#but its definitely not want tourists often come for

[femmesandhoney]

hey as someone from Detroit who actively lives in Detroit that post comes off as dismissive of our efforts to rebrand ourselves as a midwest tourist destination after the auto industry moved away from Detroit and took all its jobs with it. We have cool and historical places (as we are the birthplace of motown, techno, and arguably american punk rock), art, history, and science museums, good food of all different ethnicities, local live music, and our riverwalk which was voted the best in america by USA TODAY for the third year in a row. Beyond the gentrified spaces there is so much magic in Detroit and we wish people would stop just instantly assuming we live in a fucking shithole because it's actually fucking great

hi anon, you're assuming a lot about my feelings about Detroit based on one off hand joke about American tourism specifically for non-Americans. I am correct that people traveling abroad to the US will most likely not put Detroit on their lists of must-go places no matter how nice of a city it is. I'm sure there are people who do see the beauty of the city and plan a trip there, but I think a lot of tourists will go to places like California, Florida, NYC, Washington DC, and general national parks and monuments out West.

As someone from Milwaukee who loves the Midwest, I don't think badly of Detroit at all lol, I think we have beautiful culture and nature, but most tourism towards the city will be marketed to other Midwesterners or Americans. Did i ever say its a shithole? Did i say i hate Detroit and think its a wasteland? No, so don't put words in my mouth.

[youraverageaemondsimp]

Incomprehensible Horror. // Demon!Aemond Targaryen x Fem!Reader

Halloween Special 🎃

MDNI, DD:DNE(?): reader discretion is advised.

block the tag #MAE:DARK!CONTENT to prevent seeing dark content from me.

WARNINGS: dubcon, cunnilingus, demon fucking(?), p in v sex, past life, mentions of abuse, plotting, murder, multiple orgasms, oral (f. receiving), size kink, cum eating, slight breeding kink, spooky vibes(?), manhandling, so much canon divergence, GoT S8 spoilers(?) kinda idk, the plot is shifted and extremely altered to fit this story. + not proofread

WC: 3.8k

A/N: the original draft got deleted and i had to rewrite it because I wanted to publish this before Halloween is over, so this is slightly rushed :(

There was something extremely eerie about the red keep that always set you on the edge whenever you would hear stories about it.

The burnt down remnants of it untouched as the city around it prospered, only developing more as the time passed on, with skyscrapers, branded shops, turning into what you would call a 'modern city'.

King's Landing was not the way it was anymore, the destruction of it provided a reason to rebuild the city entirely, it was a lengthy process but definitely worth it.

A seemingly innocent city until you look past the sky scrapers, shops, etc, revealing a sinister and a tragic history of the land, a story that involves a royal family fighting and going mad for the throne, only to succumb to their madness and go extinct.

There have been many attempts in the past to rebuild it, but all in vain as there have been cases of construction accidents, fatal injuries, suicides, making it impossible to rebuild it, so they turned it into a tourist attraction.

What a way to make money.

Yet they close it off the moment the sun begins to set.

You had visited it a lot, having been living in King's Landing for a while, it was basically harmless, making you wonder why it was rumoured to be haunted, when it's just a disfigured building with half of its structure on the ground.

It was a casual weekday for you, returning to your apartment from work after the sun had long set, you took the elevator up the building, the music abruptly coming to a stop way before you reached your floor, leaving you confused, but you soon broke out of your confusion when you heard the familiar 'ding' indicating that you reached your floor, and as soon as you left the elevator the automatic doors slammed quickly, causing a loud sound, startling you.

It seemed as if the elevator was having technical difficulties.

You make a mental note to take the elevator less often until it is fixed.

You quickly scurry to the side of your apartment, pulling the keys out and pushing it into the lockhole, turning it, which opens the door, but you stumble over something and lose your balance, holding the wall for support to not fall until you finally push yourself back onto your feet and look down.

It was a package.

But you had not ordered anything.

Weirdly enough, there was no address.

You should've left it there.

But you took it inside.

Your curiosity got the best of you, and the package not having any address only further fuelled your justification for opening it.

It was a book.

An occult type of book to be exact.

You opened it and skimmed through the pages, it seemed more like a personal diary than an instruction based book for spells.

And it was convincing enough at first until you read a certain page.

“Go to the ruins of the red keep at 3AM, and chant this, 'Oh rōvēgrie zaldrīzes dārilaros, māzigon naejot se iōragon gō nyke, ivestragī aōha kasta se melkasta laesi jurnegon rȳ nyke, iksan isse jorrāelagon hen aōha dohaeragon, kesan krenyikhé tepagon mirros ao jaelagon' for a miracle!” (Oh great dragon prince, come forward and stand before me, let your blue and purple eyes look at me, I am in need of your help, I will gladly give anything you wish.)

This made you chuckle, what kind of prank was this? This was so badly written to the point of making any paranoia you felt about this book dissipate immediately.

I mean, chanting spells? to summon a dead prince? it made you laugh, and of course the location was the red keep, a place rumoured to be haunted. It couldn't not be more obvious than that, because whatever this was, was clearly a joke.

So you pushed the book aside and settled for bed.

Sleep did not come to you.

Which you found odd.

You would usually be extremely tired, and the moment you lay on the bed, you would be pulled under the depth of slumber.

Yet now you squirmed, not being able to find any sleep.

You don't know how many hours passed, making you frustrated.

And your mind wandered off to what you had read earlier.

You glanced at the time, it read 2AM.

You purse your lips in thought, not knowing what to do.

You got up from your bed.

You knew this was a bad idea, sneaking into the red keep, with the stupid book in your hand as you navigated through the building, and then you ended up in a room with a bunch of paintings of the past targaryens.

You set the book down and kneeled, looking at the verse you were supposed to chant out loud, you bought out your phone and looked at the time, it read 2:59AM.

One more minute.

You did not know why you were doing this, normally, you were a rational person, you usually don't let your curiosity win in situations like this, having control over it, but in this case, it seems you had lost all your control, and it seemed as your mind is being controlled to do whatever was written on that page.

Besides, it's not like anything would happen.

It seemed fake after all.

Trying doesn't hurt.

You never really believed in ghosts or demons yourself, so what were you scared of?

And so as soon as the time read 3AM, you chanted the saying out loud.

You waited.

And waited.

You looked at the time, 3:10AM.

Nothing happened.

You let out a scoff, what did you expect? A demon to appear?

You collected the book and left the scene, annoyed that nothing happened, but you were also glad nothing happened at the same time.

The air felt colder than before, and lights seemed to flicker constantly whenever you crossed a street light, everything seemed out of place and odd, the buildings looked distorted.

Was your paranoid finally getting to you?

You felt a chill run up your spine.

It felt as if someone whispered in your ear, causing you to jump and look back, only to find nothing.

This was setting you on edge, you quickly walked faster back to your apartment, you frowned when you saw the "out of order" sign on the elevator, knowing that it was not there when you used it to come down prior to your visit to the red keep.

You sighed heavily and took the stairs, climbing to the floor you lived in, but for an odd reason, the stairs seemed to go on for longer, the more you climbed, the more they went on, you did not know if you were seeing things for feeling that way simply cause you were spooked, but you know for a fact that climbing 7 floors should not take more than 10 minutes at a slow pace, and yet here you were still climbing at a fast pace yet the stairs seemed to be never ending, you did not know if you were hallucinating the scribbled out floor numbers assigned to the respective floors or if they were originally like that before.

You looked down the stairwell, and it only seemed as if you climbed 3 floors, which left you baffled. You ran up as fast as you could, and to your relief you saw the '7th floor' on the board, indicating you were on your floor. You sighed in relief, making your way to your apartment, you did your best to ignore the constant flicker of lights, and what seemed like a dark figure standing from the corner of your eyes, the keys fumbled in your hands, it took you a few tries to unlock the door and when you did, you saw the figure move towards you, so you quickly rushed inside and slammed the door shut behind you.

You leaned against the door breathing heavily, closing your eyes and taking deep breaths, to try and calm your mind. You cannot tell if this was just your mind playing tricks because you're so worked up, or something odd is actually happening, but you know for the fact that whatever you were seeing was real.

Your apartment suddenly starts smelling putrid, making you scrunch up your nose. The smell was unbearable, as if thousands of dead rats were in your apartment, decaying away. It made you want to throw up, the foul scent leaving you light headed as you went towards your bedroom, to access the attached bathroom.

Luckily for you, the bedroom smelled like it usually would instead of dead rats, so you took a deep breath of the normal air, the nausea beginning to slowly fade away.

“For what have you summoned me, mortal?” a deep voice says, making you freeze in your spot, you turn around and your eyes widen in horror, as you take in the sight in front of you.

The face of a goat with horns, and scales that belonged to a dragon running down its upper body, stopping at it's elbows, black fluid dripping from its body, covering it's most intimate area, and its legs covered in scales as well, your voice was stuck in your throat, not being able to scream as the sheer panic made it unable to.

It looks confused at your horror filled face before looking down to its body and sighing annoyedly, and then its body distorts, the sound of bones cracking, flesh turning and squeezing, you watch the entire thing happen, the way its body is changing shape until it stops, making your breath hitch in your throat.

It took the form of a human man, face now mimicking a normal human, yet it was also disfigured, with a scar running up his cheek to his eyebrow, and an eye patch on his left eye, before he took it off, revealing the sapphire placed in the eye socket. His gaze was piercing, staring daggers at you, as he grew visibly frustrated at your silence.

“Can't you speak?” his voice booms across the room, causing you to snap out of your fear, and finally answer him, “I-it was an accident, I didn't mean to.” you answer and that displeases him, face now carrying the expression of a scowl.

“You followed as the book had instructed, did you not?” he asks and you nod, “Then it is no accident.”

“I did not think it would actually work, it was my mistake, please its an accident-” your voice cracks, still trying to process what was happening, trying to form words that made sense. He pushed you against the wall, his hand wrapped around your throat, long sharp nails digging into the skin of your neck, restricting the passage of air as you struggled in his grip, “On accident you say? Then you must pay the price for wasting my time.” he said darkly, and released you, causing you to fall to the ground, coughing and taking lungfuls of air.

“Should I kill you and then take your soul? Or take your soul directly and watch as the light fades from your eyes, screaming and writhing in agony in my hold.” he ponders genuinely and you gulp in fear, tears welling up in your eyes, knowing that something stupid is now costing you your life. “Please forgive me- I did not mean for any of this to happen.” you beg, voice hoarse.

“Forgive you? You should not have stifled me to begin with, now you must pay the price for your own stupidity, what shall I do hmm? My time is incredibly precious after all.” he looks down at you and you quiver in fear.

