepishly when the doctor cast you a sidelong glance and clicked his tongue. “i didn’t mean to keep forgetting! i was new to the area at that time, and it just kept slipping my mind.”

“still, it’s not good to neglect regular visits like that. i’ll make sure you schedule your six month follow-up before you leave today.”

you nodded, because that made sense. at least he seemed to care about your health, unlike some other dentists you’ve had before in the past.

dr. nanami typed for a moment more before pushing the computer away and getting back to his feet. “before we can start, i need to take some x-rays of your teeth. have you had this done before?”

“a long time ago, yeah,” you watched closely as dr. nanami took a step over to where a protective vest was hanging, watching him pull it down before approaching you again.

he used a foot pedal to lean the chair back slightly, and you went with it, your head resting against the high back of the chair. he looked much taller from this lower angle, his cheekbones high and his jaw cut and perfectly angled. 

he laid the heavy vest over your chest and then leaned over your body completely to reach for the x-ray camera that was hovering overhead, tugging it down closer to you. you sucked in a breath; he smelled of some foreign, expensive cologne, the scent making your head spin slightly. 

dr. nanami hummed in the back of his throat as he stepped away from you to reach for a box of gloves on the desk, tugging out two of the black latex garments and pulling them on, one at a time. you watched the latex shine in the sickly fluorescent light of the examination room, watched the way he stretched the rubbery material over thick fingers and broad palms. one by one, he snapped them on, making sure he was protected. 

you shifted in the chair again when he leaned over you to bring the plastic piece to your mouth. he was so close – he had to be, this was an exam, snap out of it! – “i just need you to open up wide and then bite down on this, okay? it’s going to take a few photos of your teeth and your jaw.”

you blinked like a deer in headlights, because suddenly a gloved finger was tapping your cheek. you opened your mouth, nice and wide, and felt the cold plastic slip past your lips and rest between your teeth.

“bite down,” and you did, “that’s it. good. now stay still.”

you found yourself preening under his ministrations. he would step away and let the machine whir as it photographed your teeth and your bones and your jaw structure, and then he would be right back in your space to adjust where you were holding the piece between your teeth. he took about five or six pictures (it felt like you were swimming in his cologne) before he finally pulled the piece from your mouth with a soft pop and pushed the attachment away.

his wide, gloved hands lifted the vest from your chest, and you felt like you could breathe again once the weight was gone.

“not so bad, hm?” dr. nanami quipped, though he didn’t smile, and you laughed airily like a little girl who got caught with ice cream she shouldn’t be having.

“not so bad, right.”

he nodded once before he took a seat on the stool again and sat right next to you, pulling up the fresh x-rays as they loaded up. you were presented with the images on the television just as dr. nanami viewed them up close on the computer screen in front of him.

“your teeth look good,” he murmured, as if it was more to himself than to you. “all even – none missing. adult teeth grew in almost perfectly, though you did wear a retainer briefly, did you not?”

“yes.”

“right.” he clicked over towards an image of your molars, humming under his breath. “have you been experiencing any pain in this area?”

“hm? no, why?”

“there’s a bit of a dark spot here,” he moved the mouse over to a spot on the image, on a tooth that had to be all the way in the back of your mouth. “it could be a cavity.”

you moved your tongue in your mouth to feel for it, but came up short. “i don’t feel it, but maybe.”

dr. nanami pushed the computer away and shifted closer to you, reaching up over your body to grab the light fixture and drag it down towards you. using the foot pedal again, he brought your chair back, back, back; it felt like you were completely horizontal by now. 

he rolled his stool over to be behind your head, leaning over you. it was almost as if your head was in his lap, separated only by the chair’s headrest.

he pulled the light down lower until it was perfectly on your lips. once settled into position, he moved his surgical mask back up and over his mouth and nose, and you thought that it somehow made his eyes all the more alluring to you.

“i need to conduct a further oral examination to assess the cavity. is that alright?”

“yes,” you breathed, and dr. nanami made a sound of approval. 

you figured he would reach over for the metal table and grab for one of those little mirrors, or maybe even a water pik of some kind, but, no; dr. nanami leaned more over you and pressed two gloved fingers to your lips.

“open up and stick your tongue out, yeah?”

you blinked at him, heat rushing up to your cheeks once again. you felt as though your ears were playing tricks on you; dr. nanami had sounded huskier, like his voice had dropped an entire octave when he muttered the command to you.

you swallowed the saliva that pooled on your tongue before opening your mouth as wide as you could, sticking out your tongue and flattening it so he could see your teeth better. 

“good girl.”

your whole body shuddered the moment those gloved fingers pressed on your tongue with the utterance of those two little words. what was this?

a part of you was saying that something was off about his ministrations, about the way his fingers pressed and almost petted the flat of your tongue before starting to explore deeper. the other parts of you, however…

it felt as though you were floating as dr. nanami brought his other hand up to your face to hook a finger in your cheek and pull slightly, tugging your mouth open just a little wider. your eyes fluttered and you made a wet little sound, only for dr. nanami to click his tongue behind his mask and murmur for you to settle. 

his fingers continued their journey, probing and prodding at the warm flesh of your cheeks, the hardness of your teeth, rubbing and feeling over your tongue and your flesh and bone.

you whimpered softly when you felt his index finger rub over your molar in the far back of your mouth. it felt as though his whole hand was forcing your little mouth open, but that definitely wasn’t the case. 

“what a pretty little mouth you have,” muttered the doctor, before his fingers dove down towards your throat.

you gagged harshly around his digits and kicked up a fuss in the chair, rattling the attachments and kicking your feet. dr. nanami let up only for a moment as you felt drool start to form at the corners of your mouth and coat your tongue. your eyes brimmed with tears, wetting your lashes, and dr. nanami only watched you with those golden brown eyes.

you couldn’t see the bottom half of his face, but he had to have been panting.

“your teeth are in very good condition,” he spoke in such a soft tone it almost had you relaxing again as he unhooked his finger from your cheek, letting your jaw slip just slightly closed again to try and find comfort. 

“ah, i’m not finished,” dr. nanami chastised you with a tap of his wet finger on your cheek, and you whined softly under him as his forefinger started to probe and inspect your mouth yet again.

one by one he inspected all of your teeth the best he could, feeling each one, filling your mouth with the taste of latex and the scent of his cologne. your eyes were locked on his face, while his were locked on the way your lashes stuck together, wet with tears, and drool started to drip from your lips and drag down your cheeks. 

his eyes flickered away from his inspection for a brief moment to watch the way your thighs were squeezing together, and that was it for him, the sign that he needed.

he pulled his fingers from your mouth and tugged his mask off of his face, placing it to the side as you heaved.

“now then,” he started, shifting back away from you as you caught your breath, “your teeth are in perfect condition, but i’m concerned about your throat. let’s… conduct an experiment.”

your wet eyes shifted hazily backwards as you tried to look at him again, only to be met by a thick cock springing free from dr. nanami’s khakis. he was leaky and drippy at the tip, and it smacked wetly against your cheek.

oh. oh.

you squirmed in the seat and moved yourself backwards (or, well, up towards him) with a bit of his help, a wet hand on your shoulder tugging your body up so your head would hang off the headrest of the dentist’s chair. 

from this angle, dr. nanami didn’t even need to get up. he could stay seated in his stool and let you do all the work.

but you were his patient, and he was your doctor. he would take care of you.

he shifted his weight and took his cock in hand, guiding the tip over your spit-soaked lips. his other hand wrapped loosely around your throat, his thumb hooking onto your jaw to force your mouth open.

