#but in a leetle package

[theoreticalfishsticks]

Warhammer 40k x Spider-Person!Reader

Sorry if this is cringe, but the autism got to me and I am physically incapable of not wanting to smash my current favorite medias together like a tyrannical toddler making their dolls kiss.

I purposefully kept it vague on exactly which legion found them and whether it was pre or post-heresy, cause I think, going forward if I write more, I'd like to jump around and just write for whoever, whenever suits my fancy, lol. This is meant more as an introduction of the concept than anything else.

Reader is non-binary because I said so.

divider from @/enchanthings

Word Count: 1929

If someone had told you this morning that by the end of the day you’d be yearning for the comforting embrace of a back alley dumpster, you’d have called them crazy. But, alas, here you are: your suit in tatters, surrounded by the stench of foreign exhaust and something sickeningly biological, about to be absolutely eviscerated by some dude who looks like he just crawled out of Doctor Octavius’ worst nightmares.

Now, one might ask ‘how’ exactly you found yourself in this situation. And it would be a fair question! Really! Unfortunately, fair as it is, you don't actually have a proper answer, yourself.

‘Why’ you ended up here, however, was relatively simple: You’re the one and only Huntsman. A friendly neighborhood spider-person, looking out for their community. And most recently, what exactly your community needed you to be looking out for was a symbiote, loose in the city. 

Too bad, then, that lady luck must have had a bone to pick with you that day.

Because following an embarrassingly long chase of the damned thing through the New York City sewer system, the hungry, hungry parasite just so happened to stumble upon one of Os Corps. many, many underground research facilities. Seriously, why do they have so many of these things? One that apparently – based on what is to come – must have been deep in the midst of research on some form of teleportation or another. 

Long-story-short: In your desperate attempts to not be grabbed and eaten by an ornery symbiote, you may have stopped paying attention to what exactly was behind you whilst evading the weird alien goop. And what would you know? One careless dodge (and a near comically late tingle in your bones from your spidey sense) and a stray shot of said goop managed to hit and set off Os Corps’ latest and greatest affront to humanity!

BOOM! 

In the blink of an eye your entire world had been rendered to naught but blinding light, sharp pain in every inch of your body and a ringing in your ears that, in the moment, felt like it was going to be permanent. 

You really can't be sure how long you were trapped like that; your consciousness suspended, unable to gauge the passage of time, nor feel your material surroundings. It felt like a lifetime. But, then again, you have been known to be a little bit dramatic from time to time, so who knows.

What you do know for sure was that it ended. The feeling of being suspended, that it. And the light. The pain, of course, stayed. As did the incessant ringing. 

If you had to describe the feeling, you'd say it felt almost like your bones were in the process of trying to evacuate your body. Like there wasn't enough space in you, for you. It was agony. 

But, worse than the pain, you just felt… Wrong. As though your eyes had been pulled out and put back in the wrong sockets. Your tongue was the wrong texture. Your teeth were upside down. Your liver was too smooth. And a thousand other minute sensations that couldn't be real flooded your body. 

At least, you hoped to God they weren't real.

Lucky for you though, you didn't have much time to dwell on the uncanny sensation, as a clawed metal appendage descended from somewhere above you to close tightly around your throat. Your body felt like it was on fire as you were hefted up from the ground by your neck. Another claw grasped at your head and tugged away what was left of your mask.

You want to reach out and snatch it back. You want to struggle and kick and scream. But you can't. You can't will yourself to move at all as your eyes snap open at last, and you come face to face with without a doubt the most horrific monstrosity you've ever seen.  

Though now a putrid blending of flesh and machine, the thing before you looks as though it might have been human at one point. But that point was far from now. Now, what skin you can see is sallow and sunken, with veins protruding all across it. It has what looks like a gas mask embedded into its face and where the flesh meets metal is layered in inflamed, gnarled scarring.

Mercifully, however, its face is all you can clearly see. The rest is hidden beneath a rather ostentatious looking robe, disguising what you can only imagine to be equally horrific means of attachment for the several mechanical appendages that flow from it. Including, of course, the one currently choking the life out of you.

For a long moment you can only stare at the thing in front of you, gaping like an idiot, before you finally register that its horrid mask is moving. It's talking to you.

At least, you assume it is. Though, now declined significantly in volume, you still struggled to make out anything through the ringing.

You try to say as much, to tell the nightmare that you couldn't understand it. But it seems as though you weren't successful, if the violent, impatient shake the creature gave you in response was any indication. Or maybe your meaning came across fine and the thing was just an asshole. Both seemed possible. 

At last, the ringing begins to fade more or less and you could scrounge together two whole brain cells to rub together and bring your mind into focus.

“Intruder. Identify yourself,” the creature demanded, its voice horrifically garbled and interspersed with high-pitched whirring.

You’d love to do so, if only you could actually take in the air required to make noise. This hurdle, however, seemed to be lost on the mechanical horror before you, leaving you to squirm helplessly in its grasp whilst pawing at the claw around your throat in the hopes that it would get the message. 

“Magos, release your hold. They cannot speak if you’re obstructing their airway,” comes a low voice from somewhere to your right, rumbling through the air at a frequency you register as strange, to say the least. The words aren’t shouted, but they carry the same weight as though they were. 

