#how to increase iron levels quickly

[amasterpieceofmadness]

the new suit – tony s.

summary You and Tony are working together on a new suit as you end up kissing him. But before you can confess your feelings you get interrupted by Steve…

warnings none, fluff, mutual pining

wordcount 5.2K

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Tony slides his glasses back on as he’s fishing up on some new designs for his Iron Man suit. "You finished the sketches of the costume? Let me see." He leans over the desk while I’m sitting in a chair, he puts his palms on the table and takes a closer look over at my sketchbook.

“What do you think?” I ask as I lean back in my chair.

"Hmm." Tony stares at the sketchbook, rubbing his hands together as he takes in the designs, his brows furrowing and his mouth twisting into a thoughtful frown. "Very interesting. I see your thought process here. It's clear that you took inspiration from some of my old work, but you also managed to add your own touches. It's creative. I like it." He pushes himself off of the desk and looks at me from under his glasses with a small smirk, which makes me a bit proud to be honest.

“Oh, you haven't seen the best part yet” I lean over, nearly spilling my coffee, to get some more sketches out under a pile of other papers “There you are” I hand him the sketches and once again Tony leans in, craning his neck to get a better look at them. His face lights up as he sees them, quickly analyzing and taking in the details.

"Okay, I like the direction you've taken. I really like your new touches to my original style. It looks damn good, and the new armory you added sounds great!” He seems really pleased with my work.

“Thought you like it. The material for the suit is light but it can still protect you just as good and it is very resistance” I explain my sketches to him, occasionally looking up to check if he’s still listening.

Tony is visibly impressed, nodding in approval as he takes in the details. "Yes, that's a fantastic feature. The light weight and increased protection would be an asset in any battle. I also like the addition of the new weapons. It adds an extra level of versatility, and gives me a little more firepower. And it's great that you were able to do it all while keeping the suit light weight. That's always been one of my main concerns."

“So... when can we get started?” I ask overly motivated, looking up at him while sipping on my like 10th coffee today, even though it’s only 1pm.

Tony smiles and lets out a chuckle as he glances once again at the many sketches of his new suit. "Well, with this level of enthusiasm, I'd say we could start right now. Everything we need is here in the lab. The only thing we need to decide on is the color scheme. Do you want to stick with classic red and gold, or go with something different?"

I smirk and get up, ready to go to work. “No, no, the red-gold is iconic. We are not gonna change a thing there. But we should pick a darker shade for the red. This way the suit doesn’t look like a toy and it really brings out the golden accents I put there” I point to the sketches

Tony nods in agreement, looking at the sketches with a critical eye, taking in the subtle details I’ve added.

"Hmm, a darker red would definitely give it a more sophisticated and mature look. And it would also make the gold accents pop more. Let's go with a darker red, and see how it looks."

I nod in agreement and already walk through the lab, looking around for the stuff we need and turning on all the electronical devices. “Sounds good. But we can decide about the final color later on in the process anyway. Jarvis, put on some ACDC”

Tony chuckles at the unexpected command to Jarvis, but follows behind me as I walk through the lab, eyeing the different machines and equipment as I pass. "True that. For now, let's focus on getting the different parts of the suit put together. And ACDC is always a perfect choice for the mood in the lab." Tony says with a smile, as the iconic rock music fills the lab, filling him with a surge of energy.

We work diligently throughout the whole night, making steady progress on the suit. It’s nothing too unusual for the two of us since we both really enjoy working together and we are both night owls. And I have to admit that I love to work with him. We are very close and always fool around and joke together.

The sun is starting to rise, but neither of us seems to notice, as we’re too busy focusing on creating the perfect suit. We’ve made a lot of progress on putting the different components together, and we’re both beginning to feel a sense of accomplishment. Tony sighs and stretches and I can’t help but glance at his muscles. "I'd say that we should take a break and stretch our legs for a bit. We've been here all night, and I feel the need to move around a little bit."

I nod quickly and take my eyes off of him. If he noticed me staring, he just ignores it. “You can move around while testing the new gloves.”

Tony grins and nods his head, deciding that a physical test of the gloves was a great idea. "Eager, are we? Give me a few minutes to put them on, and then I'll go out on a test run."

“Alright. Jarvis, put on the test mode” Jarvis immediately snaps to attention and responds to the command in a calm and robotic voice. “Test mode initiated”

The suit is immediately powered on and the screens light up with different modes and data readouts. The hands and fingers of the suit appear to be moving and extending and retracting in a variety of movements. Tony's hands flex and move as he tests out the new gloves. I watch as Tony brings his arms forward and aiming the palms towards the ground. He holds the position for a few seconds, as a bright red circle emits from each palm towards the ground. The red rings come into contact with each other and create a force field that quickly expands and covers Tony inside of it.

A huge smirk crosses my face as I see that my plans work out and the new armory is working just fine. “What do you think?”

Tony chuckles in response to my smug grin. "I think it's brilliant. Your idea for the shield component was an excellent addition to this suit. Well done on this upgrade."

“Thank you” I chuckle and check the data on the screens again.

Tony flashes a wide smile as he looks at you with a hint of approval. That million-dollar smile that makes my knees weak every time. "You're welcome. I think your additions have really brought the suit to the next level.” Tony nods in agreement, glancing over at the different components that are stacked on the workbench. "The next step is to finish putting all the parts together and getting the full suit assembled. After that it's just a matter of testing the suit itself and making sure everything works properly."

I nod as well, approvingly, and look up at Tony. “What about you get some coffee, I get breakfast and then we can continue with the suit?”

Tony nods and smirks, excited to continue working on the suit. The day passes and Tony and I don't even leave the lab. Sometimes the other Avengers come in to check on us and they all smile at our teamwork. Currently Steve looks around the lab, smirking at Tony and me. “You know, the way you guys work together... it seems like there is going on more than just friendship”

Tony chuckles as he hears Steve's comment, but doesn't take his eyes off his work as he continues to assemble the different parts of the suit, testing and retesting every component for functionality and efficiency. He responds to Steve's comment without looking away from his work. "We have a good dynamic going. It's not hard to get in a groove and get things done with her on my team. That’s all."

I chuckle and walk over to Tony, handing him some more parts of the suit. “Just admit it, you would be helpless without me”

Tony laughs and jokingly rolls his eyes, as he takes the parts and slots them into the appropriate place inside the suit. He turns and looks at me, as he begins to test out the new upgrades. "Okay, okay, you've got me. I'm totally useless without you." Tony says in a sarcastic tone, though it's clear he's still enjoying the banter and he is thankful for my help.

I too chuckle and sit back down on my own working bench, getting back to work.

“You two are cute” Steve smiles, wanting to tease Tony a bit more.

Tony laughs again and blushes a bit as he hears Steve's comment. After all, we really do have very good chemistry. Tony doesn't deny the fact that there is some truth to Steve's comment, but decides to play it cool. He shrugs as he continues to work. "Thanks, Cap, but we're just friends. Nothing more." Tony says with a mischievous smile, as he continues his work.

“Whatever” Steve smirks and leaves the lab after looking around one final time.

Tony nods his head and chuckles as Steve walks away, but he can't help feeling just a little bit embarrassed, and a little bit excited, by Steve's comment. He glances over at me, as I’m working on my own component. We are just friends, but sometimes it's hard to deny that there is something between us. We continue to work together for another couple hours, until finally we have the full suit assembled. We take a moment to step back and admire our work proudly.

I grin widely in excitement, standing next to Tony. “It's finished! We made it, and it looks good!”

Tony looks just as excited and proud as me, as he grins and nods his head, looking over the full suit. It has a clean, classic look to it, while also incorporating all the new upgrades that they added. The red-gold color scheme stands out, and the added accents look like a perfect blend of old and new. Tony is truly satisfied with the finished product. "I'd say we did an excellent job, wouldn't you?"

“Definitely!” I say a bit overexcited and thanks to my clumsiness I nearly fall over

Tony can't help but laugh a little bit as he sees me stumble, but he quickly catches me with his strong arms and steadies me, supporting my weight. He looks down at me with a smirk. "Careful now. We don't want any accidents to ruin our finished product."

I chuckle slightly but can't help and blush a bit as I get back onto my feet, brushing a strand of hair out of my face. “Of course not”

Tony smiles at the brief blush that he witnesses, though he is careful to keep his expression neutral and professional. He knows from experiences just how easily he can get distracted when I’m close. "So, what do you say, are we ready for a test run?"

”Yeah... Yeah! Let's test it out, getting you dressed up” I smile at him excitedly.

My enthusiasm is contagious, and Tony can't help but smile at my excitement. He starts getting changed, quickly pulling the different components of the suit on. The gloves snap into place, the boots secure onto his legs, and finally the chest and head components are in place as well. I just watch, occasionally checking the screens for the data. I can’t help but think he looks really handsome in that suit…

"Okay, I'm ready to test it out. Let's put this bad boy to the test.” Tony says as he is now fully into the suit.

I smirk at his choice of words and watch as Jarvis finishes securing the last component and the suit seals itself in place. The various monitors light up with different systems and readouts, as Jarvis speaks in his typical calm voice "Suit has been activated and all systems are at full operating capacity." Tony smiles and steps away from the workbench, giving the suit a brief visual inspection before turning to face me. "So, what do you think?"

“It looks damn good” and you too, I think to myself. “Jarvis, activate the testing mode”

Jarvis obeys the command, and the suit powers up fully, with the chest piece shining brightly as the repulsor rays light up. The arm cannons point forward, ready to act. It is indeed an impressive sight. "Alright, let's do this."

As soon as the face mask snaps into place, the suit is fully sealed and active. Tony lifts his hands into the air, as the repulsor rays shoot out at full power. The suit propels Tony into the sky, as the thrust lifts him into a high, smooth, stable flight.

I smile happily, we really did a great job. I walk around checking the diagrams on the computers “Seems like everything works just fine. Try it out some more”

Tony begins to fly around the lab, testing the different features of the suit. He begins testing out the weapons that you had installed as well. He seems pretty satisfied and I too smile happily, glad we did such a good job. “Jarvis, open the window hatch”

Jarvis immediately responds with a calm, robotic voice. "Opening window hatch." The window hatch opens up, allowing Tony to fly directly out of the lab and into the open outdoors. I watch as he flies through the window and up into the sky, his suit still shining brightly in the sunlight. He flies in a large circle around the lab building. I grin widely as I run over to the window and look outside, seeing Tony flying around in his new suit

Tony seems to be enjoying the test run as much as I am watching from the lab. He appears to be in full control of the suit, and seems to have no problems flying it around the outdoor space above the lab. The flight is smooth and stable, allowing Tony to make sharp turns and take advantage of the different features of the suit. He seems to be testing out every aspect of the new suit as he goes along. After a few minutes, he begins to fly back towards the lab window. He returns right through the window and lands in the lab, opening his face mask. I walk over to him, more than happy

“Wow! That looked so awesome!”