“there you go, nice and wide, just like that…” dr. nanami hunched over you, studying your fucked out expression. “is this okay?” “ye-yes,” you whispered, and dr. nanami finally smiled down at you. it was brief and fleeting, but it was there.

and then he gathered spit between his lips and let it drip down onto your waiting tongue.

you moaned, quiet and wanton, just as dr. nanami slipped his cock into your mouth.

he tasted musky and salty and perfect. he fucked your mouth open slowly, his hand a nice weight on your throat, helping to hold your twitchy body down as you shook with anticipation.

slowly, slowly, he worked the tip of his cock further and further into your mouth, until he was muttering, “open wider, wider, just like that, good girl, take it…”

it felt like all of your blood was rushing to your brain in this position, but at the moment, you didn’t care. all you cared about was how you choked and gagged around the tip of dr. nanami’s cock as he worked it into your awaiting throat.

he sheathed himself in your tight heat and started to rut into you as your throat fluttered around his girthy length. the room filled with the sounds of skin-on-skin, soft gags, wet plaps, and dr. nanami’s little gasps and moans.

he moved his hand from your throat to the hem of your pants, managing to undo the button and the zipper with just one gloved hand before it was slipping into the front of your panties to graze over your clit.

you gasped and moaned around his cock before starting to choke again, drool dribbling all over your cheeks and face as dr. nanami collected some of your slick on his gloved fingers to rub your clit in quick circles.

“shh, quiet. feels good, right? feels nice to have your throat fucked like this? you like it when your doctor touches you here?”

you had gotten so turned on that his words were almost enough to send you over the edge, your nails clawing at the rubbery material of the dentist’s chair.

“i can feel you throbbing,” he grunted as he fucked his cock deeper into your throat, “go ahead, cum on my fingers, cum, cum-”

his fingers didn’t stop even as you creamed in your pants and all over his gloved hand, your body jerking and your throat constricting around his cock. dr. nanami groaned low in his throat as he finished down yours, pumping his hips slowly and riding out his own high.

he pulled back from you and panted, pulling his hand from your panties and licking your juices off of his glove, then discarding both. 

you laid on the dentist’s chair, head hung over the edge, boneless and still twitching from the waves of your pleasure.

“now, for your cleaning…”

—

“so, do you want to make your six-month follow-up now? or should we send you a letter reminder in the mail?” nobara popped her gum and twirled her pen between her fingers as she looked you over.

“i’d-i’d like to make it now, please.”

“sure. and don’t forget to leave us a good review online, alright?”

[lingerina]

➤ g!p wonyoung x fem!reader ➤ pwp, smut, choking, hair pulling, creampie, squirting ➤ 748 words ➤ your roommate had invited a friend over for a study session, but said friend makes it before your roommate does. and what can transpire while you both wait for her to return?

You do not associate with Jang Wonyoung: the campus Barbie, valedictorian, and all-around athletic jock.

You do not associate with an arguably flawless being; your roommate does.

Ahn Yujin, one of Wonyoung’s closest friends who’s equally stellar in all aspects, had invited her over for a study session and a debrief on an upcoming volleyball tournament. She had consulted you about having someone over, so you had expected a visitor today. You just didn’t expect the visitor to be one of the most sought-after campus girls.

You couldn’t look Wonyoung in the eye.

You couldn’t look into her round, doe eyes. Couldn’t look at her gorgeous face.

Yujin has yet to make it home, so you’re stuck with her perfect best friend–tongue-tied and frazzled. From afar, there was no denying her beauty, and it’s further amplified by her confidence and charisma. Heads turn when Jang Wonyoung struts down the walkway, but you could barely allow yourself a glimpse of her in your peripheral view.

And she didn’t seem okay with that.

“Ah-!”

You gasp as she shoves her cock inside you, forcing you up against the kitchen counter that you’re bent over. Her chest presses against your back, long but dainty fingers locking your tresses in a vice grip as she fucks you. Her soft features and pure beauty masquerades the sins of a villainess with the way she had pounced on you, trapped you beneath her, and is now rutting into you with no concern of your roommate possibly bursting through that door.

You had prayed for Yujin to return when Wonyoung’s hand slipped up your flimsy pajama shorts. Now you’re begging for the world to stall her as you’re getting railed–destroyed.

“You like that, huh?,” Wonyoung purrs by your ear after a pause.

Your breath hitches in response, your slick walls suctioning tighter around her with the lack of friction. Your initial pleas and concerns didn’t match your actions, as you had allowed her to get this far. Pathetic, really. You’re even more pathetic now, pinned down with the prettiest girl balls deep inside your weeping cunt. Wonyoung thrives on your helplessness. You’re a person of little words, and it amuses her that you only make so much noise.

“Don’t be shy.”

With a flick of her wrist, she fixes a hold on your hair and jerks your head back. You yelp at the searing pain on your scalp, but it quickly fuses with a moan as her cock is dragged out, then rammed back into you. The force of her hips nearly embed you into the hard, marble surface, but you don’t care. Wonyoung is stretching your cunt deliciously, filling and hitting all the right places that have yet to be reached–even by your own toys.

Wonyoung’s hand wraps around the base of your throat. She forces your head back onto her shoulder and her lips skim over your collarbone, as if your neck hasn’t already been converted into a canvas for her mouth.

You’ve gone beyond your conscience over the pain though. Numbness. Accommodated. You’re already used to it. You’re more fixated on Wonyoung’s pace.

And with vigorous swipes of your clit, your eyes roll back and you clutch the edge of the counter for dear life as you squirt all over her dick. Your clenched walls resist her, but your orgasm ejects her. Her hand doesn’t slack on your engorged clit, however, and she forces you to make a mess everywhere, juices spattering all over the cupboard doors and her fervent digits. Her strength is to be commended because she’s holding you up while you’re writhing and struggling to keep still.

The second you sink onto the counter, she forces her hard cock back into you, minding the orgasm that tore through you a second ago and reducing you to a vessel for her cum as she fucks you. Your pussy has been through hell, heaven, and back, but Wonyoung is fixed on one final thing.

“Fuck!,” she hisses with a drawl, fingertips digging into your hips as she thrusts harder. “Yes, yes, yes!”

You nearly lose your footing when she bottoms out in you, the silent apartment reverberating with Wonyoung’s moans and profanity as she spills inside you. She withdraws her slick-coated dick and shoves back into you with a guttural ‘yes!’, pushing her cum deeper into you. Your brain can barely function now that you’ve been utterly ruined by your roommate’s best friend.

But you don’t regret it.

Not one bit.

[mysticstronomy]

WHAT CAUSES A STAR TO SHINE??

Blog#475

Wednesday, January 29th, 2025.

Welcome back,

Astronomers estimate that the universe could contain up to one septillion stars – that’s a one followed by 24 zeros. Our Milky Way alone contains more than 100 billion, including our most well-studied star, the Sun.

Stars are giant balls of hot gas – mostly hydrogen, with some helium and small amounts of other elements. Every star has its own life cycle, ranging from a few million to trillions of years, and its properties change as it ages.

Stars form in large clouds of gas and dust called molecular clouds. Molecular clouds range from 1,000 to 10 million times the mass of the Sun and can span as much as hundreds of light-years.

Molecular clouds are cold which causes gas to clump, creating high-density pockets. Some of these clumps can collide with each other or collect more matter, strengthening their gravitational force as their mass grows. Eventually, gravity causes some of these clumps to collapse. When this happens, friction causes the material to heat up, which eventually leads to the development of a protostar – a baby star. Batches of stars that have recently formed from molecular clouds are often called stellar clusters, and molecular clouds full of stellar clusters are called stellar nurseries.

At first, most of the protostar’s energy comes from heat released by its initial collapse. After millions of years, immense pressures and temperatures in the star’s core squeeze the nuclei of hydrogen atoms together to form helium, a process called nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion releases energy, which heats the star and prevents it from further collapsing under the force of gravity.