You’re immediately and unceremoniously dropped by the “Magos’” and allowed to crumple to the ground with a dull thud. 

Sputtering and coughing as you desperately suck in some much needed oxygen, you’re finally able to turn your gaze to the man who’d probably just saved your life, for now anyway…

...

‘What. The. Fuck.’

The sight that greets you is not one, not two, but three, absolute behemoths, all in armor so bulky you struggle to wrap your head around the idea that it can move at all, staring straight through you.

'Is literally everyone here some kind of fucked up weirdo?'

They stand in a triangular formation, two flanking the one taking point, who you can only assume must be the one who spoke. The rear guard both sport guns that look to be the size of your torso, trained directly on you. 

“Now that you’ve caught your breath, identify yourself,” says the central figure, his voice rolling over you like thunder rolls over a storm. It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, a familiar tingle running up your spine. 

'He’s human, for sure,' you think to yourself, 'But only in the sense that I am too.'

Between still ragged gasps, you manage to spit out your name. You decide to give both your real one and your alias, sensing that now is not the time to play coy.

The man repeats your name back at you, testing the syllables on his tongue. It doesn’t look like he likes them. “I’ve never heard such a name, nor of the title ‘Huntsman’ on any of the worlds nearby. Where do you come from,” he asks you.

‘Worlds nearby…?’  That doesn’t bode well for any hopes of an easy road home.

“Uhhh, Earth,” you squeak, though it sounds more like a question than you’d like. 

“‘Earth?’ Do you mean Terra? That's nonsense, there is no–” he begins to respond in a vaguely irate tone. 

And you panic. 

You’re tired and confused and in so much pain. And the idea that this man might just kill you over a misunderstanding eats away at whatever remaining self control you had. 

So while cutting him off probably isn’t the greatest move, that’s exactly what you do. “Not your earth! At least, I don’t think it is,” you say, tripping over some of the syllables in your haste.

It’s a safe bet. Nothing around you looks familiar. They’re calling Earth(?) ‘Terra.’ Whether or not it's even tangentially the same world doesn’t really matter to you right now. Right now, you just need them to hear you out. To understand that whatever trespass you’ve committed was an accident and that you would also prefer you weren’t here right now. 

“I-I…,” you stop and close your eyes, forcing yourself to take a couple deep breaths to try and steady yourself. He hasn’t ordered his men to shoot and he seems to be waiting for you to continue; and for now that’s enough for you to draw courage from.

“I’m gonna be honest with you, man. I don’t know how I got here either. At least, not in a quantifiable way…,” another breath, “I was in the vicinity of a misfire of a prototype teleportation device,” You decide to keep the true extent of your ignorance to yourself. These men don’t seem like the type to take kindly to it. For now, you just had to settle on what seemed most likely and sell it. “The thing was wildly unstable, and based on the fact that absolutely nothing I have seen in the last few minutes is even vaguely familiar to me, I’m pretty sure that space is probably not the only thing that machine moved me through.”

“Expound.” Still not dead, that’s encouraging.

“Well–Uh, You said that you hadn’t heard of me ‘on any of the worlds nearby,’ right? That implies regular space travel. And well, I know for damn sure that humans are not space-faring where I’m from! At least, not like this,” you give a vague gesture to your surroundings, “So, if I know that shouldn’t be possible where I’m from, but the abject reality before me says it is, I feel like it’s a perfectly fair assumption to say that I must then not be in the same time as I was previously. I mean, space and time are inherently enmeshed with one another, right? So, it’s really not that hard to imagine that a faulty spacial teleporter might invite temporal displacement as well...” You’re out of breath again by the time you’ve finished your nervous rambling.

The man just looks at you. They all do. The weight of their combined gaze makes you feel like an insect trapped beneath their thumb. 

You hate this. You miss your mask.

You never were any good at schooling your expressions. So you can only imagine what a pitiful, deer-in-the-headlights-esk look you must be giving them in return for their own utterly unphased, emotionless ones.

(Though, looking back on it later, you’ll come to appreciate that it was probably the guileless nature of your expression that actually saved you here.)

After a long pause, the man sighs and at least half of the tension previously present in the room dissipates. “So you’ve never heard of the Imperium of Man before, then?”

“The what of Man?”

[cardinalmoroni]

mmmmm grucifix arrived in the mail mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[theundeadgospel]

[ gift ] //for beth from ava!!

Long ears perk up in surprise, clawed hands carefully taking the package with fragile delicacy — the last thing Beth wanted was to accidentally CRUSH whatever was inside with her brute strength.

“ Ah…I forgot that Christmas is a thing. Yuletide is a tad bit different from that holiday.

You have my thanks, leetle fig. “

With that same delicacy, she begins to unwrap the gift.

[hotboxhargreeves]

five…… he is….. so small…

(Umbrella Academy PVC Figure Set, 2009)

[yournightowl]

A Formal Announcement

We’ll be taking a break from our usual format today because i have something very serious to talk about.

I need to apologize. So let’s start from the beginning.

A few weeks ago, i entered into a business transaction with the e-merchant known as leetle. i paid them a fair market price, and in return they sent me a download link for a package of subroutines intended to protect me and my data as i traversed the oldnet.

