#and have a big mea culpa

[xythlia]

↳ MEA CULPA

Latin - an acknowledgement of ones fault or error, often said in apology

› my contribution to the sicko satoru agenda brought to u by nyquil & fever dreams <3

› yandere satoru x f!reader

› word count : 2.5k+

warnings : rilegious imagery, masturbation f & m mentioned, voyeurism, stalking, panty stealing, home invasion technically, hes mad obsessive, noncon revoked consent, taking advantage of a drunk person, alcohol consumption, satoru is a bit of a sadist & a masochist to me, creampie, prone bone, backshots, reader has hair long enough to pull, installing spyware on someone's phone

If there is such a thing as a soulmate Satoru knows you're his. Knew it from the very first moment he saw you buying coffee on that mid thaw spring day. He hadn't been able to ignore the ever growing thump of his heart in his ears, hadn't been able to forget the way you looked, nor how your eyes had lingered on him for a second longer than what was considered polite. The instant intrigue had him snared, helpless against the trap that was you.

Without a doubt you're what keeps his heart beating.

The sweetness that permeates your whole being sates him better than any treat could hope to. He sees it in the way you often chat with your next door neighbor if you two pass by either coming or going, a kind smile on your face or even an indulgent giggle here or there. Its in the way you stop to pet a stray cat on your walk back to your car, scratching under its chin as you coo at it.

He'd be lying if he said it didn't make something ugly twist in his gut, it should be him that gets to hear your laughter, him that you fawn over and speak so softly too. It's jealousy, he's aware enough to recognize it but couldn't ever bring himself to admit it makes his jaw clench and his fingers ache to cause some unfortunate mishap with your neighbor. The little cat would find itself whisked to a shelter, no longer diverting your attention on your way home.

But by far his favorite thing about you, and what makes him forget all about that foul envy constricting around his mind like a cobra, is seeing you in the waning hours of the evening when your bedroom glows faintly orange from the soft lamp at your bedside.

Never had the act of undressing looked so religious. His hands shake with pure need, the need to trace every plane of your skin and map you with his lips. When you lay down his breath catches in his throat, your hand disappearing between your legs has him groaning softly from just beyond the windowpane.

Self pleasure as some divine ritual with him as the figure observing the rite, breathless at every expression you make while your fingers play with your pussy until you're cumming and your lips part. He hopes his name will be the prayer that completes the sacrament, that one day he'll be lapping up your arousal to drip like wine down his throat instead of feeling himself spill into his own hands outside the confines of your home.

Still, Satoru finds your most convenient quality is that you don't possess much situational awareness. You never notice the aquamarine eyes peering into your window, nor the second shadow that follows you down streets. He's abundantly thankful you've never noticed a presence in your home: the one that switches on a second alarm so you're never over sleeping, or how many pairs of your underwear have been stuffed into his pockets, and have never woken to his lips ghosting over your forehead as you rest.

The feeling you give him is like when swallowing a shot of tequila, the straight burn up and down the throat and the accompanied warmth that spreads in the cheeks and chest. He almost giggles as he traces a finger along the bridge of your nose in the hazy dark of your bedroom, a lovesick smile on his face.

Getting you here hadn't been a big task at all, it's jarring how open to suggestion you are when you're drunk. It was easy, with smooth words and his natural overconfident air, to make you believe in a matter of seconds that of course he knew the friends that had left you at the bar. Of course, he'd been there all along, you must not have noticed silly girl. You were so cheery getting into his car, so open and gregarious. All too happy to have the convenient ride home.

"Have we met before?"

The question had stopped him dead, it felt like the second an airplane cockpit experiences violent decompression: all air sucked out and the flight left doomed.

That is, until he turned at the red light to see you drunkenly ogling him. Your eyes, even unfocused from the booze, didn't fail to notice that he was tall, well built, nor did it escape him the way you looked a second too long at his crotch and thighs. It made him feel like a blushy teenager again, the magic of you.

"Hm, maybe here or there," he said noncommittally, after all he had to keep up appearances as a mutual friend.

"Well, I'd remember someone as gorgeous as you," you giggle, clearly feeling the liquid courage blooming inside your head. Fortunate that it also blotted out your memory of seeing him at the coffee shop in the very beginning.

It was adorable, Satoru swears he's never seen anything on this earth as whimsically beautiful as you.

After a bit of flirtatious banter coupled with the drive lulling you into a drunken stupor he gets you right where he wants you: hanging off his arm like he's all that kept you standing as he guided you to your house. Luckily you never stopped to ask how he knew where your house was to begin with.

His lips find yours as soon as he walks you into your bedroom, the tang of leftover liquor on your tongue does nothing to dampen how sugary you taste. It made his head spin, cradling you in his arms and keeping you so firmly pressed against himself it was as if he were trying to merge you two completely.

You'd been just as starved, fingers winding through his ghost white hair and it had made his brain short out- touching you so freely was something he'd only fantasized about for the last six months, only allowing himself the barest of touches when he would slip into your already familiar bedroom, and this time there was no anxiety fizzing on the edges of his mind.

"Satoru," you'd sighed against his lips, nuzzling your nose to his while his saliva glistened on your lips. You'd pressed back into him, hands roaming his muscled back as he pressed sloppy, open mouth kisses to your throat. Your voice had been so low with lust it made him hard instantly, straining against his pants.

Visions danced across his mind, the way you'd sound beneath him, the way your ass would feel in his hands, what it would feel like to grope your chest and finally, finally be inside you, making you squeeze around his cock and cum until you're braindead. It was all right there, you were right there for the taking.

"Please just fuck me," you whined against his cheek and he could've cum before you finished speaking. Its the four words he ached to hear, they made him groan against your bruised skin as his hands slipped beneath your shirt to snake upwards, squeezing your breasts through your bra.

Desperation practically bled from his hands as he pushed you down onto the bed, grinning wildly climbing over you, his tongue sliding across yours as he tugged down your pants and underwear, yanked up your top and nearly ripped the bra from your chest.

You'd yelped into his mouth, clearly hadn't anticipated his movements to mimic those of an over eager animal tearing into prey. It hadn't deterred you though, hunger the constant note in all of the frantic little movements of your hands and the way your lips moved against his, all teeth and spit. He only reluctantly broke the kiss to yank his own shirt off, biting your bottom lip a little too hard in the process.

"You don't know how fuckin' hard you make me," he'd groaned leaning back over you, biting and sucking along the tops of your breasts, "How badly I've wanted you."

You were too overloaded by lust and liquor to catch exactly what he'd said, reaching for the waistband of his pants before palming his cock through the material. To him it was downright romantic and he'd made no move to stop you as you worked them open, wriggling them down with his boxers enough to let his cock spring free in your grasp.

Being that hard was painful, almost heart attack inducing. Your glossy eyes had widened, lips parting cutely in surprise as you'd taken in the way he was flushed pink with precum oozing from the tip to smear onto your fingers.

"You're massive," you'd mumbled, an adrenaline shot to his ego like no other. He'd even throbbed in your grip at your words.

His lips met yours in another tidal wave of desire, moaning into your mouth as you stroked him while his fingers frantically dipped down to spread your slick folds, rubbing circles around your clit to make you gasp and arch your back. So caught up in it you hadn't even heard what he whispered against your lips.

"You're even better than I thought you'd be."

His fingers became coated in arousal as he flooded you with the plush feeling of pleasure, his tongue exploring your mouth so thoroughly it was as if he'd been committing the map of it to memory. The way you stroked his cock had him impatient, rutting into your hand and whining each time your thumb would rub against his swollen tip.

"I need to fuck you," he whined in a daze, sounding almost close to tears, hips aching and eyes taking on a fishbowl perspective towards the string of spit connecting your mouths.

You rubbed his thigh, hand slowing its motions on his shaft. "Please-"

The word barely escaped your lips before he was gently replacing your hand with his own, sliding between your folds and encouraging you to hold your legs by the back of your thighs as he nudged at your entrance. "So beautiful," he choked out watching the way his cock disappeared inside your pussy, your walls constricting around him in a steady, massaging rhythm.

He'd had to focus hard on his own breathing to make sure he didn't cum inside you right then. "Gonna treat you so well, I promise-" the bite of your nails against his shoulders made him wince, but he'd take any pain so long as it came from your hands.

Pressing your chests flush together, his pubic bone grinding against your clit, his rhythm slow and deep as he'd pressed his forehead to yours and let himself become unmoored in your lust blown eyes, a willing drowning victim.

It was all he's wanted, and he never wanted it to end.

To him heaven is just a word, the real thing lives inside you, taking form in the way your pussy clenches around him, the way you moan and toss your head back into the mattress, the way the moonlight from the window plays across your skin and makes you look otherworldly beneath him.

You whined his name, hips rising up to meet his thrusts as you rubbed your clit and your eyes rolled back while Satoru had wrapped his lips around your nipple, sucking hard and scraping with his teeth just to hear you yelp and feel you claw at his skin again.

What no one realizes about him is the longing for pain, both giving and receiving. What you don't know specifically is that there's nothing that can give him that, nothing he would allow except you. What could be more devotional than that, in his mind?

Its what makes him pause, ignoring your whines as he slips out in fact nearly ignoring you altogether, drunk off your body and a fervor that grips his mind like madness. The desire to both give and receive, all things in balance. He guides you to turn over, roughly pushing your ass up and forcing your head down into the duvet.

His mind had been entirely clouded, too focused on needing to see your soaked cunt greedily swallow him whole. It was mesmerizing, both the sight and the way your body grips him like it'll never let go again while the mess of slick against your inner thighs glints in the moonlight. Starved and desperate he fucked you without care, fingers digging into your hips and ass so hard bruises would stain your skin like watercolors, showing the exact position on his fingers come morning.

"I'm gonna make you cum, angel, all over my cock," he panted through rough, recklessly deep thrusts. He leaned down so one hand could fist in your hair, a cruel grip that had you crying out in pain. It was a sickening sort of thrill that overtook him watching your hands flail blindly above your head before scratching and gripping at his hand.

Now it's you who knows what it's like to be caught in the snare.

"Stop! It hurts!" You'd sobbed out, but he was beyond the point of stopping, beyond the point of reason. He did make an effort to placate you, pressing you down into prone bone flat to the bed and leaving messy kisses on the back on your neck but it was in the distinct tone of forgiveness.

You don't hold out much longer, sobbing and nearly wailing as your abused cunt spasmed around his throbbing length, liquid dripping down from the base of his cock to smear against his and your thighs as he fucked you through it before being unable to last against the onslaught of your pulsing walls, burying himself inside you and filling you up with hot, sticky spurts of cum.

He'd stayed pressed against you, laying on top of you for a while, simply listening to your sniffles as he fiddled with your hair. Really Satoru was loath to pull out of you, pull away from you.

Every silent pass of his fingers against your skin was an apology, and eventually those teary sniffles had subsided into even, deep breaths as sleep closed it's fingers around you instead.

So the moment had passed, the rope cut so that the rabbit might yet run out of sight, it's heart pounding and leg twinging in pain.

He'd been lost in reliving it already, coming back to himself and placing a chaste kiss to your lips as he tugged his shirt back on and made sure you were in a comfortable position beneath the duvet he'd tucked you into.

Of course he'd also taken a moment to unlock your phone with your index finger, installing just a tiny little program that would allow him to get copies of all your phone activity.