He grabs your hair and pulls you to your feet, making you stand, his hot breath fans against your face as you look up at him, and then he scans your face, taking in your features and then his eye widens as if he realised something.

And then he smiles, the grip in your hair becoming even tighter, causing you to wince in pain, “Please- let go of me- I'm sorry.” you grip his hand, trying to make him let go of the hold he has on you, “Aemond- please.” and that's when he releases you.

“Ah, so you do remember me.” he says, amused and you look at him confused, “Huh? What do you mean?” you ask him genuinely and that's when you realised you called him Aemond, it came out so naturally to the point you did not notice it.

But you still had no idea what just occurred.

Who's Aemond?

He grabs your cheeks, “I had waited so many years.”

What is he talking about?

“I won't lose you this time.” he says and before you can respond, he presses his lips against yours, one hand wrapped around your waist as the other holds the back of your head, pressing your face against him.

Your head felt hazy all of a sudden.

Why does all of this feel familiar?

You don't protest when he pushes you on the bed, climbing on top of you, you just stare at him, blinking in confusion as he tears away at your clothing, “Oh how the fashion has changed overtime, I remember last time you were wearing a black gown, mourning the death of your husband.” he whispers in your year and you feel ringing in your ear.

“What an amazing actress you were, mourning him in such a convincing way, only to get fucked by me after the funeral.” his hands trail down your body, “Such good memories, to have you underneath me, moaning my name constantly like a prayer, you were the first woman I ever desired after my death, the one who broke my curse, letting me become a true demon, it was on accident too back then.” he chuckles, he grips your pants, tearing the fabric as if it were paper.

“Until they found out of course, that you conspired with a demon, and planned the murder of your own husband.” his voice turns dark, and the ringing in your ear gets louder, your mind spins. “I remember not being able to do anything as they burned you alive at the sept, sigils placed around you to prevent me from interfering, to watch your flesh on fire as you screamed in agony, screamed my name in pain and it was then I swore that I would destroy that city.” he growled darkly.

“And so I did, possessing my own descendant and burning the city down, not too long after your passing.” he recalls with a satisfied smirk on his face, “Do you still remember my full name?” he looks at you and the ringing suddenly stops, and everything seemed to be spinning around you, his face becomes blurry and your head begins to hurt, eyes beginning to water as you feel that you were set on fire, letting out a loud scream at the sheer amount of pain coursing through your body as memories you didn't recognize flowed through your mind, you writhing below him in pain, letting out loud cries, “Shh..” he caresses your head and suddenly the pain stops, making you breath heavily, making you close your eyes.

“Aemond Targaryen.” you hear your own voice speak and you open your eyes to look at him, he has a smirk on his face, a small smile grazes your face as well, lifting your hand up to caress his cheek, pulling his face towards you to kiss you, lips engulfing his, you breathe in his scent, and he suddenly doesn't smell putrid anymore, but instead of cloves and ash.

“Fucking cunts, all of them, they remained silent all throughout the time i was abused by him, but the moment I get my own revenge, they burnt me alive.” you say after pulling away from the kiss, gritting your teeth.

You felt so confused with yourself.

Both memories of your past life and current life clashing against each other, fighting for dominance, to decide who you were.

“It's over my love, I burnt them all down.” he kisses down your neck, to your breasts, and down to your cunt, pressing kisses to your inner thighs. You smile at him, spreading your legs wide for him to settle freely and latch his lips onto your clit, making you throw your head back when you feel his tongue move skillfully against the bundle of nerves, you grip his hair, shoving his face further into your cunt.

“Fuck- you taste the same as I remember, I missed this cunt so much, seven hells.” he curses, licking away at your cunt, you moan as his sharp teeth grazes your clit. “Watch your teeth-” you whimper, feeling his fingers prod at your entrance, before gently pushing them in. He pulls away from your cunt and watches his own fingers be engulfed by your cunt as he thrusts them in and out, he groans at the sight, wishing it was his cock plunging inside you. “Goodness gracious, you're so fucking divine.” he murmers before latching on your cunt again, tongue swirling against your bud.

You feel the band in your stomach, “Aemond, I'm cumming- I'm- fuck-!” you reach your peaking on his hands, back arched as the orgasm ripples through your body. You breath heavily and watch aemond climb up, his knees on the mattress of your bed as he bends your legs, your knees pressing to your chest.

You watch as he grabs his cock, your eyes widening at the sheer size of it before flitting over to his own, he smirks, “Aemond it won't fit-” you whine but he shushes you, “You took it with no problem before, tis the same.” he lines in up against your entrance, “But still-”

“Remember when we did it the first time, you said it wouldn't fit? Only to have you crying and cumming all over my cock like a common whore.” he says and you sigh, remembering the memory.

He slowly pushes his cock inside you, taking his own time, throwing his head back in pleasure, “Seven hells, you feel so fucking good, the gods be damned.” he grunts, feeling pleasure at the way your cunt is wrapped around him so perfectly. You grip the sheets below you for support, clenching your eyes shut as you try to adjust to him.

He grabs a hold of your legs, throwing them over his shoulder before he grabs your hips and starts thrusting in and out of you, making your body jolt up and down the bed at the force. Your moans of his name soon fill the room, and he moans too, closing his eye in pleasure as he continuously shoves his cock in and out of you.

He opens his eye to look down, only to smirk when he sees the outline of his cock in your lower abdomen whenever he thrusts fully inside, he presses a hand against it and you squirm, the pleasure amplifying, making your toes curl.

He leans down, causing your legs to fall off his shoulder and be pushed up against your chest one more, his long black tongue enters inside your mouth, extending far back into your throat making you gag before he pulls it back, finally letting both your lips meet. Your hands shoot up to his hair pushing him against you, he hums in satisfaction. His scales are back on his body, along with his horns, partly turning into his demonic form, you feel him grow in size, both height and mass, and eventually down there, which rips an orgasm from you, wetness flowing down your hole and dirtying the sheets and you choke on your own spit at the sudden peak.

He pulls out, and you look at him in confusion, knowing he didn't peak yet, but soon the confusion is replaced with anticipation as he flips you around onto your stomach, your body knows what to do immediately and you support yourself on your arms and knees. Aemond doesn't waste another moment before pushing himself inside you, letting out a loud moan when he feels you clench around him.

His pace is brutal and fast, only seeming to care about his own pleasure, he grabs you by your hair and tugs on it, causing you to curve your head backward but not lean back, he's fucking you like an animal in heat, the size difference making it easy to manhandle you as he wishes.

He soon feels his peak arriving after pounding into you like a madman, and he spills himself deep inside you, cumming so much to the point it makes you feel bloated and so full, you whine when you feel his pull out. He watches as his seed leaks out of you, gathering it with his index finger and tasting it, humming at it.

“I wish my seed takes.” he mutters.

He turns you on your back again, and holds your legs wide and spread apart, and spits on your cunt, before leaning down, holding your thighs apart and once again presses his warm mouth against your cunt, only this time he shoves his long tongue down your hole, you can feel him licking around there, eating up his own spend, and that's when he flicks his tongue upwards inside you, grazing your gspot and your thighs shut around his head, trying to prevent him from making you cum again, too overstimulated and tired.

“Aemond- another time, please- I'm so tired.” you whine, your eyes closing, and he listens to you, pulling away, withdrawing his tongue from inside of you. He climbs next to you in bed, shifting into his full human form again and pulling you close.

“I won't let anyone take you away from me now.” he murmurs in your ear and you nod, turning and snuggling close to him.

There were so many questions left unanswered.

Each and everything was an odd occurrence.

From the encounter of the package to you summoning a demon, who turned out to be the one you loved & fucked in your past life, even conspiring with him to kill your abusive husband, and to fucking him again, and now laying safely wrapped in his arms.

Who was the one that sent you the package then?

Just then you remember an odd event.

You remembered the text and pictures of the book with a bunch of spells and summoning rituals, you hadn't noticed it then but it was the same handwriting as yours.

It was your diary.

And you remember losing it the day right before you were burnt to death.

And you remember writing the words you had heard in your dream, confused back then as what "3AM" meant.

You did not want to dwell on this anymore.

Because you realised that it would drive into madness.

And so, you drifted off into slumber in the arms of your beloved.

[tainbocuailnge]

maybe its just that the amount of fateposters on this site is much smaller and a larger audience by definition includes a larger amount of assholes but it's always fascinating and bewildering to see the difference in responses i get on daily between twitter and tumblr. yesterdays super milquetoast statement got multiple reblogs of 'i dont like fate but i agree with the sentiment' on tumblr and truckloads of 'cringe tranny kill yourself' qrts on twitter. plenty of supportive qrts too and i usually end up with a net plus change in twitter followers after posting something like that so by every measure it doesn't hurt me in any way to periodically chase off these people because the support is always larger than the disapproval. idk its scary to be alive as transgender in a climate of rampant transphobia but at many points i find that loud transphobia is often coming from a minority of assholes that feels emboldened because one particular transphobic asshole in their area holds a disproportionate amount of power or influence. which is still scary but 'the people in power hate us' feels a little more surmountable than 'everyone hates us'.

its also kinda interesting how many of these people jumped to "fate started as porn" as gotcha, or saying i must be new to fate. they've taken to using "tourist" as term for it apparently. they don't know i'm a decorated fate scholar of course because i don't tell people on daily who i am for a reason, don't want them coming here too without already knowing about me anyway and thats why i lock posts where i mention it. but there's something interesting about them equating dislike of lolicon content with dislike of sexual content in general and then trying to call me a hypocrite for not sharing that equivalence. and of course the large overlap between anime transphobes and lolicons despite the common tactic of slandering transgender people as pedophiles. and there's always something bitterly funny about how every time this happens a disproportionately large amount of these transphobic type moon fans are really into mordred. or they get really really upset at the idea of saber saying something they ideologically disagree with. like im just fascinated by the kind of arguments that end up being made in these situations because it reveals a lot about the untenability of their position. they always have to resort to "well you're new here so i dont have to listen to you" or "well you used a lot of words so im not reading that" or even "well MY waifu wouldn't say that". they don't have a leg to stand on other than being loud and the fact that some jackass with authority agrees with them and I think they on some level know it, i think they wouldn't be as aggressive about it otherwise.

[neon-moon-beam]

Not Again: Ableism Post-Teal Mask Edition

Hey, how about NOT being ableist towards Carmine and Kieran?

We've already dealt with N and Submas experiencing this since Gen 5's initial run, we've dealt with Volo and then Nemona, and definitely more but those are the big ones.