Tony nods his head as he pulls the mask off of his face. He is visibly thrilled and excited, both by the positive outcome of the test and by the fact that I were there to witness it. "It flew surprisingly well, and the different weapon systems were all functioning perfectly. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a test run this much. And it all came out looking so good as well. We did a great job!"

“Yes, we definitely did!” I hug him out of pure excitement and suddenly our lips meet for just a few seconds.

Tony is caught off guard by this unexpected kiss, but he immediately wraps his arms around me as he kisses me back for just a few seconds. A brief and innocent kiss, the result of the heat of the moment. Tony pulls his head away eventually, and we just stand there, staring into each other’s eyes for a few seconds. He smiles and I see a faint glimpse of his cheeks turning red. I quickly pull away, blushing heavily and stuttering. “Oh my... I... I'm sorry, I... I don't know what... I ...”

Tony laughs softly as he sees just how flushed I am, but he's unable to hide a brief moment of amusement. "Relax, it was just a quick kiss. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Just a natural reaction to the moment. No big deal."

I take a deep breath, my cheeks still bright red. “We… we did a great job. The suit seems to work just fine”

Tony smiles at the way I stumble over my words, as he notices that my cheeks still haven't stopped blushing.

"Definitely. The suit works perfectly. The results speak for themselves and it will definitely be a game changer. But I guess the suit isn't the only thing that will be changing..."

I turn to look at him and frown, asking concerned “What do you mean? Are you not happy with it?”

Tony laughs as he notices the misunderstanding. "Oh no, I'm very happy with the suit. I was referring to our relationship. It feels like it's been changing between just friends and something more. I mean, late nights in the lab together, our banters, glances and a quick kiss, and you're blushing like crazy.”

My eyes widen at his words and I can feel my heart beating out of my chest. My voice shaky “Tony... I... I think this is just... the lack of sleep or the amount of coffee we drank or the excitement from the suit... I...”

Tony chuckles slightly and shakes his head, as he steps towards me and places his hands on my waist. "Is it really though? Or is it something else? I think we both know that this whole evening we've spent together had more to it than simple late nights and coffee.”

I look at him still dressed in his suit, my face flushed and my heart beating like crazy. “Tony...”

But before he can reply, Steve enters the lab and Tony immediately let go of me, stepping back a little.

“Oh hey! You finished the suit!” Steve says, rather impressed by the work Tony and I’ve done.

Tony stares at Steve with a friendly smile, knowing that he was caught in the middle of something but trying to play it off. "Sure did. Y/n and I just finished up the final tests, and we're very pleased with the results."

Steve looks between Tony and me, smirking softly and raising an eyebrow “Did I interrupt anything?”

Tony laughs as he shrugs his shoulders, pretending to be completely oblivious to the tension that was obviously there between him and me earlier. "Interrupt? No. We were just excited that the suit seemed to work so well, so we were discussing the final results and plans for the suit” he explains calmly and walks over to Steve, showing him the new suit he is still wearing.

“Yeah, we were just testing it out and the suit works pretty well” I smile at Steve as well, trying to hide my blush

Steve smiles back at me and gives a brief nod, as he continues to study my expressions. "Great! Seems like you both did an excellent job. I guess the suit isn't the only thing that got tested out tonight, huh?"

I blush and quickly turn around as Bruce also comes into the lab. “Oh hey, Wow! That suit looks good!”

The unexpected entry of Bruce throws Tony off for a quick second, as he glances over at him and flashes a look of surprise. He quickly regains his composure though, and smiles as he looks back over at Steve and Bruce. "Thanks. You’re just in time to see the new suit in action, if you'd like. Y/n and I just finished up the final tests for it."

As we continue to talk and show the features of the suit to Steve and Bruce, I notice the way that both Steve and Bruce keep stealing glances over at Tony and me with smirks in their faces. I know that at least one of them can clearly see the chemistry that is present between me and Tony. We both seem to be very close and comfortable together as we talk and laugh. After a while I start to feel tired and decide it's now time to get some rest. “Alright guys, I think I'll go get some sleep now. Tony, you good without me?

Tony's expression softens as he sees me starting to feel tired. He gives me a soft smile and nods his head. "Yeah, I'll be fine. You go get some sleep, and we'll meet back here tomorrow morning."

I agree and smile back at him before waving at Steve and Bruce before heading out of the lab and towards my room.

Tony watches me as I walk away, and he can't help but notice the way my curves hug tightly against my pants as I walk away from him. The vision in his eyes briefly lingers as all of the memories from the night come back to him. A faint glow appears in his eyes as he continues to watch me, then eventually he breaks the gaze and turns to Steve and Bruce.

Tony starts to get out of his suit and Steve smirks at him knowingly. Tony knows he's been caught, so he turns to look at Steve and raises an eyebrow in question, waiting for him to say what's on his mind. “So, what exactly did I interrupt before I came into lab?” Steve asks curiously and leans back against a work bench.

“Yeah, what was going on between you two?” Bruce looks confused yet curious between the two men.

Tony sighs as he realizes that he doesn't even have an excuse for this one. He can't deny the chemistry between us that both Steve and Bruce have observed. He just shrugs his shoulders, with a look of acceptance that shows he no longer has room to weasel himself out of it. "Just two friends enjoying some late night lab time. You know how it is. We just got a little carried away by the excitement of the suit."

“No, no... That seemed like something way more intimate” Steve smirks again and won’t let this go so easy.

Tony realizes that he's now in the position of having to either play dumb, or explain everything. Playing dumb in front of Steve and Bruce won’t work though. Tony sighs. "Look, Steve, some words have been spoken and there was a quick kiss. We both felt that this was more than just friendship..."

Both Steve and Bruce start to grin. “That's so cute. But you should talk to her, Tony.”

Tony's face flushes bright red. He hates that he is currently at the mercy of both Steve and Bruce with this whole situation. They are both grinning at him, clearly enjoying his predicament. He tries to act casual and gives off a soft sigh, acknowledging that Steve and Bruce are both right. "You guys... Come on, it wasn't that big of a deal. It just happened in the moment. Maybe it was all just a result of the late nights and energy drinks and the excitement of the suit."

Steve frowns a bit and looks more serious at Tony “The question is, do you want it to be just that?”

Tony looks over at Steve, knowing exactly what he's asking and fully aware of what his answer would be if he let himself be honest. He doesn't want it to be 'just that', but he can't just come out and say it in front of Steve and Bruce. Tony shakes his head from side to side, as if he can't really respond, though his mind is giving him a very strong, and very clear answer.

Both Steve and Bruce just smirk at each other, knowing the answer. Bruce sighs and pats Tony’s shoulder “Alright, buddy, get some rest. And think about it” Then Steve and Bruce leave.

After Steve and Bruce leave, Tony is left alone with his own thoughts, as he realizes that he now has to face the situation on his own. He can't keep trying to play it off as 'just a little accident' or "a result of late nights and energy drinks." It was all real, and he just has to find out how much it means to Y/n. He walks around the lab, considering everything that has happened over the course of the evening, and the different feelings that he feels for her. That brief kiss that had occurred. He's completely lost in his own thoughts as he walks to his room, pacing up and down.

Meanwhile I’m sitting on my bed and even though I’m rather tired, I’m wide awake, thinking of all the nights I spent with Tony in his lab. We were really good friends, but is that really everything? It was all getting to my head. I look over at the clock to see it's already 11:30 pm. I sigh and decide it was no use, so I get up and walk back to the lab, wanting to sketch some more ideas.

Tony is wide awake, as well. The memories from the night keep running through his head and he can't help but notice the way his heart begins to beat faster as he plays those memories back in his head over and over. He thinks about the late nights together where they would work on the suit, the jokes and laughs that they shared while doing so, the excitement that they felt and the brief kiss that they had shared, the blushing cheeks... Tony lies in bed for a while, struggling to fall asleep. He feels just a little bit energized from the night, but more so, he's feeling a bit restless as he struggles to process the events of tonight. He too notices how late it is and he decides to head back to the lab.

I'm sitting on the chair, hair up in a messy bun, looking over some sketches and trying to find some more new ideas to add. I'm so focused on the sketches that I don't even notice Tony entering the lab

Once Tony reaches the lab, he immediately catches a glimpse of the sketches and how casually I am seated with my hair up. I look very relaxed, almost as if this is normal for me to be up at this time in the lab, and Tony can't help but notice how the night had only brought out the most natural and casual side of me. He is also struck by how lovely you look in this setting...

Tony watches as I keep sketching, and he can't help but be charmed by how focused and completely lost I am in the task at hand. He finds himself feeling the urge to hug me and just rest his face against my shoulders to breath in my scent.

I’m just trying out some sketches of additional ideas on the suit when I suddenly feel a pair of strong, warm arms wrapping around myself and I jump slightly. “Shhh, it’s me” It's Tony, who has silently approached me from behind and wrapped his arms tightly around me, pulling me into a warm embrace. He rests his head on my shoulder, the feeling of my hair against his face feeling extremely reassuring. I can feel the heat of his body as his breath is close to my neck.

I let out a breath shaky breath “Hey…” Tony smiles as he feels my body relax in his embrace, and he doesn't even bother to explain his sudden move. He just enjoys the warmth of the moment, just as I am, as he wraps his arms even tighter around me, pulling me closer. “Aren't you asleep?” I ask curiously, ignoring the beating of my heart

"Nope." Tony answers softly, as he continues to tightly pull me into his embrace. He doesn't want to let go. He enjoys this moment of just being close to me without saying a word, and he can't help but breath in the scent of me that fills his nostrils. I relax more in his embrace and lean back slightly into him, closing my eyes and resting my hand onto his arms, feeling his muscles beneath his skin. Tony leans his head towards me, and he gently gives my cheek a small kiss, without saying anything. He feels my body slightly tense up at this, but I don't pull away. He can't help but blush at the fact that I’m allowing this to happen, as he pulls himself away, a small blush on his cheeks. I blush heavily and finally I turn my head slightly so now I'm facing him. We are just inches apart.