One last kiss to your temple before he slips out the door, down the hallway, and back into his car.

One last silent query of forgiveness.

[smolvenger]

The King of Asgard (Loki x fem! Reader Oneshot)

Synopsis: As the wife of Prince Loki of Asgard, you suddenly discover that Odin and Thor are gone. You are made queen and your dear husband is king. But a king needs an heir...

Word Count: 5K

Warnings: SMUT Y'ALL!!! 18+ Breeding Kink and Vanilla P in V sex and dirty talk. Some angst in the beginning but lots of hurt/comfort regarding his discovery about being a Frost Giant. Some married fluff. I use the canon events in Thor 1 but stretch out the timeline because it's my fic and I can do what I want. References to fairy tales because I'm a slut for literary references.

A03//My Ko-Fi//My Etsy Shop//Masterlist//Wattpad

A/N: Since seeing Thor 1 in its completion this has been in my head. I don't usually write for the big man Loki himself too often- but it's a treat to do so! Maybe I will do more of this stuff if I get more ideas! REBLOGS, COMMENTS, DMS, AND ASKS ABOUT MY WORK ARE ALWAYS APPRECIATED! Also, I don't know if Frigga is also Freya the goddess of love and sex in this universe when I wrote this but her character is clearly more FRIGGA than Freya...so yeah...mea culpa

Taglist: @evelyn-kingsley @jennyggggrrr @five-miles-over @fictive-sl0th @ladycamillewrites @villainousshakespeare @holdmytesseract @eleniblue @twhxhck @lokisgoodgirl @lovelysizzlingbluebird @raqnarokr @holymultiplefandomsbatman @michelleleewise @wolfsmom1 @infinitystoner @littlespaceyelf @superficialdomina (since all the way back you asked to be tagged! Ta da! Here it is!!)

You had many regrets in your life. But marrying Prince Loki was not one of them.  When he asked you, you threw your arms around him and kissed him repeating one word- “Yes!”

You never regretted the day you wore a jeweled veil and walked down that aisle. You never regretted vowing before all the gods that you were his and he was yours. You never regretted becoming Princess of Asgard. Not if it meant the love of your life could become your husband.

Some whispered that your choice was unusual. That it was the wrong prince. That you should have married Thor. After all, it seemed obvious he was going to be the heir. But things did not happen in your heart the way they did. Thor was jovial and friendly to you. But before your betrothal, he liked you as a sister. No more, no less. Even if Odin commanded it, Thor would object to the match. If Thor learned to reign in his arrogance someday, you thought, he would make a fine lover to some lucky person!

Other than being the most beautiful man you had ever beheld, Loki was intelligent. Full of elegance as well as guile. Well-read, polite, patient, and charming, but could hold his own in any battle. It seemed you were one of the few people who recognized that. That was one of many reasons why he loved you.

You both attended feasts side by side. He would flirt with you even though you were still about a year into marriage.

“Why, it is too bad that such loveliness is sitting by herself tonight! May I have the seat next to her?” Loki would croon as he sat in the chair next to you.

 You danced every dance together at balls. You especially loved spending free hours exploring the Asgardian library together. Reading works from all Nine Realms. Sometimes until you both fell asleep by the fireplace. Not to mention his finesse in the bedroom.

Loki confessed of his wedding day nerves to you in private. He feared…displeasing you on your wedding night. But your mutual passion and reverence for each other won over all else. Every time you coupled, you brought each other to Valhalla and back again. You learned about each other’s bodies like studying maps. Each minute of lovemaking was both exploration and worship of each other.

Lately, the two of you were careful. You had your own special tea to drink before or after it happened. At most, he would spill his seed somewhere that wasn’t between your legs. You knew so much was happening. Becoming a parent would put more stress on both of you. Especially considering Odin was about to name his heir.

 Though you both did hope someday to have a child. You knew Loki would be a wonderful father and you wanted to be a mother. You wanted a family. You wanted to have a sweet baby (or two) of your own to cuddle and kiss. To hear it laugh when you tickled it. To welcome their first steps with open arms. To watch it grow. To leave your own mark- a person who was both Loki and you.

Now wasn’t the right time, both of you knew it. When you would sigh about it, he would hug you.

“We will wait, my love…time is our friend…” he’d assure you.

 There were worse things in life. And you might as well enjoy what you had now before it was too late. You were lucky to have him. Many couples lived happy, long lives together without children. You were fortunate to have a man who you could confide anything to. And he in turn confided all his worries to you.

The ceremony arrived. And it was not Loki who was named heir as he hoped. It was Thor.

As you stood next to Loki, you felt him stiffen. Thor smiled and held up Mjonir as the kingdom cheered for him. Looking at your husband, you took his hand. You heard him take in a deep sigh through his nose.

“I know you wanted it…I’m so sorry…” you whispered to him, rubbing a thumb over his palm.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

 One evening when you walked about the garden. The sun was setting and while there was some light, you wanted to admire the roses Frigga grew. Dressed in your golden dress, you knelt to sniff a few red ones. Admiring her work and the peace of the place. You jumped when a guard ran over to you.

“The Prince Loki requests your presence immediately in the castle vaults,” he reported.

Picking up your skirts, you hurried there.

“Loki, where are you? Are you hurt?” you asked as you entered.

He was standing on the steps before the Tesseract’s section. He looked up at the sound of your voice. There were tears in his eyes.

“I…I just spoke with father…” he said.

“What did he say this time?” you asked.

He took a step towards you. More tears fell down his cheeks.

“Y/N…I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have married you, shouldn’t have made you my prisoner…” he said.

Pain curled up in your chest at the words. Their grip tightened your throat and your eyes watered as well as his.

“Prisoner!?! What are you talking about, Loki? You cannot believe every word Odin says! I will talk to him myself right away! How dare he say such cruel things to you! You do deserve me! You do!” you cried.

You reached over to grab his hands and he jerked them back.

“No Asgardian maiden deserves to be sold and made wife to a Frost Giant!” He blurted.

You paused.

“Frost Giant?” you repeated.

All your life you heard whispers of the land of the Frost Giants, or Jotenheim. And they were always violent tales of terror. The large, ice creatures were longtime enemies of your kingdom. It was typical for Thor to boast about how much he would slay if given the chance.

“Stay here…and watch…” Loki instructed.

He put his hand on the Tesseract. Upon contact, his skin turned blue and his eyes red. A frost giant if you ever saw one.

Your eyes widened and you gasped in response, a hand flew over your mouth. Shock made your body lock in place. But you did not turn your eyes from him.

“Oh, Loki!” you cried.

You did not flee. No, you would not. Instead, you ran up and embraced him. He felt cold to the touch. As his hands released the Tesseract you felt him warm up in your arms as his skin turned back to ivory. They curled around your back, and he buried himself in your touch. You felt him shaking. Despite your own surprise, you would not abandon him. Never.

“It’s alright…it’s alright, I’m right here…this is a lot, I know…” you consoled as he cried.

He explained to you that years ago, Odin found an abandoned Frost Giant baby in Jotenheim. He took in the infant to be raised as one of his own. But never telling that young prince the truth about his parentage. Not until an accidental discovery. In a recent battle a Frost Gant touched your husband’s arm, changing your prince’s skin to blue beneath his grip. And blue skin could not lie.

“Do you know what I am, Y/N? I am a monster! That’s who you are married to! A monster!” Loki mourned.

You glanced at the door, then back to him. An idea from a recent library read growing in your head.

“Are you familiar with Midgard Fairy Tales? The ones for children?” you asked.

“No,” he answered.

“You don’t?” you asked.

“Midgard never interested me before…”

Taking him by the hand, you led him back to the library. You found a collection of Midgard Fairy Tales left on your favorite chair. You brought it to him and opened it up, flipping the pages. You then pointed to one story. The first page was illustrated with a ship on the ocean, then a rose, and a grand castle.

“You should read this one right here. It was written years ago by a lady. It is a Midgard Fairy Story called La Belle et La Bete or Beauty and The Beast…” you explained.

Loki took the book. He then flipped the page to see a picture of the eponymous beast.

“I know enough of fairy tales. They’re all the same. There’s some giant or creature who’s always the villain. Kidnapping unwilling maidens and hoarding gold. That is until a prince skewers them. Then there’s great celebration over the killing,” he dismissed.

You placed a hand on the page before he could close it.

“You’re right about one thing. There is a beast in this one…” you continued.

“Oh, and he’s there to do those things so babes will grow up learning to hate me,” Loki complained.

“No! Not in this one he’s not!” you objected.

You turned the page. It showed the Beast smiling with a lady in a rose garden.

“Yes, he is a beast. But do you know what he also is? He is the prince in the story! He might look frightening to some, but beneath it, he is kind and generous! He falls in love and marries a woman who sees that in the end! She doesn’t focus on what makes him monstrous and different- she accepts who he is!”

You set the book down and cupped his face.

 “Because she loves him!”

His jaw dropped, speaking nothing. He leaned into your hand.

“A Frost Giant? Yes. I will learn to adjust to the blue skin…but you are my husband. I could not ask for a better one. And I love you. No matter what…” you said.

He embraced you again and you both cried. Tears of happiness and of sorrow. Blue skin or white. Yellow eyes or blue ones. He was Loki. He was your husband, and you would always stay with him. Besides, it’s what he would have done for you.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

When you went to bed that night, you expected tomorrow to be a day like any other. But instead, you were shaken out of sleep.

“Loki, what is it? It’s too early…” you murmured, half-awake.

You felt your bedside but did not feel the lump of his body.

Wakefulness creeping on you, you saw the guards and a few servants in your bedchambers. You jumped to sit up. You held onto the blankets, your knuckles popping in your grip.

“Where is my husband? Is he alright? What’s going on?” you questioned.

Their eyes were all wide. One servant stepped forward and spoke with gravity.

“The prince Thor is banished. And Odin has fallen into his Odinsleep. Loki is now King of Asgard. And you are it’s Queen.”

It was only four sentences. But it felt like something from a dream. You jolted out of bed to stand. You barely opened your mouth to respond when the servant knelt before you. He took your hand and kissed it in reverence.

“Your highness! Queen of Asgard!” he announced.

All bowed before you in your room.

 You expected many things when you married the god of mischief. Just not this! It felt like one of those Midgard Fairytales happening to you.

When you dressed and hurried to your husband in the throne room. You forgot your new role and froze your steps. He sat on a throne, legs deliciously apart. He took up space now. The throne was entirely his and he was going to use every inch of it. He was decked in the robe of a ruler, not a prince destined to wait in the wings all his life. He had power in him, and you had to confess the aura of it was…. doing something for you. Your legs were buckling beneath your dress. There was that infamous, mischievous smile on him. It made you shiver. Already morning and desire swirled inside you. When his head turned to see you, he lit up. He got up from his throne and walked down. Per habit, you curtsied low. Then, placing a finger beneath your chin, he led you to standing. Your sex beneath your legs clenched at the gesture.

He then grabbed you and lifted you up in a hug where your feet didn’t touch the ground.

“Y/N…darling!” he greeted.

He put you down and placed a kiss on your lips.

“But…are you ready to rule? It won’t be easy…” you worried.

“It will not. But at last, think of everything I could do…lead armies…unite kingdoms…”

Even Jotenheim and Asgard if he decreed it so, you noted. You then smiled at him. He was glowing from pride and joy. He took your hand and kissed it.