Astronomers call stars that are stably undergoing nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium main sequence stars. This is the longest phase of a star’s life. The star’s luminosity, size, and temperature will slowly change over millions or billions of years during this phase. Our Sun is roughly midway through its main sequence stage.

A star’s gas provides its fuel, and its mass determines how rapidly it runs through its supply, with lower-mass stars burning longer, dimmer, and cooler than very massive stars. More massive stars must burn fuel at a higher rate to generate the energy that keeps them from collapsing under their own weight. Some low-mass stars will shine for trillions of years – longer than the universe has currently existed – while some massive stars will live for only a few million years.

At the beginning of the end of a star’s life, its core runs out of hydrogen to convert into helium. The energy produced by fusion creates pressure inside the star that balances gravity’s tendency to pull matter together, so the core starts to collapse. But squeezing the core also increases its temperature and pressure, making the star slowly puff up. However, the details of the late stages of the star’s death depend strongly on its mass.

A low-mass star’s atmosphere will keep expanding until it becomes a subgiant or giant star while fusion converts helium into carbon in the core. (This will be the fate of our Sun, in several billion years.) Some giants become unstable and pulsate, periodically inflating and ejecting some of their atmospheres. Eventually, all the star’s outer layers blow away, creating an expanding cloud of dust and gas called a planetary nebula.

All that’s left of the star is its core, now called a white dwarf, a roughly Earth-sized stellar cinder that gradually cools over billions of years.

A high-mass star goes further. Fusion converts carbon into heavier elements like oxygen, neon, and magnesium, which will become future fuel for the core. For the largest stars, this chain continues until silicon fuses into iron. These processes produce energy that keeps the core from collapsing, but each new fuel buys it less and less time. The whole process takes just a few million years. By the time silicon fuses into iron, the star runs out of fuel in a matter of days. The next step would be fusing iron into some heavier element but doing so requires energy instead of releasing it.

The star’s iron core collapses until forces between the nuclei push the brakes, then it rebounds. This change creates a shock wave that travels outward through the star. The result is a huge explosion called a supernova. The core survives as an incredibly dense remnant, either a neutron star or a black hole.

Material cast into the cosmos by supernovae and other stellar events will enrich future molecular clouds and become incorporated into the next generation of stars.

Originally published on https://science.nasa.gov

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, February 1st, 2025)

"WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO REACH ZERO SPACE DEBRIS??"

[our-fascinating-universe]

Did you know the Sun loses approximately 4.2 million tons of mass every second? This immense mass loss occurs due to nuclear fusion, the process in which hydrogen nuclei combine to form helium, releasing vast amounts of energy. This fusion takes place in the Sun's core, where temperatures soar to about 15 million degrees Celsius. Nuclear fusion is the fundamental process that powers the Sun and other stars. Scientists only uncovered this mechanism in the 20th century, after centuries of puzzling over how the Sun could continuously produce such enormous amounts of energy. The realization that the Sun’s energy comes from fusion revolutionized our understanding of stellar physics. During fusion, hydrogen atoms undergo a series of reactions that convert a small amount of mass into energy, as described by Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc². This process generates the Sun’s light and heat, making it the primary energy source for life on Earth. While the Sun's immense hydrogen reserves sustain this reaction, it will eventually deplete its fuel, leading to the next stages of its lifecycle. Understanding how the Sun generates energy not only deepens our knowledge of our own star but also provides crucial insights into the life cycles of stars across the universe. It serves as a reminder of the incredible power and vast scale of cosmic processes that sustain life on Earth and shape the evolution of stars.

[kalinara]

ok so apologies if this is a dumb question—if you HAVE to have a source for Scott’s optic blasts, and this is assuming you can chose the canon, do you prefer the solar powered explanation or the windows to the punch dimension?

Apart of me likes the punch dimension, because the idea that the optic blasts are reliant on an external source ruins the stupid idea in my head that Scott’s beams can’t stop out unless he closes his eyes or has a barrier like the visor or jean’s telekinetic block

It's an interesting question.

My own preference is for the solar-powered explanation, for a few reasons.

The first is that, while the punch dimension is objectively hilarious, I don't actually recall it coming up in the comics themselves. I think it's from a handbook somewhere.

I feel like there's more canon support for the solar-powered explanation, especially since we've seen at least one instance, possibly more, of Scott absorbing OTHER types of energy for the blasts.

(I don't have my scans right at the moment, but I distinctly remember some time in the 60s comics, where he absorbs a plasma blast from Alex for extra optic blast power. I feel like there was also an instance with Storm's lightning, though for the life of me, I can't remember where I saw that.)

I also tend to like the solar powered explanation because I think it offers more story potential. IIRC, the X-Men cartoon from the 90s used it in their Morlock episode (with Scott in place of Warren as Callisto's object of affection.) It's a nice mechanism for a storyline where Scott is imprisoned or depowered.

(Admittedly, it can't JUST be solar power, since Scott does not seem to have an issue maintaining his power in space. It might be STELLAR power though, with some ambient absorption.)

The shipper in me also likes it for the fact that Jean ate a star. The idea that Scott converts solar energy seems pretty compatible with that. And there was that one Phoenix storyarc (Endsong, I think) where the Phoenix was pretty obsessed with absorbing his eye beams for power. So I feel like it makes sense. (And if you want to make it a Throuple thing, Logan tends to be associated with wolves a lot. Wolves tend to be narratively associated with the moon. So you get a nice sun-moon thing there.)

That said, I'm not averse to the idea of the punch dimension if a creator wants to do something fun with it. I remember reading a fan theory once that linked the punch dimension and ruby quartz to Cytorrak and his ruby gem, and I thought that was a pretty neat idea.

[tanadrin]

Pr and the Mniw

Pr is a minor planet orbiting the millisecond magnetar MMR CHA J1712-2901 ("Ast"), about a thousand light years from Earth, in the constellation Sagittarius. Ast has four major planets: Wsjrhp, Hrw, Mnw, and Bstt. Hrw has one moon, Jmstj. There are five large minor planet in eccentric orbits within 3 AU, Jrb, Bjr, Rrj, Zr, and Pr.

Planetoid

Pr is a large asteroid with a rotation period of about two hours; its average density is less than 4 g/cm^3, but its internal composition is highly variable. About 40% of its solid material is composed of massive diamond fragments fused together at seams formed of carbon glass, and the interior of the planet contains a large irregular cavern roughly 250 kilometers in radius. This cavern is sufficiently enclosed to retain an envelope of water and air with minimal outgassing. Due to the very high rotation speed of the planetoid, the surface of the cavern, at its lower levels, experiences a centrifugal force about 1-2% of Earth's gravity. The axis of Pr's rotation is nearly perpendicular to its orbit.

No complete model of the formation of the Ast system has yet been offered, but several hypotheses have been suggested to account for some of its more unusual features. The formation of a protoplanetary disk may be due to the disruption of a stellar companion, or fallback from the supernova that formed Ast in the first place; the diamond fragments which make up Pr may have originated in a disrupted carbon-rich planet or planetoid, or gas giant. The interior atmosphere of Pr is perhaps due primarily to biological processes releasing volatiles into the cavern.

Deliberate planetary engineering has been mooted as a possibility, but the crew of the DSE Scholiast, the only vessel to survey the system so far, has not yet found evidence of such engineering by other civilizations, and the indigenous inhabitants of Pr are likely incapable of such undertakings at this time.

[Map of Pr, with some regions and bodies of water labelled, plus many major settlements. The relief of the cavern interior is very great; the large plateaus have scarps tens or hundreds of kilometers high. Note that the equilibrium potential at the interior surface of a rotating body is cylindrical, not spherical, and this projection is adjusted accordingly, and so shows true shapes near the poles. The nature of the geological processes that have shaped Pr's interior are not fully understood at this time. The total land area visible here is roughly equivalent to Texas or the Iberian Peninsula.]