Tony stares deeply into my gaze as he can suddenly feel the intense connection between us. He can't help but be struck by everything that he's feeling when he looks into my eyes. He slowly moves his face forward, and he presses his lips onto mine, kissing me soft and gently. I can't help but blush heavily. The first kiss today in the lab was due to excitement, but this one now is different. This is a more intimate kiss, the kind where you slowly move forward, and you keep your lips connected to his. He pulls back after a few moments, just enough for our faces not to be touching anymore, but he is still close enough to feel my breath as it touches his face.

“What was that for..?” My voice is not more than a whisper, just for him to hear

"It was just... an urge to show you my appreciation." Tony answers softly, as he continues to smile at me. His gaze is still soft and gentle, but there's also this slightly confident tone in his voice which hints at the possibility that this 'urge' is something more. He pauses for a moment, as he sees my reaction to his statement, and he waits for my respond.

I smile at him softly “Then let my show you my appreciation” I turn around a bit in my chair, now able to move my arms and lay my hand onto his chest

He doesn't say anything in reply, but he leans forward and slowly presses his lips against mine once more, in a longer, and more intimate kiss. He can't help but let out a soft noise. He continues to kiss me soft and gently, wrapping his arms around me now and pushing himself even closer to me. The kiss feels very tender and affectionate, and he can't help but feel a bit vulnerable in this situation, as if this was all just too perfect to be true. We pull apart and look at each other. He shakes his head as he regains composure and smiles softly at me.

“God, I love that smile”, I say to him, laying one hand against his cheek softly.

Tony wraps his arms around me tightly. He leans closer and he presses his forehead against mine, his eyes closing and taking a deep breath. “And I love you”

My smile grows even more as I hear those words from him. “I love you too” I whisper and he pulls me in for another loving kiss before looking at me again with his charming smile. We continue to stand in the lab, holding each other and no one of us wanting to let go as we finally confessed our feelings to each other. And it’s just the perfect ending to the work on his suit.

A/N Here is my complete masterlist with all the ff, imagines, oneshots, smut and whatever. Check it out and leave a like :)

[vialae]

wowie a wip of pre tadpole moonrise meetings where kaidos gets as mad as u would expect bhaals chosen to

“Your father is certainly a demanding one, isn’t he?”

Kaidos’ face dropped. What was once an amused and doting smile was now cold and harsh. It had been a long while since Gortash had been the victim of such a stare from the Bhaalspawn.

“How dare you. Who do you think you are to be disrespecting the Murder Lord in such a way?”

“Somebody who needs to tell you the truth, clearly.” The Banite looked entirely relaxed within his seat. He even leaned back in it, his fingers steepling.

“This is not what we are in this room to discuss.” Ketheric firmly spoke before Kaidos could spit whatever venom was clearly building within him.

“I will not take such blatant disrespect, regardless of what we are in this room for, you old sack of bones.” Kaidos stood from his seat, the chair squealing before tipping backwards and crashing down onto the stone floor. An accusatory finger was pointed directly at Gortash’s face, “Take back what you said, or I swear you will not leave this tower whole.”

Gortash raised a brow at the Bhaalspawn. He would be a fool to believe he was simply all hot air, but he knew he would get at least a few more threats out of his ally before anything physical would happen, so long as he worded his retorts carefully.

“The pact we made renders all of these words moot, my dear.”

“I said I wouldn’t kill you. That doesn’t mean I can’t hack a limb off. Maybe we can add you to that drider in the Iron Throne, huh? See how long you last in your own tests.” Kaidos spoke through gritted teeth, the increasing pressure within his throbbing brain becoming near insufferable. “Take it back.”

Gortash opened his mouth to speak, a brief pause in his speech as he heard Ketheric sigh heavily. He pointedly blinked and moved his hands, palms turned upwards and fingers spread out in mock surrender. “I had only meant it as a passing comment. There is no need to become this irate. Sit back down.”

“You’re not telling me what to do.” The more the Banite spoke with such a condescending tone, acting as if he had any right to order Bhaal’s very own scion around – oh, that made Kaidos more furious than anything else. “You insult my Father – mock him – and then expect me to simply roll over?”

Heavy, bloodstained hands slammed onto the meeting table, a few wine bottles jostling and clinking together. The tiefling leaned across the table, his height allowing him well into the Banite’s half of the surface.

“You cannot harm me, Kaidos.” Gortash firmly reminded the Bhaalspawn, his dark and bitter eyes narrowing as they became level with flaming, hating ones.

“How typical of you to hide behind pacts and rules. I can smell your blood pulsing through your veins; your heart rate increasing.” His right hand twitched, fingernails scraping against the wooden surface of the table. “Oh, how lucky you are that I cannot tear you open for such blatant disrespect.”

Now that Kaidos had been whipped into such a frenzy, the Urge having taken full advantage of the slightest of annoyances, there was no calming down. There was only mindlessly killing to satiate such a painful desire. His head throbbed, his throat felt tight, his mouth dry. Nobody in this room could be a victim of Bhaal’s Chosen, and so he must find one - and fast.

Kaidos picked up one of the wine bottles, smashing the main body off on the edge of the table before turning to leave with his jagged improvised weapon. A shimmering dust of glass coated the table and floor alike, sparkling amongst much larger shards and a few spatters of wine that had been sitting in the bottom of the bottle mere seconds ago.

The door banged against the wall with the ferocity it was yanked open at, quickly swinging closed and bumping uselessly against the latch when it failed to catch. It remained ajar as both Gortash and Ketheric silently watched Kaidos storm out of the room and deeper into the depths of Moonrise Towers.

“You are personally replacing whoever he kills, Gortash.”

“Am I?”

“I don’t see why he must take from my ranks so frequently, especially when you are the cause for these outbursts.”

Gortash gave a slight shrug, “I think that may just be one of the occupational hazards which come with working with a Bhaalspawn, General.” He rose from his seat, adjusting his coat accordingly. “Just be pleased you are not his victim.”

The Banite calmly walked over to the door which had been left ajar in Kaidos’ fury and pulled it open the rest of the way. “Same time tomorrow, I presume?”

Ketheric rubbed his first finger and thumb together, a fidget he did to keep his frustration under control. “Yes.”

“Wonderful. I’ll be sure to bring along the good wine and a possibly calmer Chosen of Bhaal.” He gave a small wave with his fingers before leaving the room.

He made sure the door clicked properly behind him.

[cxpperhead]

🐣 !!

Send 🐣 to catch my muse caring for a child

It must have been an odd sight for Batman that night, arriving on the scene to deal with the abduction of a child only to find that the situation had already been dealt with.

Well, perhaps dealt with wasn't quite the right term. Bodies lay strewn all around the place, most of which were men in various degrees of consciousness with some in very real danger of never coming around again. Those men had been... bitten by something, something Batman would no doubt recognize the instant he observed the symptoms of those afflicted by their mysterious attacker. Symptoms that only someone who used venom could inflict. At the end of the trail of crooks, the one responsible for this scene of carnage was currently sitting in the deepest level of the basement. Copperhead lounged on the decrepit office desk like some sort of oversized cat, his powerful tail looped gently around the body of a small child. The child, a little girl who seemed no older than four looked to be in no danger however, her blue eyes wide with wonder as the serpent gently tended to a bruise on her cheek. It would have been a heartwarming scene if the person still seated at the table wasn't stiff as a corpse, the only motion being his roving eyes as his body refused to obey his commands. Such a shame. Copperhead's neurotoxin tended to have that effect on mammals, especially humans. Copperhead sighed, finishing his patient's treatment by applying a small plaster to her scuffed face. The act of a desperate gang had led them to an unusually foolish crime - abducting the child of a prominent citizen. They'd contacted Copperhead to ensure the ransom was not only paid but that the father, who was meant to deliver the money at the specified drop-off point, would meet his end at Copperhead's claws instead of finding his daughter. The whole plan had left a bad taste in Copperhead's mouth, who felt that such a job was far beneath his skills but the ringleader who seemed to have realized far too late just how over his head he'd gotten had been insistent. The stench of fear in the air was overwhelming; the ringleader, his men and the hostage increasing to the point when one of the men, agitated by the girl's increasingly noisy sobs, had enough and slapped her hard. In response, Copperhead sent him flying into a wall with a slap of his tail and it all kicked off from there. If he could have closed his eyes, he would have. How ironic that he, an assassin for hire, had turned on those who'd sought his skills. Some crimes were more trouble than they were worth however, and this was one crime he'd rather not have had any part of to begin with. The arrival of a new scent in the air quickly distracted him from the girl's babbling stream of questions, Copperhead's tongue flickering as he deduced it was none other than the Dark Knight himself. The string of paralyzed and unconscious bodies no doubt had him moving faster than normal, anticipating the worst when a child was involved but perhaps just this once, Batman could be pleasantly surprised for a change. The door to the room flung open, looming silhouette haunting the entrance with only the whites of his eyes glinting in the darkness. They might have widened in surprise - or shock to see that all hostiles were already down, with nothing left but a serpent standing between him and the hostage. Before Batman could do anything however, Copperhead decided to beat him to the punch with an excited point of his finger. "Look, there's Batman! Go to him quickly now, he's come to help you." He said, gently setting the girl down so she could run to the waiting vigilante. At once she took off, never looking back as she scampered across the room to latch onto one of Batman's armor-clad legs like a limpet clinging to a rock. Perhaps it was manipulative, utilizing a child's fears as so to prevent his foe from intercepting his escape but Copperhead felt as though he'd overstayed his welcome and besides, Batman would surely have his hands full administering antidotes to all affected by his venom before the effects of paralysis became permanent. By the time Batman looked back up again, Copperhead would be long gone, having slipped through the same hole from whence he came.

[voidfilledgod]

♡───────────────────────────────♡

benefits of dandelion tea

what it is, what it does, + why you should try it!

───────────────────────────────

[ part one - what is it? ]

dandelion tea is made from roasting and steeping dandelion roots! however, it can also be made with the leaves or flowers.

───────────────────────────────

[ part two - why should i try it? ]

it tastes great (light + herbal), contains 0 calories, and has a LOT of health benefits, listed below!

1. dandelion tea is a natural diuretic, meaning it increases urine output + flushes out excess water. this helps:

reduce water weight

reduce bloating

treat + prevent utis

2. dandelion tea’s diuretic effect also adds water to stool, making it a gentle, natural laxative that works fairly quickly!

3. dandelion tea contains many vitamins + minerals, such as:

vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C

potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron

antioxidants (beta-carotene + taraxasterol)

4. it helps increase + maintain the flow of bile, promoting healthy liver function.