“If we’re together through this…we can handle it…” he said.

They placed you to stand by his side on the throne.

 Frigga entered. She bowed to you. Your own knees bucked a little out of habit. Usually you were the one bowing to her! You walked down to her, taking her shoulders.

“Queen mother…I…I’m speechless! …I don’t know how I could ever be a queen as well as you!” you confessed to her.

She kissed your cheek and gave you a patient smile.

“Don’t worry, I will help you. Day by day, step by step, you will learn how.”

“Thank you…what do I do now?”

“You will be crowned this afternoon. The kingdom will be watching. Look at them, your people. And show them you care…” she advised.

The hour arrived for them all. Swarms of people broke in like a flood to the throne room. You felt every eye as a golden crown was placed on your head and as his familiar helmet was placed on Loki.

Remembering Frigga’s advice, you looked down on them. You allowed a smile to grow on you. You smiled as you heard your name being chanted along with your husband's name.

They cheered and bowed to you. Flags were waved and confetti fell like snow across the palace.  Loki got took your hand and lifted it up before them. They began to cry out.

“Hail the King Loki! Hail the Queen Y/N!”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

When the sun began to set, a familiar servant ran up to you.

“The King sends his regrets that duties require his immediate attention. He asked for the cooks to go ahead and serve you dinner in his absence,” she announced.

“Thank you,” you replied. An attempt at a regal tone of voice new to you.

The servant bowed and left. She didn’t do that as reverently when you were a mere princess. You ate your dinner alone and then took a rosewater bath right after. You noticed several stray petals floating around in the tub.

Once you finished, you returned to your chambers. It seemed they would stay the same for now. The King’s room was for the Odinsleep. Drying yourself you picked a nightgown. Tonight, it was a white one with a silvery tone to it. It had long sleeves that draped down and had beautiful beading around the bodice. The neckline dipped down to the clasp that secured it. Some might consider it immodest, but it was too beautiful for your resistance. It gave you some very sensual cleavage that you loved (and so would your husband). The skirt then dipped down to the floor, making it feel like a robe, but the material was not so thick that it felt too hot.

If you dressed more like a queen, even at night, you would feel more apt to the role.

What a day it had been. Part of your body ached after such excitement. You sat by your vanity on a cushion. Flowers (including the roses you liked) from the gardens in vases bedecked it. By the candlelight you checked your hair. Sighing in, you relaxed on the seat, admiring the glimpse of the kingdom at night from your curtains. Enjoying a moment of peace.

You then heard his voice outside the door.

“I am now going to bed. Do not disturb us unless there is an emergency,” Loki ordered the servants and guards. Already he was speaking more like a king.

The doors creaked as he opened it and walked inside. Though he was in his own green bedrobes, there was a bounce and urgency to his step. Then he approached you as you sat on the cushion before the vanity. Though his blue eyes did wander hungrily to your low neckline. They then returned up to your face in the mirror’s reflection.

“How is my pretty queen tonight?” he asked.

“I’m good…” you answered.

“Are you tired?” he asked with a tone of concern.

He placed a hand on your shoulder, fingers drumming in anticipation. Was there some old prank he was going to pull that he wanted you to see? What was he going to say?

“Only a little…I’m still taking it in…” you replied.

He embraced you from behind, nuzzling into your neck. You smiled at the contact of feeling his nose against your skin. He smiled as he looked at you in the mirror.

“You always were a queen to me, my dear….” He said.

He kissed your cheek and then lowered his lips to your neck. You smiled, enjoying the increasingly amorous gesture. You felt the tickle of his breath. His soft lips made another kiss in between your neck and clavicle. You melted into it.

“My, Freya has gotten someone enchanted…” you teased.

“It’s not Freya who enchants me…” he husked.

He then turned you around and led you to stand. And laid a desperate kiss on your lips. You wrapped your arms around him. He slid in his tongue. A hand of his crept to hold your back to him. You groaned into it. Already, arousal began its long, sinful climb with its wet signal between your legs. You released lips with a satisfying smack.

“If you continue this, I’ll ring for that tea…” you said.

“No…” he voiced.

“Hmm?”

He held your hands down.

“You won’t need that tea tonight. Or for a while…” he said.

You blinked.

“How come?”

He gave you a smile, looking in your eyes.

“I must tell you…the council has given me much advice. To secure myself as king, there are a few things I can do. Enact laws. Silence any rebellions or refusals. And, since I’m already married...”

He paused.

“Sire an heir.”

You felt your breath stop in your throat. Your eyes widened. His smile went down to a smirk. A glint in his eye as he went to you. His eyes roaming down your exposed chest. His hands wandered down, staring to hike a little of your skirt.

“So, you’re saying…” you stuttered.

“Y/N, I…I need you tonight…tonight…I’ll give you a child, an heir, someone to carry on my reign, and keep me as king…Would you like that?” he asked.

He leaned closer. Wanting to kiss you, then pausing. You could feel his breath just on your lips, making you dizzy. He placed his hips against yours. You felt a moan shudder out of you. Your answer was an easy one.

“Yes, yes I would.”

He swept you up in his arms, strong despite his lean frame.  Your heart raced so hard you felt it would burst out of you. He laid you on the bed then crawled over you. You felt yourself trembling like it was the first time. He cupped your cheek and leaned over to kiss you.

“My queen, my darling…”

You wrapped your arms around him.

“And my Prince made King,” you said back.

Intuitively, he ground his hips on yours. A small shudder went through you, coming out as a sigh. You reached a hand to run it through his hair as he kissed you again. Combing through those dark curls you loved so much. Because they were a part of him. His crown that never left him. You gave him another, harder kiss. He then looked down at your robe. He slid a hand over the beading, over your chest.

“A lady beautiful as you could doesn’t need such …embellishments…” he growled.

He removed his hand to lift it in the air. He flicked it and a green light began at the tips of your toes and then worked its way up your legs and through your body. Your evening robes for sleeping vanished and instead was your skin. He wetted his lips at the sight of your nakedness.

“I’ve longed to see this, to touch you for hours…”

He went up to your bare breasts. You gulped as he began to kiss it. Your back arched on impulse, tensing already. As he worked his way to the center, you felt yourself tensing already. Smiling at the pleasure as he used his tongue, swirling your nipple. Chills ran over you. He released his mouth to whisper.

“I’ve missed your breasts. The shape. The softness. Feeling you…”

He replaced it with his large hand. He gently squeezed and groped both around. You exhaled out another sound coming out of you. Not a polite one.

“Perfection-perfect for my hands. And perfect to nurse my heir…”

He then lowered himself down, kissing your stomach. Tracing your hips. He then kissed your bellybutton, dipping his tongue into the hole of it. Only a symbol of what was next. A delicious forewarning. Preparation. You grew wetter with the feeling of something soft and wet inside a hole of yours.

“Loki…Loki, my dear…husband…” you whimpered.

He held your hips down, tracing it and feeling them again. How they curved up to where they made your waist. His fingers sprawled possessively over your flesh. Then back down to your hips. Looking down, there was a bulge getting bigger against his green robe.

“And these…perfect. Perfect for what I put between them. For my mouth, my fingers, my cock, and my child…”

He pulled his head up, then you put your finger to his lips. Giggling lightly, as did he.

“You talk so much. But you’ve yet to bare yourself too, my love,” you teased.

With a cocky half-smile, all he did was tilt his head. The seidr ran down from the forehead to the toes, and the smooth robe was replaced with his warm skin. He was so beautiful. Every time he took off his clothes, it was everything in you not to stare. He had a broad, ivory chest so large and enveloping. It was like a blanket when you rested your head on them or when he thrust on top of you. You put a hand to explore the crevices, going through the patch of hairs on him. His muscular shoulders, perfect for digging your nails in. His abdominals-both soft and strong. For he was both at the center of his heart as well. Thighs made thick from running, jumping, and everything a warrior did.

He ground against you. His cock, already hard, teased your stomach. He leaned up to kiss your neck in its small soft spot. A hand returning to your breast.

“You will look wonderful engorged with a babe…a child…a part of you that will always be there, a trace of us together.”

“Loki…my dear husband…I love you…” you voiced.

He smiled, inching close.

“And I love you when you’re screaming beneath me…”

With one long, beautiful hand, he took the outside of your legs. He traced his fingers down from thigh to knee. Ghosting against the upper flesh of your skin. As tenderly as if you were the brightest, most precious jewel kept in his treasury. In seas of coins, rubies, and diamonds…it was you, you out of everything else, that mattered to him.

He took his large, beautiful hands and then moved them to the inside of your knees. You bit back a moan, leaning your head into the pillow as you felt it.

Using both his hands, he then spread you apart, wide open. He looked down at you and grinned. He had seen, felt, penetrated, and tasted your pussy like an addict. Always hungry for more. Even if you were poison, he would consider it the sweetest way to die. He placed himself back up. The tip just teasing your entrance. Every nerve inside you screamed. It brushed against you, never plunging in.

“You’re a banquet all for me, my dear…now…are you ready?” he whispered.

“Oh, please…. stop tormenting me… I want a child…and I want you…give me…give me one, Loki…” you begged.

“Let me…let me feel your sweet warmth and take your king’s shaft…” Loki husked.

He plunged into you slowly. Part of you panted through your nose. You felt him climb inside, inch by agonizing inch. This was a ceremony, sacred as any other rite in a royal bedroom. As if everything had to be right. Yet there was beauty-there was divinity. An ecstasy of reaching something otherworldly in between each other’s legs. You let out a loud gasp when he placed all of you inside him. You grabbed onto him.

He then retracted his hips, and he began to thrust into you. Grinding you right into the bed. Writhing as you accepted his largeness like it was new. Each gasp from his breath, each pant from each thrust. You could feel one muscular arm of your husbands touched the headboard, keeping him steady against you. You felt your back and ass slide against the silk sheets. He was slow, but eager.

“Yes…I promised you… when we married…I’d give you-nrgh-I’d give-give you everything-fuck-everything you’d ever want-gods…yes, gods, yes!” he whimpered as he thrusted.

You let out a moan with each thrust, your own breasts bouncing slowly with the movement. He looked down, releasing the hand on the headboard to slap them.

You let out a gasp- “L-Loki-you-you-you beast!”

“I thought you figured that out already, darling…” he whispered with a chuckle.

You felt his other hand wander to touch your back. You writhed under him.  He then slid his hand under his hips guide you up. His strength held you steady. He hit a different angle and you let out a cry-it was deeper, and his cock had found it’s way to your bud. Already sensitive and shaking.

“L-Loki! There! Please! There!”  you begged as he kept thrusting.

“As my queen commands…”

You saw the veins in his neck tightening as he kept on. His black curls messed around him- wild and free. A creature claiming his prize for the night. How beautiful he looked. You returned a hand back up and pulled him down. You kissed him with such fervor as he thrust that he stayed for only a second inside you, pausing, catching a breath. What breath there was, anyway.

Then he picked up the pace slightly. You were starting to see stars. That sweet angle where he got your clit. You felt pleasure rise  in you. Yes, it was arriving. You moved your hands down from his shoulders, down his triangular back. Once you found his soft, perfect ass you pushed him in again.

“Loki I’m…I’m…I’m close…oh norns- I’m…I’m going to cum!” you pleaded.

