#i couldn't find a purple pic of major

[mayghosts]

Little Gold Top: (4) Kate Martin x Reader

Summary: You and Kates twisted past. (Previous) (TOC)

Warnings: Underage and unhealthy drinking/drug use, references to sex/drunk hookups, toxic relationships (Kate and reader)

AN: buckle up y'all. I REALLY hope you guys get this its so late 😭

Halloween Sophmore Year

Messy. You and Kate have always been messy in your head. The two of you seemed to only exist together when the both of you were black out or high out of your minds. You couldn't exactly recall the number of times her hands had dropped below your shoulders and into your pants, or the ammount of times you had hungrily kissed her. Or the ammount of times you would wake up alone and find some article of her clothing forgotten on your floor.

This would mark one year since the first time you had woken up in her dorm. Maybe you were silly for remembering this. The thought lingered in the back of your head as you got ready. Maybe it was basic of you to go as a black cat, but your only goal tonight was to get drunk enough to forget your latest fling. Another masc, indie, art major with bleach blonde hair. You had ended it last night. You took another shot before drawing your whiskers on with eyeliner. "You need to slow down, you're gonna get drunk before you even get to the party." Gabbie looked at you disapprovingly. She truly was your other half, but right now you didn't want a voice of reason you wanted Kate you wanted to be drunk. You rolled your eyes at her as you walked out of the bathroom, pulling on your shoes.

"God finally you guys are ready, can we leave now?" Caitlin immediately shot out of her chair, walking towards the door in her cowboy boots. You could feel Kates eyes glued to your exposed thighs as she complemented you and Gabbie on your contrasting costumes. Just a reminder of how you knew this night was going to end. Jada walked up to you with a big smile on her face "well don't you look cute!" You giggled at her enthusiasum and her little mouse ears, everything is funny when you're a little drunk, "we need some hot pics tonight for my insta!" You guys had dressed up as a cat and mouse for the second year in a row. You grinned back at her, "Yesss of course!"

As the five of you made your way down the dorm halls and out towards the frats, you found your eyes drifting towards Kate. You continued this action throughout the night, constantly finding her dumb unicorn horn above the crowd. She fucked you in the back of her car that night. You think that was the last time it truly meant nothing. You were both hammered, neither of you really remebered anything from that night. Atleast you didn't. Just the fog on the windows and the pop song blasting through her crappy toyota corolla speakers.

New Years Sophmore Year

After Halloweekend, and multiple more blackout party weekends with Kate, you decided to go sober. No more blackout weekends, no more greening out in random basements, no more Kate. Emphasis on no more Kate. Over a year of useless hookups, it was time to move on. Find something serious. Maybe a brunette, short, fem with brown eyes and a vowl at the beginning of her name. No more blondes.

You repeated this like an oath in your head as you knocked on the apartement door. Kate and Caitlin had moved into an off campus apartement together over break. Their first "to do" was to host new years. Clad in a black mini skirt and a gold croptop you shivered in the hall. The door swung back, revealing the one and only Kate Martin. "Hey..." You stared up at her. Distance really does make the heart grow fonder, the purple lights from inside the apartement cast an odd glow into the badly lit hallway. "You cold?..." She reached a hand out to graze over your arm, shamelessly staring at your boobs sequined shirt. The air felt thick, not in a sexual tension way. You felt like you could see the longing through her eyes, the need for something more. Maybe you were just projecting but suddenly in her eyes you saw children and a big old farmhouse with a pickett fence.

"So are you gonna let her in or are you just gonna let her freeze out there?" As Caitlin poked her head around the corner Kate snatched her hand back as if she had been burned. She stepped to the side, letting you shuffle into the warm apartement.

You remeber that night clear as day. You succeded with 2/3 of your goals. However, you made one critical mistake. You let Kate walk you back to your dorm. Alone. She wrapped her thick coat over your shoulders as you two walked silently. The random hookups had really put a twist on your relationship, but it gave you a weird sense of safety. You were fine with the silence, you were fine with her holding your hand, you were fine with her eyes constantly drifiting towards your shirt. You looked up at her "I think I owe you an apology." she glanced over at you, pressing her lips between her teeth before looking back at the ground. "What do you mean?" You were silent for a minute before looking up at the sky. "Well you know... this last year... I haven't really been a great friend." You stopped walking and stared expectantly at her face, admiring the slope of her nose and the deep blue in her eyes. She hesitated again, you could see something brewing behind her eyes as you felt your gut sink "Wanna make it up to me?" You stared up at her as she stepped closed, gently wrapping her arms around your waist as she pulled you in for a kiss.