5. it soothes the stomach lining which helps the body absorb minerals + increases the stomach’s probiotic properties

6. it is anti-inflammatory (aka reduces inflammation in the body) + helps regulate blood sugar levels by stimulating insulin production

───────────────────────────────

[ part three - where can i get it? ]

you can buy dandelion tea in most grocery stores. if you can’t find it on its own, “detox” teas almost always include dandelion root + are very commonly sold!

you can also make your own dandelion tea at home! dandelions are really easy to find, but be careful not to use any that have been sprayed with pesticide or any other chemicals.

♡───────────────────────────────♡

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Allan Stratton

Published: Jul 23, 2023

Toronto is one of the most tolerant, multicultural cities in the world. And yet, according to many of its progressive journalists, academics, and politicians, it’s actually a den of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. Unless you’re a straight white man, daily life is supposedly an exhausting and dangerous struggle. If you live in the United States, the UK, Australia, or elsewhere in Canada, I’m guessing you’ve been told similar things about your own society.

I’m a gay man for whom these reports bear no relationship to the real world. Certainly, hate-crime statistics show a sharp increase in physical and verbal abuse against specific demographics, including my own. And there are even rare incidents of murder and arson. But to suggest that minorities live under constant threat from a bigoted majority is apocalyptic nonsense. This is especially true of Canada, an especially open, diverse, and welcoming country. Western nations, more generally, are incontrovertibly the most tolerant on the planet.

My heretical view (among fellow progressives, at least) may be due to my “positionality” (this being a faddishly woke jargon term that most English speakers would call “perspective”). The Holocaust and the internment of Japanese North Americans ended a mere six years before I was born. The pass system that turned Canadian Indigenous reservations into open-air prison camps was still in force. The United States was segregated by Jim Crow and redlining. Cross burnings and lynchings went unpunished. Marital rape was legal. Spousal abuse and unequal pay were commonplace. Gay sex and cross-dressing were criminalized, with outed individuals losing their jobs and children. “Fag bashing” was treated as public entertainment.

In the relatively few decades since, western governments have implemented universal civil and human rights protections for racial and sexual minorities. The speed and depth of this transformation has been so remarkable that it seems inconceivable that we ever lived as we once did. Has any other culture critiqued its failings and set about reforming itself so quickly?

This is not to suggest that everything is sunshine and lollipops. Human nature has not been repealed. Police departments without effective civilian oversight, for instance, continue to invite corruption and abuse. Nonetheless, we now have the tools to press for accountability, such as human rights tribunals and whistleblower protections.

It’s also important to acknowledge that while the relative increase in reported hate crimes may seem shocking, that rise is based on a remarkably low baseline. For instance, 2021 saw a 65 per cent increase in incidents (over 50 per cent of these comprising verbal slurs) targeting Canada’s LGB and T communities. But that still represents just 423 cases in a country of 40-million people. That’s hardly a “tsunami of hate.” The number is infinitesimal compared to the 114,132 domestic assaults and 34,242 sexual assaults recorded against women.

One often hears that a reversion to the backward ways of the past is just around the corner. And it is true that abortion rights now hang in the balance in many conservative U.S. states. But the idea that any Western country (especially Canada) is on the cusp of a wholesale rejection of liberal principles is absurd. Women will never again need their husband’s signature to open a bank account. Racial segregation is unthinkable (except, ironically, in certain progressive institutions). Marriage equality for same-sex couples is constitutionally protected in North America, and enjoys a historic 70 per cent level of support in the United States.

So, unlike those on the left who came of age in the 90s and the decades that followed, I don’t see an intolerant society destroying civil rights and minority safety. Rather, what I am now witnessing is a period of progressive overreach, led by ideologues with no (apparent) historical memory or understanding of how our liberal social contract evolved. They have turned language inside out so as to render words such as “woman,” “safety,” and “genocide” essentially meaningless; pursued policies that lock one-time progressive allies in a zero-sum culture-war conflict; recast free speech as hate speech; confused wishes (and, in some cases, fantasies) with rights; and punished dissenters from their Borg-think with social exclusion, “re-education,” and firing.

This radical attempt to unilaterally impose a new social order based on race and gender essentialism has ignited a widespread public backlash, which has been weaponized by the far right, destroyed public goodwill, and done more damage to the progressive cause than anything its reactionary enemies have done in recent years.

-

The civil-rights movements of the last century won victories by liberal means based on liberal values. This included an insistence on free speech and civil liberties; and an appeal to the universal values of dignity and equality, which in turn underpin the case for protecting individual human rights and freedoms.

In part, this was because we liberals understood math. We needed white, straight, male legislators to support our causes, a project that could only be engaged through free and open debate. Empathy-based co-operation enabled us to create bridges among our diverse groups: The Gay Liberation Front raised money for the Black Panthers. In turn, its leader, Huey Newton, supported the gay liberation and women’s liberation movements. Meanwhile, Jewish groups applied their historical understanding of discrimination to help lead the fights for women’s rights (Betty Friedan), gay rights (Larry Kramer), and black voting rights, with some even giving their lives as Freedom Riders

By contrast, today’s illiberal left explicitly rejects the principles of free speech and universality. It ignores the lessons of past civil-rights successes, often denying that such successes even took place. After all, how can one insist on the dismantling (or “decolonization”) of a system that has shown itself capable of self-correction and continuous improvement? The only framework that validates the progressive narrative of ongoing oppression and white supremacy is one that ahistorically presents mainstream liberal values as a failure.

The switch in social-justice circles from liberal to authoritarian ends and means has at least three major causes. The first is structural: As (originally) liberal rights groups such as the ACLU achieved their objectives, they were required to rewrite their mission statements and pretend away their past successes — this being the only way to justify their ongoing existence.

Far from seeking to “burn it all down,” most of us within the original LGB and T movements simply wanted equality within existing social structures. We used liberal “respectability politics” to make our case, and (for the most part) folded our tents when we achieved our goal. The unwitting effect of this was to leave our old organizations to the radicals, who had long condemned us as sellouts to the patriarchy. Their goal is nothing less than the remaking — or “queering” — of society, a vaguely defined project infused with a deep suspicion of, or even hostility to, capitalism and the nuclear family. The liberal LGB and T wish to live and let live is now the authoritarian “live as we live.”

The second factor is generational change. Just as children separate from their parents in their passage to adulthood, so does each generation define itself in contradistinction to its immediate predecessor. Without personal memory of past struggles, present conditions are taken for granted. And so the battle against current injustices (real or otherwise) is seen as humanity’s defining and timeless struggle.

My generation mocked our parents’ conformity and stoic, suck-it-up ethos, forgetting that these traits had been necessary social adaptations during the Great Depression and World War II. Similarly, activists of this generation attack our commitment to free speech and integration within society, forgetting that these strategies were necessary for us to be heard during the Cold War, when outsiders were suspected as potential fifth columnists.

But perhaps the most significant factor has been the academic trend toward postmodernism, which instructs adherents that neither objective reality nor human nature exist in any certain, provable way. Reason, logic, and objective facts are rejected — or at least put in scare quotes — as are appeals to history and science. These are all held to be mere artifacts of language, which is itself presented as a reflection of existing power structures. And since these structures are presumed to systematically oppress the powerless, they must be deconstructed, dismantled, and decolonized, root and branch.

This kind of thinking isn’t just claptrap that flies in the face of day-to-day human experience. It also encourages a kind of intellectual nihilism that precludes amelioration of the injustices and power imbalances that supposedly concern many postmodern thinkers: After all, what could possibly replace our current power-based intellectual constructs except new power-based intellectual constructs?

Nonetheless, postmodern habits of mind (often flying under the banner of “critical” studies of one kind or another) have infected academic humanities and social science departments all over the west, much like the fungal parasite on The Last of Us. Its professorial hosts now work to dismantle their own institutions, attacking the “colonial” concepts of science and empiricism in favour of undefined and unfalsifiable “ways of knowing.” Meanwhile, their students have incubated its spores and spread them into the wider society, including corporate human-rights offices.

Progressives (rightly) have denounced Donald Trump and his supporters for their paranoid belief that the 2020 U.S. election was “stolen.” But these right-wing conspiracy theorists are not so different from campus leftists when it comes to their à la carte approach to accepting or rejecting reality according to passing ideological convenience

In particular, the idea that pronouns serve as magic spells that can turn a man into a (literal) women is no less ridiculous than anything Trump has ever said. The same goes for the mantra that while girls who cut themselves need therapy, girls seeking a double mastectomy require “affirmation.” Likewise: Racial segregation is a bigoted practice … except when it represents the very acme of progressive enlightenment. “Defund the police” doesn’t mean abolish the police, except when it means exactly that.

And then there’s Schrödinger’s Antifa, which presents these street thugs either as a very real force that rose up as a morally laudable reaction to fascism … or as something that exists only in Tucker Carlson’s fever dreams, depending on context.

But postmodernism and critical theory have done more than just damage our societies’ intellectual cohesion. Their denial of universal human nature eliminates empathy as a tool to bridge differences among groups, which are instead presented as warring sects prosecuting unbridgeable race (or gender) feuds. Since power is presented as the singular currency of the realm, the ability to shut the other side up is valued more than the ability to persuade it.

Gay men such as Andrew Sullivan and Andrew Doyle have been among the most prominent dissenters against wokeism — in part because we instinctively recognize the destructive nature of this power-fixated mindset. Our experience suggests that empathy and reason are far more important than threats and cultural power plays.

Dave Chappelle has said that the LGBT movement won public support more quickly than its black counterpart because of racism. But I believe the truth is different: Unlike racial and ethnic minorities, we exist in every demographic, every family, every ethnic category. When we gay men came out en masse during the 1980s AIDS pandemic, all communities realized that we were among its children, parents, and siblings. People have a harder time discriminating against their own than against outsiders.

Traditionally, the left has appealed to a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. The resulting project of alliance-building has entailed negotiation among different groups, all of which may have different priorities and perspectives. But that alliance-building project becomes impossible when one sect or another demands that disagreement be treated as a form of thoughtcrime. Deplatforming doesn’t just hurt the target; it also hurts the movement, since the summary excommunication of dissidents means that adherents never need to acknowledge or address counterarguments, internal logical inconsistencies, or the off-putting nature of their message.

Indeed, ideologues such as Nikole Hannah-Jones claim that politics has a colour: Blacks who aren’t “politically black” are traitors who collaborate with “whiteness.” As seen through this lens, Asian-Americans who fight anti-Asian discrimination in the context of affirmative action are supposedly puppets of white supremacists, and the LGB Alliance, by standing up for same-sex attraction, is smeared as a transphobic hate group. (For asserting that biology is real, Stonewall UK even tried to destroy the career of one of the LGB Alliance’s founders, Allison Bailey, a lifelong social justice advocate who happens to be a black, working-class lesbian, and the child of immigrant parents. Thankfully, Stonewall did not prevail.)