“So…am I-nrg-Call me king, call me king again and…and…I’ll-I’ll drive you there with me …”

He lowered his voice. Guttural and demanding.

“Call- me- your- king.”

He even got his free hand inside, speeding you up as he too sped up. You felt it-the breaking point.

“Yes-please-my- my king! My king!” you cried.

He let out a shout and you felt his hot seed spurt inside you. Your own climax then broke upon you. Thw words repeated out of you in a whisper.

“My king…my…my…”

It was the climax where it spun inside you. You felt your whole-body lock. Your quim felt as if it was spinning, sputtering with the pleasure. As well as his seed.  You groaned as it washed you down and you felt it. Your eyes teared up. His stayed inside, spurting like mad. Free and plentiful after starvation. A broken dam. He stayed inside. Not wasting one drip of him. You accepted it, every bit of it. Not one drop would go to waste. You felt your body buzz. Vibrating on the inside though you were still. Still except for your own breasts heaving with the breath you caught. You felt him catch his breath on top of you too.

He then cupped your cheek. His curls fell before his face. But his smile and blue eyes glowing from them.

“I couldn’t have asked for better. A better broodmare. A better wife. A better queen by my side…” he said.

Playfully, you went up and kissed the tip of his nose. He grinned at it and then embraced you. Arms flinging around each other. His own sweaty, earthy scent mixed with the rosewater bath you had earlier.

His cock still twitched inside you. Then you felt a final hot release of him and there was no more. He pulled out. Once it left you, you felt a cold space in your quim. Like it was an empty niche, something that needed filling. So much was he a part of you. You reached up your hand to brush his curls back. Seeing his face. Seeing him.

He then went down to your stomach, kissing it.

“I think if it’s a boy…we should call him Tuck…and if it’s a girl...Idona…” you then told him.

He rolled over to lay his head on the pillow. Then he turned over. You hummed at the sight of him- oh Hela, his beautiful profile was art itself!

“And what if we have twins?” he asked.

“I’ll figure it out, later!” you replied with a small laugh.

You placed your head on his chest and looked up and he down.

“I hope you’ve forgiven me for missing dinner…we’ll eat together tomorrow night; I’ll make it up to you…” he said.

“Of course, I forgive you. You had duties of your own…” you whispered.

He then gave a smile with the familiar, delicious darkness in his eyes.

“It might take more than once. We will try for an heir no matter how many times it takes. I’d like to have you on that very table like a meal of my own to devour. And I’ll have you on the library walls. On each rug. On each column. So, rest well…you have several duties of your own tomorrow.”

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

I'm seeing a lotta people trying to justify the attack on Israel as Palestine having 'tried peace and failed' (due to a peaceful march to the fences back in 2018 which was, admittedly, not met peacefully). Are people really, truly, utterly unaware that Palestine has been firing rockets at Israel pretty much daily for decades? Has nobody heard of the Six-Day War, when Israel was attacked by THREE NATIONS simultaneously (with intent to wipe them off the map) and beat their asses so badly that not only were they driven off, they GAVE Israel land as a mea culpa so the Israelis wouldn't mount a true counteroffensive? Or that Israel GAVE BACK the Gaza Strip even though they were under no obligation, as a peace offering, from which Palestine promptly starting launching rockets at them? Look, no nation is perfect, I'm not simping for Israel or claiming they never did anything wrong, but Palestine sure as shit is not the innocent wittle victim of the big bad Zionists who just want peace and were finally FORCED into violence. They've been violent for a long time.

Honestly, yes, a lot of them are completely unaware of all of that. And many of the ones who do know about it, dismiss it as "Zionist lies". Which is no surprise, because these very same people dismiss all the atrocities committed by communist states as "western imperialist lies". The vast, vast majority of Palestine supporters are either ignorant or desperate to justify their pre-existing hatred of Jews. And with how many masks have fallen since October 7th, the latter far out numbers the former.

[yournastyfavelouis]

BD *and* BDE

The ...he’s got both, bb, and I know this has been long promised, and I’m sure it’ll be outdated in about an hour, but here’s a masterpost people have been askin’ for! Gonna give a lil tease before the rest goes under the cut (ahem):

Before I go further, let me just say I would normally dive DEEP and try to find the full rez versions of these, but it’s almost impossible to find them in today’s shitty search, so mea culpa, hope it still works out for ya! I’m also gonna add some links to some fave ~energy because I know I’m gonna hit the limit AND it’s impossible (??) to download a gif from twitter. :( So let’s start with some outstanding clips:

The eye contact...OKAY

AND AGAIN, ONLY CALLED OUT

This sheer shirt would look 180 degrees different on anyone else

*sweating*

The person who created this video knew EXACTLY what they were doing

....uh....

I will contend that he’s not a shower but a 100% grower

....so now let’s dig into some photos vs. links!

Certified ICONIQUE, Zayn’s FACE:

It’s hinted at in one of the links above, but the people in the crowd, #blessed:

I love how this was a moment:

...that happened more than once:

...and behind the scenes of this tour, too:

Computer, enhance:

Oh, Louis:

There are a lot of moments where he’s not actually B in the DE, but it’s just OUT THERE, like what the fuck, dude:

...

...

...

...

But there’s also something in the way he walks, where it’s not front and center, but it’s all EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE in the BDE:

...

...

...

...which naturally takes you into the spank hands, which is alllll E:

...

I also love when he feels himself up, just to let you know it’s there:

...

I’m a big fan of the spread, too:

...

Just the power stance or sitce in general:

...

...

...

...

THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME:

[alexanderwales]

Art and the Artist

I generally prefer to read things without knowing much about the author. There aren't that many cases where it adds much to the work to know that they were a plumber before they got into writing, or that they immigrated from Jamaica, or that they served in World War II. To my thinking, a piece of media should stand on its own and not need the context of the author's life story. If you have to open up with "this story is about the Holocaust" then in my opinion, you've already failed as an author.

With that said, it's often inevitable. Sometimes it's just the nature of the work itself, and it would bleed into your understanding even if there weren't a little "about the author" blurb at the end. Sometimes a story is painful obvious in how personal it is, or the metaphor to the real world is so poignant that it's impossible not to make the connection. And sometimes you just get a sense of a person from their writing, particularly if you've read a lot of their writing. It can be the authorial voice you come to understand, the things they choose to show you, the way their mind works, and you think to yourself "yeah, I could get along with them".

And other times, you find yourself drawn to the author because they're the person who best knows their own work. A book leaves lingering questions, and it might be better for you to understand it by communing with other people, but the author is often right there, and you want to hear their takes on their own work, what they were thinking, what lies behind the scenes, the cut chapters and the ways the ending might have been different. You finish gobbling up what the author has prepared for you, and then you gobble up the scraps in the kitchen, and when that's not enough, you start gobbling up the author: you read interviews, you read their blog, you start as a fan of their work and become a fan of them.

Sometimes their understanding of their own work does not match your understanding, and that can be a little bit heartbreaking. Sometimes the stuff behind the curtain is awful and bad, worsening your enjoyment of the text because now it seems phony and poorly thought out. Sometimes an author turns out to be a piece of shit.

Usually, I can move past it. If I like a book or a movie, then I like it for the feelings that it produces in me, and the person who created it is irrelevant except maybe for the fact that they're getting $5 from me or whatever, which is not the level of microutilions that I generally worry about.

Sometimes it impacts my understanding of the work itself, casting a shadow over the things that I once felt, tainting the art.

I was a big fan of Louis CK. The self-deprecating humor did it for me, the introspection and irreverence, the way he was saying things that felt real and true, things that I had always noticed but never really considered. And of course I found him funny. But then there were allegations, and his mea culpa, and I stopped finding it funny. Partly that's because his comedy was autobiographical, so the taint was worse than it might have otherwise been, but part of it was the comedy itself: if the comedy rests on me recognizing myself in Louis CK's stories about himself, I'm going to be less able to do that if drawing those comparisons gives me a curdled milk feeling.

I was a fan of Buffy and Dollhouse and Firefly and Cabin in the Woods and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog, and I think that these don't suffer nearly as much from being from the mind of Joss Whedon. It's easier to dissociate the stories from the man, and harder to read his personal shittery into the character arcs and setting details and elemental units of plot. Some of that is just the medium: comedy specials are the product of a singular vision, while television shows and movies are the result of team of people working together. Even then, I think shitty people can make good art, so long as they're good at separating their shiftiness from their art. Most people with a bit of awareness would do this naturally, I think: they know what's unpalatable, and present an image to the world, which also comes from the art they make.

Information about the artist informs a reading of the art, as much as we might try to have it not do that. I think some art survives revelations better than others. Someone who writes about murders being revealed as a murderer certainly seems like it would poison my enjoyment of their books. But it's the nature of art that's it's all pretend, and sometimes people don't create because they're spewing self-confession onto the page. Then, I think, you're usually safe.

I hadn't written this with Neil Gaiman in mind: it was sitting in my drafts folder, as so many posts are. But I think Gaiman's work will, for me, survive the accusations, even if the man himself is exiled. I'm certain there will be passages and plots that read differently, places where he can be seen defending himself, chapters that are now unseemly. But I think that for me, the stink of his crimes will wash off quickly, and I'm hopeful that unlike other cases, separating the art from the artist is easier for me.

[olderthannetfic]

I hate to say it, but I think End OTW Racism is just Antis establishing a new front and hoping to wound the Archive that way.

Here's what I think the play is: they are going to cite the OTW not responding to their demands very "mea culpa, mea culpa,mea maxima culpa" publicly and not hiring a diversity consultant as PROOF that the organization is racist and loves racism and people should not donate to them anymore. And they are going to hammer hard on that come the next donation drive.

"Don't donate to the OTW, they are RACIST (and love child porn)."

And a lot of people who have not thought the whole thing through, and haven't connected the dots will fall for it, hook, line, and sinker.

Why do I think this?

First off, they cite Stich and Nerdlingwrites whose final comment in this very popular post, certainly seems very anti https://www.tumblr.com/nerdlingwrites/624303276296388609/seriously-im-going-to-delete-this-post-just-so ("What I'm saying, what black people and other people of color and trans people and PEOPLE WHO HATE CHILD PORN, are all saying is that AO3 needs to put on their big person pants and start asking themselves hard questions.")

Now, out of all the posts/metas that could've been chosen to illustrate the points that EOTWR could've chosen? Why those two bloggers?

Nerdling goes on to say: "Stop trying to act like AO3 is the be all and end all of platforms. They rise and fucking fall, just like empires. And if they can't get their shit together to fight racism that's rampant on their site? Then boo fucking hoo, they can go the way of MySpace. You'll live without porn, but plenty of my people are dying from racism, you'll forgive me if I don't give a shit about your masturbatory aids. Learn to write your own fucking stony diaper porn if that's what you're into, and stop being a shithead."

AS IF all of the AO3 is nothing but Pr0n. It's where many marginalized people find their voice and agency and finally finally finally see themselves reflected. (Also note the addition Anti sentiment.)

But this part in particular: "Then boo fucking hoo, they can go the way of MySpace. "

I hate to be this cynical and I hope I am wrong, but Nerdlingwrites' post being held up and endorsed through the linking is deeply troubling.

They could've harvested her screenshots and credited them, but no ... they linked her entire post with no disclaimer.

I know a fucking dog-whistle when I hear it.

--

Oh, I'm sure they're not all antis.