Biology and Ecology

Pr's internal heat is maintained by the radiation from Ast, which is converted to thermal energy in Pr's crust. Thinner regions of the crust, particularly near the equator, have higher heat flow from the exterior; the high axial tilt of Pr also means that the northern and southern hemispheres can experience somewhat different heat flows throughout the year. Much more important to Pr's seasons, however, is the variability of Ast's magnetic field created by the eccentricity of Pr's orbit. When Pr is closest to Ast, organisms can extract energy from the magnetic field, as Pr's rotation allows them to create selective ion gradients whose diffusion provides energy, or to directly extract mechanical energy from electrically charged cilia. (Induced current is much too weak to be a useful source of biological energy).

As on Earth, the native lifeforms can be broadly classified into producers and consumers, but even the consumers on Ast obtain a significant portion of their energy budget from autotrophy, using heterotrophy only to supplement this budget. A minority of producers are also radiotrophs, who extract energy from the radioactive elements in Pr's crust.

Pr biology does not use DNA and is highly resistant to radiation. It also does not seem to experience Darwinian genetic drift. Instead, cells seem able to adapt their own internal machinery in response to certain kinds of stress, and to disseminate these changes throughout the organism, or even to conspecifics. The nature of this process and how it could have evolved is still a mystery, nor can they apparently account for all of the different forms observed among the native life.

The interior of Pr is dim, but not dark. Some plant species have evolved to emit light as a form of signaling, incentivizing some animal species to evolve eyes in response.

Because of the energy inefficiency of pure heterotrophy, to say nothing of pure heterotrophy that involves predating on other heterotrophs, no carnivorous animals are known on Pr.

[Above, the Mniw. The upper Mni has a fully-grown set of skin-plates; the lower Mni has either shed or removed hers, possibly as a cosmetic choice. The dark patches of skin shown are the rough beds from which the skin-plates grow.]

The Mniw

The Mniw (singular Mni) are the indigenous inhabitants of Pr. They are 12-18 centimeters long, with tough gray skin, and usually found with a mineralized defensive covering that grows out from the skin. They have a single sex, and reproduce via parthenogenesis. However, they still engage in a form of sexual intercourse, which is divorced from reproduction: instead, sex among the Mniw exists as a means of facilitating horizontal gene transfer, which then alters the nature of the offspring they bear. It can also allow a limited sharing of experiential memory. In addition to sight, hearing, and the other usual senses, the Mniw have the ability to sense the weak induced electrical currents in Pr's crust, which helps them perceive their environment better.

Mniw hatch from eggs and are generally raised in family units; they do not make sex-based distinctions, but do make social distinctions based on relationships. A mwt is the Mni who laid the egg; all other adults in the same household involved in childrearing are jtw; the sntw are siblings who share a mother, while other children raised in the same house are snw. Children from one's own eggs are srtw, while children from one's partner(s) are mnw.

As in humans, Mni adolesence is marked by gradual sexual maturity; reproductive fertility comes later in life, however, around the age of 30. Past 50, fertility declines slowly, as does the capacity to engage in horizontal gene transfer, though the capacity for sexual intercourse remains. Past 65 or so, Mniw enter their equivalent of "old age," but Mni do not experience a sudden collapse in their physiological health late in life, and can in principle life forever so long as they are not felled by accident, violence, or disease. In practice, lifespans are around 130-200 years, with a great deal of variability.

Mniw have many social elements, like hierarchy and emotions and social roles, that would not be entirely alien to humans, but they have no direct analogue to human sex roles or orientations. Instead the major cleavage in Mni society historically is between Mniw who tend to be primarily exogamous, preferring to mate and rear children with Mniw from distant communities, vs Mniw who tend to be primarily endogamous, with about 85% of Mniw being primarily endogamous; these traits perhaps evolved in the context of horizontal gene transfer to take advantage of different patterns of dissemination of useful traits.

Mniw can survive outside of Pr, but without a strong, moving magnetic field must consume a large amount of food; and the food they are normally adapted for will not grow at all absent such a field. An Earth-standard gravitational field would render them totally immobile, and would be extremely unpleasant, though probably not fatal, and it's possible given their unique physiology that they could eventually adapt to such an environment.

Mniw generally inhabit large, almost hive-like cities that are built out in three dimensions; historically, these could be strongly fortified against attack in a way that made wars of conquest nearly impossible until the invention of gunpowder. Mniw have had writing for about 5,000 years, and the first confederate states emerged around 3-4,000 years ago. The dissemination of gunpowder weapons 1,500 years ago radically altered politics and society on Pr, but the absence of easy paths to industrialization has caused a certain degree of stagnation since.

Modern Pr is divided into about a dozen large states, in an area of roughly 750,000 kilometers square, with a fair amount of diversity in languages, cultures, and social systems, given the small size of Pr. A very loose framework of international diplomacy is carried out through a series of councils called the Jaw Mwad, and on the occasion of the Scholiast's arrival, the Mniw convened a great council, a Wr Jaw Mwad, for the first time in over a century to open formal channels of communication.

[inquisitionthoughts]

Dragon Age the Veilguard: My Thoughts

I have played through all of the latest Dragon Age installation (except for two side quests in Rivain, and one blighted dragon that I was locked out of for the entire game due to what I believe was a bug) and I have things to say. 

After finishing it I had so many conflicting thoughts and feelings, and those internal conflicts have only grown after letting the experience marinate. 

I want to start with saying that I am writing what I'm going to say as a nonbinary, queer, bi, pan, poly, “leftist” progressive feminist vegetarian working at an NGO LGBTQI-organization, so you can safely assume that I am not coming from a grifter or alt-right point of view. 

To give you an idea of where I am coming from:

I grew up reading folktales, mythologies and fantasy literature by Pratchett, Tolkien and Eddings; playing the Swedish version of Dungeons & Dragons, making role-playing games, and programming text based fantasy adventures in DOS as a kid. That's how I ended up in this whole fandom in the first place. 

I am an original Dragon Age fan. I've followed and absolutely loved the series since before the release of Origins. As I watched my friends play Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, but never had a good enough computer at home to play those games myself at that time, I was elated when I got to hear talk of a game universe that was the “spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate”, and I followed all info on the development and marketing, until the game was released. And boy did they deliver, Dragon Age: Origins converted me into a gamer and cemented my love for cRPGs as well as my love for BioWare. 

I did many playthroughs of Origins; every origin, good runs, evil runs, canon runs. All the DLC. Several runs of Awakening. When the demo for DAII was released I was apprehensive due to the really weird look so it took me a while to play it, but when I eventually did it was amazing. The companions and the story were stellar, and it didn't really matter that they reused the dungeons, I just wish they had updated the maps so it wasn't as obvious. Several playthroughs later with both siblings, all romances and different allied endings I was ready for the next installation. 

I pre-ordered Dragon Age Inquisition as soon as it was possible, the collector's edition, so I ended up learning tarot to use the deck that came with it. I bought all the art books for all the games. I kind of wanted to stop playing Inquisition at the 1337 hour mark but now I have over 2000 hours in the game, with all the DLC completed, and I've played every race and class, explored all the different ways the character can be portrayed as devout Andrastian, carefree selfish asshole, elven supremacist or goodie-two shoes hero, and I’ve even written a guide to how to get the best DAI experience here on tumblr (tldr; get out of the Hinterlands, talk to companions, skip the shards 😅). 