Opponents of cancel culture often focus on its negative effects on conservatives. But it’s often woke organizations that end up imploding under its strains, typically due to internal battles over victimhood status and linguistic control. In recent years, many of these groups have been driven off the rails by single-issue gender activists who are willing to support misogyny and homophobia in the name of trans rights; or BLM activists willing to permit racism directed at “model minorities.” Even antisemites have been allowed to infiltrate left-wing political parties, the arts establishment, and anti-racist education initiatives. No wonder everyone involved with this movement is always complaining about how emotionally “exhausted” they are: They’re surrounded by toxic fellow travellers who gaslight them as right-stooges if they dare raise a complaint.

Another notable feature of militant social-justice movements is the sheer joylessness of their leaders and supporters, a condition that often seems to blur into a collectively embraced state of clinical depression and paranoia. This posture flows from their presupposition that they suffer endlessly due to the malignant primordial character of “whiteness” and heteronormativity (or, yet worse, cisheteronormativity). The language of individual agency and hope, which animates liberalism, is replaced with a soul-dead idiom by which the activist presents as a self-pitying victim of oppression, constantly at risk of suicidal ideation, erasure, and genocide.

Even privileged “allies” are encouraged to dwell on their whiteness, straightness, cisness, “settler” status, and other marks of intersectional Cain. By erasing the possibility of redemption, the movement alienates liberal allies who are seeking to build bridges with others en route to living successful and fulfilling lives in a way that escapes the politics of identity. The social-justice puritan, being primarily concerned with advancing his status within a cultish inward-seeking subculture that’s constantly inventing new grievances, on the other hand, finds such a goal unthinkable.

The use of words such as “harm” and “violence” to describe the microaggressions known to the rest of us as “daily life” is a particularly unattractive feature of social-justice culture. In the 1980s, gays and lesbians responded to daily discrimination with the chant, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” Today, the children and grandchildren of that generation, now enjoying full civil rights and perches within elites sectors of government, culture, and high society, instead tell us, “We’re here, we’re queer, and … we’re terrified to step outside.” As a gay man, it’s humiliating to hear this kind of maudlin rhetoric uttered in my name.

The broad public, long sympathetic and accommodating, has had it. People have no time for hysterical activists who whine, bully, and hector them about things they didn’t do and over which they have no control. This is particularly true when those same activists demand the elimination of women’s sex-based rights, the medical sterilization of children and teens, and the explicit exclusion of job applicants by race. The more that ordinary men and women came to learn about gay marriage, the more they accepted it. By contrast, the more that ordinary men and women come to learn about trans-activist demands and critical race theory, the more they’ve become repulsed.

Support for Black Lives Matter collapsed when the woke trivialized the arson and looting that accompanied the George Floyd protests. The public was completely onside with the left’s demand for police reform, but horrified by the extremist push to dismantle public security, and enraged that the left justified breaking pandemic restrictions for protests while insisting that grieving families be kept from their dying relatives in hospitals.

Likewise, Lia Thomas tanked support on gender radicalism. The public had long welcomed trans civil rights, sympathized with those suffering dysphoria, and accepted that even non-dysphoric trans-identified individuals should be able to live and present as they wished. But the sight of a strapping, butch male taking women’s prizes and opportunities was a breaststroke too far.

Facing resistance, the woke doubled down, insisting on automatic gender affirmation for everyone, including rapists and children. The result gifted social conservatives an issue of concern to majorities across the political spectrum. Now, progressives in the U.S. face a raft of bills that, among other things, resurrect false charges of Alphabet paedophilia. No wonder LGB groups are jettisoning the T: In the space of just a few years, trans activists have undone the good work that gay activists did over multiple generations.

The progressive movement must stand up to its extremists. We must restore the liberal social compact that won our civil and human rights. That means we should root our claims in areas of common ground, demanding fair treatment, but not the right to dictate what others think.

The most intense theatres of culture-war combat involve the education of children, an area in which liberal attitudes must be allowed to hold sway. Popular free speech principles should be applied to school libraries and curricula — which means opposing campaigns to root out books demonized by both the left and the right alike. In classrooms, an open exploration of history can provide a context for kids to discuss how injustices were overcome in the past and how they might be handled in the present. Students can be taught to brainstorm how to use their advantages to help the less fortunate, and how others in their situation have dealt with adversity. But they should never be taught that personal relationships and moral hierarchies are determined by the colour of one’s skin.

Likewise, boys and girls should be allowed to play and dress free of gender stereotypes, with a no-bullying policy strictly enforced. They should learn who they are by themselves, and be taught that they are more than the sum of their parts. They should not be labelled by ideological adults consumed by a mania for gender theory. In school, I skipped with the girls, had a lisp, and liked to play with china elves. That didn’t make me a girl, just as dressing butch and dreading the effects of a puberty doesn’t turn a lesbian into a boy. (I shudder to think what might have happened were I a child today.)

We should also return to the left’s traditional focus on class. Diversty, equity, and inclusion initiatives enrich the small group of well-educated profiteers who proselytize the DEI faith, but they’re actually worse than useless when it comes to workplaces, exacerbating intolerance among the hapless workers forced to submit to tedious seminars and questionnaires. Resources from the DEI industry’s rapidly metastasizing bureaucracies should be redirected to programs that materially help the poor: Unlike affirmative action programs, investments in deprived neighbourhoods disproportionately assist minorities without the creation of double-standards and racial left-behinds that serve to energize white nationalists. They also support social mobility and economic inclusion.

“I just want to say—you know—can we, can we all get along?” is how Rodney King put it in 1991. While many of us might read the underlying sentiment as self-evident, the militant social-justice left now treats it as a forbidden lie, since the entire movement is based on the conceit that peaceful and harmonious coexistence is impossible within a pluralistic liberal society that doesn’t forcibly “queer” itself, endlessly hector citizens about their bigotry, and segregate workers and students by skin colour.

I believe we can all get along. As a progressive, a gay man, a Canadian, and a liberal, I want no part of any movement — whatever it calls itself — that insists we can’t.

[ Mirror: https://archive.is/es3Q4 ]

==

To the extent that liberal principles are actually being rejected, it's coming from both the authoritarian reactionary right, and the authoritarian postmodern left.

[zhongrin]

ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀ ꜱʜᴇᴇᴛ: ᴏᴄ

꧁𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨

ʙᴀꜱᴇ ᴘʀᴏꜰɪʟᴇ ⟡ ɪɴ-ɢᴀᴍᴇ ᴇᴅɪᴛɪᴏɴ ① ⟡ ɪɴ-ɢᴀᴍᴇ ᴇᴅɪᴛɪᴏɴ ②

Disclaimer: I'm not a meta player so these numbers or effects may be fucked up. Please take it in all good fun 🙏🏻

ー༄ Special Dish:

“Absolutely Normal Hot Chocolate.”

Type: Recovery Dishes

Ingredients: Cocoa powder x2, Milk x1, Spice x1

Effect: Restores 18~22% of Max HP to the selected character and regenerates 300~470 HP every 5s for 30s.

Description: Coviello’s specialty. Indulgent blend of cocoa and steaming hot milk, along with a dollop of condensed milk and a dash of cinnamon, with marshmallows to stir in or nibble on the side. It’ll warm up your body from the inside. Disclaimer: this version has no god’s remains inside.

ー༄ Favorite food:

“Venison Stew”

Type: Recovery Dishes

Ingredients: Raw meat x2, Fire-Water x1, Pepper x1

Effect: Restores 26~30% of Max HP to the selected character and regenerates 450~790 HP every 5s for the next 30s.

Description: A simple but hearty meal made of freshly hunted game. Since the Fire-Water is poured in the later process of the cooking, the alcohol should warm anyone up quite nicely. A perfect dinner to have in a cold winter night.

ー༄ Signature Weapon:

🗡 Frozen Flame

Weapon Type: Sword

2nd Stat Type: Elemental Mastery

Rating: ★★★★★

Description: An icy blue sword with glowing red ‘veins’ along its blade. Forged by the cold frozen lake of Snezhnaya's endless winters and the eternal fire of Natlan, it seems to be especially receptive to certain elements.

Refinement Rank 1: Lux Aut Umbra

Upon hitting enemies affected by Hydro: Refreshes any existing Nota stacks and gains one Umbra Nota, which increases ATK to all party members by 18% for 10s. Max 3 stacks. The next two Umbra Nota can only be gained if wielder is off-field. When the wielder has 3 stacks, active character’s ATK SPD will be increased by 6%.

Upon hitting enemies affected with Cryo or Pyro: Refreshes any existing Nota stacks and gains Lux Nota, which increases the wielder’s Normal Attack DMG by 100%. This effect will disappear after 42 DMG instances or 18s.

A/N ⟡ Kit Concept: Mainly a weapon to better enhance Coviello's versatile playstyle. e.g. as support/sub-DPS, you'd focus on gaining Umbra Nota and making sure they go off-field, while as a main/sub-DPS, you'd focus on gaining Lux Nota (which can easily be done using their Elemental Burst).

ー༄ Active Skills:

Normal Attack: Advancing in Caution

Normal Attack: Performs up to 5 rapid strikes.

Charged Attack: Consumes a certain amount of stamina to quickly step back and either 1) fires a pistol or 2) throws a dagger. Both instances deal Physical DMG.

Plunging Attack: Plunges from mid-air to strike the ground below, damaging opponents along the path and dealing AoE DMG upon impact.

Elemental Skill: Frostbite

Duration: 12s ⟡ CD: 20s

Cryo DMG: (Base level) 120% ATK + 140% Elemental Mastery

Applies a circular Cryo field which deals continuous Cryo DMG every 2s.

“Why do I wear thick clothes and layers if the cold doesn’t bother me?”

“….... You know I’m still human, right? Or was that a roundabout way of you saying that you want me to die?”

Elemental Burst: Ice Burn

Duration: 18s ⟡ CD: 32s

Enhanced Normal Attack DMG: (Base level) 120% ATK + 250% Elemental Mastery

HP Drain: 5% Max HP per second

Coviello activates their delusion and alternates between Cryo and Pyro DMG between attacks, causing continuous Melt reaction. This will convert their Normal Attack: Advancing in Caution’s Physical DMG into Elemental DMG.

While they’re in this state, their HP will continuously be drained.