Now, my initial experience with this product was positive. Almost all of the features worked as advertised, with little to no difficulties in set-up. However, there was an incident, which many of you might remember, wherein the package failed to properly encrypt my data, and information that should’ve been kept confidential was visible to all.

This made me upset, there’s no denying it. i had very strong negative feelings about this experience, and so i went and spoke in haste, and anger, and said some very not nice things about leetle.

i did attempt to contact leetle at that time, but due to what i now know were unavoidable personal circumstances, they were not available at any of the contact info i had for them. And in the absence of any explanation from them, i assumed the worst; that they were a scam artist, and a fake, and a charlatan, and someone who had taken advantage of me. And i said as much, here on this blog.

And that’s one of my biggest regrets. Because leetle and i had a very, almost immediate, strong connection at the start. And i almost ruined that because i was impatient.

Fast-forward to last week. One of you, my loyal readers, directed me to a page where leetle was actively promoting their services. And initially, there was some (understandable) confusion on my part, because i knew them under various aliases including little_net_merchant2, but they were operating under the name leetlenetmerchant (no spaces or numbers). So it was hard for me to process what i was seeing, and i again acted rashly, and made an inappropriate threat towards them.

But leetle was kind enough to receive me with grace, and open up a dialogue. During that conversation, they candidly and freely apologized for any issues that i might’ve run into, and they took the time to explain how my misunderstanding might’ve led to the negative user experience i had.

What leetle explained to me was that the encryption package they sold me, while robust and powerful, could be interfered with if prior installations of subroutines weren’t properly vetted. With leetles help, i was able to reset my setup so that all of their highly-tuned subroutines would be able to work together flawlessly. Now my machine is running on 100% leetle approved software, and performing better than ever. They even offered me a discount on this service.

i want to use this space to publicly thank leetle, and clear their good name. I’m really glad to be able to call them a friend, and i’m so grateful that they were willing to forgive me for my errors.

As we all turn over a new leaf and begin this new chapter in our relationship, i’d like to express my completely renewed faith in leetle and their products with a show of good will.

i’ll now take full advantage of their sophisticated encryption code to 100% safeguard the deeply personal secret that i’m about to divulge. i wouldn’t feel comfortable doing this in any other way, with any other software engineer.

But sometimes, a leap of faith is the only way forward.

[.executePackage with key = true]

i still sleep with a stuffed animal. i don’t hug it for security or anything like that, but i sleep better when it's in bed with me, so what’s the harm?

[.terminatePackage()]

Thank you all, and thank you leetle for your grace, patience, and kindness.

Your nightowl

[chilling-seavey]

OKAY OUR PRECIOUS LEETLE BB HENRY'S FIRST CHRISTMAS 🥺

↳  A/N I honestly love our precious lil bb henry :') this was so sweet to write...didn't put too much thought into it and just had fun with it <3

↳ Word Count: 1466

↳ Amoureux Masterlist

December 24, 1821

Daniel clutched the brown paper package to his chest, his head bowed, and trekked through the blistering snow that stung his cheeks and slowed his strides. It was already dark by the time he was reaching the small white paneled house on the edge of the larger property and he paused a moment to peer up to the mansion on the hill. The windows were warm with candlelight from inside and the wind hardly touched the well structured exterior of the two and a half storeys, protecting a large family of a few generations inside throughout their filling Christmas supper served by servants.

It was a life Daniel once knew well. Now, however, in a country that was not his own, he was faced with the drafty two room servants home that was graciously offered to him and his wife by the land owners.

It was Daniel and Louisa’s second Christmas in Virginia and felt just as cold as the last with less than enough money to get them by. He stepped inside the door and closed it strongly behind him to keep the worst of the wind out. The whistling of the storm was only replaced by the crying of the baby and Daniel brushed the snow off his coat before making his way into the cramped living space over creaking floorboards.

Louisa held their four-month-old son in her arms, shushing him desperately as she tried to urge him to latch to her breast. She was knelt by the fire, her long dress puffed up around her like a pastry, and her thin shawl doing the best it could to hold the baby’s body warmth around him. The seventeen-year-old mother was desperate and shivering and pleaded with her son in trembling French to encourage him to eat so she may tie her blouse up again.

“I’m back.” Daniel called softly from the doorway.

Louisa didn’t look at him as she sniffled, “He refuses to eat.”

The baby only screamed louder in her arms and Louisa shushed him helplessly, stroking his head and touching his toes tenderly.

“He is so cold, Dani.” Louisa whispered.

“Here.” Daniel shrugged off his coat and draped it around his wife’s shoulders, encompassing her with his own body heat that had warmed the inside. She quickly moved to huddle their son inside it with her.

The baby just cried on, resting against her shoulder as she wrapped the coat around his tiny body and held him close.

Daniel crouched down just behind her and rested a gentle hand to his cold cheek, sighing out a worrisome, “Oh, Henry.”

“He will get sick if he will not warm up.” Louisa muttered.

“No, no,” Daniel shifted to sit beside her in front of their small fire, “Look.”