And then I waited for ten years. Played Mass Effect 1-4, Fallout 3-4, Skyrim, Witcher 3, Baldur's Gate 1-3, Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, Elder Scrolls Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Divinity: Original Sin 2, The Outer Worlds, Cyberpunk 2077 and Starfield to bide my time. Followed Ghil Dirthalen's YouTube channel religiously. Read most of the Dragon Age Wiki, even contributed to it. Made my own mad person mind maps over the lore and timeline of the universe; the Maker, the titans, the spirits, the elves, the veil, humans, Tevinter, qunari, the blight, Andraste and the Chantry. 

I love the darkness and depth of the Dragon Age universe. How it consciously turns fantasy tropes on their head in its own way. I have memories of the writers of Origins explaining that when they created the setting they wanted to contemplate how the existence of magic, elves and dwarves actually would play out in a gritty realistic world filled with bigoted and narrow minded people, and then followed through with those conclusions. How the plight of the elves had clear connotations to the holocaust and the Jewish gettos of Europe. It was a curious series not afraid to follow their own trains of thought, making you nauseated, flabbergasted and upset on the way. 

I followed the twists and turns of the development at BioWare. Through development being halted due to teams being moved to Andromeda and Anthem, the pivot to and from multi-player live service, mass leavings and layoffs, teaser trailers, Kotaku articles and whatnot. It was a roller-coaster pendulum swing between being afraid and hopeful, oftentimes at the same time. I refused to completely give up hope, I never did, and I was immensely excited for the release of Dragon Age Dreadwolf. 

Eventually it came! Name changed to Veilguard. A quite weird League of Legends-esque companions trailer. A spoiler filled gameplay video. Marketing team spoiling endgame scenes with official trailers. Rumors of amazing character creation and a shocking reveal that only three choices would carry over from the past three games. We already knew the Keep wouldn't be used, but only three? Nevertheless I pre-ordered and then it came. 

And I played it. 

I loved it so much, but at the same time I had so many deep grievances that threatened to take over the whole playthrough unless I somehow managed them. I had to create a document that stayed open at all times on my second screen just so I could write down things that I just could not let go otherwise, that made me able to keep focusing on the game and not the hard to swallow moments I was getting stuck on. I have never experienced anything like this before, but on the other hand I have never loved and been invested in any game fantasy universe like this. 

This was the result of all my reactions to Dragon Age the Veilguard:

THE LOVE

Things I really loved

the lighthouse <3

the look and graphics of every place, the game is absolutely stunning, and the visual people have outdone themselves, the level designs, the environmental storytelling is amazing and beyond

the cities, the markets, I LOVE LOVE LOVE them, and they give so much cyberpunk 2077 vibes in a good way 

dock town gives awesome low town vibes from da2 ❤️

the main story

the new lore drops, omg the lore, yum yum

buskers playing the old tavern songs, just love it

the blight, visually, oh god I loved it, it was really a throwback to the fleshyness of the Deep Roads in Origins

the new look of the demons, I actually loved it eventually as I was first sceptical, even though the pride demons were abit too much floaty neon

so many new iterations of enemies, in such fun ways

the faction systems and factions stores 

the companion gear systems

the gear system, upgrade systems

the short letters ❤️

the leveling up systems, really funny, great to be able to refund at any time

the world maps and fast travel systems

the cards where you chose your companions, stunning

the scene in front of the lighthouse eluvian, awestriking

the companion conversation system where you could see on the map of the lighthouse if they had anything new, or a quest or where they were if you wanted to eavesdrop - it was very refreshing after talking to everyone in camp in bg3 every night to see if there is any new reaction to something you did, now I could just talk to them if they had something and not compulsively all the time

the quest formats of walking along with your companions in areas you otherwise can end up in battle in, loved that so much, a calm way to experience these absolutely stunning environments

the combat system on explorer mode, when at highest level the animations that played out were mad cool XD that was fun!

that you can walk into and climb ladders at the same time as companions and that they teleport to you or enemies in battle, lovely

squeezing through narrow passages, sliding down, walking on thin planks

the no fall damage jumping

opening doors like in dark souls games

that lucanis had a contract on a bronto once XD

elgar’nan has an amaaazing voice actor giving weight to his menace

loved the format of the ending in the style of mass effect 2, so well executed! one of the best endings of all times

the varric twist OMG!! I cried ❤️

I have cried and have had goosebumps so many time during this game ❤️ I love so much of it so much ❤️

the hype for what the "devouring storm", "the adversary" and "it's eye" is, and a potential next game

the joining chalice T_T

THE MEH

Things that were meh

that the romance was super PG13 T_T I guess I am spoiled after bg3 but to get a peck and then a lying hug on a couch and an "I love you" was of course wonderful, but NOT ENOUGH XD I absolutely loved the Lucanis romance otherwise, very spicy in it's way, but I really wanted the scenes of origins, da2 or dai - we honestly didn't get that here

wasn't a fan of the cartoony vibes for the characters but I still grew into almost immediately, I really wish that they had done something to not make all important characters look so extremely young, some people who should be in at least their 30s look like teenagers.. they should have used more rugged face textures

that there was no real way to make your inquisitor look like your original inquisitor like in they did with hawke in Inquisition, kinda broke immersion and emotional connection

the controls (ok remappable so it was fine in the end)

the lol dota fortnite overwatch type of ui vibe

whats up with all this drowning all the time XD

that you have to destroy stuff to loot it - very dark souls (they have clearly been elden ring inspired in this game) - very unimmersive as you trash the markets in all major cities…😅 but in the end it was fun, but still insane XD

repetetive puzzles in especially arlathan forest, wish they made more meaningful quests there instead to slow the pace

wish I never watched the game trailers they released, they spoiled too much of the

would have loved to be able to zoom in a bit more

too many cats XD 😉

the music was more like starfield or a scifi game than dragon age - there was a lot of modern music instead of the classical brass orchestra or choirs, I missed that

I missed the chantry, and the chant of light

personal quests starts like in the shadow of mordor games, interesting, a bit weird 😛

THE 😬

Things that I did not like

that I could not recreate a body that is similar to mine (and I have a completely normal female body that is just kinda curvaceous) because they put an unrealistic cap on boob and butt size, it makes me really sad because it feels like there is something wrong with existing like me, especially since women like me are the only ones not allowed to be included and represented in a game that otherwise prides itself at inclusion and representation

the stressed opening throwing us into the main action of the game far too quickly with far too little buildup as to who your character is, how they were drafted by Varric, what they have been doing, why they have been split up, what their relationships are like and why you should care about your own character

the gold exploding everywhere when looting or opening chests, it is really immersion breaking and unnecessary, I really hope someone can mod that out

the new look of the darkspawn: I like that there are so many different types and the amazing idea that the blight has changed, but they obviously went for comedic effect instead of horror here which makes me so sad, it feels like it ties in with other choices that make the game more juvenile that are hard to reckon with, especially since the game is marketed as “mature”

the new combat system on anything other than explorer, a huge nope for me, unfortunately, but I can only congratulate all those that seem to love it

that we, true to american culture and despite healing magic existing in this world, get death scenes of people just sitting and watching someone die crying for dramatic effect instead of trying to help them… it irks me every time it happens in any media

that you cannot sort your inventory by any values or show only light or medium armor or anything, a missed opportunity

THE 😭

These last grievances are the hardest ones to put into words and the things that have stayed with me since I played the game. They have given rise to so many questions as to why these choices were made, because these things are so obviously choices that it becomes really hard to understand why they would chose to go this route.