“Do you know what severe frostbite feels like? It feels tingly at first, like sparks of electricity. Then, it starts to burn and swell, before you lose all feelings in that particular area... Heh. Ironic, isn’t it? How can cold ice feel like it’s burning your skin?”

“....... I suppose it's something you might not be able to wrap your head around unless you've experienced it yourself.”

A/N ⟡ Kit Concept: Great off-field support/sub-DPS for Hydro-wielding characters (specifically Childe), but turns into main/sub-DPS after their Elemental Burst is unleashed (which could also be a good support for Childe as you wait for his Elemental Skill cooldown). Also I imagine if RNG blesses Cov to fire a pistol as a charged attack, in-game Meirin would go "That's my child ;w;" /silly

ー༄ Passive Skills:

Thermoregulatory: Party is immune to cold weather effects.

Avalanche (be upon ye): If the deployed party is entirely composed of Hydro and Cryo characters, including Coviello, opponents affected by Cryo will have their Cryo RES decreased by 10% for 12s.

Legal Hunting: Gains 25% more rewards when dispatched on a Snezhnaya Expedition for 20 hours.

ー༄ Constellations:

C1: Frostnip

Increases the Level of Frostbite by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.

C2: Impermafrost ★

Active characters within Cryo field generated by Frostbite are immune to Frozen even when Wet (other elemental reactions with Hydro will still apply).

C3: Permafrost ★

If the opponent is Frozen, increase Frostbite’s Cryo DMG to 1.5x of the current multiplier value for Coviello’s Elemental Mastery.

C4: Hypothermia

Increases the Level of Normal Attack: Advancing in Caution by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.

C5: Blizzard

Increases the Level of Ice Burn by 3. Maximum upgrade level is 15.

C6: Gangrene ★

Increases Ice Burn’s Enhanced Normal Attack DMG to 1.5x of the current multiplier value for Coviello’s Elemental Mastery and reduce HP Drain to 4% Max HP per second.

A/N ⟡ Concept: C1-C3 enhances their support/sub-DPS capability, but C4-C6 evolves them into a decent DPS.

ー༄ Idle Animations:

Crosses arms and watches the snow falling.

Sees a duckling on the ground. Crouches to pet it for a few seconds before standing back up.

[lyramundana]

I have a question and I would like your opinion on it I that’s alright🥰

Yandere!Minsung..how do you think they’d feel about their third getting a little too close with the members? I.e. giving them pecks on the cheek as a greeting, hugging them randomly, cuddling with some, etc.?

Considering all we've talked about them in this blog, this one is easy to guess.

Honey, they'll be mad mad. They're already possessive as hell in normal settings, so being yandere would increase this to an unhinged level.

They can't even stand seeing their third smiling at someone else, something that mundane. In their mind, their partner should be always with them and only pay attention to them.

For fuck's sake, they don't even allow their partner to wear her own clothes around the house, only using their shirts and pants because it feels like a solid proof of their ownership over her.

The're rarely away from their third, so in order for her to get close to the members, it must happen when neither Han or Minho are near. Maybe she does it to tease them, maybe she does it because she likes it maybe she simply wants some resemblance of security. Anyway, it's the only time she can break the rules because MinSung wouldn't cause an scandal in front of the members, so their hands are tied, clenching white knuckles as she stumbles in and gives her affection to the other members so carelessly.

First of all, there's no need for her to greet the members. They already know her. She's supposed to be by MinSung's side inmediatly and don't move far.

When she goes and kisses Changbin on the cheek for whatever reason, Minho looks at the scene while blinking repeteadly and tonguing with his cheek in a barely repressed scowl. Jisung stares with a dark frown, shifting in his seat constantly and toes tapping the floor. Minho aproachs her quickly as soon as Changbin doesn't see, grabs her roughly by the chin and cleans her lips with his finger, murmuring threats a breath away off her face.

When she's found cuddling Felix because no one can say no the boy, Jisung doesn't waste time in ripping her away harshly, moving her right next to him with an iron like grip. Minho pushes away Felix "playfully" and chuckles darkly, telling him to please don't do it again. Later, they keep her caged between their bodies and bruising her skin with their fingers, hushing her whimpers of pain with dark glares. Didn't she want to be cuddled? They're giving her just that. She should be grateful they haven't throw her in their laps and spank her for her bratting.

If she's caught hugging one of the members casually, they feel the blood boil underneath their skin. Minho's cat reflexes allow him to stop the hug before it even happens, playing it off with a innocent grin like "he was passing by" or "he needs to speak to her about something", but when he turns his head towards her, his eyes alone make her crumble and fill her with dread. Jisung doesn't even hide it and screams "ya! what are you doing hugging her?" and the members laugh because they think it's all harmless, but they don't notice his teeth clenching and the veins on his neck popping out. He storms towards the scene and separates them, hugging her tightly while glaring at the other boy. She feels his nails scratching where he's holding her and tries to escape, but he only strenghtens his hold and whispers in her ear just how badly she fucked up, how Hyung and him are going to remind her to not let others touch what's theirs.

In short, it'll be disastrous. They'll lock her in their house for days until she learns her lesson, maybe some angry punishment sex here and there where they don't let her cum. Minho forces her to take a bath to cleans off the smell/touch the others left on her skin, the skin that's supposed to be touched only by them. They keep her glued to their side, like she's joint at their hips. Jisung is most likely to get into a fight with the members because of it, unable to supress his frustration and jealousy.

Eventually, she's not even allowed to chat with other members unless MinSung are with her.

Tagging my lovelies: @channieandhisgoonsquad @2chopsticks2eyes @sweetracha in case they have more ideas to add

@moonlightndaydreams

[puddlesl1me]

The Mending Enchantment in Minecraft

I've had this thought for a while now, and I figured it'd be good to share it with the endless void to see if it gets picked up anywhere. Here are my thoughts on how to fix mending in Minecraft. Be warned, this post is VERY long.

TL;DR: Add mending to the enchanting table, add an option to refresh the enchantments in the enchanting table without having to use the grindstone, and potentially add a way to increase odds of getting a specific enchantment.

Imagine this scenario: you've just gotten diamond tools, you're super excited to use them, and you do. It's great. They're faster than iron, and don't break as quickly. But, they do eventually break. They're now on their last legs, only 13 durability on the pickaxe and 22 on the axe. You've switched back to iron for the time being, but want to use diamond tools again. How do you fix this situation?

There are 4 main options:

- Repair them in an anvil with diamonds

- Just make more tools

- Buy new tools from toolsmith villagers

- Get mending books to repair them

Repairing them is fine, especially if you don't anticipate playing for much longer (eg. you're about to beat the Ender Dragon), but otherwise is a bit wasteful. It also gets more and more expensive in terms of xp as you repair more. And good luck repairing netherite tools like this.

Making more tools can be even more wasteful, especially if your old tools are enchanted. You have to go through the process of getting the tools all over again.

Buying them from toolsmith villagers means having access to villagers, and being able to level up at least one toolsmith villager to the required level. That's a pain.

Mending is the most enticing. Keep your current tools, and have a infinitely renewable way to repair them. It's the best solution. However, mending is also awful to get.

It's a treasure enchantment, which means you can't get it with an enchanting table. Loot tables such as structure chests and fishing can be good, but are incredibly unreliable. They contain every other enchanted book as well, so you'd have to get lucky to get a mending book specifically. Villagers are a renewable way to get the books, and are usually the least painful.

Despite being the least painful, however, they still manage to make the experience incredibly dull. Assuming you have villagers, you sit there with one nearby, destroying and replacing a lectern to hopefully find a mending book in their trades. This can take 10 minutes, or 2 hours. That's not even taking into account getting the emeralds to buy the books, which also takes a long time and usually involves a second villager at the very least. Past this, if you want to get different enchantments guaranteed, or other things, a villager trading hall is a necessity. You're now spending many hours on this project, that most likely will be repeated in every world that you get to this point.

Suffice to say, villagers are in no way the ideal method to get mending books. But because villagers are so useful, and mending books so necessary for long playthroughs, this process is the most common way, by far, to get mending books.

This is all because mending books are a treasure enchantment.

If mending books were available via the enchanting table, this wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem. It's still RNG-based (which I'll get to later), but provides an alternative viable method to get mending books. In particular, it allows casual players to get mending without needing to go through the villager process. There's still the problem of needing to make an xp farm, but most players need to do this anyways to get enchantments onto equipment (also it takes less time).

Like I mentioned, the RNG of the enchantment table is still a problem. If mending was moved to the enchanting table, this would still be a major improvement. But I'd also like to suggest some improvements to enchanting while I'm here.

First, for a small change, add an option to refresh the enchantments without enchanting an item. One of the bigger issues with enchanting is that there's a lot of time waste from having to refresh the enchantments over and over, then exiting the menu to use a grindstone on all the enchanted items so you can do it all over again. It's a large waste of time, and is one of the worst parts of enchanting. Adding an option to refresh the enchantments that's built into the table would be very beneficial. 1 xp level and 1 lapis, to match the first enchanting level requirements, and it completely refreshes the enchantments. More resource conservative players can still use the old way to save some xp by using the grindstone, but it provides an easier option for more casual players.

For a much bigger, and more complex change, I suggest allowing modification for the probabilities of certain enchantments through what I'm calling catalysts.

These would be items that, when placed in a certain slot in the enchanting menu, increase (or potentially decrease) the odds of getting certain enchantments. As an example, ice would increase the odds of fire protection and frost walker (assuming that's also removed from the treasure pool), but decrease the chance of fire aspect. Gold increases the chance for efficiency, but decreases the chance for unbreaking. Obsidian increases blast protection and protection, cactus increases thorns, etc. There could be many items to increase or decrease many different enchantments, but the point is that there's a way to alter the probabilities for enchantments.

This is important because, as enchanting table use grows, players will continue to complain about spending hours at their mob farm, trying to get all the enchantments they need for their gear. Giving a method for adjusting the probabilities would appease the players, at least a little.

An additional change for this, although not nearly as necessary, would be to allow for bookshelves to be imbued with these catalysts. It would give the nearby enchanting table the corresponding permanent bonus, albeit at a reduced effect. Or better yet, make a new endgame item that does this, but only one of this item can affect an enchanting table (I'm thinking something above the enchanting table, using a spore blossom and other items that make it endgame. The catalyst would be in the crafting recipe, so you have to make more if you want to have access to different bonuses). This single endgame item would provide the full bonus, since it's an endgame item and there can only be one affecting the probabilities.