He held the brown paper package on his lap. It was tied with string in a messy bow and was stained in tiny spots of melted snow from his journey back from town. Louisa stared at it for a moment and then looked up at his hopeful expression.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Our little prince’s first Christmas gift.” Daniel answered proudly.

Louisa’s breath shuttered, “Daniel, we do not have money for gifts right now. We barely have money for food-”

“Don’t worry about that. Go on now; open it.”

She clutched the baby to her shoulder and he held the package as she pulled the twine ribbon open with her one free hand. Daniel watched her with a hopeful smile she didn’t meet. When the paper was torn away, a thick woolen blanket was left in his hands, the deep royal blue fabric folded neatly into a square.

Louisa could only let out a small, “Oh” before her hand was pressed to her mouth and she cried.

“Something cozy for my son.” Daniel whispered as he opened up the blanket and tucked it around his tiny body.

Louisa sniffled back her tears of relief as she eased the baby from her shoulder in order to swaddle him properly in the thick blanket on the floor in front of the fire. She brushed her tears away with the heel of her palm before lifting him back up into her arms, her puffy little prince.

Daniel tucked her messy hair behind her ear and leaned in to kiss her cheek before he shuffled closer to wrap an arm around her back, “Let’s get off the floor, alright?”

She nodded, still shivering herself as the baby was starting to quiet down. Daniel helped her to her feet and they took the few steps across the tiny living space to the worn down sofa and the young parents sat side by side. Daniel stared down at his infant son swaddled in that large woolen blanket right up around his head, and he dusted his cold fingertips over the bridge of his tiny nose.

Louisa tried to feed the baby again as she lifted him closer and guided her nipple to his lips. He latched with ease now, content in his blanket, and suckled eagerly on her breast with his eyes rested peacefully closed against frost bitten cheeks.

“Very good, mon coeur.” Louisa whimpered.

Daniel made sure his coat was still wrapped around her shoulders securely and she leaned her head against his. He kissed her temple before leaning into her too as they stared down at their baby.

“How ever did you afford this?” Louisa asked quietly, as if speaking loudly would interrupt Henry’s eating, “It is so high quality.”

“I played piano in the town pub for money.” Daniel whispered. “Few afternoons…put my hat on the top one time and someone dropped a coin in. Not much but after a month or so I had enough for a little something. Henry needed a good blanket for the winter. Couldn’t let my boy freeze.”

Louisa leaned her head back onto his arm that was draped around her shoulders and her loving smile urged them to share a soft kiss or two.

“Je t'aime.” she whispered.

“I love you.” Daniel replied back just as softly and left her with one more kiss to her head.

“Mm, I have something for you.” Louisa said and shifted away from him while carefully holding the nursing baby to reach down beside the foot of the couch.

Daniel, confused yet awfully curious, watched as she held out a very tiny box towards him. It was topped with a small red ribbon and no bigger than the palm of her dainty hand. With furrowed eyebrows, he took the small box from her and unwrapped the ribbon. A single chocolate truffle was sitting inside.

His face absolutely lit up and he looked over to his wife with a grin, “Louisa.”

“Happy Christmas, darling.” she smiled sweetly.

“Oh, Louisa.” Daniel breathed in awe as if he had just been given the keys to the country and he carefully lifted the small dessert from its box between two fingers. “Where in heaven’s name did you find this?”

“The bakery in town, of course.” Louisa giggled. “I wanted to get you something much nicer but all I could get for my hairpin was enough for one of these.”

Daniel looked back over at her, “You sold your hairpin?”

She shrugged, “It is alright.”

“But you loved it.”

“I love you more.”

Daniel pouted sweetly and reached over to brush her strawberry blonde hair over her shoulder, “I was wondering why you had your hair down today.”

“Do you like it? I hope they are still your favourite.”

“I love it. Share it with me.” Daniel offered.

Louisa shook her head, “It is your present.”

“You’re my present. Come here. Little bite.” Daniel tugged gently at the end of her hair.

Louisa giggled sweetly and shuffled closer to him and offered her mouth. When he held out the truffle, she bit half and he popped the rest in his mouth. There was a moment of silence as they chewed and savoured the sweet chocolate that melted on their tongues, cuddled together on the couch in their cold single storey house.

“Not as good as England.” Louisa whispered.

Daniel shook his head, “I agree. Although, it was an incredible surprise.”

Louisa smiled widely at him, “I am so very glad.”

They shared a chocolatey kiss.

“I didn’t get you anything though.” Daniel whispered, swiping his thumb over her cheeks that held a few stray drying tears.

“I do not need anything. This blanket is more than I could have asked for Henry.”

They looked down at their son, having fallen asleep after his feeding and was dreaming peacefully in his dark blue blanket and his mother’s arms by the light of the small fire.

Daniel leaned down to kiss his forehead, “Happy first Christmas, our little prince.”

Amoureux Taglist: @hopelesslylivv @tempus-ut-luceant @hopinglimelight @onlyangelavery @randomlimelightxxx @jonahlovescoffee @sbrewer21 @bessonsbxtch @viamiasoncrack @21burritoseavey @queenseavey23 @serenityseavey @marthagryffindor @xkelsev @lotus-brekker-inn

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[msgrumpygills]

Hey! Grumpy! Social Media Anon here!