I think plenty of them are the kind of people who hear "I was harmed" and think you have to always take that at face value and always try to fix things. Telling someone to their face "No, I won't do anything about your pain" feels wrong to most people.

In reality, lots of people say "harmed" when they mean "I feel uncomfortable about something that is none of my business and that no one asked me to go look at".

They're not even lying. They're just bad at managing their emotions, and catering to them creates an environment where the only way to get treated well is to be performatively the most fragile.

My view is that, like jealousy, woobies are fun fanfic and not something to be tolerated in real life.

[centrally-unplanned]

(Spoilers ahead) So with the obvious caveat that the show has several more episodes to go so this all might still be addressed, I am gonna have to lay down some criticism on seasonal favourite Hibike Euphonium right now - this is my complains-about-things blog after all!

The show has an issue in that its Kumiko's story, and the story it is dealing with is that their chosen strategy of intensive auditions that swap members between performances is draining morale - plus her own defeat in said auditions is complicating her emotions and further draining morale as she is the well-liked president. Her friend and co-executive Reina is actively rejecting solutions, and the teacher Taki won't comment on the drama. So she has to solve it. Which she does with, essentially, a big heartfelt speech before their performance.

As a minor aside, right before their sectional performance? I thought the morale issues were affecting practice? Were they or weren't they? Too late to fix that now, right? Not a big deal but I did still want to note it - don't sacrifice realism for drama in a show as grounded as Hibike is.

On to the meat of the problem - Reina and Taki-sensei. Kumiko's big speech is essentially a mea culpa, being a "yeah I should have communicated my honest feelings right out the gate" deal. This choice and the presentation of it generally lines up with Reina being proven right in her stance - including explicit comments from Kumiko saying such.

The problem there is that Reina is totally wrong and also being a huge asshole about it:

You don't get to say this to your bff at the first sign of trouble and just walk away from it - you definitely don't get to do it when you are extremely obviously running interference for your teacher because you have the hots for him. At every turn Reina has made this problem worse - calling out students for casually gossiping on their own time, verbally chastising any dissent, at one point in this episode even contradicting Kumiko publicly in front of the club to argue with a student mid-rehearsal. Her idea of a solution is literally just "club members should shut their mouths and never dissent from Taki-sensei's vision", which since they are human beings and also not in love with him is not actually a workable plan. I would bet at least a third of the drama comes from the way Reina acts, which would make any student both sus of the behind-the-scenes dynamic and double down out of spite. She is a club leader and is failing at her job in a basic way.

And since Kumiko's speech "resolves" the problem, all of these failures are handwaved away; she doesn't really have to say anything, right? Her and Kumiko seem fine now. Her failure as a friend and her failure as a club leader is just sitting unaddressed. Maybe it will come up next episode, but that still doesn't make this "arc conclusion" satisfying.

Now lets move on to Taki-sensei. His "arc", as much as he can have one as a non-core member, is detailed with a lot more care. His thing is that he is just a dude, he doesn't have magic insight or anything, and even Kumiko is putting him on a bit of a pedestal. Throughout the season they have all these little hints about him being not nearly as mature as his role-as-teacher suggests, including his childish snacking habits:

Some have interpreted this as critical, but I don't personally - Taki tends to be explicit about his own fallibility, like when Kumiko asks if he is tailoring their music specifically to win the competition and he replies "idk if that is even a thing actually". And this latest episode definitely peaks at Asuka pointing out that Taki is probably not confident in his choice to deny Kumiko the solo - his confidence in it is faked for the purposes of club morale:

He knows its controversial, he knows morale is hit, and is powering through it.

That is all fine enough, but it also makes him a bad teacher. I won't harsh too much on the fact that he puts way too much in the hands of his student leaders, because its done to center the narrative on their arcs. But, for one, that falls apart when the crisis is explicitly one in Taki. Expecting a student to fix that is pretty asinine. And he definitely brings this on himself - he never explains his decision-making to the students, not even in a sanitized, authoritative way. He just expects them to deal with no guidance. When Kumiko's friend Kanade gets cut midway from a failed audition, she rationalizes the decision really well, explaining that the tuba section was weak and their numbers are capped, so they sacked someone from the already-strong euphonium section.

What a graceful, morale-saving explanation. Which Taki never gave! Kanade just inferred this. He doesn't have to explain every decision in detail of course, but some level of guidance as to why changes are being made would have gone a very long way.

Now you can say "his vibe is just to be standoffish, its his method", which imo is a dumb method but okay, I'll run with that. But if you do that and outsource all of the communication to your student leaders, then you can't also be standoffish with those student leaders. According to the text he knows about the drama; which means he knows Reina is a clusterfuck wannabee dictator and she and the vice president are having open shouting matches after rehearsal, and that Kumiko is spiraling through an indecision crisis. So meet with your damn leadership team and help them nail out a plan. And tell Reina to check her libido at the door or something. Either this above-it-all strategy is intentional, at which point you are botching its management, or it isn't, at which point you are botching being a teacher.

(And if the stakes of all this were small enough that he didn't need to bother having a meeting about it, then Reina is being a much bigger asshole and Kumiko is being a bit of a sob story weakling. I don't think that is the intended message)

I think some of this "harshing on Taki-sensi" I am seeing in the fandom is coming from noticing his failures as a teacher alongside the narrative hints about his arc. But I don't think based on this episode the narrative is going to acknowledge them. Its a "he's human" narrative, which is tonally quite different. I do expect some level of "change" in Reina at least, but it doesn't seem like a real apology is not going to be the offing. And I think it stems from the fact Kumiko is just being overly centered in a story where the conflict is not something she is driving. It has to be her problem to be her story, and this isn't quite enough to meet muster.

But I could be wrong! Lets find out I guess.

[chalkrevelations]

if you don't want to talk about this further, just ignore this of course, but have you seen pond's fucking instagram post about build? (without saying his name of course) i know automatic translations can be wonky, but overall, he is making it all about himself and his feelings, STILL "both sides" the whole thing, and throws in a "watch the new ep of our show" (you know... the one they took away from build) at the end. the audacity that man has is just beyond comprehension. i truly hope karma will do its thing and ruin the company and that man's life.

Hi, Anon. I. Hm.

I went back and forth a couple of times on whether I actually did want to respond to this. I have a lot of feelings and opinions about Pond and about BOC under his direction that I’ve rarely spoken about so publicly (although I have some suspicions, for Reasons, that some things I’ve said in semi-private spaces have been spread further than those spaces). I'm very aware that I'm at a cultural and linguistic disadvantage when I try to evaluate anything about Pond or BOC and that I'm therefore working with limited information. But I don’t think it’s a big secret I’m not a fan of Pond’s. From what I’ve seen, I think his behavior has been deeply problematic and unethical, and not just in relationship to Build’s situation - although the way he’s tried to portray himself as peacemaker during this whole debacle with Poi has certainly only exacerbated my negative impression. The best I can give him is that maybe he’s unaware of his own unctuous self-centeredness? So, while it would be gross and skeevy that he would 1) make something as serious as this all about himself and his own feelings, and 2) use it as a mercenary chance to flog his latest BOC property despite the fact that property no longer has anything to do with Build, I wouldn't be surprised by it.

Personally, I'm sorry that I gave him and his company the benefit of the doubt for as long as I did. Like many other people, I bought into the “big happy family” fan service for a while, before eventually accepting that it was just as much fan service as any branded pair, so, mea culpa on that front, right? But I think too many people didn’t and haven’t realized or accepted that, and that Build in particular has paid an out-sized price for it - including when people have put the blame on him for the cracks in the facade, especially in misplaced anger and outrage over the “leaked” DMs that threatened the happy found-family narrative BOC was selling and that fans want(ed) to believe.

I think Pond and BOC have been very good at manipulating fan sentiment into believing their self-imposed Hero Edit and self-promotion as industry disrupter, despite evidence to the contrary that goes back as far as the filming of KPTS, when Poi and Yok got away with sexually and otherwise harassing multiple cast members, including a teenaged Barcode. It extends through leveraging Barcode’s and other cast members' emotional response to Jeff’s departure to provide a show for a live concert audience, and forward to a reality show in which a bunch of young wannabe actors were pressured into exposing their worst moments, on television, for prurient viewer interest. Setting up Apo, of all people, to hawk skin lightener was a terrible thing to do and makes everyone involved a worse human being.

So, no, I wouldn't find this latest skeevy behavior surprising. I don’t know what Build’s hopes and plans are, as far as regaining a domestic career, and he's always seemed, publicly at least, to be far more forgiving of Pond than I would be in his position. I don't know if that's personal, cultural, or professionally rooted. But I personally hope Build has enough resources to allow him to avoid getting involved with Pond again, given the way Pond and BOC have treated him – from folding to a ginned-up harassment campaign so that Build was kept out of the public eye precisely when VP was airing/trending (funny, that), through leaving him to twist in the wind from the time of Poi’s first salvo of plagiarism accusations - which BOC apparently couldn’t be bothered to respond to, even though it was one of their properties at issue - to Pond standing around for a year and a half with his hands in the air like a bystander while Nong Poi publicly curbstomped someone who Pond claimed was a friend and part of his work "family," before sad-facing for the press about how hurtful it was that Build decided to leave the “family” that had publicly damnatio memoriae’d him.

Anyway, that's really more time and emotional spoons than I want to spend on Pond or his company - tbqh, they're one reason I'm semi-hiatusing at this point - so I'm likely done talking about them after this. But as usual, once I start, I talk forever, so here this is.

[canmom]

if you have a sec: why is there concern rn about tumblr being taken down?

lol it's not a realistic concern. just a CEO with a big mouth digging himself in a hole on an unprofitable website.

basically Automattic ceo Matt Somethingorother (@photomatt), our current overlord, made a series of very unwise posts about the case of a certain trans woman user of this site who was the subject of a harassment campaign that abused the reporting system and got her 7+ year old blog banned.

rather than just do a quick 'mea culpa' and restore her account, tumblr and Matt in particular seem to have doubled down on insisting she deserved the ban, proffering an old vent post following her first spurious ban in which she expressed a vague hope that he would die in 'a car full of exploding hammers' and other sarcastic comments - comments that unambiguously read as 'frustration' to anyone actually versed in the site's culture - as 'death threats' that would warrant talking to the actual FBI.

my impression is that he's probably not that invested in the case and half-assed the response to users sending him angry messages in a way that made him look a whole lot worse. his attempts at sounding neutral and bureaucratic just made him sound pathetic and came off as deliberate misgendering, adding fuel to the fire.

ofc moderation at scale is an unsolved problem, and inevitably tumblr's moderation of anything that isn't outright illegal has generally been pretty opaque and half-assed. far more realistic threats are not exactly unusual on here, but rarely get moderated, and most of us have learned to live with it. so the hypocrisy has drawn a big furore on the CEO, basically a chance for people to vent all their frustrations at the moderation. it's a combination of people angry on behalf of the girl who got banned and other cases where they've been heavy handed towards innocuous posts from trans girls, combined with resentment over feeling the moderation has been lenient on whatever other bad group (nazis, pedos, terfs or whatever) that a given user feels run rampant on this site.

most likely outcome is that Matt Whatever gets a talking to from his PR manager and we get some kind of apology post in the next few days as they try to walk it down. maybe reinstate that girl's blog. but since buying Tumblr has been an incredibly unprofitable investment for Automattic, I was joking darkly that this would just be the last straw for him to be like 'fuck it, pull the plug'.