Lately there seems to be this tendency of people to want to diagnose every character and you don't actually need to give every single character an armchair diagnosis right out the gate. While representation is important and some characters have enough in their characterization to suggest an illness or disability, or even seem outright coded, not every character is, or needs to be. If a character strongly resonates with your experience with an illness or disability, that's one thing; many autistic people feel seen and validated by Submas, for example. But if you're grasping at straws or stretching a character's actions or situations to make them "fit" a diagnosis, it often comes across more as pathologizing characters rather than humanizing them. It's important to not only think about why you want to portray a character this way, but whether or not it fits with their characterization and if you're using it to show an accurate portrayal, or if you're just using it to excuse/dismiss their hurtful actions, or even demonize the character.

Spoilers for the Teal Mask DLC ahead. CW for ableism.

There's a huge difference between say, Submas who are so heavily autistic-coded you'd have a harder time arguing they aren't, and someone like Kieran who shows rejection sensitivity that may or may not be a symptom of something else, or Carmine, who appears explosive and a cruel bully, but it turns out her anger comes from places of worry as well as being angry about innocent people and Pokemon being wronged. Her decision to not tell Kieran they met Ogerpon was because she knew how much Ogerpon meant to him and how bad he would feel knowing he missed her. People have been quick to decide she has low or no empathy, when the game literally shows her having a lot of it! We also don't know Carmine and Kieran's whole stories yet. We're going to see them at Blueberry Academy next (and Kieran does tell the player that Carmine does everything for him there, which is a reason he wants to get stronger). We don't know why they're going to school there, if they have friends there or a community or if they’re outcast and bullied, or where their parents are. Their attitudes, actions, or even potential symptoms may be situational. Carmine certainly appears to be acting out to the threat of her hometown being overrun by tourists (and considering how tourism tends to impact places and its locals IRL, can you blame her?) Kieran has the conflicting situation of his sister looking out for him at school for reasons we haven’t seen yet, while also verbally cutting him down. He also identified with Ogerpon even before the player arrived at Kitakami, and maybe even projected onto her for a reason. There’s a potential for a lot to be going on here without either of them needing an instant armchair diagnosis before their story arcs are complete.

A character desperate for friends doesn't necessary indicate a personality disorder, especially when their backstory is that they were left out, bullied, or even considered an outsider to a degree in the town they grew up in. Someone like Nemona or Kieran wanting to have friends after experiencing a lot of rejection and isolation doesn't instantly mean they have a personality disorder, and even if the story ended up indicating that they did, that does not give anyone the excuse to write them as "scary" or "yandere". Personality disorders are complex in potential causes and how they manifest, and using them as shorthand to write a character being a "yandere" or abusive is ableist.

And once again, it is time to bring up the subject of “feral” or “unhinged”. Whether or not Carmine has anger issues that can be given a diagnosis or Kieran has a personality disorder or anything else that can be diagnosed doesn’t matter here. Making characters “scary and unhinged” for experiencing basic human emotions is…dehumanizing. When you decide Carmine should snap and go around hurting people, you actually sound just like the people in Kitakami who are ostracizing her and whispering behind her back, making her feel like she has no place in her own community. And the same with Kieran. The last scene of the storyline in Kitakami has him vowing to defeat the player. It comes off as a bit creepy, but it doesn’t mean he’s supposed to have been a creep all along or is turning into one; from a developer/storytelling perspective, it’s literally just creating suspense for the Indigo Disk story. While Kieran is shown to be rejection sensitive, jealous, self-isolating, and at times inconsiderate (Carmine had to remind him that Ogerpon’s feelings on who she should travel with mattered too), he’s also a kid. We don’t have an exact age, but my impression was he might be a bit younger than the player. Carmine does mention him having “teen angst” but it could be a joke as she herself is a teen claiming to be over it, and it could be one of those “older kid jokes about younger kid as though older kid is an elderly person” type of jokes. But if he is a teen, he’s a younger one, and he still has a lot to learn about managing his emotions and expressing himself constructively. Nobody is always mature about that at 13 (heck, there are adults who lack emotional maturity altogether). He shouldn’t be expected to react maturely every time to things that upset him, and he shouldn’t be pathologized or considered “unhinged” every time he doesn’t. Depicting him as “unhinged” also detracts from his positive traits that we see in conjunction with, or even in spite of his negative ones. He’s jealous of the player character’s strength and skill, but he doesn’t actually resent them, despite becoming obsessed with the idea of defeating them. Ogerpon was bonding more with the player, but he still decided to help with the situation with the masks and the Lousy Three. He’s jealous that Ogerpon wanted to go with the player, but he’s still happy for both of them. It’s much more likely that we’ll see him mature as a person and recognize his own strengths independent of Carmine and the player at the end of the Indigo Disk then see him become a “madman consumed by jealousy and pursuit of power”, because Pokemon doesn’t really tell stories like that, and certainly not with non-villain characters! And if Carmine and Kieran end up fitting a diagnosis for an illness or disability, continuing to depict them as “unhinged” based on those traits is very ableist. I and others have said it in regards to Submas so many times, but it’s true for other characters too.

And this is by no means an exhaustive list of examples of the ways people are being ableist after the Teal Mask DLC has released.

With all that said, a headcanon diagnosis doesn’t excuse a character’s actions that have hurt others, and neither does a character who’s acting out is situational. Carmine still lashes out at Kieran and hurts him, even when her intentions are to protect him. Kieran still ended up causing the revival of the Lousy Three and put the player and Ogrepon in an uncomfortable situation, and will likely put the player in an uncomfortable situation at Blueberry Academy. In the end, they’re characters being portrayed with virtues and flaws, and that humanizes them much more than slapping on a diagnosis and absolving them of every hurtful action, and certainly much more than slapping a diagnosis on them and in turn using it to demonize them. And if you’re really interested in writing characters with mental illnesses and/or disabilities, and especially if it’s not based on your own experiences, you need to do some actual research, not just watch a few short videos listing symptoms by a non-professional on the video app du jour. If you’re not sure where to look, Wikipedia articles cite their sources at the bottom of the article; you can read the page you’re interested in, but please check out the cited sources too!

Sadly, this is at least the third time in just under three years that people have immediately started depicting characters introduced, or reintroduced in Pokemon, in ways that have ended up becoming ableist. It’s disappointing and disheartening to see, and to be honest, it gets tiring for those of us talking about the issue to keep talking about it. Many of the people making the ableist depictions aren’t personally affected by the issues they misrepresent, and they can just post their art or fic, and continue on their way. But for those of us who have the illnesses and/or disabilities being misrepresented, even misrepresented as entertainment, we can’t just log off and go on our way. The reality is a series, characters, or even fandom that could be our break from everyday life, and should be our refuge, instead has a fandom that  just plays out our everyday difficulties for laughs, brings up our trauma as an excuse to write a character as “haha unhinged! ooh feral!”, treats characters the way so many of us were treated by bullies, by parents and teachers who didn’t understand, and ends up alienating us from a space that should be ours, a space some of us helped build, only to have to leave as others made it unfriendly to us. It gets so tiring to have to avoid content that should be enjoyable but isn’t, to have friends ask, “Is this really how others see me?” when yet another autistic-coded character is portrayed as unhinged and creepy, or to have them tell you how yet another fic or art dehumanized them via their favorite characters, to watch people describe a character the way your peers once described you as they made fun of or ostracized you for your neurodivergence. It’s tiring to have other fans of the same series make a space alienating, inaccessible, or even antagonistic towards you, instead of fostering community.

Come on people, please do better.

Thank you for reading my post and your consideration. And if you think other people would benefit from reading this, please give it a reblog. Likes don't do anything as tumblr has no real algorithm.

[ofduskanddreams]

The Embers of Us — Snippet

requested by @thelovelymadone

CW: REFERENCES TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & CHILD ABUSE (below the cut)

✦ ✦ ✦

Eris’s breaths cloud with every exhale before dissolving into the early April air. The rising sun will peek above the feathered crowns of the fir trees lining the far side of the river any minute.

He’s twenty-nine today. A year from now he’ll be thirty.

If his twenty-year-old self could see him right now—still in Wyoming, still single, running Autumn Crest Ranch of all things—he’d think it was a nightmare come true. But Eris has learned to love this place.

It turns out that it wasn’t the ranch he hated; it wasn’t the small town that made him feel like the walls were closing in even under endlessly blue skies, it was his father. Beron Vanserra was the rot in the roots; a poison, slow and insidious in its creeping.

Eris ran off to Seattle for university when the chance presented itself. It had been a selfish choice, a desperate one if he’s being honest, but a choice that he loves and loathes with equal measure.

Those had been four years when he’d left his mother and brothers here under his father’s fist and unprotected. Those four years had also been the first time he’d felt truly alive—truly himself—for longer than a few stolen hours at a time.

Beron died when the ranch was about to go under three years prior. Eris thinks that if he didn’t have those precious few years to learn and live the way he wanted to, he would have failed his family when he inherited the ranch. Instead, he turned things around.

It is still a “working” ranch by all technical definitions but their cattle herd is mainly for show. After all, tourists come to Starlight Creek from all corners of the world to get an “authentic” experience at Autumn Crest Ranch.

Does it make him a sellout? Potentially. But Eris would rather take the judgemental looks from the other ranchers in the area than be unable to provide a comfortable life for his mother and brothers.

And there’s the added bonus of this: of the sun climbing and setting fire to the treetops, of Cinder and Vulcan chasing after a rabbit, of Candy’s warmth seeping through his jeans into his calves as they walked parallel to the gravelly river bank.

It’s these moments that fill him with an inundating sense of peace, of home, and Eris marvels that this is the same land he grew up on. In the absence of Beron’s shadow it’s a different world: one where his mother is often smiling and never concealing bruises, one where Lucien does his homework at the kitchen table and Maddox can read a novel in the living room instead of hiding away so as not to be noticed.

In this world, Eris flies a Pride flag right below Old Glory and flips the ground the finger whenever he leaves the house and sees it on the pole. He hopes his father is rolling over in his grave at the fact that his ranch is more successful in the hands of his bisexual son than it ever was when he was alive and throwing slurs at the TV whenever a man appeared on-screen that didn’t match his definition of the word.

In this world, Eris’s home and family are flourishing and he wakes up looking forward to the day ahead. When this is already so much more than he’d ever imagined for himself, what more could he want?

[supermaks]

Completed [max/daniel] published on 2022-01-08

Alternate universe - non famous, alternate universe - mechanics, Jammy and Sassy, cat dad max, neighbors, Monte Carlo [derogatory], resolved sexual tension, slow burn, internalized biphobia, eventual smut, balconies

mon voisin

Chapter 1

“Are your neighbors always so noisy?” Isabelle asks him. Daniel shrugs.