Now, how does this work with mending? Surely with a powerful enchantment, it would make sense to either not improve the enchantment odds at all, or have a very endgame item increase the odds. And I would agree, to a point. Mending is very useful in the beginning of the game, and getting it before beating the ender dragon is common. Having it be locked in the end dimension wouldn't be very useful, and wouldn't solve the issue. Rather, I believe the solution is to give it a normal enchantment probability, but when an enchanted item gets more than one enchantment.

To be a little bit more clear, let's say you enchant a sword with a level 30 enchantment. It says sharpness 4, cool, that's what you want. You enchant it, and you get the added bonus of knockback 2, or unbreaking, or something else. Mending would be in this pool of enchantments, but not in the regular pool. This would mean that it isn't visible when looking at the available enchantments for the item you're enchanting, but is available as a potential additional enchantment.

This guarantees that all players are able to get the enchantment, but it's still difficult. Still based on RNG, but a little RNG is fine. A potential option to allow it to appear as it's own enchantment would be to use dragon's breath as the catalyst. Why? Because dragon's breath is kinda useless honestly, and I think it should get more use. Xp bottles may be more appropriate, but they're difficult to get without villagers (which we're trying to avoid).

I realize this isn't without problems, but, in my opinion, this would be a better alternative to using villagers. People who like villagers can still use them, and they're still better for getting what you want. But those who dislike villagers, or are tired of repeating the same task every playthrough, are given a different method to obtain a near-necessary item.

Thanks for reading, and I'm sorry this was so long. Please let me know any ideas you have regarding this, and/or how I could have improved this post (i have no idea what im doing on tumblr)

[mustlovesteve]

someone made a comment speculating on the sustainability of steve as eddie's primary food source in LATBG and i now feel compelled to share my thoughts about it. spoilers for blood-drinking logistics of the story behind the cut!

keep in mind that i haven't consumed a ton of vampire media, so this is likely an extremely common approach, but...humor me, alright?

for plot-reasons (read: i needed an excuse to shove in more blood-drinking scenes), eddie gets thirsty every 24hrs. he can survive much longer than that without blood, but he'll get increasingly weaker and certain vampire traits will become less prominent (eye color, claw sharpness/length, etc.).

blood volume can be restored relatively quickly with good hydration, but red blood cells take much longer to return to baseline. the rate at which this happens is dependent on many factors, such as testosterone levels, thyroid hormones, iron levels, the altitude at which someone lives, etc. however, even in the best conditions, that still wouldn't be even remotely sustainable.

from this article on RBC production:

The capacity of the bone marrow to produce red cells is enormous. When stimulated to peak activity and when provided adequately with nutrient substances, the marrow can compensate for the loss of several pints of blood per week. Hemorrhage or accelerated destruction of red cells leads to enhanced marrow activity. The marrow can increase its production of red cells up to eight times the usual rate. After that, if blood loss continues, anemia develops.

this wasn't what i had been reading at the time, but ideas like this were what got me thinking about how vampires work in this universe and how this could be manipulated to make steve an even better blood bag (the dream!!!).

within this fic, vampires are predators with an option to keep their prey alive for the sake of having a reliable food source. this is why they can tweak the "cocktail" and lick the wound to make it stop bleeding. ideally, a vampire would have a rotation of tasty morsels to snack on without worrying that any of them would get depleted too quickly.

buuuut what if something within the vampire's saliva actually stimulated RBC production to go into constant overdrive, compensated by certain food cravings and some other bodily tweaks?

the "goal" would be for steve to safely get bitten on a weekly basis, kind of like a date night (but like, sexier)! this would likely be discovered during dr. owens' tests. if this was proven to be safe, then eddie would be less reliant on blood donations from the other adults and hospital supplies--but steve's weekly grocery bill would be really high lmao.

i don't want to get into the actual calculations, since that would vary wildly based on how much blood eddie needs to consume on a daily basis, but in a very rough estimate, we'd be aiming for 10x higher RBC production than the average healthy adult male with the power of vampire magic.

[somethingclevermahogony]

Happy WBW! What is the most deadly weapon in your world?

Thank you for the ask!

Ekatism Tech

Ekatism Tech, the creation of which catalyzed the Age of Glass and Metal, allowed for the capture and processing of lifeforce, essentially converting a soul into a workable source of energy. This technology was developed by the human researcher and sage, Tagalan Ekat. Ironically, by the time of her death, she actively campaigned against her own invention.

Ekatism Tech was originally intended for benevolent purposes. It was meant to enable physicians and caretakers to transfer some of their own strength and vitality into others, aiding in better recovery. However, it was quickly discovered that this capture and transfer of energy could be done without the consent of the person being drained. Moreover, the energy or magical power taken from an individual didn’t have to be stored in a living body but could be put into inanimate vessels for later use.

The process of collecting souls for energy was first tested on prisoners, with the energy taken from them used to light the very prisons they inhabited. Several nations legalized the use of Ekatism Tech in hospitals to “utilize” dying or otherwise unresponsive patients, including its own inventor, Tagalan Ekat. In time, Ekatism Execution became the preferred method of execution in most Pre-Calamity nations.

The Ekatism Corporation, in cooperation with the agricultural sector, began to use the technology in slaughterhouses to kill livestock, using the resultant energy to light cities and fuel an Industrial Revolution. This led to a dramatic increase in meat consumption, with the average Pre-Calamity civilian consuming 780% more meat and meat by-products than their Post-Calamity counterparts. 

Energy specifically sourced from animal life was marketed as “humane” and considerably cheaper, while energy sourced from prisoners and the dying was sold at a far cheaper rate. However, once a soul was broken down into energy, it could not be reverted, and evidence suggested that the soul might still retain some level of awareness in this state. This process resulted in the permanent destruction of souls, preventing reincarnation and causing massive ecological destruction both on Kobani and in other worlds within the Cycle of Reincarnation.

Ekatism Tech was eventually co-opted by military groups, resulting in the development of guns and bombs. The Ekatsim Rifle M4, the most popular of its kind, could shoot a miniature Ekatism apparatus instead of a bullet. Upon penetrating a living being, the apparatus would absorb their energy, killing the individual. These pellets could then be retrieved and repurposed. More advanced weapons capable of draining multiple individuals at once were also invented.

The most feared weapon was the Sage-Suit, a metal exoskeleton that allowed the user to collect and utilize energy for various purposes, similar to how a sage uses magic but without the physical degradation. Sage-Suits became emblematic of a new, Ekatism-fueled world. The need for conventional fuel in warfare became irrelevant, as the enemy themselves became a fuel source. Successful invasions or military operations had a direct influence on energy prices for consumers, as the energy produced from enemy combatants (and non-combatants) flooded the market. Several nations even legalized the use of Ekatism Tech on prisoners of war.

Ekatism Tech was responsible for the near-total annihilation of the Tree-Tender people and several other groups. Further developments allowed for the technology's use on plant life and spirits. Concurrently, technology was perfected to infuse energy into fetuses in utero, creating artificially enhanced Spiritbloods. These Spiritbloods were utilized as super-soldiers, often further enhanced by Sage-Suits and Ekatism Implants.

The destructive potential of Ekatism Tech eventually gained the attention and ire of the Gods, leading to the total destruction of all human cities and over 99% of the population in an event known as the Calamity. Despite this, some pieces of Ekatism Tech still exist, scattered in the remote and hidden places of Kobani, waiting to be discovered once more.

[redd956]

3 Games that double-down on video games as works of art

Not every time do you play a video game purely for the entertainment we expect. Video games themselves are also works of art; they radiate with creativity and human touch, their soundtracks alone attest to that. 

However not every game is designed with the intent to bring back money, become an infamous popular classic, or gain the archetype of being a esports play. Many games are designed with only the objective of an experience at hand, and these five games nail it!

Iron Lung

Iron Lung is a short horror video game located on Steam, developed by David Szymanski. He purposefully developed the game to last about an hour of gameplay, however that doesn’t budge on its insanely well designed atmosphere in the first place.

It is beyond grim, and spawns tons of questions that will likely never be answered. It is a single player experience, in which you play a convict trapped within an outdated submarine, sent to explore an ominous blood ocean on a moon.

The sound design is eerie and perfect. The game aims for a sense of isolation, dread, and hopelessness. The exposition is delightfully spooky, followed by gradual built up to singular moment in the game. The atmosphere is retro but exceeds in its dreariness, and truly gives players the feeling of being locked into a submarine blind underneath the depths of a blood ocean on the moon.

Each objective within the game reached not only lures the player to continue on, but adds to the anxiety of the game built-in atmosphere. The submarine itself also begins deteriorating, perhaps even reflecting how the player character himself is falling apart at the seams and losing all hope. It built an experience for sure.

SUPERHOT

SUPERHOT is a first-person action game, where you are simulating a man with inhuman abilities going on a deadly rampage as the world seemingly throws armies of opponents against you. The game spans onto several platforms, with many different ways to play, and also a handful of variations of the game.

This is another game heavy on building on experience. It starts much more innocent feeling, which is accompanied by its addictive smooth gameplay, where it appears as an everyday looping action game. However quickly everything seems to be going much more wrong, and the story being told rapidly increases in darkness.

The maps being to warp. The red enemies sometimes mimic innocent civilians, desperate forces attempting to stop you, and eventually they too morph and change. In SUPERHOT: Mind Control Delete levels are available to play, with snippets of our player character’s sanity being shown.

In an attempt to finish or continuing playing such smooth and fun gameplay, the players end up mimicking the character’s endless aggressive addiction and spiraling sanity. As dialogue is discovered it feels both aimed at the player and the character, and the your actions are become done methodically with sadness. Now both you and the character are searching for answers, whilst continuing a maddening cycle.

Papers Please

Papers Please was created by Lucas Pope. As a work of art it not only serves an experience that stays with you, but makes statements against many post-WW2 world problems. Heavily inspired by the border control during the Cold War, especially from Yugoslavic nations and the Soviet Union, Papers Please challenges both your attention to detail, patience, and empathy.

In Papers Please you play a border control agent in the fictional nation of Arstotzka. Similar to SUPERHOT and Iron Lung, as soon as the game is opened, the tone is thrown in the face of players. This time a slavic inspired dreary militaristic anthem booms, as the title and logo is revealed.

The complexity of the border transactions, along with the sudden interruptions to the gameplay’s monotony, makes the game engaging and fresh. However the struggle of the player character is also quickly put on the table after the end of the first day. The game grows more and more complex as the days pass on, and eventually your character will face a time limit on their life.