But here they are, the three major grievances I have with this game:

1) the lore breaking or retconning

2) the writing regarding companions, NPCs and its ideas of "teambuilding" and preaching

3) that there is so little real choice 

The lore breaking or retconning

That there is much lore that is missing, and many choices or things from the previous games that are not referenced, felt a lot more okay than the instances where actual lore and world building was retconned in a way that was not explained in any capacity, but where you were just supposed to live with the fact that this is the new reality of the world.��

I am not fully sure why this happened, and it felt really disrespectful to the game itself, its previous creators and all those who love this universe. It feels like they did it for two main reasons: one was that they wanted to remove things that could be somehow perceived as “uncomfortable” or “problematic” to the player, and the other was in instances where I think that the writers did not have enough knowledge or interest in the world lore, or experience with playing the previous games, and thus missed important pieces of lore where they had taken part of just some of previous codex entries and just kind of gotten it wrong. I really don’t know. 

They seem to have retconned and thrown out the window all previous elf lore regarding dalish and city elves, that dalish elves are very hateful towards shemlen, and that humans are generally racist against elves, and that city elves are oppressed, and that they are often andrastian, and that not all elves even speak elvish… 

Playing an elf mage warden was a rollercoaster of people talking about "my people" when I most likely grew up in a mage circle and was drafted to the wardens and should most likely not speak old elven? All elves just talked about "our people" and "our culture" like if that was a thing constantly, but it is so much more complex in this universe. And it seemed all elves just suddenly knew elvish, which was not a thing in the older games, that was like a cryptic language people didn't know much about.

The weirdest scene in the whole game that had me rubbing my eyes to make sure I was seeing and hearing correctly was the one where you meet the Veil Jumpers for the first time and the two leaders of the faction for some unknown reasons had knowledge of Solas being Fen'harel and most importantly that the old elven gods were power hungry evil mages. Like, that should not at all be any kind of common knowledge, that just felt absolutely insane. No explanation given as to how they could have pertained that bit of info.

And there was something really off with Arlathan, where the whereabouts of the ancient elven capital was like the biggest mystery of the previous games; no one knew where it had vanished, it had just been buried according to legend, and suddenly there is just a large crater in the middle of Arlathan forest and loads of city parts kind of left? Just, really strange. 

And all this talk about the Tevinter blood magic destroying the elves while walking in that forest - where we literally just learned in the last game that it was not Tevinter that destroyed the elves, but the elves themselves and that when Tevinter came they were long gone, which makes those throwaway conversations just like this huge retcon of the last games. Kind of like someone reading the early lore and being like, aha, this is what happened, without also taking part of the events that showed that as being a false belief… 

And it feels like this was done because it fits in with this whole new idea of “elves good” and “man bad” vibe of the story, where elves had been turned into some kind of indigenous population that were fighting the evil colonialist Tevinter? Which is not at all the original lore; in the original lore pretty much everyone’s an asshole in different ways (even if Tevinter are more assholes than most).

They have also removed a lot of the difference between surface dwarves and thaigh dwarves with their quite oppressive cast systems and racism towards the surface dwarves and peoples.

And they made the chantry into the catholic church in Antiva, is that really lore friendly? The chantry run or other mage circles aren’t really referenced anymore, even with several new organisations around that forming after Inquisition no matter what choices you made, and mages aren’t really treated any special, and people don’t seem to be afraid of them or revere them as they would in the rest of the world or Tevinter, and magic has been turned into some kind of scifi magical tech instead of what it used to be. 

And apparently dragons have treasures now, but they never used to have that, so that's another thing where it feels like the writers did not write for the Thedas but for like generic fantasy. 

And the Crows of Antiva are only a friendly family instead of an unscrupulous child buying assassin’s league (I hear that has kind of been explained in some written media by a war between the different crow factions, but they could have somehow then explained that...), and the pirates lead by Isabela - one of the worst perpetrator of cultural theft known from Dragon Age 2 where she stole the Tome of Koslun, with so little care as to return it to the point that a war with the Qunari broke out in Kirkwall - are not pirates but culturally sensitive treasure hunters, but of course without explanation as to how this could come to pass. 

I have seen many people complain about things and references that are missing but that actually ARE in the game, and that is why I am not as upset about the missing lore because I know that there are probably a lot of that lying around in codexes and scenes and little NPC conversations and such that I have missed, just as many others have missed a lot of things. But those things that ARE there, that break the earlier lore without any given plausible explanation, that is what hurts. 

The writing regarding companions, NPCs, "teambuilding" and preaching tone

Generally people are just too happy and cheery almost all the time.

I've heard "you've got this" WAY too many times - the disconnect between the dark lore and world and the NPCs who are so unphased almost all of the time, except for when emotion is needed for a scene, is too large. There is way much more cynicism needed here to reflect the evil in the world and the actual goings on around. This constant cheeriness was present in both companion dialogue and NPC interaction.

This game is obviously themed around building "a team" - that's the main premise, but the idea the writers have about how you do that doesn't feel based in reality. It feels like the power fantasy of nerdy queer computer developers on how they want people to feel or operate. Rook is made out to be a good leader because the question "are you ok" is used in any and all (not always reasonable) situations. Romantic questions are blunt in a way that not everyone would be comfortable with, but all companions are still happy with that in-the-real-world not very successful flirting style, and it feels like that is a power fantasy of writers who just wish the world would function like this. 

You as Rook feels like your companion's mom and therapist, and their struggles are so juvenile and safe that they are about that they cannot sleep, forget to eat, that their mom told them to do something, that grandma might not approve of them, or that they do not like vegetables… And you tell them how to live their lives; they should eat, and sleep, and lots of other cliches, but the game also tells you as the player through companion dialogue that it is also good to do breathing exercises, drink less coffee, eat more flax-seed because it's good for your stomach, and how often you should shower. I as Rook even gave the mega ancient goddess Mythal modern style RELATIONSHIP advice, I wanted to sink through the floor… 

This game feels preachy in a way that I have never ever felt in a game, it is like there are some writers there who just discovered that mindfulness, flax-seed and personal hygiene are good for you and now have to tell that to the WORLD. If kind of feels like they were envisioning us players some young vulnerable gamers that they needed to save with their hard earned life wisdom. I feel like the writers behind a lot of the companion interactions were not suited to write the kind of deep meaningful content that you expect from this kind of game.

The amount of times I have heard "Thank you" and "I am sorry" in this game is insane. The characters thank each others and apologize constantly like there is no tomorrow, and they resolve their differences within two sentences like - "I hate your whole way of life" - "Oh, I'm sorry I wish you said something sooner" - "Oh, no, I am sorry, I should never have called you assbag." It's just… so much bad writing, I don't know what to call it, it's shallow and flat and I just wish it was so different.

A whole lot of the preaching style could have been remedied if there had been more “show, don’t tell” in this game. It feels like the writers have forgotten that when you want to convey a moral, cultural, artistic or political message through a piece of art, like games are, you need to do it through the power of allegory and not just by having characters outright saying what is right or wrong.

For example, if the message that you want to get across is that cultural piracy is bad, you should not have a character posture for an organisation just telling you how good they are for returning treasure to cultures they come from; you should write a quest where you dig up a piece of treasure that gives you some kind of power, but where you later find out this is an important cultural relic of some lost tribe that really wants it back, and where you as the player have to grapple with the weight of that moral choice. Even players who would then choose to keep the relic for selfish and power-grabbing reasons would still feel kind of morally bad, and they would still get the message you are trying to convey. This kind of mechanic in storytelling is something that is missing throughout the whole game when it comes to different moral, social or cultural messages. 

Also, in the character Bellara the retcon or writing for a different universe and strange companion writing converges. She namely talks about herself as autodidact - that she has learnt not by studying but by poking around and figuring out what goes boom - but at the same time she has many discussions with professor Emmerich about academic stuff and she uses all the fancy words, words that are also out of lore-words, about frequencies and things that come rather from Elder Scrolls and sci-fi universes, whereas in Dragon Age magical power relates to blood (titan blood, human blood, blighted blood and so on) or the fade and spirits. A person who is self taught by only learning and doing would not at all talk like that "you need to huperflux the enchantment-condesator", they would say "you know that feeling you get when it's about to go boom, that's when you do like this show and hold your breath" or something.