I'm still chortling at the "Jared is a mega success and don't be a meanie" post...

So, for the statistically challenged here, here are the cliff notes for Walker.

1. The CW is a shit network, being top of it is very much being a leetle teeny fish in a teeny tiny pool.

2. Supernatural and other shows broke out of their network constraints for a while (The Flash, Vampire Diaries etc.) and punched way way above their weight. In SPN's case, that was because it started out as a cool, witty, sharp show with super hot leads!

3. The last vewing year the top show on CW was, DRUM ROLL PLEASE...... SUPERNATURAL. It ended with a .30 average and higher viewers than others (based on its short season.

4. So how did Walker do? Not bad overall is the answer. TERRIBLY as a trajectory is also the answer.

5. It started with 2.438 million viewers for the pilot and a 0.34 demographic. That is AWESOME for the CW and, a year later, all that is ever mentioned still. There is a LOT of harking back to the Varsity year on the Walker promotion trail ;). Fast forward and how did it end? With an average in the final quarter of under 1 million viewers and a .15 demographic.... and a continuing downward trajectory.

6. Season average that out and it ends up at .20 demographic and 1.3m viewers. Highest (other than SPN) in viewers but 5th in demographic. Demographic matters more to advertisers and TV shows are the bits that fill in between adverts. Demographic matters more because advertisers don't care how many people watch a show, just how many product buyers watch it.

7 First seasons are tricky and shows find their feet. However, I don't think Walker will improve it's ratings. Why? Because it's shit. It has TERRIBLY writing. It has TERRIBLY camera work. Jared is ostensibly the star but the ensemble cast means he has little screen time and is a plot irrelevance.

8. Second seasons usually have an advertising buffer but then drop about 25% in the first quarter from how they ended their last season if they DON'T break out of any first season issues. You have new show competition and people just saying "enough of this crap". So my prediction is that, by 5+ episodes in Walker will struggle to regularly top a million and be in the .12 to .14 regularly. I predict it will stabilise there for a while and then have a further drop. It has 3 leads with a fanbase and they provide a core base.

9. So Walker is a struggler. It's Jared's fault ultimately. HE is the guy with the name badge of producer and he can't be arsed to quality control his show. It'll make Season 3, it's on the CW, it could make Season 5! What it won't do is what the CW hoped it would, prop up their failing network with a mega hit.

10. As for Parrot Analytics (which is the "sooooo many viewers" bit of the post), NOPE it's not the most watched show (why would it be, it's a shit show on a minor network?) it's not even on the list of most watched show. On a Tuesday afternoon in Idaho it might be, but nationally, after release, nah). Parrot shows competition from every show ever aired and still available (I love Lucy and Gunsmoke!)... it's only just beating Gunsmoke... Read the analysis of it.

10 And Keegan? I like his instagram. He's a forest dwelling, song writing, poetry reading hippy who's just lost his Mother to cancer. Does he like Jared? I suspect so, Jared seems like a genuinely witty and engaging companion. He also seems spoilt, self absorbed and full of hubris. He's been famous and fawned since he was 18, it was bound to have an impact. I can imagine though he's a fun guy to hang out with. Are they bonding into a bromance? I doubt it. Not only because of their character differences, but because Jared is a family man and past that man chick moment in his life.

11. Finally, get real Anon. it's on HBO on a years deal and being flogged off in packages around the world like every other show. The promotion team saying "Walker is now in BRAZIL!" doesn't make that a big deal.. .EVERY show is packaged around the world.... that's what they are created for. That's why sentences in shows got shorter and language simpler, so they translate easily.

CONCLUSION. Jared and Walker are fine. It's a shit show being propped up by a C list star. That won't keep the ratings where Paul "Jared, save the network!" Pedowitz wants them, but it'll keep Jared being fawned over by his fanbase and his wife in $20,000 dollar dresses for a little while longer. It is what is is... and that isn't the mega success SPN was or even a "best on network" success. Likely the show of the season on the CW will be Superman and Lois this year.

I missed you!

I'm interested to see if your predictions end up happening, stats-wise! I don't have a lot of optimism for them changing the problems with the show. When they've got a bunch of stans who would praise a $10 budget movie filmed by Shep, and seem to be ignoring any of the criticisms thus far, I don't have much hope. It also doesn't help that Jared's ego seems to be as big as his head now so I don't have hope for a revival.

I didn't know that about Keegan, that's awful. I don't have any ill will towards him or have any beef with him, and I hope I haven't come off that way. I just think it's ridiculous for people to act like he and Jared are the new bro pair who hang out all the time. To me, I think that Keegan was excited to work with Jared, excited to see Jared as a mentor and friend, but once he got to know Jared, maybe that died down a bit. Will Keegan still praise Jared like he's the best thing to happen to TV? Absolutely! He's not stupid, and from what I've seen, he doesn't seem like a bad person. I hope he distances himself from the Padalecki Circus while he can though.

But yes, hopefully this will stop Jared stans from continuing to parrot (pun kind of intended) the same tired views.