[anthrotulip]

So in the Jedi Apprentice series which I am slowly reading because it is out print--Gotta Catch Them All--when Obi-Wan returns to the Temple after Melidan/Dann under less then ideal circumstances. Yoda has just been attacked in the Temple and everyone is except maybe him (of course) is low key stressed/panicked by this. This does color the meeting discussing if Obi-Wan can return to the order in my opinion and they are pretty harsh with him:

I want stress, although, Obi-Wan may not fully understand the implications of what he has done, he isn’t giving half cocked non apology apology before this either. He is pretty mea culpa (honestly too much in my opinion but that’s another post) both externally and internally about it. Obi-Wan is impulsive in many ways but it’s due to a lack of experience not character, which is what makes how Mace phrases things incredibly frustrating. The idea is solid saying sorry doesn’t make what happened go away. However, Qui-Gon is also at fault how things went down, if set aside plot armor ( e.g. this has to happen for the story to). That should be acknowledged (to be fair the previous book Yoda was basically like (“Thought I did you knew what Obi-Wan is like*. Other options you had use why not did you ?") And before anyone asks what I think he should have done (which is again whole another post) my short answer is not leave Obi-Wan alone for weeks to months in an active war zone even that meant dragging him on the ship.

*Big heart, self worth issues, stubborn, kind, which all make him have the survival instincts of drydak on spice

[rametarin]

Angry about something

Please, please, please, let movements be horrible on their own without saying, "The're the [previous thing] of [subject]"

We don't say the Nazis were the modern Napoleonic Imperialists. We don't say the Napoleonic Imperialists were their day's Golden Horde of Genghis Khan. We don't say Muslim pirates and abductors from Tripoli cruising Europe for slaves and conquests were "totally Trans Atlantic Slave Trading it." Muslims were abducting Europeans for slave applications for centuries before Europeans did it for

And when people talk about modern day Intersectional Feminists, capital P Progressives and oldschool TERF-flavor feminists get nasty in accordance with their values all over a pasttime, a hobby, or a group of people that enjoys something and tells them they're doing it wrong thanks to a VERY unreliably narrated assessment of what they are and why they are, they tend to treat their behavior as if it's the same stock mindset of previous experience related to Christian puritainism and religious evangelism.

Don't fucking do this. Their values are not the same. They come from a different place, and you doing this helps them do something they SPECIFICALLY like to do. First, muck around acting like assholes in self-righteous quests to control how people interpret reality and see things, and when called out for it, have their own controlled mea culpa where they apologize because, "that's just the old Christian White Supremacist in me, the feminism part of me isn't like that and can't be like that because feminism is just good and can't be bad. I'm sowwy. :C"

No. Fucking no. Do NOT fucking allow that to happen. Feminism is not a simple act of seeing women as equal, it's an entire dogmatic baggage that necessitates Class Struggle Theory, the willful adoption of the idea the only thing that matters in sexual politics is that "Women Are Oppressed (TM)" even when circumstances and culture are entirely equal and even handed with them, and that society owes them something to compensate for this inherent oppression- at the expense of men. And that Society is the third wheel in their relationship, automatically there to redistribute from the man.

Feminism bills itself as simply a phenomenon of 'equality'... for women.. but it is no more this than Christianity is synonymous with The Good(tm). It certainly is a shitty way to see the world, but it is not the definition of seeing the world. It boils down to making some very very intensely specific logical leaps and shortcuts out of convenience and then dogmatically insisting these values are immutable and unquestionable.

From that position, we come to the other little black box in the equation. The idea that something that exists in culture that represents an icon or concept, oppresses and exploits that icon, object or group, and that it is specifically wrong to objectify that, but only if it's a woman, a group that is "oppressed." (it's however perfectly justifiable to objectify an 'oppressor.' See how that works.) Right before they say some apologetics like, "It's not MY fault cisheterosexual Judeo-Christian Patriarchy is sexually binary! Maybe if you agreed in more options we wouldn't be having this conversation!"

And it's because of this shitty point of view, they argue that even having big booby fictional characters that are female, boobily boobing down the stairs for the appreciation of the audience, they jump to the next facet of their belief system. Male Gaze Theory.

Built off their idea that Classes Struggle (tm) and Women Are the Obligate Oppressed Class(tm), and that any reference or participation by women is inherently an act of an oppressed political group in bondage to and beholden to their oppressive captors, AND that works of fiction and literature are part of culture, these facets of culture give groups their marching orders, programming and ideas on what they are, mean and even their existence. They believe, uncompromisingly, that your very perception and understanding of reality is built solely upon what books written by the state have to say about what is real and what isn't. That if society writes books about a murderer and don't go out of their way to omnipotently, omnipresently dictate with no ambiguity that, "Murder is bad, ackshully," that you endorse a society where murder happens. And, no joke, this is how they imagine murder, theft and antisocial behavior happening. Because it exists in that cultural bubble like evil waves of energy, just going unneutralized to warp the minds of unprepared people who haven't been told what is right and wrong by society, making them rapists, murderers and exploiters of those weaker than them (and they only care when the person exploits someone weaker than them.)

So they see sexy drawn women as depictions of an oppressed minority being reveled over by a slavemaster class, exploiting their image and the idea of that group for profit (which they also despise) and believe the women should also be profitting off their "exploitation" in fiction, and some sort of state council should exist that oversees the expression or interpretation of women in fiction, or else abolish the work from existing for not fitting their moral and social view of how literature and culture are "allowed" to see women. Seeing this very dour, extreme interpretation about how all men depicting women is exploitation, and by default society is meant for a male, oppressor perspective, is called, "Male Gaze Theory."

At no point in this equation did their greviance or conceptual principles cross over with Puritainism or Christians. They are their own totalitarian beasts, and like the Nazis are not Napoleonics are not The Mongol Horde, FUCKING TELL IT LIKE IT IS AND ACCEPT RADICAL FEMINISM IS JUST LIKE THIS.

You can somehow see one radical conservative and condemn the entire conservative or right-wing party as inherently racist, white supremacist and homophobic, but you can't acknowledge that radical feminism has more Ls to its name and more bad ideas and more bad values than rejecting the idea that trans men and women aren't men and women. All their ideological supremacism, all their logical leaps, all of their antagonistic marching into any fandom and demanding the fandom most conform to their ideas of what is mentally, emotionally an socially healthy, are their own. They are not Puritans, they're fucking radical feminists. Do not use the bad behavior of past groups as an ablative shield when you fucking mean what you mean.

"Well complaining about feminism makes me sound like some kind of CHUD..."

That's a you problem. In the past, complaining about the Church when it was synonymous with power would've made you a "pagan" or an "unbeliever." And before the T in LGBT got traction, it was just "anti-feminist" for a biological man to argue with a woman, giving them infinite instant Ls, even if they did identify as a woman. It starts somewhere.

Call it like it is and just realize radical feminism is rotten from the top windows of the attic to the foundations.

[spurgie-cousin]

Do you remember the big bates / Duggar baby boom a few years back, when it seemed like (even more than usual) everybody was announcing the name for their baby like as SOON as they found out the gender? I remember personally thinking at the time that was kind of an annoying thing to do, or if nothing else kind of a shame because by the time the baby got here there wasn’t really any fun new news to share/learn. Also all the times we have ever been annoyed by names that feel too close to an existing name (Evy/Evie being the most notable).

I do still think it’s nice to save the name for birth (fundie or otherwise)…..BUT I just want to issue a personal mea culpa to the fundieverse—as a first time pregnant person expecting at the same time as both of my older sisters (both of them have 1-2 kids already and both are due before me)—I really do get why that happened.

We are due end of September, are having a boy, and settled on our name (first and middle) several weeks ago. We are waiting to announce the name til birth, but I had shared the first name as one on our short list with my mom and oldest sister when we were still deciding. And when I tell you I am SO paranoid that my middle sister (due with her first boy, second child, in August) is going to use our name before we get a chance to—i mean I am pretty chill overall but the fear she will steal our name is maybe my most intrusive thought.

It would be VERY on brand for this sister to do that (either intentionally or because she heard it thrown around as a brainstorm suggestion in conversation with my mom or something and got incepted into stealing it kind of unintentionally). And the thing is, if that happens what can you do?? Are you going to hold it against the baby? Respond with “wtf” and try to get the fam on your side against your sibling minutes after they birthed this innocent life into the world? No way. You’ve got no recourse.

Anyway. Just want to say as someone who never considered announcing a name before birth, I am now considering announcing internally to the family just to be sure my sister due before me doesn’t steal our baby name. And I only have 2 sisters pregnant at the same time as me, not like 7 or however many it has been at once in these families. I also formally forgive all parties the Evy/Evie ordeal. Those kids will have a million cousins and they live across the damn country from each other. Once you’ve settled on a name and feel a little bit bonded with that baby in your belly, it’s hard to let it go and just pick something else.

Not really an ask I guess just…another example of *these are real people with very bad and harmful beliefs and occasionally very cringy behaviors, but also—sometimes they’re just human and we are perhaps a bit quick to be harsh*? Idk felt like it belonged on fundie tumblr but I don’t really have a blog so sent it to you feel free to just skip or delete!!

Yea I agree lol, I remember being sooooo annoyed with all the speculated name drama for that exact reason, like truly. There's a portion of the fundie snark community that desperately needs these women to be having some kind of secret Real Housewives-level of drama going on between them at all times because they view it all as entertainment, and the women as characters. And that's not to say I don't believe any of those people ever have conflict with each other, but to assume things like someone giving their child a name they'll have forever just to spite someone or with no evidence like.......come on lol.

And like you mentioned with the name announcement thing, I think people forget that these women are also a part of communities with similar values, so in addition to their humongous families, they're also probably getting birth announcements from friends/acquaintances every other heartbeat. So who knows why any of them chose to announce things like names when they did, maybe it was to steal spotlight from a sister like so many snarkers thought, or maybe it was just for the 100000 other reasons people decide when to do that stuff. I just don't relate to their need to immediately find a negative explanation for these kinds of things.

Idk I have so much to say about this subject that I just can't articulate right now because I have a million things to do atm, but there's a whole other conversation we could have about how much misogyny pops up in the snarking community, even though it is supposedly a very feminist place. I don't know how else to describe it right now except that it's often the same vibe as when people say rancid shit about fat folks online and then justify it with "i JuSt WaNt YoU tO bE hEaLtHy" y'know

[abeautifulblog]

Thoughts on the Radovid romance

A couple people have asked about the Radovid/Jaskier relationship, and I thought it was... fine? As fine as anything in this show gets?

I wasn't expecting it to dethrone Geralt/Jaskier, because 20+ years of Jaskier building his life and legacy around Geralt is a lot more compelling than Some Twink He Met Yesterday, but I did go into it with a genuinely open mind. Everyone on tumblr was gushing over their chemistry, and I was like, Yea I'd believe it, given that this is Joey Batey we're talking about. So I was expecting to enjoy it the way I'd enjoyed the Yennskier content in S2, the rare treat of two characters having a real emotional connection.

And then I watched it, and it wasn't bad, but the relationship was a lot more disjointed (and their "chemistry" a lot less compelling) than tumblr had led me to believe. (Lol, mea culpa, I should have known better than to take tumblr's word for it.) Also it’s unclear whether it’s supposed to be a cute romance, or whether it’s two people using each other for their own ends?