You two took it up stairs, tripping over your dorm carpet as she pushed you back towards your bed. That night wasn't messy. Well i mean... You remebered every moment, her sweet hands, every "I love you" you murmered against her neck, all of it.

When you opened your eyes the next morning you expected to feel a warm Kate in bed with you. However, you woke up to an empty bed. You could feel your heart crack as it hit you that you would never truly have Kate. At least not how you wanted.

After this, you decided to limit your interactions. This quicky backfired. You would go to the bars with your friends and watch from afar as Kate would have a few and take some random girl home. You were always convinced they looked a little like you, maybe you were just desperate for a sign. They deffinately looked like you. During practice Kate would overcompensate to try and distract from your terrible attitude towards her. You would refuse to pass the ball to her or even look at her, and she would just laugh it off, until she couldn't find it funny anymore. After a while, the team just came around to the idea that you and Kate just weren't friends anymore. You both played pretty terribly. The season ended pretty quickly after that, and you didn't see her until next fall.

Junior Year First Team Dinner

The deja vu as she walked you back to your apartement was intense. The silence wasn't comforting, instead it seemed to loom over the two if you. She didn't hold your hand or wrap her jacket around your shoulders. She didn't even look at you as she spoke, "For the well being of the team..." She looked up towards your apartement door, "I think its best we start fresh." Kate stopped walking and turned to face you, face blank. Internally, you wanted to rip her head off. Yell at her and blame her for the fact that you two got this bad. You knew it wasn't solely her fault, but for your mental well being it was 100% her fault. You reached the front door of your apartement and she stared at you expectantly. You didn't bother meeting her eyes as you spat back "Whatever you want Kate, just leave me alone." You walked into the lobby, leaving her outside in the cold.

[anotheruserwithnoname]

Happy Harriet Quimby Day!

(Harriet Quimby, left, with her fellow pilot and buddy Matilde Moissant - who at some point autographed this photo. Many versions of this pic crop Matilde out of the image. Harriet's outfit was brilliant purple - her trademark.)

Friday, August 2 is the official Harriet Quimby Day! So, with her being my most recent historical crush, I couldn't let the day go unobserved.

The date marks the occasion on August 2, 1911 when 36-year-old Harriet, an acclaimed New York City investigative journalist who was basically a prototype of Lois Lane, became the first woman in North America (and only the second on the planet) to be officially awarded a pilot's licence. She would go on to become the first woman to fly solo across the English Channel (a major accomplishment in those days and considered a major steppingstone to flying across oceans) before dying in a flying accident in July 1912 (many early aviators met tragic ends given they were riding essentially flying bicycles with minimal safety gear; ironically, Harriet wrote articles on the importance of flight safety gear).

Before the tragedy, Harriet was the Taylor Swift of her day, a major celebrity who at the end of her life was able to command the 2024 equivalent of millions of dollars just to do short flights at air shows. She often performed alongside Matilde Moissant, her best friend (pictured above) who was the second woman in North America to be licensed. Decades before Monty Python came along, the two were members of what was called a "flying circus".

The more I read about Harriet the more I wonder why there hasn't been a movie - if not a full-out TV series - made about her yet (all I can find is a lost TV production from the 50s and a character loosely based on her appeared in a TV movie spin-off of the Anne of Green Gables-esque TV series Christy some years ago). And there have only been a handful of biographies and a couple of children's books about her exploits. And even then I'm reading the latest one called Fearless and it is a frustrating experience as the writer spends most of his pages writing about OTHER people, not her. She's a guest star in her own biography.

But I guess that's par for the course given how Harriet, while not forgotten, certainly has not had the same level of notoriety as, say, Amelia Earhart, who credited Harriet as an inspiration. Having the bad luck of doing her English Channel flight the day after the sinking of the Titanic (which got all the media attention) didn't help, nor is the fact only a couple of minutes of newsreel footage exists of her along with a relatively small amount of photographs (including some attributed to her that I don't believe actually show her). That has made being a Harriet Quimby fan (and trying to make posts about her) something of a treasure hunt.

[ginger-grimm]

🫐dj and purple

[horizonzerodawnaesthetic]

The Foods of the Forbidden West

The discord was talking about worldbuilding, as per usual, and we were trying to figure out what the people in Horizon eat/grow. So, armed with the encouragement and companionship of @elsodex, I set out to every major settlement to take pictures of their food and crops. Warning: this is gonna be a long one.

First up on our culinary quest: the Tenakth! And the first of them is the Lowland clan. Let's see the food of Thornmarsh.

(For every image we look at, we'll start at the top left, move our way down, then go to the next column.)