“Upstairs?” She nods. “No, I don’t think so. They must’ve moved in this week or something.”

He settles back against the couch and puts his legs on her lap. She immediately pushes them off, and Daniel figures she’s too warm. He fetches the remote and turns on Sky Sports.

Last time Isabelle came over, she made him watch a documentary about a man who quite literally wanted to fuck an octopus, and then got upset with him because he pointed out the man wanted to fuck the octopus. Like, he’s not judging. People are weird. Love is weird.

“Daniel.”

“Yeah, sweetheart.”

“The noise doesn’t bother you?”

“What noise?”

She doesn’t reply and Daniel looks her to find her staring back at him, a slight twitch to her left eye. “Yeah, I can’t do this.” She gets up. “We are done.” She announces. Daniel blinks.

“We’re done? Wait, what? Why? Izzy?”

Isabelle looks at him like he’s insane, which is not an unfamiliar sight. Maybe he should’ve seen this coming. “Why? Do you even like me?”

“Of course I like you.”

Isabelle groans and throws her hands up. “Oh my God, of course. Au revoir, Daniel.”

“I’ll … call you?” Daniel offers.

“Non, merci!"

Daniel watches her leave, and it’s not until the door slams closed behind her that he realizes he didn’t even move from where he was slumped over the couch pillows. That was rude of him. That probably didn’t help things.

Right. Well.

He looks up at the ceiling. After a second, Daniel hears it. The sound of footsteps stumping around, something crashing to the floor, loud meowing.

Then, a muffled, heavily accented, “Fuck off! No, fuck off! What are you doing?” followed by a barrage of words in a language Daniel doesn’t recognize. Maybe German.

More meowing. More stumping.

Daniels snorts despite himself. He doesn’t remember seeing a moving truck, or anyone new loitering around the stairs. But then again, he hasn’t been home a lot lately. The Garage always gets swamped in May. Gran Prix and all. Lots of tourists from all across Europe doing long drives for the first time.

Isabelle was a nice girl. Those were a nice three weeks. It’s the longest relationship he’s had this year.

“Christ.” Daniel murmurs.

He steps outside into the balcony and breathes in the late afternoon breeze. The sun is setting on the Mediterranean Sea, and the sky has mellowed into a soft pink and orange. Another beautiful day in the French Riviera.

Another beautiful day of being a fucking nobody.

A loud meow startles Daniel out of his (normal and healthy) thoughts. He tilts his head back and catches sight of an exotic-looking cat perched on the windowsill right above him. The cat is peering down at him like it’s wondering what Daniel’s problem is. “Hello.” Daniel says. The cat meows, and Daniel grins. “Enchanté.”

He’s not a cat person, at all, but this one is very pretty. The cat tilts its head, stretches its neck a little further out, and Daniel thinks, shit. “No, no, no.” He mumbles, at the same time the same voice from before says, a lot clearer:

“Listen. Listen, I’m not going to get you if you fall.”

The guy—or kid, he must be young with a voice like that, definitely younger than Daniel—has a lisp. Daniel is hit by the strange, irrational urge to yell at him to come closer to the window.

The cat gives Daniel one last look, Daniel waggles his eyebrows, because who gives a shit, and then the cat’s little head vanishes back inside. The window shutters are closed, quite abruptly, but not before Daniel hears a much gentler, “Gek meisje.”

The kid is so fucking loud.

If it’s not the cats (there’s more than one, Daniel has figured out as much), it’s the video games until sunrise, which often result in abrupt avalanches of swearing or equally disconcerting laughter that sounds like someone tap dancing on a chew toy.

Sometimes, when Daniel is really lucky, he gets a combination of both: the cats and the video games and the kid swearing at the cats to get off my fucking TV, you assholes.

Great stuff.

Two weeks into Daniel’s new cat-infused reality, he meets a six-foot bombshell who looks at him from across the bar like she wants to put him in a pretzel. Daniel is gross, still in his work overalls, covered in dirt and oil, but some people are into that, and he figures she’s one of them.

Unfortunately, she’s American, and funny, which means they end up talking a lot, drinking even more, and by the time Daniel feels like taking her home, he also feels like passing out cold for twelve hours. He leaves her to her friends, throws back one last shot, and calls it a night.

Lando gasps like Daniel just became a monk.

“No, c’mon! C’mon, you had it. She’s so hot.” He whines. He puts a hand on Daniel’s forehead, then grabs Kimi’s hand and puts his hand on Daniel’s forehead. “Does he feel warm to you?”

“Ha-ha.” Daniel deadpans. Kimi takes off his hand, gently, and shakes his head.

“Just old.” He declares.

Daniel snorts.

“You literally killed the dinosaurs, mate.” He says. Kimi raises his pint in a mock-toast.

“So, wait, are you still upset about your last girl, then? The biologist?” Lando presses. Lando reminds Daniel of himself when he was younger. He’s a lot nicer than Daniel was at his age, though. Lando showed up to the Garage with nothing but a backpack and a smile, and no one faulted Seb for taking him in.

“No, little Nando.” Daniel sighs. Isabelle was right. He didn’t even like her that much. “I’m honestly just tired, yeah?” He cracks a grin and knocks his knee into Lando’s under the table. “Some of us don’t get to fix one 125cc and then fuck around in the break room for the rest of the day, you bloody bludger.” He teases, and Lando actually blushes.

“Not true.”

“Yes true. I saw it, it was one Vespa, mate.”

“It was a GTS, those are 300cc! The radiator was baked, I had to—”

“You are tired because of the piece of shit neighbor and his demon cats.” Kimi interrupts. Daniel’s laughter at Lando’s indignation slowly dissolves into a chuckle, and he shrugs. He mentioned his new neighbor to his coworkers during a difficult overhaul of a BMW engine, mostly to make them laugh.

“Maybe, maybe. Either way, I’m out of this dump, fuck both of you.” Daniel gets up and the world only spins a respectable amount. He claps Kimi on the back and pinches Lando’s cheek. “I’ll see you next Monday, messieurs.”

“Oi, do you mind if I go talk to her?” Lando asks, rubbing at his cheek with one hand and motioning at the LA girl with the other. He’s so cute. Daniel almost wants to tell him no, just to spare his feelings.

“Not at all, my friend.” Daniel says, and throws up a salute. “Watch out for the brave soldier out there, Iceman.”

Kimi, a married father of two, takes the tiniest sip of his second pint. “No.”

The fifteen minute walk home is enough to sober him up a bit. The night’s warm and pleasant in a way it would never be back in Perth this time of the year, and Daniel gets to have his ego stroked by a group of partygoers who giggle past him and squeal when he throws them kisses.

It’s around 1 a.m. by the time Daniel stumbles inside his apartment, and he feels like every inch of his body is going to spontaneously vaporize. He’s glad he cut things short with the LA girl. That would’ve been a disappointing performance.

God, he really needs a good night’s sleep.

Daniel drinks some water, washes off the oil and dirt as best as he can and face plants directly into his bed. It’s only as he’s rubbing his bare legs up and down the cool mattress that he notices the silence.

Complete and utter, glorious silence. He can’t even hear tiny paws sputtering across the wooden boards.

He almost wants to cry. Daniel hugs his pillow and closes his eyes with a big, manic grin on his face. It doesn’t last. Why would it last.

The first creak of a bed frame rocking on its hinges is sudden, and loud enough to startle him awake. Daniel’s eyes flash open, his smile vanishes. After a few seconds, there’s more creaking, again and again, joined by the distinct, unmistakable rhythm of skin slapping against skin. He’s having sex. The kid is having sex and his bedroom is right above Daniel’s.

“You have to be joking.” Daniel says, out loud. No one answers. Actually, no one says anything. No moaning, no grunting, nothing. Just that sad, perfunctory rhythm, slapslapslap.

Daniel flails around his nightstand until he finds his phone and his headphones. He’s exhausted, and annoyed, and running out of goodwill. He’s also a little turned on, which he refuses to feel bad about.

Fucking figures, he thinks, that his neighbor would put him through mildly uncomfortable sex after Daniel turned down the easiest lay of his life. Daniel puts on a random chill playlist and lets the soft beats drown out the dry smacking going on upstairs. They can’t be having a good time, those two. Daniel has had sex that sounded like that, and he certainly didn’t enjoy it.

The last thing that crosses his mind before exhaustion finally takes over is that it’s weird for someone who’s so fucking loud all the time to become so damn quiet during sex.

Chapter 2

[tadpal]

if you were a mermaid... what kind of tail would you have?? (species, colour, vibe, etc)

this is such a contentious question for girls who grew up on a beach so i do have several answers prepared bc obviously it was needed at the time ESPECIALLY since 2000s mermaid trend was ON TREND anyway

all that to say when i was a kid i would pretend to be a dolphin girl. yeah fr. i had several glass figures and when i was learning to surf i got a board with a dolphin on but this was all a ruse to impress the girls in my surf class. although i have seen dolphins often in the cove and off the rocky beach and i did and do think they're incredible honestly i preferred to watch for blue whales and thought dolphin mermaids weren't very cool. dolphins are cool companions for mermaids but i was kind of a mermaid purist: mermaids should be fish with obvious scales. but for the dolphin girls all the boys in their games would be sharks and i hated sharks as i was deadly afraid of tiger sharks which in fairness, did swim up the river to breed every year and attacks did happen but. yeah i thought the shark boys were also lame. so when trying to fit in with this lot i made the decision to be an orca mermaid who had lost its pod and was trying to live with the dolphins. the dolphin girls hated this until they realised that they could do a storyline in which i never move past my evil orca hunger and end up killing and eating several girls in a bloodlust that would then fade and i weep over their bodies. in real life this looked like a game of tag with biting and theatrics.