But it did brush up against some interesting thoughts I'd had before about Jaskier and his patrons, and got me to thinking about consent and power dynamics again, because I am THEE MOST predictable little beastie in fandom. 🤣

First off, I'm not sure what we're supposed to make of Radovid. Obviously he's ~hiding his true self~ in some way, but I can't tell if we're meant to take at face value the side of himself he shows Jaskier -- that he's more intelligent than he's been letting on, and is actually deeply lonely in the empty-headed partyboy role he's been playing, desperate for genuine connection and for someone to truly see him for who he is -- or whether that is yet more deception, and this is all part of some big ambitious scheme that he'll whip out in a mustache-twirling villain reveal. There are elements that make me think it's the latter, but Hugh Skinner's acting is also just weird (and why are his eyes so wet o_o), and I can't tell whether that's supposed to be deliberate foreshadowing, or if, once again, the people making the show are just clueless about how their creative choices are coming off.

(I assume this will get answered at some point, possibly already has in part 2, but I haven't watched that yet.)

Honestly, the part that caught my interest the most was when Jaskier showed up at Radovid's salon wanting to talk about new intel he had on Rience, and Radovid was blithely uninterested, just wanted Jaskier to sing for them -- and then proceeded to casually, completely disregard Jaskier's No.

gremble: Oho? 👀

That's a red flag! 😊 Jaskier tried to set a boundary, and Radovid brushed right past it. And in any competently-executed piece of media, I would expect that to be deliberately signaling something. It doesn't necessarily mean that Radovid is evil -- could just mean he's a crown prince who doesn't have much experience with people telling him No -- but seeing him blithely override Jaskier's wishes in a low-stakes situation sets a bad precedent, and foreshadows how he might behave later, when the stakes might well be higher.

...Except that this production team is so HILARIOUSLY bad at writing healthy relationships -- for three seasons they've been feeding us the most toxic slop imaginable and telling us that's what love looks like -- that I have no idea whether that was on purpose or not. 😂😂😂

--

The Radovid storyline does touch on some concepts that I've long found fascinating, about Jaskier's system of patronage and how he trades on his sexuality. How his work is canonically sex work, or at least sex-work adjacent (that's made explicit when he talks about the Countess de Stael, that they were involved sexually while she was supporting him financially), and the balancing act of keeping his patrons happy when they are always, always going to be second in his affections to Geralt -- and how they probably wouldn't be too happy to learn that.

Because for all that S3 tells us Jaskier is developing a crush on Radovid, Joey Batey's acting says something very different. He did not come off as a man in love, to me -- he came off as someone who's acutely aware that when the crown prince of Redania rolls up and tells you he's your biggest fan, you fucking smile for him.

(Why yes, Moulin Rouge is my all-time favorite movie, why do you ask? 🤣)

Jaskier's interactions with Radovid feel very... 'calculated' isn't quite the word for it, but Jaskier is conscious of the power differentials there, and always carefully choosing what he does and says in light of what he knows Radovid wants from him. He's conscious of having to keep Radovid happy, yes but he's also conscious of what he stands to gain from having a crown prince clamoring to win his affections, and what he could leverage out of that. (Like, say, having the entire Redanian army to protect his little found family.)

And the power imbalance isn't entirely one-directional either. Radovid wants Jaskier's affections, something that can't be bought or coerced, and wants his specifically, which means Jaskier has all the power to give or withhold it... while also being aware that toying with a prince's affections is a dangerous game.

........Or maybe I entirely misread that, and Jaskier's feelings for Radovid are meant to be genuine, and the whole thing was supposed to be a cute little romance. The way that Joey & the production team have talked about that relationship makes it sound like that's what they were going for, but what's onscreen is very ambiguous.

It will surprise no one to learn that I think the more interesting option would be the one that complicates Jaskier’s motives. That even if he likes Radovid well enough, he's still deliberately leveraging Radovid's crush on him to get help for Geralt -- and that if he oversteps, he's risking the wrath of a very powerful man. (And that as the perceived rival, Geralt could wind up as the target of Radovid’s retribution.)

Anyway, it's a fascinating situation, and almost identical to a fic premise I've been tossing around for years. It's never quite coalesced enough to get written, but it does compel me.

(Alternately, if you wanted Radovid to be noble and tragic, @coffee-mage-sans-caffeine suggested a situation in which Radovid and Geralt are in peril together, one of them is not going to make it out of this, and Radovid sacrifices himself so Geralt lives -- because he knows which of them Jaskier loves more.)

[quirinah]

how do you get your colors to look so nice and your lineart so red and vibrant? i love it

omg anon thank you!! 😭 im going 2 be honest I am Not Great with color theory... but i like having my sketch pages look cohesive to me...

BUCKLE UP this is going to need a readmore bc i like talking.

I always sketch in neon colors it's a habit i picked up from an old teacher but I'll think of a color usually on a whim and draw with that. and then if i want to draw something else ill pick another color that i think goes well with the page. usually most of my color schemes r analogous (colors right next to each other on the wheel)

yanked this from recent dunmesh post; i kept most of my colors within the pink/red/orange range.

i wouldn't recommend doing everything in monochrome or analogous palettes though because it's sort of a guilty crutch of mine XD.

sometimes when im coloring ill change the layer mode of the sketch. color burn gets you either very very bright or very very deep colors depending on the color of the flats underneath. multiply and linear burn do the same thing but they're a lot tamer and generally always return darker colors. im sure there's some technical bits behind this though. ill either color my lineart afterward to compliment the color of the flats, leave it as is, or mess with layer modes if i feel like it. my favorite trick is color burn + linear burn + some combination of two lineart layers and just fiddling until i get a nice burn effect.

mithrun was done with crimson red on color burn.

coloring... like 999% of this is relative color which is like. kind of the idea that colors look different when placed next to each other. if you eyeball it a bit it's pretty noticeable.

what i used to do a bit ago was i would fill in the area i wanted to color with one big mask of color, make a new layer that has a clipping mask down to the flat layer of color, and then draw my actual flat colors. the color of the mask helped me pick my flat colors bc if I picked a color i think stood out too much next to the mask i could kind of just adjust it until it looked a little more cohesive.

old ish drawing next 2 a canon reference. i ignore local color a lot...mea culpa....but my overall color palette here was a light pink, so the shirt here is actually a desaturated pink? or violet i believe. if you shift sort of that purple color far enough into the gray area of your color wheel it can take on a blueish or even greenish hue. it being next to a lot of warm pinks/fuschias helps.

a neat thing that kind of helps is that if you desaturate or saturate certain colors they can kind of take on a certain hue? not sure if this makes sense. sort of how orange here turns tealish blue the grayer it gets. so if im drawing something that's predominantly orange and i have a blue color i can just take an orange color and desaturate it until i get a color that sort of looks like blue. and that way it kind of looks more harmonious? at least to me XD

shading. i don't apply serious lighting to a lot of my drawings, but a helpful bit is that the shadows tend to be the opposite of whatever color the lighting is? i try to think first about the "mood" or the main color i want to go for in the drawing and then i pick a shadow color opposite of that. so for here, i wanted the lighting to be a coolish magenta so the shadows r lime green. if there's anything off i fiddle around until i get something i like. the shadows on the skin here were too green initially so i shifted them a little more orange.

there's a "band" of color going on between the transition of the shadows to the light. generally this could be for a lot of reasons and i tend to use it differently (core shadow? overexposure? etc etc). but this is a color post so ill try not to go too off track.

but generally digital doesn't "mix" colors the same way traditional colors do if you use RGB (cmyk is a bit better with this but is kind of a pain to get used to), so to make blending a little less muddy, i sometimes add an intermediate color to smooth things out a little. for example, mixing digitally blue n yellow tends to get you gray, but generally, blue + yellow makes green, so if im making a blue->yellow transition ill slap some green color in the middle so it flows a little better.

I do a lot more cel shading nowadays. if you've been on here for a while earlier this year i have another style of coloring but it's not really accurate to how shadows really work so i wouldn't recommend looking at it. it's mostly to add zest and texture to the underlying flat colors.

coloring your lineart does a TON to helping your colors look vibrant, though its like the garnish on a dish to me (same with shadows). i think it's good to try and play with your flat colors and try to make sure those look in order first before adding flourishes. usually ill leave it a dark, saturated color that again matches my overall palette but sometimes i go in and color them by alpha locking my lineart layer and picking a color that matches the flat colors underneath? not sure how to explain it properly.

i used a darkish purple for shuro's ponytail to match the dull red of the flat colors (more relative color! trying to simulate a black/brown while keeping the pink palette there) but a lighter crimson for laios's blond. the light was this super intense like blush pink so i thought it might be cool to add this neon salmon red in the areas of that light to really give off that vibe of a very bright intense rim light.

sometimes you could also tweak with gradient maps or color balance, which adjusts hue based on how light or dark a color is. these r fun to mess with as a final touch but i need to watch using them because they can become crutches real fast XD but those are also just tools to help you. in the end just developing a good sense of how color works and how you want to use it is the best place to start.

LONGASS ramble but yeah. tldr just kind of train ur eye for color and look at what you like best. which is unhelpful and a little sucky but it really is just observation and practice and maybe some personal zest.

happy drawing!

[cozyaliensuperstar7]

Beautiful People 👑

samanthairvinwwe:

Meet Rachel 🐶🥹

hump day dump 23

rhearipley_wwe:

🇦🇺 Media day 🇦🇺

#WWEChamber

teamlhlebanon:

LHFW is officially backkkk ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 @lewishamilton #lewis #lewishamilton #teamlh #lh44 #bahrain #f1

trinity_fatu:

“I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord

And I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord

Can you feel it coming in the air tonight? Oh Lord, oh Lord“ 🎶 #raw #eliminationchamber

keke:

Wish I took more pics! Best weekend vibes. I feel like I stretched my stomach out I ate so damn much I’m actually scared lowkey 🤣🤣

All smiles over here. 🥵

lupitanyongo:

It's safe to say I'm having a good time at @berlinale 😊

#BradyCorbet #AnnHui #ChristianPetzold #AlbertSerra #JasmineTrinca #OksanaZabuzhko #StephanieHayes

naomi:

#congratulations #DanielLee & @burberry team @BURBERRY #24 🖤🇬🇧

theestallion:

My first @nike collection is OUT NOW 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 get it while it’s hot hotties because it’s almost all SOLD OUT !!! I can’t wait to see yall in it ❤️🖤

regejean:

BAFTA NIGHTS

@giorgioarmani

@longines

@holly_macnaghten

johnboyega:

Night out with big sis 💕

@burberry by Daniel Lee Winter 2024

📸: @lloydpursall

kellyrowland:

Mea Culpa Press Run

💙💙💙💙💙💙💙

“Mea Culpa” out Feb.23rd

THIS FRIDAY!!!

bookertfivex:

One Team. One Dream.

colewalliser:

VICTORIA MONET! I’m always a fan of shooting couples on The GlamBOT but not often is the double a mother and daughter! Victoria was awesome and Hazel was so cute! Though I think she might have been a bit overwhelmed so I tried to use my inside voice when directing this one, opposed to my typical red carpet screaming lol. This one is fun, hopefully I’ll get to shoot the two of them next year! #victoriamonet #colewalliser #glambotbts #livefrome #grammys

[hollygl125]

yo umm i was wondering and couldn't find on google so i think you could help me

the shifts in csi (like day shift, graveyard shift etc) are around which times?