That there is so little real choice, you have only one personality and morality

You get very little choice in this game, so little that it almost no longer really feels like an RPG. Especially around who your Rook is and how they act, oftentimes they will just continue talking and say things about their life and background that you had no idea about and had never chosen. You are getting to know your character at the same speed as the NPCs of the game.

For a while while playing this game I honestly thought I had lost my ability to read and understand the English language, and was making plans to try to regain my language skills, because I had never before experienced such a disconnect between what you choose as a player and what Rook actually says. I realized later that this disconnect was not only felt by me but by others as well, and that there is a large disconnect between the options and what is said. 

I don’t need to be “evil” like you could be in Origins or can be in the Baldur’s Gate games, but at least I thought you could be a kind of paragon or renegade version of Rook, or at least that you could form your personality like Hawke and be kind, funny or harsh - but not even that. Rook is more pre cooked than Geralt in the Witcher games, this is more of an interactive movie in many places, so many that I wish they were more honest about that and made those conversations more into quicktime events where you would just experience the scenes like in Detroit Become Human or games like those. The illusion that there are RPG choices where you have less choice in dialogue than you had in Fallout 4 is just hurting the experience, and especially hurting any immersion and connection you can have with your player character. 

You are only allowed to be heroic, and just one type of heroic; not the one that is ready to sacrifice things for the greater good or to get things done, but only the goodie two-shoes hero (that for sure oftentimes is what I play, but which feels meaningless unless there is an option to go another route). 

The most glaring example of this forced morality that pretty much breaks the fourth wall was when Rook goes by a scene in a blighted city where several people have been hung and says very dramatically that “this shouldn’t happen anywhere” and then proceeds to murder 20 Venatori agents with zero thought as to who their mothers, children or pets are. That comment did not feel like a legitimate comment that would be said by a Rook as created by genuine interest in the character or their connection to the world, but much more as a clear “social posturing” or “virtue signaling” for the player behind the computer screen that this is a good person, and that they are good according to the only specific moral view the hero is allowed to have (no chaotic good allowed). 

It was also very present in Rook's interactions with Solas' memories in the crossroads. When confronted with a memory of the blight being created and threatening to spread to the whole world and how Solas sacrificed ONE of his agents to guarantee that the blight would not spread to the world the only way to react to that was the Solas was a horrible callous and evil person for not saving this one person and possibly condemning the world. I think they somehow meant for Rook and Solas to be moral opposites, where Rook would always protect the little people against oppression and Solas would sacrifice the little people for his missions, but it really feels so off to not have any say in your RPG characters moral values, even within the tropes of heroes.

This kind of virtue signaling is also present in many other parts of the game, used not to deepen the characters but to position them as the "good guys", and my best example here is how they handle Emmerichs vegetarianism. It could have been a really interesting trait that could have resulted in interesting conversations about morality, mortality, spirits of animals and flesh - but instead this trait is mainly used to position the other companions as good because they have (wow, time to get impressed) remembered to cook vegetarian food for Emmerich, several times even (naaw, that is so nice and inclusive of them, uwu). This cheapens the whole thing and makes it instead feel preachy (which it is at this point) and it's such a wasted potential.

And when it comes to the choices in the main game there is only one big choice before the suicide mission ending that is major and creates some replayability, but it doesn’t have a particularly large emotional effect because you have not come to know the places enough to care about them properly. The choices you make in the companion quests are, with the exception of Emmerich’s quest, so shallow and just affect their gear instead of their stories in any meaningful way, that I just wish they didn’t have any choices at the end of the quest lines.

SUMMARY

In conclusion: a lot of people have tried to explain these choices of retconning the factions and the lore, and the strange “teambuilding” discourse, as stemming from an idea of Rook as a heroic hero and their team “The Veilguard” as some kind of Avengers. And that for this purpose everything they do has to be good, they have to have only one type of personality, with one type of morality, have only one type of interaction with the world and their companions, the companions have to lack any type of “problematic” (or god forbid interesting) or morally ambiguous character flaw, and all factions you collaborate with have to be morally unambiguously good and the bad guys have to be unequivocally evil preferably without grayscale.

This way of thinking, if this is true, makes these choices that they have made for the game kind of make sense, but it is still such a weird choice to make, to take a complex dark fantasy story that is Dragon Age - and a cRPG franchise known for morally difficult and emotional choices and complex morally grey factions and cultures - and turn it into this hero-fiction, with clear cut morals and cartoony vibe aimed at younger audiences. 

This could have been such an amazing game (which is in many parts still is), but something went really wrong in the direction for the writers and I ache so bad for all those developers that I am sure really tried their best and probably suffered under insane creative direction. I don’t know how else to explain this. 

It feels like, when playing through the game, like the teams that made the environments, the main story and the companions were three different teams where the first two got all the time and resources, and no micromanagement, whereas the last team didn't have any contact with the others and got the short end of the stick.

I am still waiting for the Kotaku article where they talk to 19 people who have worked on this keeping them anonymous and telling us the real story about the experience of making this game. 

Thank you for reading this far, I seriously hope you loved this game no matter its strange choices at time, and I would STILL say after all of this that it is worth playing for all Dragon Age fans out there.

Dareth shiral.

[niobiumao3]

I've been thinking about the whole Crosshair and CX-2 situation, and I am beginning to wonder if, should CX-2 prove to be Tech, Crosshair didn't, in fact, know.

In an interview before the premiere, Michelle Ang mentioned Crosshair getting to see forgiveness and real love in the face of a great betrayal. Now, Crosshair's great betrayals are long past. So, is this some NEW betrayal? Is it someone ELSE betraying and being forgiven? CX-Tech fits the later very neatly, however, there might be another option: that Crosshair DOES know CX-2 is Tech, and has been not telling everyone because he blames himself for it happening and is sure they'll all turn him out the second they discover it (Omega included).

I'm of two minds here.

Crosshair didn't know, because Tech was put straight into conversion from medical care, and so Crosshair never saw him.

Crosshair DOES know, and feels black-hole sized guilt about it to the point where he can't bring himself to tell anyone.

In the #2 bucket goes a few things:

We see, repeatedly, that Crosshair isn't saying everything about Tantiss. This is as true for Hunter (the person always mentioning this) as it is for us, as our POV on Tantiss was almost exclusively Omega. Hunter knows Crosshair hasn't told them everything, and isn't going to push him except in specific instances where it really woulda been nice to know.

We do know that the CX conditioning is bad. Like, really bad, bad enough that wiping out your identity--not just the chip but like, you, yourself--is part of it. Or, so Crosshair says (and Tech in S2), though of course the truth of that might be more complex. This is reason enough for him to not talk about things. Except...

When Rex and Howzer explain they have a CX in custody Crosshair is immediately spooked. Then he's even MORE upset when he sees who it is. Or is it because of who it isn't?

If he knew CX-2 was Tech, and sees CX-1, he knows there is only one other CX they're sending after them, and the absolute last thing he would want is for them to have to kill Tech to get away. Or worse, kill the person who used to be Tech and can't be reclaimed (from his POV). Either way, from his POV, it is all bad news that CX-2 is inbound.

And as much as I feel Cross just isn't a hand to hand badass, at the end of his one on one with CX-2, he is clearly giving up. Everything CX-2 is saying is battering him emotionally and dousing the fight in him. Which makes a lot of sense, if he knows it's Tech.