so that was probably my first mermaidsona and it was definitely a poser moment for however it was not the only poser sona i had. outside of my swim+surf classes i had friends who were also mermaid girls but who weren't sporty or into The Ocean like the dolphin girls tended to be. they thought the dolphin girls were weird and wanted to be Mermaids like you would see in Barbie mermaidtopia, but with them, the personas tended to be less in depth. my tail was aquamarine or blue, with white fins, and i can swim really fast and crest the waves without being easily seen. i was not usually a royal but sometimes i was a middle sister if we were all princesses. often i was was the boy or prince merman. my best friends were a school of flying fish and a sperm whale. i was really good at hiding (bc of the wave thing) and my romance plot was often the princess noticing the weird hiding prince when no one else would and i show them all the magic of the seas etc. if we were playing mermaids who were are landpeople, my land job would be guy who cleans/owns an oceanfront hotel/bnb and sneaks out to water at night when hes not working. while this was More Me than the dolphin girl persona, it didnt really feel like me either, i disliked the vagueness and how none of them cared about the ocean only using it as a setting with no curiosity for it. (alas ive always been a bit of a snob)

my TRUE MERMAID SELF was this: yellowfin tuna

idk why i just felt a lot of kinship with them. at the time i was so scared of sharks and seals and everything really. just a very fearful child and i remember really longing for that school (of fish) mentality of just moving as one and that keeping them safe. i also knew that i had to be a migratory species bc we moved so constantly and i needed a fish that never really had a home. the yellowfins would come yearly to the coast i lived on and that was important to me. mostly i felt like they had a desperation to the way they move I remember seeing one in the bottom of a boat and it just fighting for its life choking to death and thinking oh hell yeah me too brother. i loved their reputation for tourists coming to fish them and then snapping their shitty lines. I loved their sleek cool bodies and their sick long fins (cooler and longer than all the other tuna). i liked that they were fast as hell and Big. i liked how they tasted fresh! i was so convinced that i was Destined to be a tuna mermaid but god. that was so lame to both my groups of mermaid friends. i drew it once i think and petitioned my Barbie Mermaid friends to be a flying fish mermaid, which was the better design i think but had less soul... ack well. being a kid a weird

[biscuits-of-bagend]

DnDoc, Artificial Intelligence #1 - Abduction

Previous stories: DnDoc, Coming Home DnDoc, Space Band DnDoc, A Man's a Man DnDoc, The God of Rock 'n' Roll DnDoc, The Loch o' the Lowes DnDoc, The Mushroom Planet DnDoc, The Flowers We'll Remember

---

One day, as they were heading for a murder mystery party in a volcano on the very tourist-y world of Anru, the TARDIS lurched to the side and started to screech her indignation at whatever was happening to her. Rogue staggered to the left and smacked his hip against the railing, but quickly steadied himself on his feet and looked around to see what the Doctor was doing about it.

   "Guys, help me," the Doctor said. Rogue and Ruby both darted to the console and waited for instructions. The Doctor looked at the controls in front of him with unblinking eyes. "Okay, you take that, Ruby. Turn that when I say. Rogue, I need you to hold down on these three buttons, use your foot if you have to."

   Rogue got to work doing what he said, trying his best to balance even though the TARDIS was still listing to the side every few seconds.

   "It's working, it's working!" the Doctor shouted. "Well, sort of. We're definitely going the way we want to, but whatever's dragging us isn't giving up. We're probably just going to end up off course from their intended destination. But that's good, means they won't know exactly where we are. Gives us time to figure out a plan."

   "This happened before?" Rogue grunted.

   "Oh, heinously often. It is so rude. I don't know why people won't just talk to me. You know how approachable I am."

   Rogue chuckled, but tried to stay focused on the task the Doctor had set him. It wasn't easy though, because the Doctor was wearing a light red knitted jumper over a tight lilac shirt with the sleeves of both rolled up to the elbows. Working this hard, he was very impressive.

   Eventually, the TARDIS came to a stop. The Doctor whispered to the console and the lights all turned off, so they had to feel along the railing to find their way to the main door.

   "Means we won't spill any light out into wherever we are," the Doctor whispered.

   The Doctor was in between Rogue and Ruby, and when he took Rogue's right hand in his left, Rogue assumed he was also taking Ruby's left hand in his right. That was very sweet, but meant he couldn’t open the door.

   "Shall I?" whispered Rogue.

   The Doctor listened for a moment, then said, "Yeah, I think the immediate coast is clear."

   Rogue pulled the door open, begging it not to creak. He was never sure if the TARDIS was doing that for effect or if her hinges genuinely always needed oiled.

   The space outside was dark. The three of them carefully exited the TARDIS, stepping onto a hard floor - maybe metal? Concrete? The Doctor kept hold of Ruby and Rogue's hands so they didn't get lost in the dark, then they walked forward into the murk. Gradually, their eyes got somewhat used to it. Rogue was sure one particular direction was offering greater visibility, so he tugged the Doctor's hand and led him that way.

   What they found was a jungle of computer equipment. Tall square blocks like mainframes or networks or something, row after row of them on either side of a wide aisle. If you looked to the left or right down one of the narrow alleys between rows, you could see little blinking lights and white text on the surfaces of the computers. The Doctor had them edge down one of these narrower alleys to see what they could see.

   There were numbers, lots of numbers, but also some words. The first word Rogue noticed was 'Art.' He stepped up to the screen he'd seen it on, zooming forwards like a magnet. But it turned out it was not its own word, but rather the start of the phrase 'Artificial Intelligence.'

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BANK 3

RESOURCE AGENTS 31-40

   "You much of a hacker, Doctor?" asked Rogue.

   The Doctor shrugged. "I've found my way into some pretty closed circuits over my time. Not to mention I'm not supposed to know the code for UNIT's Time Window, since I'm not meant to know it exists."

   The Doctor frowned at the screen and tried to peer past the little white lines making up the letters. He had a look under the big blocky unit of electronics.

   "Hard to hack without a keyboard," said the Doctor.

   "Maybe it's like Alexa," said Ruby, though she said the word 'Alexa' extra quietly. Rogue had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

   "Could be voice activated, yeah," said the Doctor. Ah, that made more sense. The Doctor looked around the room, but there was silence. He frowned, and puffed out his chest slightly, and, still looking from side to side, said, "Hey, Alexa, play songs by Kylie Minogue."

   Silence, still.

   "Well, whoever's taken us, they have way less sense of fun than my last abductor." The Doctor winked at Rogue.

   Rogue gulped. "Slightly too tense to take that sort of joke right now, Doctor."

   "Ah, sorry," said the Doctor, giving Rogue's hand a quick squeeze.

   "No problem." Rogue kissed him on the side of the head, though absentmindedly, with screwed up eyes trying to see into the dark.

   "Hey, guys, I think she responded," said Ruby.

   "What?" The Doctor refocused his attention on the screen, which Ruby was pointing to.

RESOURCE AGENT ALEXA HOLT

INPUT: Play songs by Kylie Minogue

OUTPUT: Not known

   "Who the crap is Alexa Holt?" the Doctor muttered.

   Something new flashed up on the screen, as if to answer, but just at that moment there was a horrific crash a long way down the corridor. Rogue darted to the end of the alley and crouched down to the ground. He poked as little of his head out as he could and looked for the source.

   There was a hulking shadow at one end of the room. In a way, a shadow was good, because it meant there had to be light. But the only light forthcoming was a murky teal rectangle framing the huge, imposing figure. It was immediately shut out as the figure swung the door closed again.

   The next light Rogue saw was a laser beam flash an inch away from his nose.

---

@off-traveling-in-the-stars @casavanse @monster-donut @randomwholocker (let me know at any point if you no longer wish to be tagged in each post especially since it's a new story)

[elendsessor]

lad infinite wealth and hawaiian culture

when i first saw mentions of religion (and the name nele sounding awfully similar), i wanted to do a bit of a delve into parallels to actual real world beliefs. yes ryu ga gotoku is fictional, it’s stories are fictional, etc., fiction more often than not is influenced by the real world or other works, and the development staff seems to have done some homework regarding hawaii, as shown by elements in and outside the main story heavily referencing the history and culture. thought it would be fun to look into regardless.

i would like to preface this by saying i have not finished infinite wealth as of the time i’m writing this—i’m only at the beginning of chapter 5 so i had to dodge a lot of spoilers. this may contain inaccurate info when it comes to palekana as a (fictional) religion. this is also just based on the research i did. if anyone reading this is hawaiian and/or has a lot of knowledge about hawaiian beliefs and customs, feel free to add onto this or correct me! :)

the goddess nele—or rather, pele. similar to how kamurocho is heavily based on kabukicho in both setting design and name, nele is what pele is referred to. the actual information the game gives about nele also reflects the mythology surrounding pele.

pele is the goddess of fire and volcanoes, sometimes being referenced or referred to as pelehonuamea or peleʻaihonua, which according to the nps are based on accounts of her movement. similar to a few fire deities in various mythologies, she represents the destruction and rejuvenation of the land.

dana mentions how palekana is focused on giving back to/caring for the land and its people and as such are very environmentally friendly, do charity work, etc. but have a strict rule, particularly when it comes to maintaining food banks, about the food being native to hawaii. some of this is definitely based in the group’s own interpretations, but some of it could also parallel traditions.

according to this hawaii-focused site, removing lava rocks off the islands or eating ‘ohelo berries along the halema‘uma‘u caldera without offering them to her/asking permission brings about bad luck due to them being sacred. as the food often sold at the markets throughout what’s explorable in infinite wealth come from different countries or have been given some american flare, eating anything non-native could be seen as disrespectful to the land it comes from, in a way rejecting the gifts that land has given its natives.

the word palekana

this further ties to the reasoning behind the native-only diet. palekana means safety, protection, and used to ward off danger.

i think this goes without saying but hawaii itself has been heavily westernized. american settlers did colonize the islands, did turn them into a collective state, did try to turn natives “american,” and did (inevitably) make it into some exotic tourist attraction. most of the hawaii known in modern day is definitely not the real hawaii. rather, most of the culture has been erased or exploited.

infinite wealth doesn’t try to hide that fact and openly mentions it, particularly with dwight, which also seems to reflect the themes presented in the series (and particularly 7 and 8) involving the oppression and erasure of those in certain positions by those in power.

save for the group’s goal to help the land, palekana’s strict rules seem to be as a way to preserve the original culture of hawaii including the land, hence the protection part of it. there seems to be no strictness when it comes to race likely due to most people living in hawaii not being native so it isn’t exactly that conservative. it’s just nature-based.

the warding off danger/safety could also be what influences palekana’s charitable work and perhaps its refusal to preach/directly influence those in their care, rather having their actions speak for themselves.