Hello, lovely anon,

First of all, my sincere apologies for not having responded to your query in a timely (or, you know, remotely helpful) manner. Not as an excuse, but as an attempt at an explanation, I will tell you that I have been kind of a disaster person lately (much more so than indicated in the linked post, and even much more so this past fall than now) and don’t always have a ton of control over where my mind chooses to focus.

I should also acknowledge that, while I carried out my fall 2021 CSI rewatch (when I didn’t realize I was subsequently going to care about any of these details) with sort of rapt attention, in my (yes, many) subsequent rewatches I have often skipped scenes or storylines that don’t really interest me (e.g., where neither Sara Sidle nor Gil Grissom is anywhere to be found), and I am almost always doing two or three things at once while watching. So it’s certainly more than possible I have missed some non-GSR details in there.

In response to your question, the two things I can tell you with certainty are these:

The CSIs of CSI have three shifts: day shift, swing shift, and night/graveyard shift (this last being what the lead characters of CSI are generally working). Logic would dictate that, with three shifts and 24 hours in a day, the shifts most likely start (and end) eight hours apart. (I will not, however, state that logic necessarily dictates that the shifts each be eight hours, and I will discuss that more below.)

At the end of “Mea Culpa” (05x09), after Warrick, Nick, and Catherine are transferred from night/graveyard shift to swing shift, Warrick tells Grissom, “Well, I got to get some rest. Swing shift starts at four in the afternoon. That’s a big change.”

Based on the above (and what I will discuss below), the best answer I can give is that the shifts should start at the following times (and end approximately, though not necessarily exactly, eight hours later):

Day shift: 8:00 a.m.

Swing shift: 4:00 p.m.

Night/graveyard shift: 12:00 a.m. (midnight).

(I will also note some contradictory information below the cut, although I don’t know the source of that information.)

But the other thing I will note (and for which I will give some possibly excessive examples below the cut) is that CSI does a pretty terrible job of keeping track of these kind of workplace logistics. You might have thought the writers and showrunners of what was for a time the most popular scripted TV show in the world (or something like that) would have added a few notes to their show bible about workplace logistics (shift times, scheduling, etc.) but . . . nope, not in any way that is apparent to me! (I find wanting to write a story that is compatible with the internal logic of the show and finding there really is no internal logic of the show to be terribly frustrating.)

Shift times:

Okay, to be honest, the first place I looked for an answer to your query was in @addictedtostorytelling’s wonderful meta, both because she is an expert in (among many other things!) these finer details (e.g., dates on documents shown in the show) and because I was pretty sure I had seen a post from her that addressed shift times.

The only post I could find on the topic was this one, in which the asker states that “we know there are 3 csi shifts: day (7am to 3pm), swing (3pm to 11pm) and night (11pm to 7am).” I don’t know the source of information for that statement. (If anyone else knows, I’d be most grateful if you shared in the comments, so I can update this post!) Honestly, it’s more than possible that CSI has given contradictory information on this subject. But the one place I personally know of a shift start time being given in the show is in Warrick’s statement quoted above.

I also did a general google search on shift times (not specific to CSI or even real-world CSI-type employees). The most common answers I saw were days = 8:00 (or 7:00) a.m. to 4:00 (or 3:00) p.m., swing = 4:00 (or 3:00) p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (or 11:00 p.m.), night/graveyard = 12:00 a.m. (or 11:00 p.m.) to 8:00 (or 7:00) a.m.

In this post on Talk CSI, you can see people trying to answer your question way back in 2006, when the show was airing. One board member there noted that their (forensic, as I understand it) agency had three ten-hour shifts (with two hours of overlap at each end). Another noted that, where they worked (also apparently in the forensic context), the shifts were “12:30 to 8:30, 8:30 to 4:30 and 4:30 to 12:30 working 8 hour shifts.” @figsr kindly advised me that in her (non-forensic) experience shifts would have a half-hour overlap for handover.

I have no personal experience with this, but to me also just logically it would make sense for these shifts to have some sort of overlap for handover—so that, e.g., one team can be dealing with their beginning of shift housekeeping (shifts, assignments, memos from upper management, etc.) while the other is still primarily responsible for calls to the field.

Anyway, based on the above, I can’t give a conclusion on exactly how long the shifts are/when they end. But, as for when the shifts start, my best answer is as given at the top.

The other thing I should probably note here is that the CSIs of CSI do not stop working just because their shifts have ended; when they are in the middle of something that needs to be addressed in a timely manner, they tend to keep going, and they seem to work a lot of double shifts. They also apparently help out other shifts sometimes when necessary. (You’ll note that we see them working during the day a lot, but I don’t know how much of that can be attributed to the issue I discuss below.)

Shift times + scheduling + lack of internal logic (i.e., WTF, CSI?!):

As @addictedtostorytelling discusses in the meta I linked above (which I highly recommend reading, if you’re interested in this topic!), CSI doesn’t make much effort to depict the characters’ work schedules in any sort of realistic way, and drawing inferences about the logistics of the their work schedules is kind of a crapshoot.

Here are a few examples of CSI seeming to ignore its own shift times:

In 01x10, Sara’s asleep with her head on the table in the break room. It’s daylight (looks like morning). She wakes up as the kettle starts whistling. Grissom asks, “Did you sleep here?” Sara responds, “I was working till 4:00 a.m.” —> 4:00 a.m. should be their lunch time. None of this makes any sense.

In 07x08, Sara spends her day waiting to testify in court; they never get to her. Afterwards she goes to talk to Grissom in his office; based on the foregoing it must be late afternoon (maybe around 4:30-5:00 p.m.). Grissom has been working on that episode’s case and must have been on shift since at least the night before. He’s now sitting there reading Thoreau, and she tells him, “I won’t wait up.” —> I know he’s traditionally been a workaholic, and maybe they both have the night off, but it always strikes me as odd (and maybe a bit irresponsible?) that he’s still not heading home, given how long he must have been up and the fact that their usual shift time is in probably close to seven hours (and I always imagine him, as supervisor, arriving early).

At the end of 07x18, the TV reporter says that the suspect confessed earlier that day to the murders of the six showgirls. (The TV newscast is supposedly live, and it’s dark outside where the reporter is. He also states, “The families have organized a candlelight vigil that will begin here tonight.”) Grissom brushes a tear off Sara’s cheek then walks her out of the lab with his arm around her/hand on her back. The hallway has dim lighting and is empty aside from someone (not Natalie Davis!) mopping the floors. It’s giving very “end of the day so the lab’s deserted” vibes. —> But it’s literally never the end of the day there! They work the night shift, and the lab is always humming!

Similarly, in CSIV 1x05, Sara and then Grissom as well (“the matched set”) run into their suspect (Martin Kline) while leaving what is very specifically (i.e., with several establishing shots) shown to be a dark and empty lab. (Like, it’s clearly supposed to feel creepy when Kline first confronts Sara and she’s all alone.) —> But, again, the original CSI showed us that place was never dark and empty! It was always humming!

In 08x01, the security guard at the parking lot from which Sara was abducted says that Sara “eats at the veggie place downstairs a couple times a week.” When Catherine asks when she was there that night, he says, “I don’t know, like 7:30, maybe. That’s when she usually comes.” —> Sara eating at 7:30 p.m. is like someone who works a 9-5 job eating at about 4:30 a.m. (I also feel like their working hours are so erratic that, if she were able to pull off anything regular a couple times per week, it would be something regular she could do with Grissom—like maybe sitting down to a nice relaxed home-cooked rather than take-out meal twice per week.)

Shift times aren’t the only issue, though.

In 02x15, for example, Sara’s “Request for Leave of Absence” form states that her work week is “Tue - Sat grave.” Now, I don’t pay much heed to the CSI props department. (They did give us these nonsensical ID cards, after all.) But this would make a lot of sense to me—the CSIs all having a staggered work week, with two regular, consecutive scheduled days off each. Only . . . we don’t ever really see anything like that?

At the end of 03x22, Sara notes that the schedule says Grissom has the night off, and, when he confirms, she then adds, “Me, too.” It certainly doesn’t sound like this is a regular (weekly) occurrence. But in truth I can’t remember ever actually seeing two of our CSIs have the night off together. We almost never see them having a night off at all. Even in 03x03, when we are told Sara had the night off, it’s in the context of Grissom having called her in to work.

(I think there are a very small number of examples of one of the CSIs actually having a night off—e.g., in 03x09, Catherine has a couple days off but stops by the lab to pick something up for Lindsey’s birthday.)

Admittedly, I get this one, because of course the showrunners want for the most part for the whole cast (especially its major players, the CSIs) to be onscreen throughout every episode. So the subject of days off would have to be fudged. But it strikes me as funny that, in 04x12, when Nick is absent for the entire episode, they don’t take the opportunity to show someone having their regular days off; instead, Sara tells us he’s at the “American Academy of Forensic Science convention” (even though it’s about a month early for the AAFS conference).

Another matter that makes no logistical sense to me is the staffing changes that go on during and immediately after season 05.

In the pilot, the graveyard shift is five CSIs (including Holly Gribbs) plus Brass, who presumably does a lot of paperwork. Then Sara takes Holly’s spot and Brass is transferred out, so it’s just five very qualified CSIs (and no wonder Grissom is always behind on his paperwork, with Brass gone).

By season 5, graveyard shift is up to five and a half CSIs, basically, with Greg’s inclusion as a CSI-in-training. Then Ecklie decides to mix things up (i.e., punish Grissom and his pals), and he splits them into two shifts, adding only Sofia (to the graveyard shift). So then graveyard has three and a half CSIs (four once Greg makes CSI I), and swing shift has three CSIs. In 05x11, Ecklie acknowledges swing shift is short a couple bodies and blames budget constraints. But, if swing shift is short a couple bodies, graveyard shift must be short a body, too, even once Greg makes CSI I. How can budget constraints suddenly necessitate them being down that many bodies—especially when by season six Ecklie can somehow justify letting them now have six full CSIs on graveyard shift? Also, we know the swing shift supervisor was transferred to days to replace Ecklie, but what happened to the rest of the previous swing shift?

Now, my petty headcanon would be that the entire day shift save for Sofia quits when Ecklie gets promoted because the thought of him as assistant lab director is unbearable to them, as a result of which he moves the entire swing shift to days and pretends the staff shortages are due to budget cuts. But I find it kind of funny (again!) that, during the fifth season, when CSI really was on top of the world (e.g., ratings, cast winning the SAG award, Tarantino directing “Grave Danger”), the showrunners couldn’t at least have found a couple warm bodies to show up occasionally to round out the swing shift (even if Ecklie was punishing Grissom and his shift by leaving the graveyard shift understaffed). (In 05x16, Catherine is shown talking to three randoms in “forensics” coveralls, one of whom calls her “boss,” but no explanation is given as to who they are, and I think that’s the most we ever see in that regard.)

Anyway, thank you so much for your question, and my apologies for rambling with some of my CSI logistics grievances. My best answer to your question is as given at the top. If you should have another question, please feel free to send it my way—barring any acts of God, etc. (unforeseeable future events), I will most almost certainly be able to manage a more prompt response!