[rj-anderson]

Do you love book swag? If so, have you signed up for your 🧚🏻SWIFT🧚🏻 preorder bonus package? . If not, there’s still a few slots left! I’ve packaged up all the orders I’ve got so far for mailing out Monday morning, but haven’t run out of any of the items or options quite yet. So if you’ve thought about preordering the book but feared it was too late to get all the cool bonuses - the signed bookplate, blank notecard, bookmarks AND first part of the Flight and Flame trilogy puzzle magnet (shown for the first time here!), now’s your chance. Just check out the Preorder Bonuses post in my feed for details! . And to those of you who’ve already sent in your order, thanks so much for your support. You should be getting your package within the next week or two, Canada Post and the US Mail willing... though those of you in the UK and Australia may need to wait a *leetle* bit longer! . . #noordinaryfairytale #swift #swiftbook #flightandflametrilogy #preorderbonus #preorderincentive #enclavepublishing #fairies #fairy #faery #faerie #fae #fairybook #fairybooks #faeriebooks #faeriebook #fantasy #piskey #pisky #pixie #piskie #cornishpiskies #cornishpisky #cornishfolklore #cornishmining #spriggan #yafantasy #fantasyforlife #christianfantasy #IreadYA https://www.instagram.com/p/CCgvHTxgv03/?igshid=oxd9ai7dvpln

[thecreaturecrossroads]

@obxmbulate continued from Catch the child

Kang had a thought that the child she’d met a bit ago was stealing when she saw her climbing shelves in a store to get at the chocolate treats on the top shelf. She knew the child was living on the streets. She’d have offered that the child could live with her, share the food off her table and in the garden so that she knew that she child was safe and off the streets. But she wasn’t sure how the child would take that. 

Either way she’d trotted her way over with her hand basket and was about there when the Arrona fell. Kang swore and immediately her second set of arms reached out to catch her midair. before bringing the child to her in a safe embrace for long enough to shield the child from more contents of the shelf tumbling on top of them. Oh it wouldn’t have hurt either of them really. But Kang’s instincts had been thus. When she was sure the packages of sweets had stopped plopping on them she put Arrona down on her feet right quick. Waving off the store worker that had come to see what was the matter and apologizing for the mess. Her tail started putting the items back on the shelf while she looked at Arrona.  

“You are being alright leetle one? Not hurt, yes?” she picked up the package of chocolate that had started it all.

“Tis is te one you vvanted?”

[redheav]

🚼

Leetle Baby Man

It was only one bread roll. The only thing in the kitchen Misha had recognised. Everything else wore strange, shiny packaging. Not edible–he’d worked out the hard way.

But the bread he’d found in a wooden box, just sitting there on the counter. The young Russian had snatched it quickly, taking a big bite. It tasted amazing. Sweeter than what he was used to–but food nonetheless.

That’s when he heard footsteps. Hurriedly, he took two more big bites before she entered. Misha stared, like a deer caught in the headlights, at the Engineer. They couldn’t take back what he had already eaten. And there was so much food here but–Misha still dreaded what might happen to him.

[tawouk]

When I am keeping to my established diet, here are the main food options I usually go for which I have found to be quite easy/doable in terms of maintaining a no sugar, no/low carb diet, which was daunting at first: 

- Chicken salad: in the form of tawouk fattouch which is a common offering at Arab restaurants, and the one by my workplace has it on lunch special and the portion is huge, so for about $8 it’s a massive carton of fattouch (a Levantine salad) and a big piece of grilled chicken breast on the side. Fattouch normally comes with fried pita chips on top but I ask for it without. The amount of food is easily enough for two meals so I’ll have half for lunch and half for dinner, or leave half for the next day’s lunch and have something else for dinner. I get this quite a lot. Generally chicken and salad are big staples, whatever form that may take... most restaurants usually have a grilled boneless chicken item on the menu so that’s a great option, just get it with salad instead of fries. My “cheat” version of this is a buffalo chicken caesar salad which one restaurant around here does exceptionally well and also in a huge portion that I can cut into two meals, so I’ll “treat” myself with that every now and then; the buffalo chicken is breaded so it’s somewhat carby but I will get it without croutons, and not have any other carbs that day. 

- Chili: I love this because it’s a hearty, filling, yummy food I really enjoy, without high fat or carbs, especially if it’s not too heavy on beans (which are carby but like, not the same as eating bread or rice or pasta, and are a good protein source). I make a big pot of it at home sometimes but also sometimes pick up a cup for a few bucks at a halal restaurant that’s between my home and workplace and theirs almost feels like a veggie chili, it’s not heavy on meat at all even though it’s labeled as a pastrami chili. It’s nice to have that because my own chili recipe is quite basic as I don’t have the patience to put a million vegetables in it; it’s just beans, beef, tomato, chilis, spices (no onions bc I hate onions but I’ll use onion powder). 

- Chipotle burrito bowl: the greatest thing!! It’s convenient too because there’s a Chipotle near my house so it’s easy to swing by. I don’t eat meat from there bc it’s not halal but it’s fine because the (tofu) sofritas is soooo good; whatever your protein is though the burrito bowls are an awesome way to have your protein + veggies and other burrito fillings without a carby tortilla (I don’t get any rice or corn on it either). 