[theragethatisdesire]

TI PENSO (idk if that’s how its spelled ANYWAYS-) NEW STUFF WHEN BECAUSE IM IN LOVE WITH THAT EREN AND NEED HIMBSKAMDMMSDASMOWMDMDMD

Can u give us random THAT eren headcannons or a drabble or like ANYTHING PSLOLSPLSLSPSLSLSPSL😩😩😩😩😩😩🧎‍♀️🧎‍♀️🧎‍♀️🧎‍♀️🧎‍♀️🧎‍♀️🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅

.....hello there.

i always (and i mean always) have thoughts on ti penso eren. like. ALWAYS. so yes i can thank you for asking!!!!!!!!!!! dropping ti penso eren lore and headcanons for you here

has a very weird relationship with zeke. like, they're somewhat close in ti penso (esp before eren moves to the city!), but they're very different at a deep level so they butt heads 24/7

BLOWS MONEY. like thank god he makes a lot, bc he will spend money like he's getting paid to do it

star wars nerd, considers anakin his personal jesus christ, will ramble about the lore if prompted

night owl. all that jet lag catches up to him, and you can often find him on the couch at 3am catching up on emails. he always leaves the room bc he doesn't want to wake you :(

SPONTANEOUS!!!!!! books a surprise trip to paris for your birthday, will randomly sign you both up for kickboxing lessons, you come home to find an interior designer measuring your living room wall bc he's decided to pick up a 10ftx15ft painting?????

loves the city, will probably never live anywhere else

bundles your little ones up in the dead of winter and makes you stand in line for three hours to go ice skate at rockefeller center like tourists every year

this is so specific, but even when you were young, he's always hated going out on new years. his favorite way to spend new years is snuggled up on the couch, two flutes of nice champagne, and cheersing as the ball drops

when you have kids, he gets them little flutes of sparkling apple cider and they scream and cheer and kiss you both on your cheeks and go EWWWWW when you and eren kiss they're so cute

you definitely have two kids!! one girl, one boy :)

the wedding....i can't even get started. it's like, the wedding of the century. eren stays pretty out of the spotlight generally speaking, but everything you two plan catches media attention, and the wedding gets a vogue spread and vanity fair interviews and it is...just a hooplah

OKAY SORRY. if anyone wants to know literally anything about ti penso eren or specifically their wedding i have lots of information to share lol all you have to do is ask!!!!

thank you nonny <333 i hope you enjoy!

[imaginethezeldaverse]

So my goal in life right now is to have my thirst not only feed the other Yunobo lovers so that you may all be satiated - but to drag down some unsuspecting victims with me lol 😈 but thank you for being super supportive - I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it. Yunobo is such a sweet, sweet soul and big ol' hunk on top of that so what is he if not the perfect kind of man?

But anywho...secluded you say? And it's late? Say no more 😏 (hope it's okay if I made reader afab/female here!) - also, this ask started completely differently...but I decided I wanted to flesh out what I originally wrote into another little series so thank you for the idea essentially. 🥰

"Ahhhh that's incredible," your dreamy sigh echoed off the walls of the enclosed area. Having a Goron for a boyfriend truly had its perks - sweet demeanor, strong arms, a heart that you were sure was made of actual gold - but right now it was this. A secluded hot spring. Hot springs were a common commodity in Eldin, but this one in particular was a rare find - something only Yunobo and his crew members were aware of. You sunk lower into the water, the warm waves of it enveloping your nude frame. When you were finally and fully sat, large digits found their way around your waist. "Gotta admit, I'm proud of my team for such a find!" Yunobo exclaimed, "It's not every day a new hot spring shows up on Death Mountain." The delight from his grin beams brightly; YunoboCo has been steady and growing with its business: with ore aplenty for Goron City's economy, Mine-Cart Land, and now with an addition of hot springs. Mining excavations led to some surprises as he would find out. But while the springs themselves were naturally occurring, it was actually your beau who suggested the coverings. "With all sorts of people coming to Goron City more often, having a little bit of space away from public and being able to relax freely might be good, y'know?" you remembered him explaining to you when the concept first came about. How proud you were when the idea took off without a hitch. Now? Now you were reaping the benefits together. Shifting a little closer in his hold, you leaned on his chest, "You've done great work, Yunobo, because this..." and you stretched just a bit, before settling back against him, "This is nice." He softly chuckled out his thanks, before pressing a kiss to your temple. Being that his schedule has been busier as of late, you cherished time alone with him - and a trip to a nice soothing hot spring couldn't have been a better choice to be able to relax with your Goron. Your fingers traced over his abdomen, lazily skimming the lined definition of muscle there. His hand sat innocently on your hip, keeping you in place at his side. Unsure if it was the heat of the spring or some other willing force that sent your thoughts adrift, but the more you became aware of his hand on your body, the more you wanted it elsewhere. You bit your lip at the notion. Perhaps you could...it was late enough at night. Most Gorons were already home and there definitely weren't any tourists out on this side of Death Mountain yet. "Hey, Yuno...it's getting a little late, don't you think?" Yunobo, who had briefly closed his eyes as he soaked, peeked one open in your direction, "Is it? Did you want to go home?" Suddenly he shifted towards you, both eyes open now, "Are you too hot? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to keep us in here that long!" Your hands pat his chest to settle him, "No, no, Yuno, I'm perfectly fine. I'm just saying - everyone's gone for the day. There's nobody around at this hour," your eyes slowly shift from him, to the entrance, and then back to him with some added allure, "Nobody...but us." His mental gears seemed to turn rather slowly as you watched his expression shift from confusion to pensive and then finally to stark realization of what you meant. In a slight panic his head whipped around the area, the terror of someone else being nearby clearly weighing on his mind. "H-HERE?!" he squeaked, cheeks already an intense cherry color, "What if someone walks in?" But you were ready for this reaction. Sticking out your lips in a plump pout, you gently protested, "There hasn't been a Goron around since we got here," shimmying your body a little closer now, you walked your hands up his chest to come around his neck, "Besides...I've missed being alone with you." That would do it. The poor Goron's soft spot was hit with pinpoint accuracy, your beautiful face presenting so innocently (when you were being anything but) and that doe-eyed look you gave him. His hands came around your waist, allowing him to lift you into his lap. Though apprehensive, Yunobo would be lying to himself if he said he wasn't quietly thinking something similar. Being president of the company had its drawbacks, and the derailment of how much time he got to spend with you was one of them. With your long lashes sitting prettily over your sweetheart eyes, your smaller, curvier frame nestled against his - completely naked no less; Yunobo's worry was beginning to falter. You felt the thickened pads of his fingers smooth up the length of your spine and weave into your hair. The Goron entrepaneur leaned over to stop at your ear, a necessity to balance out the severe coloration of his face, "...We can't be too loud, okay?" In a minxish move, you gently pulled back in his hold with your hands on his pecs, the idea for you to be able to see his face entirely when you say, "That depends on how good it feels, big guy." You swore steam ejected from his ears, his grip on your body just a tad bit tighter. Deciding you had teased him enough, you bobbed upward looking to better position yourself closer to his face. You did not make it far however, as Yunobo was already pulling you toward him to capture your mouth in a hard kiss. His hand still cradled the back of your head, the other now sliding down your back and over the rounded curve of your ass. You deepened the kiss when you felt him squeeze your flesh, coaxing his tongue to envelope yours as the sparks of your intimacy began to heat the room further. It astounded you how quickly he made your body feel on fire, you were already trying to bite back noises at each of his touches. The way his traveling fingers eased over the muscles of your thighs, skimmed the traverse of your abdomen and slowly carried the weight of your breast against his palm. A whine spilled over from the back of your throat and into his mouth, causing him to shudder into yours. He left your lips with a pant, opting to trail feverish kisses down your jaw and into the crook of your neck. "Mmmf, Yunobo..." was your delicate whimper in response to his thumb grazing your nipple. Your hands gripped helplessly to the rocks on his back, composure leaving you at lightning speed. You wrestled with an idea your head, you wanted so badly for him to take you - the mix of the warm hot spring and his bulwark physique making you far wetter than you were expecting. Opening your mouth, you planned on your next words being a plea for him to fuck you, but the rigid slide of his hardened length against your ass gave you pause. Seems like you weren't the only one who was falling fast. "I...hnk...I-I don't know how much more restraint I have in me, sweetheart," he murmured, bracing you against him by the backs your thighs now. His chest rose and fell in heavy breaths, eyes half-lidded and dark with the haze of lust swimming through them. It made your entire body shiver from how devastatingly wracked with want his expression held. Yunobo swallowed thickly, "C-Can we...?" Stunned that he beat you to the punch, you wasted no time in blurting out your consent. You pulled him into another fiery kiss, one that was needed as he slid into you in one solid stroke. The moans that tumbled off your tongue in your kissing were depraved, though you would argue it couldn't be helped. Spearing and splitting your pussy open as Yunobo was, you were enraptured almost immediately. Little resistance came to your lovemaking, the now temperate water making it that much easier for him to fill you up. Sloshing sounds bounced off the walls of the enclosure, his thrusts becoming harder by the minute and chopping up the water beneath you both. Your pebbled nipples sent an extra zap of pleasure down your hips with each time you were brought down on his cock, the roughened planes of his chest causing the delicious friction. There wasn't a chance in hell you were lasting much longer. Finding yourself unable to kiss him any longer, you kept your forehead touched to his, mingling breaths as he fucked up into your willing pussy. "Yunoo," you gasped, his most recent thrust hitting you deep, "Yuno, unghh, hunny, I’m gonna cum soon, oh...!”  Yet soon would end up an understatement, your beau now gripping your thighs harder as he quickened his pace. His grunts were stifled by the tension in his jaw, teeth grit in concentration on slamming into that spot that had his name falling from your kiss-swollen lips. In a flash of thunderous pleasure, you were keening into his neck, gasping and sobbing to keep yourself from screaming from how hard you were cumming. The spasms of your cunt clenching around him had Yunobo swallowing a monstrous groan, him pulling out of you just before he could finish inside. You felt weak in his arms, your body leaning fully into him as you fought to catch your breath through the heat of the spring and your post-coital fog. A kiss was pressed to the top of your head,  “Love you,” he whispered, a hand soothing the muscles of your back as he supported you with the opposite. “Love you...too...” came your weary croak, feeling your eyes threaten to flutter shut.  Suddenly you were lifted completely out of the water. One hand at your back, one hand under your knees, Yunobo carried you out of the hot spring and in the direction of the robes you both had brought for after. Though he was looking straight ahead, you didn’t miss the lines of worry adorning his features,   “Let’s get you out of this heat, hm? You look like you wanna pass out.”  You laughed softly at that - it made your heart sing often with how kind he was. Though... you supposed after the fact that you could have done without your remark of that possibly being because he railed you so well - seeing as how it nearly caused Yunobo to drop you. 