On the top left there's a basket of artichoke (the only one I found) next to a basket full of fruits. I can't be 100% sure, but I believe the purple/blue fruits are plums, and the red and yellow fruits are apples and pears.

Next image. Left basket has dragon fruit and.. well the other fruit I'm finding difficult to place. At first I thought it was a durian, but looking at images it definitely isn't. The closest fruit I could find was the kiwano, but it looks as though the colors of the rind and the flesh were swapped. The basket in front of it also has the kiwano, as well as... okay I talked to several people about this and we couldn't figure it out. Honestly I think it might be a grub of some kind. Or really large mandarin orange slices? There's a better picture coming up. The basket on the right has the same miscellaneous fruits as before (here it's easier to see the pear), with an addition of onions.

Below that we have our meats and veggies. A basket of radishes, a basket of turnips and carrots, baskets of seagulls (the only unplucked bird we'll see), a basket of fish, and a container of what seems to be nakati, which is a type of eggplant.

on the top right we have a medley of foods, most of which we've seen already. We have nakati, multiple kinds of radishes, fish, dragon fruit, kiwano, and the new addition of bell peppers in the basket on the right. (spoiler alert, we're gonna see kiwano and dragon fruit a lot.)

Up next is the Sky clan, lets see what food they have at The Bulwark:

Alright so, top left we have some hanging foods, garlic, fish, onions, and what I believe are oranges?

both pictures below are boars, the skyclan is the only place I saw these, though it's possible I missed something.

The whole middle column is meat, with the hanging meat likely being boar, and the bottom being some bird (likely goose), and possibly sides of salmon?

Top right we have more boar and birds, as well as a crate of eggs below them. (I'm struggling to place them, they are speckled and many different colors, which neither geese nor ducks lay, but chickens do not exist.) Next we have sausage, more meats, oranges again, kiwano, dragon fruits, and now tomatoes join the fray.

We have all the same foods found in Thornmarsh here, bell peppers, radishes, kiwano, onions, and dragon fruit.

Next up we have kiwano, dragon fruit, and some bread. Under the table is some already shucked corn.

The final Tenakth clan is the desert clan, and well, they have some interesting things going on in Scalding Spear.

We've got our usual contenders in these crates, dragon fruit, kiwano, and nakati.

Next we have some racks of ribs, and a coil of sausages I originally mistook for a giant cinnamon bun.

next we have onions, eggplants, plums, pears, apples, corn, and green and red varieties of romaine lettuce.

Back up at the top we have the beginning of an interesting trend: "skewering foods and placing them near a fire". Do I even have to tell you what's in the top pic? say it with me now: dragon fruit and kiwano. there's also some meat that was absolutely not spiked on that wood.

next we have Dragon fruit and kiwano again, this time with bell peppers to shake things up.

At the bottom we have various small sausages and cuts of meat, sitting way too far from that fire to be getting any benefit from it. This level of meat preservation might explain every quest that's in the desert clan.

Now hold on! We're not leaving Scalding Spear yet. You may have noticed the bamboo being used to build the fire pits in the last image. Now you, dear reader, may be wondering where the hell you find bamboo in the middle of a desert. Well the answer is in Yarra's Personal Stash of Shit. (Or Drakka's, I guess, if you kill her. Does he automatically get her stuff? idk.)

On the left is potted bamboo. There were actually a few of these around her area. There's a few other plants as well, it's interesting that she chooses to cultivate these plants despite the clan's constant need of water. (Additionally, if that bamboo really is cultivated, then it is the only example of farming I've found in the Tenakth.)

On the right is what must be Yarra's pantry. we have an unknown spice in a dish on the left. Kiwano in the middle. The hanging fruits are probably mangoes, the green just looks blue because of the lighting. And other that we have those orange things again. I don't know maybe they're circus peanuts.

Next stop: Plainsong, both the foods and the planted crops.

Alright, you know the drill, top left is radishes, turnips, carrots, and a two new vegetables: salsify (the black one), and parsnips (the white one).

Under that we have a basket of the same, next to what I believe is a bowl of uncooked rice (though it could be another grain).

Next up we have a colorful collection of veggies. Parsnips, carrots, radishes, eggplants, peppers, romaine lettuce, rice, and scallions (though the leaves aren't correct so it might be something else).

We have rice soaking before it's being cooked (this is done to enhance the flavor and shorten the cooking time).

Then we have some beautiful honeycomb. (Mead, anyone?)

Then we have a nice array of dishes, I'm not going to try to figure out what they all are, but we have: a single baked sweet potato, various bowls of rice, and what seems to be various versions of a dish similar to lau lau. (Though lau lau is made with meat, so I'm not sure what they're using, probably something starchy such as the sweet potato.)