- Spinach salad: that I make at home, it’s tons of fresh baby spinach, diced tomato, sliced cucumber, diced avocado, lemon juice and salt. Normally I’d add olive oil to a salad but the avocado is already fatty and dresses the salad to an extent that I don’t miss the olive oil there. Sometimes I’ll add feta and occasionally pecans, which I love but they’re expensive lol. 

- Chicken: that I make at home, with boneless skinless thighs, chopped up carrots, a ton of peeled sliced garlic, maybe sometimes a little bit of chopped potato, and a Moroccan-influenced spice combination; it’s my mom’s recipe and she adds diced onions and peppers too but I hate onions and peppers. I love the flavor that this certain spice combo gives and this is really easy and quick to make. 

- Steak: the halal supermarket by my workplace sells these packs of 6 long thin steaks for like $4, which is a great bargain for me even if they are really not real steaks at all but just these long thin pieces of meat - I’ll buy a pack and split it into 3 portions of 2 pieces each and freeze them for quick meals. They’re so thin that I just season them and fry them in a touch of olive oil for 1 minute on each side on high heat, and then have that with some salad or guac (that I make) or carrots that I slice and grill in a bit of olive oil and spices under the oven broiler. 

- Stew: sometimes I’ll make Arab stews at home, namely a lima bean/tomato sauce/garlic/cilantro/ground beef stew or green bean/tomato sauce/garlic/ ground beef stew or carrot/pea/garlic/tomato sauce/ground beef stew, and make brown rice along with it and have it with just a bit of the rice or no rice at all. The pea/carrot one eats especially well with no rice, kind of like a soup. We really love making lamb karahi (Indian style curry) as well but not so often, as it has a high oil content (even though we cut that down from the original recipe), takes a while to make and it’s the one thing we exceptionally make with white basmati rice instead of brown, because you really need to enjoy that dish properly (and frankly it’s spicy enough that you really need the rice to balance it out). 

- Ablama: a variation on the traditional Arab stuffed zucchini, this is basically zucchini stuffed with a filling of ground beef/pine nuts/spices and cooked in a tomato sauce or yogurt sauce, served with rice; however I skip the stuffing part and just slice the zucchini in half, grill it then top it with the filling, add the tomato sauce (I don’t like it in yogurt) and bake; so simple. I’ll have it with just a little bit of brown rice. 

- Pasta: I make a quick and easy sauce which is basically a pasta sauce jar + cans of diced tomato and tomato sauce + ground beef + garlic + herbs/spices + diced sundried tomatoes if we have some in the house. No dairy or oil or butter at all, not even to fry the meat. Generally whether it’s for pasta or stew or chili or whatever we buy lean ground beef without much fat in it; you can still easily fry it in a nonstick pan without any oil. Wholegrain pasta with it - which I do not mind at all; it was very easy for me to get used to over white pasta, moreso than brown rice over white rice. Sometimes I’ll forego the pasta altogether and just have that sauce like a soup, maybe with some cheese on top, so kind of like an Italian chili. 

- Kibbe: the love of my life, is an Arab dish which is basically a meat filling in a meat/cracked wheat shell; so it’s kind of carby but I’ll have it in moderation and it will be the only carbs of the day. It comes in different forms but commonly in egg-sized “footballs” which the  deli at the Arab supermarket by my workplace sells at like 80 cents apiece so I’ll grab a few of them and some salad from there for dinner sometimes. 

- Soup: so many non-carby soups you can go for! the restaurant by my workplace has the BEST lentil soup and a great chicken vegetable soup as well. The latter is a great healthy option to go for while the former is a bit carby what with the lentils, but I just love it so much. It’s enough all on its own as a light lunch for me. I love tomato soup as well so my “cheat” thing will be a bowl of that from Panera; it’s sooo good but more fatty bc of the cream and probably has a considerable sugar content too. 

- If I do have bread: we only buy wholegrain bread, occasionally I’ll have a toasted piece of that with avocado spread (avocado/lemon/salt/pepper/crushed garlic) or peanut butter, which is the most amazing (non-carb/no sugar/good fat!) creation. Having it on celery instead of bread is also a great no-carb snack to go for. I avoid jams/jellies completely because of the sugar. 

- Eggs: My kind of “cheat” thing that I occasionally make is poached egg + sliced avocado + sliced tomato fried in olive oil, all piled on a piece of toast. Not the most unhealthy combo ever but I consider it a cheat thing because it is a relatively high fat content, especially with the fried tomato (which I lovvvve). This is also a much healthier version of the way I used to make it years ago, where the egg and bread were also fried...... frankly terrible. Eggs in general are so great though and you can easily forego any kind of bread and have a great omelet with healthy ingredients, even throw some cheese in there, the fat content is fine as long as you’re avoiding carbs. Or poach the egg if you want to avoid frying and have it with fresh sliced avocado and tomato or whatever else you like. 

- Fish: don’t eat as much of this as I should, but baked salmon or a shrimp stir-fry with veggies are a good way to go; tuna is also a quick fix I sometimes go for, without drowning it in mayo. 