[albertserra]

hi! you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, no worries—but i'm curious what you generally like/dislike about living in DC? i just got a job offer there and it's a big move, so i want to ask around first. i like public transit, if that helps.

this is hard since i feel like something like a place to live is so subjective lmao but ill try

likes

public transit is like. mostly good? i can get pretty much anywhere within the heart of the city that i need to go using the metro, just with some walking added on which i dont mind. I don't use the busses but theyre there and thats whats needed to get around outside the major parts of the city. its also clean. dont expect it to be as fast or convenient as nyc. its more sparse and trains dont run as often. its also much more expensive (trips can be up to $6 based on distance). i like it personally but theres definitely a *lot* of room for improvement. theres constant track work that can interfere with commutes and the replacement shuttles suck a lot of the time.

its a city so like there are gay people. i feel mostly comfortable walking around visibly gnc to a point but ive been heckled and shouted at and whispered about and stared at and laughed at. lowkey sexually harassed once. never anything more direct and nothing physical but thats my personal experience. its way less prevalent/common than in nyc in my experience. keep in mind i have my own reservations about presentation that im still trying to work through so im not always super feminine, dont wear dresses etc, even my heels are usually more tame like boots and stuff. so i dont go through what visibly trans women or more outwardly gnc people likely go through. ive done pda in the city and no one cared.

i like some of the theaters (afi even though its a trek, angelika, theres a landmark but it kinda sucks but the programming is ok sometimes). some of the museums sometimes do really interesting film programming

museums can be cool but this is also very subjective. they can also get old quick.

dislikes

theaters are limited. will never compete with nyc or LA. no real film festival on the level of nyff. if you care about this you *will* miss interesting releases that dont go wide enough to hit dc. I was begging on my hands and knees for Memoria for months until it finally came here for a week. restorations are much less likely to screen here.

its the capital. you will brush shoulders with government employees and lots of military soldiers and employees and whatever. the pentagon literally has a metro stop. i still want to shoot someone when i see a bunch of uniformed navy/army/air force people on my train. people you encounter may actively or passively participate in the various crimes of the state and not blink an eye. obviously not everyone is like this, if the palestine protests are anything to go by there are a bunch of dissenters and leftists etc but like be aware that these people are here. in a similar vein, military contractors are also rampant here.

being the capital the tourists are also a different... flavor... than in other cities ive been in/to. ive seen high school tour groups buying and wearing a bunch of maga hats as edgy post-irony jokes. then theres ofc the very serious hardcore nationalists. shit like that. on a related note. oomf has an israeli journalist (for a right wing publication of course) that regularly comes into his place of work.

its expensive. but my main frame of reference city-wise is nyc and its not nearly on that level (yet).

[amandamazzillo]

FROM SCRATCH: Captivating, But Overlong Romantic Drama with Strong Performances

From Scratch is a romantic drama limited series coming to Netflix October 21st. The series follows Amy (Zoe Saldana) as she meets and falls in love with the Sicilian Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea) while studying abroad in Italy.

Structure and Story

What sets From Scratch apart from similar romantic stories is how the series explores what comes next after the whirlwind romance between Amy and Lino. We get to see all the wonderful romcom moments before diving into their love story across many years--and how relationships and people evolve over time.

The performances in From Scratch help bring this entertaining story to life. Zoe Saldana and Eugenio Mastrandrea are wonderful and bring beautiful chemistry between Lino and Amy. We feel in touch with these characters and want to see what comes next in their romance.

With its structure of exploring a relationship across a large period of time, From Scratch has a lot of potential story to tell, but sometimes, the time doesn't feel well-used. At times, you wonder if the romance between Amy and Lino would have been better as a two-hour movie rather than an eight episode series.

Balance of Genres

From Scratch does a good job of showing the realistic elements of a relationship, while also exploring the drama we come to expect from a story such as this one. And amid all of this, the series still has a sense of humor and much-appreciated moments of levity.

From Scratch balances its comedic moments with heartfelt scenes that feel even more real because the performances add another layer to these complex and intriguing characters.

But, there are a few times where the dreams of the main characters get lost amid the drama. From Scratch is about Amy--an artist--falling in love with Lino--a chef--as she studies art in Florence, but as the series progresses, we see less and less of their professions. Story wise, it makes sense that relationships stifle their creative passions, but it would be nice to be reminded of their hopes and dreams more often across the eight episode series.

Cinematography and Location

From Scratch looks beautiful, especially when its showcasing the beauty found across the world. We see Italy through the eyes of a tourist as well as locals, showcasing different aspects of the culture and unique world.

The series also explores Los Angeles and how Amy finds beauty where she never expected it--and rekindling her love of art.

From Scratch does not spend enough time in Italy, but the moments in Italy are beautiful and will definitely appeal to anyone watching the series for its location.

Cultural Differences

From Scratch offers some interesting introspection into cultural and racial differences. Both Lino and Amy expect backlash from their families about who they choose to date. Amy is Black and her family is from Texas. Lino is Sicilian and he expresses that his mother wouldn't want him to date someone who is Black, an American, and not Catholic.

The series does a good job of showing how Amy is in unfamiliar territory with Lino in Italy. And it also explores how Lino doesn't quite fit in when he's in America. Both Amy and Lino experience cultural differences--and From Scratch explores how these differences impact their romance--both negatively and positively--as they grow closer together.

From Scratch also does a great job of showcasing parental relationships, the good and the bad, and offer heartwarming moments of reconciliation that are some of the most memorable scenes throughout the series.

From Scratch is a beautiful story about learning to accept yourself and find someone who will prop you up just as much as you prop them up. It's refreshing to see relationships where both partners want the other to follow their dreams.

Conclusion

From Scratch tells a familiar fish-out-of-water romance in a unique, but overlong, way--exploring how relationships can change over time. The chemistry between Zoe Saldana and Eugenio Mastandrea makes for a memorable romantic tale.

[tenebriism]

Another season sparks another letter; the idle but warm hearted chatter of a delicate cerulean scrawl once again having found its way into the Khaenri’ahn’s presence. There’s far less purpose to it this time beyond an open stream of consciousness tinged with endearing eccentricity - but Jean feels better for having sent it, all the same. A note to let him know she is thinking of him. A note to remind him that someone still cares. 

Dear nameless breath stealer, 

Can you believe it’s been another three months already? The seasons seem to be passing more and more quickly this year, with Autumn already bringing changes in on the breeze. I always thought Mondstadt was very much a city for Springtime, but as the leaves change to shades of orange and brown I can’t help but think perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps next time you get a chance to steal away from your adventures, you’ll be able to walk with me and see it? I can’t promise I won’t be fully embracing my long forgotten youth and kicking my feet through piles of leaves, but I think you’d enjoy it. It’s peaceful and perhaps even homely. 

Not that I would dare to presume you need consider it a home of course! I know your roots lie in other places, but should you have need of a haven, at least for a little while, I like to think as a nation we might carry just enough charm to make it a pleasant stay. (And yes, dear knight, I am aware that every letter I send you sounds more and more like a tourist brochure for singing Mondstadt’s praises.)

I think I just want to show you so many things and share with you the snippets of mundanity that make me smile, it’s become a second nature now. The amount of times I’ll have walked past a shop window or seen a particularly nice flower and thought, ‘I know who would love this…’ is almost embarrassing to admit. Although these days, particularly now the nights are drawing in, it’s often more after dark that I find you once again in my thoughts. 

It’s definitely one of the perks of the Autumn season; knowing that the sky will drawn in a little bit earlier and the stars will once again twinkle to life. I still wholly stand by my belief you may well have fallen from those stars, but should the moon ever come looking for you, I’ll gladly throw hands to defend your honour, my starlight friend. 

And yes, alright, perhaps I am talking nonsense now. It’s been a long day, but sharing these odd little thoughts with you makes the distance that bit more tolerable. Although on the bright side, at least as the season changes lantern rite creeps ever closer. 

In another few months, we’ll be back in each other’s company and keeping our time honoured tradition alive. But until then, know that I…miss you. And I hope above all else, that you are happy, healthy and safe. 

Stay out of trouble, starshine, 

- J. x

The letter is somewhat STAINED, this time, and the handwriting quite MESSY in comparison to its writer's usual pretty cursive. Her letter finds him amidst a time he needs it MOST, and whether or not SHE knew that, or the gods are playing the game of MERCY with him again, he shan't take a blessing for granted. Perhaps he could have waited until he isn't struggling with himself so the letter could be completely legible, but reading her letter, and swiftly sitting down to RESPOND to it, means he may bask in the feelings and emotions she grants him with ease even longer.

The happiness may be shortlived, but he will cling to it, as he always does.

[ su nshine in dark ti mes ,

im sorry if this letter is a strug gle to deciph er. i fair les s th an well at p resent. do n o t worry , this wil l not kee p me fr om seein g you at the lant ern r i te. of that, iam cert ai n and pr omis e you.

The love and admiration you house for your nation is a pleasant comfort; in that regard, we are very similar. The times I have found myself in or around Mondstadt, I have always felt a sense of home and belonging. Perhaps it is because I know you are there, working tirelessly to ensure it continues to feel that way for both myself and the others who both live and travel there. Regardless, I can say for sure that, of all the nations I have visited, Mondstadt is the one that seems to care for its people the most.

Were I to ever settle down, unlikely though it may be, I am confident Mondstadt would be in my favored choices to do so.

My travels have taken me far from your wind-embraced home, but there is beauty in knowing we are gazing up at the same sky every night. It makes me feel like the distance betwixt us is not so heartbreakingly massive, even if the sun may banish the feeling come morning time.

That you would compare me to starlight is strange, but not unwelcomed. I have certainly fallen, yes, but not from the stars. I have fallen in a great many ways. If I am, indeed, some sort of fallen star, however, then it is befitting that you are the sun. The stars are always out, and whilst we cannot see them during the day, they are there. I like to think they find peace and respite when the sun comes up. A chance to have a break, to bask in the beauties and purities of the sun.

Then, nighttime falls and the sun retreats, bringing darkness and loneliness as the moon then rises to take its place. There, the stars shine again. I used to think I preferred the latter hours of the night, when all is quiet and I may exist undisturbed, though I am starting to enjoy the sun, too. It is blinding and powerful, but beneath it, I find peace. I can merely . . . be. ]

There is a tear beneath this section, where the force of his unsteady hand has ripped the paper. With how ABRUPTLY the letter then proceeds to end, 'tis evident he'd been afraid of tearing it entirely. He needed SOMETHING to send back to her. Something intact, something to let her know she hadn't been forgotten, and that she, too, was missed.

[ i mi ss y ou too. re m em ber to tak e car e of you rsel f, s unsh ine.

~ D . ]

@gunnhildred ;;

[newjerseydumpster]

Willkommen to Ulmich!

This is the unnecessary consequence of me wanting the protagonist of a shitfic to be a silly german middle aged woman. Please accept this funky little map before I open the exposition floodgates!

General Information

Ulmich is a region in what would be Pokemon's equivalency of Europe. It's pretty much just a yassified PokeGermany. It's in the center of this alleged "PokeContinent," and shares a border with the Kalos region to the west.