For #1, well, the explanation is much simpler: we, and Omega and Crosshair, never see Tech in CX conditioning because he was in a bacta tank for part of it and then into a pod for the rest. He might have even converted quickly if we're to assume he had amnesia from the fall. (I suspect, should he prove to be CX-2, we won't get an explanation for this.) This actually would give Omega AND Crosshair some severe guilt, realizing when they escaped they left Tech on Tantiss in Hemlock's not-so-stellar care. It makes sense Crosshair would never want to go back--the conditioning sounds pretty awful. But then his reaction to CX-1 is a little less clear; we know there aren't very many CXes at this point, so why is THIS one such a concern to him? He just appears to be a reg. And CX-1's use of 'brother' is also very pointed. Which would make sense if CX-2 is Tech, who would have referred to Crosshair as his brother...

Anyways. We'll see if this pans out. I'd considered this might be the case even as I was like 'are we really doing that', and while I'm not a fan of this plot in the overall, like a cat being dragged outside on a harness for some enrichment I can grudgingly accept it. Mostly.

[worlds-worst-ships]

Do you ship it?

Based on a very nicely presented idea by @starburst2000

Hello again Ester. Sorry for the long wait, this is an awesome idea, I've just not been all that motivated to do much lately. Concurrent submissions are my favourite, yknow! (also yes, I referenced the street fighter movie)

[alltheglowingeyess]

fast car - wip

When Naomi’s car starts doing a stellar impression of a blender choking on pebbles, she tries to ignore it. Unfortunately, a minute later, when the noise only grows louder, she realizes that being surrounded by nothing but tall grass and with thirty minutes still to go until Will’s school, this is not the best time to ignore her ancient Honda Civic’s cries of distress.

Gritting her teeth, she veers onto the gravel shoulder and steps out. She walks to the front of the car and pops open the hood, grimacing when steam hisses up. Squinting into the mess of pipes and wires, she grabs a rag from the trunk and starts poking around.

She’s worked on this car herself for years, but nothing’s helping. The engine won’t turn over, and every fix she tries only makes the sputtering worse.

After two minutes of her unsuccessful handiwork, she gives up, leaning against the front bumper. She can already picture Will’s face when he realizes she’s not there yet again. The way he’ll look to her with poorly concealed disappointment when she runs into the school breathless hours later. Her heart aches at the image of him sitting there in the empty school lobby, his folded poster and bag by his side, smiling a forced and patient smile.

She keeps failing him.

No matter how much she prays for clarity—how to balance being a good mom, following her dreams, and keeping a roof over their heads—she never finds it.

Sighing, she drops her head onto her knees, resisting the urge to scream. She halfheartedly reaches for her phone, prepared to call a repair service. Maybe they can get her car running long enough to catch at least the tail end of the fair.

Her thumb hovers over the call button when she hears the low rumble of a passing car. She doesn’t bother looking up, though. Whatever’s going on with her car is not something that a random passerby can fix.

But then the wind shifts. The car doesn’t pass as expected. Instead, she feels the breeze stutter as it pauses near her and a moment later, the engine cuts out.

A car door opens.

“Need a ride?”

Her head snaps up, and the first thing she registers is the atrociously bright red convertible. The early afternoon sunlight glints off of the car, making it near impossible to look at for more than a few seconds.

The next is the driver, a sight somehow more offensive than the car that it instinctively makes her jerk her head back. A terrible idea, considering she promptly slams her head into the bumper behind her.

Biting back a curse, she tries to rub the ache back of her head. In the background, she hears footsteps approach, followed by a figure crouching in front of her.

Blonde curls and sky-blue eyes, paired with a blinding smile that only intensifies the pounding in her skull. He’s dressed in a plain yellow shirt, light-washed jeans, and (stupidly) pristine white tennis shoes. She sighs, squeezing her eyes shut and hoping—praying—that when she opens them again, he’ll be gone.

“That looks like it hurt.”

Sigh. She never gets what she wants. Cracking her eyes open, she wrinkles her nose at the wide, curious eyes staring back at her.

“If I hit my head again, will you disappear?”

To his credit, Apollo remains apparently unfazed by her attitude. “Is that any way to talk to someone doing you a favor?”

She stands abruptly, face heating up at the sudden rise of anger as she steps past his still-crouched form. “I don’t need any favors from you. Why are you even here?”

Apollo stays crouched for a moment longer before standing too, brushing off invisible dirt from his jeans. “Well, you called, I answered. Pretty simple, my love.”

Unconsciously, Naomi’s hand begins to search the dirt for a rock to throw. “Three things. First, don’t call me that. Second, I didn’t call you for shit, so you’re dead wrong there. And third, that’s not how the whole thing works, seeing as I’m pretty sure all my previous calls have gone unanswered. You know, like when I was giving birth? Alone? To the baby that you put in me?”

“Eloquent way to word it.”

Wow. Naomi might actually kill a god today. “Get bent.”

Her words, inexplicably, seem to just make him smile wider. “Well, perhaps you didn’t call me specifically, but I was out this way and heard your prayers.” He waves his hand flippantly, eyeing her as though he’s expecting her to fall to her knees and start thanking him.

Naomi just wrinkles her nose in response, making a mental note to be more careful with her thoughts in the future. 

(Because that’s a thing she needs to worry about now). 

(…Stupid intrusive and apparently all-knowing gods). 

“So, are we going or what?” Apollo says. In the time she had taken to try exploding him with her mind, he had walked past her, standing at the driver’s side of his car. He pats it twice, and Naomi grimaces when it seems to flash a little brighter with each touch.

Sticking a thumb in the direction of her car, she starts to walk backwards to the driver’s side. “I know this might be hard for you to understand, but I can’t just ditch my car here. Tow truck won’t be here for another hour.”

Wordlessly, Apollo snaps his fingers. Before she can ask what he’s doing, her car vanishes into thin air.

Naomi stares for a moment, open-mouthed, looking between where her car used to be and him. Her face begins to heat up again. “Apollo, so help me if you just scrapped my fucking car—”

She gets a pssh and hand wave in response, only serving to tick her off even more. “Of course not, I simply sent it back to your home.”

Naomi raises an eyebrow. “How do you know where we live?”

“Well, I do try keep an eye on you and Will.”

“Creep.”

If Apollo hears her, he doesn’t acknowledge it. “You’ll certainly have to deal with that car later, but now we can get going.” He slides into the driver’s seat, staring at her as she stays rooted in place with crossed arms.

“And why can’t you… y’know.” She raises a hand, snapping her fingers a few times.

“Direct interference is not allowed,” he replies. Despite the fact that this sounds like inconvenient news, he continues to smile broadly at her “Which means…” Like an absolute dork, he begins a rapid drumroll on his steering wheel.

And really, Naomi has enough rage in her that she could keep going back and forth with him for at least another hour. But, unfortunately, the watch on her right wrist tells her that she now has just over an hour to make it to Will’s school. And seeing as her car is probably sitting pretty and horribly broken in their apartment’s parking lot, her options for what to do are significantly limited.

Moving slowly, she rounds the car, matching Apollo’s unrestrained excitement with a glare. Hesitating for a moment, she yanks open the car door and quickly sits herself in the shotgun seat, closing the door next to her before she can listen to the voices telling her to jump back out. 

As she pulls her seatbelt over, she frowns, side eyeing the god. “How is you driving me to the school not direct interference?”

Apollo seems to ponder this for a moment. “Well… let’s say I am simply on route for some of my personal, godly business. And I happened to have stumbled across a mortal in need, who, upon receiving a request for help, it made sense to help in order to not draw suspicions to myself.” He fiddles with the rear view mirror for a second before flashing her yet another blinding smile. “Happy?”

Naomi glares right back. She got lost about halfway through his sentence, but really she couldn’t care less what the excuse is so long as it is good enough that she isn’t going to get blasted by godly magic for riding in his car. 

“Just start the damn car.” 

With a laugh, Apollo starts the engine.