- Coffee: a bit of a struggle, because I lovvvve coffee and need it to be somewhat sweet, not overly but I can’t drink black/bitter coffee at all. What’s nice is that there is a regional Michigan coffee chain called Biggby that has sugar free flavoring options (so you could get a coffee with sugar free vanilla instead of sugar, or a sugar free mocha) and that’s what I opt for; a café au lait is a good option because being half coffee half milk it’s not so bitter. However the struggle for me, even with sugar free options available, is wanting coffee in the morning but resisting it to stick to my intermittent fast till noon. My night owl lifestyle has always worked out fine even if I have to be up early as long as I have coffee; sticking to the fast has made me actually need to start sleeping earlier lol. Which I guess is healthier anyway... 

- Chocolate: No sugar and avoiding desserts is hard, even while I don’t have the hugest sweet tooth in general, sometimes it can be hard to resist. I do sometimes of course cheat, but try to keep it balanced. When I’m not cheating, for a leetle bit of indulgence, I have always loved dark chocolate anyway so a bit of that doesn’t hurt while I’m not having any other significant sources of sugar. Not all dark chocolate is created equal though, so I studied all the kinds at Target to find the one with the lowest sugar content without being too bitter. The winner is Ghirardelli Intense Dark 86% Midnight Reverie, a 90g bar of 8 large squares with 10g of sugar to the bar = 1.25g of sugar per square. That’s my go-to now and I usually have one square a night. 

- Other snacks: peanuts!!! A great no sugar/no carb snack and I really love peanuts; it’s easy to go overboard on them so I bought like a box of the small individually packaged ones, the kind of thing you’d put in a kid’s school lunch, and that’s in my office desk drawer so I’ll have a pack as a snack occasionally. The small packs ensure sticking to a controlled portion, vs having a can of peanuts that you just dive into. Chips or cheez-its (which I adore) are not the worst thing on earth either in moderation, like those small 50 cent bags; there’s no sugar and a small serving isn’t the hugest carb intake so that’s something to occasionally indulge on. Plain tortilla chips with salsa also is better than like doritos or whatever - portion control is just the key. 

[yournightowl]

Your NightOwl #007

After i had a not very fun encounter with that fellow lurker the other day, i started brainstorming about what i could do to be better prepared. There’s lots of protective subroutines out there, but they’re all designed for the modern darknet. i had hoped there might be some overlap, but it seems like the differences are even bigger than i thought.

The problem is the difference in intent.

The internet we use now was built for consumers and consumerism. It’s designed to be easy to use, easy to navigate, and as flexible as possible. The darknet we have (if you can call it that) is just the occasional, forgotten tepid pool at the bottom of the cistern that a few unsavory types can gather in, to trade data in (relative) privacy. It’s small and very scattered- If they want to send anything around the world, they have to put it on physical drives and put those drives on a plane, and hope they’ll get plugged back in to the right darknet waiting for them on the other side of the globe. 

All of which is about as glamorous as trafficking fish back and forth from the pet store, if you ask me.

But the oldnet was built for data first and people second. All the usability and ease of access, all the user interfaces and search engines were added later. The “deep web” was there first, and it never went away, so the hidden side of things was always so much bigger than lusers ever imagined.

That deep web’s still here, but it’s lost a lot of its meaning. Now that the oldnet’s abandoned, the difference between it’s various layers and their depths don’t seem to matter very much. It’s /all/ dark and murky back here- some parts are just further away from the surface than others.

So, if the oldnet is its own microcosm, and i want to carry protection, i’ll have to find it here, right?

Enter my new contact, “leetle”. For a very reasonable fee, they sold me a subroutine package that’ll keep my address secure, my setup vaccinated, and my data as heavily or lightly encrypted as i please.

I’m taking it for a test spin right now.

[.executePackage with key = true]

How’s this? Frustrating, isn’t it? To not be able to decode what I’m typing here? i could be spilling all kinds of secrets and no one would be the wiser. Best of all, it looks normal to me, so I won’t embarrass myself by leaving behind any typos

For myself to find, I guess, since no one’s reading this

huh

okay well i might as well leave one real secret here while i’ve got the chance:

i lied to Ana about not being genetically compatible with Mods. My parents would just never allow it.

And i happen to look good in my glasses, Lindsey, so not spending my whole adult life walking around with leds for eyeballs isn’t nearly as tragic as you made it sound

[.terminatePackage()]

Pretty neat, huh?

Flying under cover of night with none the wiser,

Your nightowl

ᕙ(  •̀ v •́  )ᕗ

[yournightowl]

Your NightOwl #008

Leetle is now public enemy number one.

That goddamn encryption package they sold me didn’t do dick-shit. i got my ass beat in the comment section by every computer-chair-general on the planet, telling me how i was a dumbass. But even if i am a dumbass, it’s still shame on leetle, not shame on me. Screw em all.

Pardon my language.

Starting now, it’s back to forging my own way through the murky darkness of the old net (which is pretty cyber-punk in its own way). Any problems i encounter i’ll deal with on my own.

 And we’re never gonna talk about Leetle again.

Moving on, forcefully, with a hardened heart,

Your nightowl

ps: if you see anyone using the usernames:

leetle

l33tl3

little_net_merchant2

san_dersony

LEETLE (All caps, sic.)

please report them to whatever authorities exist, and if you’re capable of it, clusterbomb.exe their comp back to the stone age, or whatever dishonorable time period they got their manners from.