Each character plays a role in adding to the atmosphere. Even the fictional nations, pixel art visuals, and sound design are built with the purpose of drawing out the depressing atmosphere the border, and Arstotzka offer. The ups are memorable, great, and heartstring tugging. While the downs are just the same, while also reminding the players of their character’s reality.

Authors Notes

I have played the final two of these games, and I have played a lot of them. I suggest go and play them, or maybe even relive them if you already have them.

[homeremediestube]

Toxicity Risks of Common Supplements: Exploring the Dark Side of Overdosing

Supplements can be a great way to boost your health and well-being, but it's important to take them safely and responsibly. Too much of a good thing can be harmful, and certain supplements can be toxic if taken in excess.

Vitamin A

Vitamin A is an essential nutrient that plays a role in vision, immune function, and cell growth and development. However, excessive intake of vitamin A supplements can be toxic. Symptoms of vitamin A toxicity can include nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headache, and blurred vision. In severe cases, vitamin A toxicity can damage the liver and other organs.

Iron

Iron is an essential mineral that is necessary for the production of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood. However, too much iron can be harmful. Symptoms of iron overdose can include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and constipation. In severe cases, iron overdose can damage the liver, heart, and other organs.

Selenium

Selenium is an essential trace mineral that has antioxidant properties. However, excessive intake of selenium supplements can lead to selenosis, a condition characterized by hair loss, skin rash, and digestive problems. In severe cases, selenosis can cause neurological problems and even death.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D is an essential nutrient that is important for bone health and immune function. However, excessive intake of vitamin D supplements can lead to hypercalcemia, a condition characterized by high levels of calcium in the blood. Symptoms of hypercalcemia can include nausea, vomiting, weakness, constipation, and kidney problems.

Other supplements

In addition to the supplements listed above, there are a number of other supplements that can be harmful if taken in excess. For example, high doses of zinc supplements can interfere with copper absorption and cause anemia. High doses of omega-3 fatty acid supplements can increase the risk of bleeding. And high doses of herbal supplements, such as ephedra and kava, can cause serious side effects, including heart problems and seizures.

Safety tips

To avoid the potential dangers of excessive supplement intake, it is important to follow recommended dosage guidelines and consult with a healthcare professional before starting any new supplements. Here are some additional safety tips:

• Read the supplement label carefully and follow the dosage instructions.

• Be aware of the potential side effects of the supplements you are taking.

• Tell your healthcare professional about all of the supplements you are taking, including herbal supplements and over-the-counter medications.

• Avoid taking supplements if you are pregnant or breastfeeding, unless directed to do so by your healthcare professional.

Supplements can provide benefits when taken in appropriate doses. However, it is important to be aware of the potential dangers of excessive supplement intake. By following the safety tips above, you can help to ensure safe and effective usage of supplements.

Supplement Overdose: What You Need to Know to Stay Safe

We all strive to live healthy lives and often turn to supplements to support our well-being. While these products can offer benefits when taken responsibly, it's crucial to understand that even natural or herbal supplements can pose risks if consumed in excessive amounts. In this article, we'll explore what you need to know about supplement overdose and how to handle such situations.

1. Recognizing the Signs:

Identifying a supplement overdose can be challenging, as symptoms can vary depending on the specific supplement and dosage. However, some common signs to look out for include nausea, vomiting, dizziness, rapid heartbeat, confusion, and difficulty breathing. If you or someone you know experiences these symptoms after taking supplements, it's essential to act quickly.

2. Seek Immediate Medical Help:

If you suspect a supplement overdose, don't hesitate to call emergency services or rush to the nearest emergency room. Prompt medical attention is crucial in such situations. While waiting for professional help, try to keep the affected person calm and monitor their vital signs if possible.

3. Provide Information:

When seeking medical help, provide accurate information about the supplements ingested, including the brand name, dosage, and any other medications being taken. This information will assist healthcare professionals in providing the appropriate treatment.

4. Avoid Self-Remedies:

It's crucial not to take matters into your own hands by inducing vomiting or administering any substances without medical guidance. Incorrect interventions can potentially worsen the situation or lead to complications. Trust the expertise of healthcare professionals to guide you through the necessary steps.

5. Prevention Is Key:

Preventing supplement overdose is always better than dealing with its consequences. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

a. Consult a Healthcare Professional: Before starting any new supplement regimen, consult with a healthcare professional who can assess your specific needs and recommend appropriate dosages.

b. Follow Recommended Dosages: Always adhere to the recommended dosages provided on the supplement packaging or as advised by a healthcare professional. More is not necessarily better when it comes to supplements.

c. Be Mindful of Combinations: If you're taking multiple supplements or medications, be aware of potential interactions. Some combinations can lead to adverse effects or decrease the effectiveness of certain substances.

d. Store Supplements Safely: Keep supplements out of reach of children and in a cool, dry place as directed on the packaging. This helps maintain their potency and prevents accidental ingestion.

Supplements can be beneficial when used responsibly, but it's crucial to understand the risks of overdose. If you suspect a supplement overdose, seek immediate medical help and provide accurate information to healthcare professionals. Remember, prevention is key, so consult with a healthcare professional, follow recommended dosages, be mindful of combinations, and store supplements safely. By being informed and cautious, you can make informed choices about your well-being and enjoy the benefits of supplements without compromising your health.

[cerezsis]

Life is Beautiful

Chapter Two

Life has a habit of taking unexpected turns.

--

The sound of ceramic shattering against the tile floor jolted Kyle from sleep. Eyes snapping open to the sight of Jessi’s empty side of the bed, he instinctually bolted up, sprinting to the kitchen.

“Jessi!” His heart plummeted at the sight of her, face flushed and knuckles white as she gripped the counter, legs just barely able to support her. Careful to avoid the jagged pieces of broken plate and the toasted bagel that was now cream cheese-side down on the tile, he hurried to her side, wrapping an arm around her as he helped her walk to the dining table.

“I’m fine,” she tried to insist as she sat down, voice coming out in a slight mutter, “Just got a bit dizzy.”

Looking her over, Kyle quickly deduced she hadn’t injured herself in the dropping of her breakfast, though there was cream cheese smeared on her pant leg. With a gentle lift of her chin, he looked into her eyes, attempting to gauge her lucidity.

“Did you take your medication last night?” he asked as he hesitantly left her side, needing to retrieve something from the living room.

“Yeah,” Jessi nodded, a single hand resting on her swollen belly. The little one seemed unphased by the happenings around them, continuing with their usual morning stretches.

Returning to the kitchen, Kyle held the blood pressure cuff in his hands. As he wrapped the cold nylon around her left arm, Jessi found herself turning away. Despite what some people said about women’s bodies being made to have babies, it was abundantly clear by now that hers simply wasn’t. Blood pressure fluctuations were just one of her complications, her body just not knowing what to do with the increased hormone levels and the presence of the unfamiliar being growing inside her. Having just passed the twenty-four week mark, she’d already seen enough doctors and had enough tests run to make up for the sixteen years of blank medical history.

“Blood pressure’s normal,” Kyle told her as the cuff began to release its grip.

Jessi sighed. “Iron levels probably went down again.”

“I thought you just had a blood test?” he asked as he went to put the cuff back.

“Haven’t got the results back yet.”

Sighing himself at his entrance, Kyle got to work cleaning the mess on the floor. “Maybe you should call in today.”

Another sigh leaving her lips, Jessi shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

“You boss will understand.”

“No, I don’t want to miss work again.” This was all so frustrating. She loved her job, loved creating the security programs IT heads and CEOs alike went out of their way to request her for, and loved the feeling of doing something important. “The deadline’s coming up, beta tests still need to be run-”

“Jessi…” He tried not to sigh again as he threw out the broken plate and uneaten bagel. Part of him wished she wasn’t so stubborn, but the rest of him understood the predicament. Freelance humanitarian work didn’t bring in the same income, and if they wanted their child to have the experience and memories of playing in a backyard and running through the halls of their childhood home, they really needed the savings. Plus, he knew the toll this pregnancy was taking on her, how she struggled with limitations on a good day, and how important it was for her to maintain her sense of self. None of it calmed his desire to take care of her, but it at least helped him navigate these situations.

Read More on AO3

[betweenlands]

tell us about the origin ideas i have medicore code skills and a desire to listen

ok!!! under the cut bc this got Long. presenting Solar’s Variant (V)illager Origins! (also these are free to use as ideas for actual origins as long as you credit us)

below the cut: variant villager, variant vindicator, variant illusioner, and half-illager.

Variant Villager

+ Witches are neutral towards you + If you have no food in your inventory, other villagers will throw food at you (bread, potatoes, beetroot, or carrots) + You have a single innate discount level with other villagers, and iron golems won't attack you no matter how bad your reputation is + You cannot create major negative gossip about yourself, and minor negative gossip decays much faster - Your attacks are slightly weaker - Your natural health regen is slower - Zombies, husks, and drowned do more damage to you

Variant Vindicator

+ Vindicators, evokers, ravagers, and witches are neutral towards you; pillagers are completely passive + You start with 12 hearts + Your axe attacks are faster and do more damage + You can ride a ravager like it’s a horse + You can use emeralds to barter with pillagers and vindicators, getting things like wool and redstone components in return = You glow if someone nearby rings a bell - You start with -15 reputation in all villages, and villager prices are greatly increased permanently - Sword attacks are weaker and slower - Your natural health regen is slower

Variant Illusioner

+ Vindicators, evokers, ravagers, skeletons (and strays), zombies (and husks/drowned), creepers, and witches are all neutral towards you; pillagers are completely passive + Your bow and crossbow attacks are faster and do more damage + Your armor turns invisible if you have Invisibility +  You can use emeralds to barter with pillagers and vindicators, getting things like wool and redstone components in return + You can use a totem of undying to disguise yourself as a villager for 8 minutes, temporarily setting your base reputation to 0 and enabling you to trade with villagers - You can't trade with villagers outside of this illusion state = You glow if someone nearby rings a bell - Your natural health regen is slower - You start with -30 reputation in all villages

Hillager (half illager, half villager)

+ Vindicators, pillagers, and witches are neutral towards you; evokers and ravagers will also be neutral if you're holding a totem of undying + Your axe attacks are faster, and you can reload a crossbow quicker + You can use emeralds to barter with pillagers and vindicators, getting things like wool and redstone components in return = You glow if someone nearby rings a bell - Villagers have a chance to generate random minor negative gossip about you, causing them to raise prices (gossip generated in this way cannot drop your reputation below 0, and will decay quickly) - Your natural health regen is slower - Zombies, husks, and drowned do more damage to you