The official language of Ulmich is Ulmichan (which is just German), though most Ulmichans are bilingual, fluent in both their native tongue and either Galarian (English), Kalosian (French), or another.

The legendary Pokemon of Ulmich is Bundesaetos, a regal black eagle that Ulmich credits as its founder. Instead of using "Arceus" as a sort of stand-in word for "God," Ulmichans will often use "Bundesaetos" instead. This is not to say Bundesaetos usurps Arceus as a God, but rather that it's such an important piece of Ulmichan culture that it warrants its own everyday use.

Despite this, Bundesaetos hasn't been sighted in quite some time.

Cities [In Order of Population]

Zergen is the capital of Ulmich, as well as its most populated city. It's the industrial, financial, and government heartland of the region, a true concrete jungle if the country ever had one. This city is quite fast-paced and crowded, so cars aren't the most effective form of transportation. Instead, Zergen's got quite the underground transit system, providing commuters access to most of the city.

Additionally, Zergen is home to Zergen International Airport (ZIA), and Zergen University, among others. As far as the Pokemon League goes, Zergen has no gyms, nor is it the home of the Elite Four - but it's a must on the bucket list for tourists!

Waldig is the second most populated city in Ulmich but definitely has Zergen beat in terms of trade. It's the one Ulmich city that's right on the sea. Besides ingoing cargo ships from Galar, Kalos, or Paldea, Waldig has quite a lovely maritime beachfront and a shockingly successful cruise industry! Waldig is home to Ulmich's first and easiest gym, specializing in Water-type Pokemon.

Schwassberg is the third most populated city in Ulmich, which is quite ironic considering its placement in the more treacherous reaches of the region. However, it's mostly unperturbed by the Stahlgrenze Range due to its placement juuuust outside of its boundaries. Schwassberg residents are noticeably more laid-back than most other Ulmichans, and this is exemplified best in their world-renowned annual beer festival (Yes, we're talking Oktoberfest). You're gonna see a lot of silly Unovans come to Schwassberg for a keg or two.

Schwassberg hosts the eighth and final gym, as well as the most difficult. Considering the range that surrounds it, it's appropriate that the gym specializes in the Steel-type.

Munseedorf, lying right by the heart of the West Munsee River, is home to lovely scenery alongside the calming sounds of Munsee's current. Being closest to Kalos, a lot of Munseedorf's population is fluent in Kalosian, and the general culture is much more mixed between Kalos and Ulmich than in other parts of the region. Munseedorf houses the sixth gym, specializing in Grass-type Pokemon.

Strossem borders the Kitzberg Range to the east. As such, the city provides lovely, albeit daunting views of Mt. Kleinkrieg. Known for the "Strossem Sausage" and a thriving skiing industry, the city's doing quite well for itself. Strossem is home to the seventh gym in the Pokemon League lineup, specializing in the Bug-type.

Nachtfurt is the closest to what you could consider smack-dab in the middle of the region. It is widely considered as the "garden city" of Ulmich, as even the most urbanized squares of Nachtfurt are sprawling with gardens and forest cover. It's definitely got a gothic academia vibe. Nachtfurt is home to the fifth gym, which specializes in Ghost-type Pokemon.

Vechtwald, aside from Zergen, must be Ulmich's most blatantly historic city. Walking around the central streets will display a centuries-long myriad of architecture, from the newest marketplace to the oldest cathedral. Vechtwald is home to the second Pokemon gym, working with Dark-types.

Rosenschen is a city caught in the aridest part of Ulmich. Surrounded by the Rosenkranz Desert and Norwuste Range, Bundesaetos knows that it's a bit hard for things to grow. Citizens make it work, though, capitalizing on a sort of cowboy aesthetic to attract tourism. Rosenschen's gym is fourth in the League lineup, focusing on the Ground-type.

Mecklenstadt is the ninth and final city of note in the Ulmich Region. While it's not a buzzing metropolis, Mecklenstadt is quaint and historic, a much less busybodied rendition of Zergen. The city itself is probably best known for both its many Pokemon sanctuaries alongside its monopoly on Ulmich's northeastern beachfront. Mecklenstadt houses the third gym in the Ulmich League, Dragon-type in nature.

Towns and Villages

Rodenheim is the northernmost settlement in the Ulmich Region, situated at the very crest. It's like Waldig, but a much more downsized and rural version. If Ulmich were a game, Rodenheim would be the player's hometown.

Nordmund is primarily known as a fun art town. Have you got a love of gardens, old imperial palaces, and chocolate? Nordmund's got you covered, so long as you can put up with pretentious hipsters.

Kirchatz is very similar to Vechtwald in the old architecture field, minus the city aspect or secularism. Kirchatz people tend to be pretty religious, so if you're an Arceus-fearing fellow then I suppose you'd be right where you ought to be. For the rest of us, it's a bit awkward - but at least the churches look pretty.

Kalingen is a glorified rest stop. I believe in Kalingen slander.

Augureich, sitting right at the base of Ulmich's highest peak, is a village absolutely pelted by rain and snow. Augureich's a mining town, to be sure, but it's also full of spirituality and mystique. Legends say that Augureich was the birthplace of Bundesaetos. If you manage to outlast the blizzard on the way, here's to hoping you have enough money for a monk!

Gipfelitz, Ulmich's southwesternmost point, is the home of the Pokemon League itself. That's right - this little place is where the Elite Four and Champion conduct business. In Gipfelitz, upon a horizontal mountain face, belies a massive cathedral: The Pokemon League building. Walk right on in! If you dare.

Waterways

River Munsee is Ulmich's longest river, spanning out to reach across much of the northern and central reaches. Because of its shape, Munsee is divided into two parts: East and West Munsee. These rivers are vital for the prosperity of Munseedorf, Nachtfurt, Nordmund, Vechtwald, Strossem, and Kalingen.

Brandewitz River is the lifeline of Zergen and Waldig, and certainly the busiest waterway in the region as a result. Both cities use Brandewitz to ship their cargo to and from their ports, as well as the rest of Ulmich through smaller channels.

Herald River is the most straightforward river geographically speaking, but it's a lot more turbulent than Munsee or Brandewitz, with rapids in some areas that will not hesitate to knock you down. Schwassbergians really love to paddle around in it though, so I guess it's not so bad.

Mountains and Deserts

Rosenkranz Desert is the one and only desert (or prairie area, for that matter) in the Ulmich Region. In real life, Germany doesn't have any deserts - at least not truly, but south of Berlin (or Zergen, in this case) lies a pocket of pseudo-desert area referred to as the Lieberoser Desert. Rosenkranz is based on that pocket, though a lot drier. While not a sand dune type of desert, it's an area more similar to a desertified prairie land.

Norwuste Range is Ulmich's third tallest range. There's not much to write home about other than it being much tamer than Kitzberg or Stahlgrenze. Not to mention drier.

The Kitzberg Mountain Range is Ulmich's second tallest range altogether, and home to the second tallest peak in Ulmich: Mt. Kleinkrieg. The peak's name, meaning "little war," is well deserved, considering how dangerous it can really be to climb. While not as tall as Augureich, it's imposing on its own. Climbers, please perform your due diligence.

The Stahlgrenze Mountains are Ulmich's tallest range, housing Mt. Augureich, the region's highest summit. If Kleinkrieg's a freakshow, then wait till you see Augureich. The thing's surrounded by a nonstop blizzard, and if that wasn't bad enough, it also happens to be an active volcano. You see, unlike Kleinkrieg, there is NO climbing Augureich. Should you ever decide to ignore my warnings and climb the glorified death rock anyway, here's to hoping the monks in the town can give you a blessing or two before you depart. Happy days!

I've been working at this for two hours at the VERY least so I'm gonna tap out now. But if you're seeing this, thanks for sticking around! I bringeth upon thee a star sticker ⭐

[shadow-mans-things]

I got bored and decided to write a little something about my boy. There's no mentions of his brothers in this one, but perhaps in the next one there will be.

TW: disassociation (based off of how I experience it.), mentions of starving oneself, mentions of threatened murder, mentions of self harm, mentions of running away. (I'll always be sure to tag stuff like this accordingly, but if I forget one don't be afraid to tell me. I don't want to expose you or anyone else to anything triggering.)

It was like a husky shed in his bedroom. Chunks of hair lay everywhere on the floors, and the bed, there was hardly a surface in the room that didn't have hair on it. Bodaway looked into the broken mirror and didn't recognize the face reflected in it. It was his face, but it was tired, sunken in, scarred. Most of all, his hair was gone. Reduced to a buzz cut, he felt like a part of him was missing. In the past his hair was a huge representation of where he originated from, he was extremely particular about who touched it and why. As a child he'd freak out if a blade even dared to touch a singular strand upon his head, now it was gone. Bodaway knew he couldn't be sad, he cut it after all. Perhaps, the reason he felt the need to mourn was because the fallen hair meant the end of a chapter in his life, a chapter that needed to end long ago. He was done being cast off in his brothers' shadows, done being mistreated, done letting it all happen. There was a gray bag in the corner that contained a few articles of clothes, stolen food, and money he'd pickpocketed off of tourists.

Bodaway took another look at himself in the mirror. Tears welled up in his eyes as he brushed his hands against the stubble that was once a majestic mane. His hands shook violently as he ran his fingers through the tiny strands. As much as he hated it, he had to do it. His long hair made him easily recognizable, an easy target for them. This, on the other hand, was not. No one would believe that Bodaway, the kid who spent hours making sure his hair was in top condition would ever cut it. It was just too outlandish to be true. His eyes soon trailed down to the robes that lay atop the fallen strands. It was crumpled up into a misshapen ball, with smaller accessories thrown about carelessly. The clothes he wore now were like rags compared to what he grew up in. But, they were comfortable, and warm, and didn't belong to a clan that threatened to kill its members if they dared think of a life outside it. The wind smashed itself against his window, reminding him of what he had to endure. The long hours spent training in the harsh conditions, often without breaks. The meals he withheld from himself as punishment when the grandmaster criticized his every move again. The feelings of inferiority when he stood next to Bi-Han and Kuai Liang. Another noise would snap him out of his trance, a knock on his door telling him that someone was on the other end of it, waiting to come in.

"I'm busy!" Bodaway would say, hoping that the person would catch the hint and go away. They did because no further knock was made, and no voice responded to announce who they were.

With one last sigh, Bodaway dropped the razor and backed away from the mirror. He buttoned up the cheap flannel that definitely wouldn't protect him from the blizzard outside, and he grabbed his gray bag. The room was a mess, but the wind blowing the hair around and covering it in snow didn't help either.