Finally we have some more root vegetables, along with some bamboo. (Waiting to be incorporated into plainsong? To be made into dishes? Exporting to Scalding Spear? Who knows.)

Now for the crops of Plainsong:

All of these are fairly simple. Up first we have some kind of bean plant, not certain on the variety.

Then we have either bananas or plantains, I'm leaning towards the former.

Then we have sugarcane, older and younger fields respectively.

And I wouldn't know the other if it weren't for these nice ladies, who are harvesting turnips.

Our final cuisine is that of the Oseram tribe. These include pictures from Barren Light, Chainscrape, and Hidden Ember, in that order. (Barren Light did not have Carja food as far as I could tell, at least not visually. The chef was Oseram and her wares were the same as the other two settlements.)

Okay first up we have an obscene amount of onions, corn, more onions, and.. Okay I really don't know what that is. It was grilled, I can tell you that much. If it's a meat, it's a bird, maybe a turkey patty.

Next we have a pile of sweet potatoes and some kind of flat bread. Somewhere along the lines of pita and naan (fingers crossed for naan).

At the bottom we have a bunch of sausages and some birds.

Chainscrape has this sick meat rack. It has whole boars, sausages, and two types of birds (it seems the ones at the top are turkeys, meaning the rest of the birds we've seen are likely geese). At the top right is more sausage and some pretzels. (I want to see the hook they use to get those down.)

Over at Hidden Ember we have more sweet potatoes and bread.

Radishes and sausage.

A bowl of onions and a leg of Boar.

But no exploration of Oseram food would be complete without discussing ale. Here's a lovely distillery found in Hidden Ember, along with other ale-related things.

Here we have a very proud man and his distillery (He's the herbalist at Hidden Ember if you want to see him.), kegs that were lifted to the third floor via a crane or pulley system, and some nice tankards.

And that's the food of the West! I didn't go to every settlement, so I might have missed something, though I should have gotten the broad gist of things. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed- wait, what's that? I forgot something? The- THE QUEN?!? Oh no, you're right.. well, I'll leave that for another time.

[lissysagdollhouse]

The Saga of the Three Samanthas (long post)

The 1st Samantha (no pics in this section, sorry)

My first ever doll when I was 10 was a Samantha purchased at the American Girl Place NYC. I grew up very poor, even though we lived only a few hours from the city by train going there was a major event and It was quite the undertaking by my mother to make it happen. She took me and my best friend, and let me pick out any doll. I can't say how I chose Samantha. I was overwhelmed with the choices, I had read all the books and every doll in the collection had at one point or another been my must have, but honestly I never thought I'd get one at all. Anyway I chose Samantha, for whatever reason it was love at first sight. I was ecstatic, and I made her walk on the streets of NY in her little rubber shoes, I'll always remember that moment. It was the kind of wonderful moment I didn't have a lot in my childhood. I wish I had a picture of 1st Samantha. She was my cherished friend but life changes. Fast forward several years and I've gotten a scholarship to a 4 year college (an opportunity neither of my parents had) and I need money for books and other essentials which my parents can't help with, so as one of the only things of value I had I sold Samantha.

The 2nd Samantha

Life moves on, the money helped but I missed Sam. I spent entirely too much time on ebay hoping I'd find her there, even though I couldn't afford to buy her even if I did. A few years later my adult collection started when the same childhood best friend who was there the day I got the 1st Sam gifted me my 2nd. She was a doll from both our childhoods as said friend had gotten her from a family friend whose daughter outgrew her shortly after 1st Samantha. She was over 20 years old by that time and needed a lot of work. She was my first attempted doll repair and I messed it up so bad. In trying to repaint her face I stained half of it red she looked like she had a terrible sunburn. I now know I could probably have removed the marks, but at the time I thought she was ruined and was very upset. But she ended up inspiring a very creative custom. I'd read Rit dye could dye vinyl and was so curious if I could dye a whole doll. The answer is yes, meet Órfhlaith

I dyed her purple and molded elf ears out of air dry clay, and gave her new custom eyes from dollofakind on etsy.

Here she is hanging out with her horse Sir Kenneth, as named by my best friend.

The 3rd Samantha

If you saw my last post you've already met her. She was a super lucky find, I got her for $30 in her full meet and the only problem was her wig had been cut. So I gave her 2nd Samantha's wig and she became the centerpiece of my new collection which has grown considerably since then. I love finding cheap dolls and bringing them back to life, all inspired by Samantha in her many forms.