#i will continue to ignore it

[lover-of-mine]

this is like the start to some very good mutual pining fics. why cant you date him???

ASKAOSKOAKS yk, I was thinking that if my life was a tv show the team slowburn angsty friends to lovers is having a great week because of recent developments. But basically, we met almost exactly 12 years ago, we bonded because I had a crush on his best friend at the time, he had a crush on my best friend at the time and they didn't want to date us lol and then we just stuck around. But we kinda cursed ourselves by bonding over wanting other people because there are always other people involved, he's currently in a very messy on/off relationship and they are taking some space to figure shit out, and he lives in a different city, but I live in the same city as his mom, he came to see her, we ended up spending about 10 hours together, things were said, questions were asked, feelings might've been uncovered, because I never truly thought about the possibility of me having feelings for him before Saturday, like I think he's hot, but I never thought beyond the vague awareness that I think he is attractive lol, like seriously, if you asked me last week I would've confidently said it's not like that between us, someone literally asked me on Saturday if I was his gf and I just laughed, but he went back to his city, we see each other once every 2 years at this point, I don't know how he's feeling, so like, I'm not sabotaging our friendship because I'm confused because we kissed at 5 am after a night out lol but realistically, we both had issues with long-distance relationships in the past and that's not something either one of us would be willing to get into even if without the other complications, so I can't date him logistically even if this was a thing that we multually want, which I'm honestly not sure, because I'm pretty sure he's gonna get back together with his ex, so I'm in pretend it never happened mode, repression at it's finest. But things to add to the fanfic plots: all of his exes are me in different fonts, even he can admit that, every time I break up with someone he says and I quote "you need to find someone who sees you like I do", we can't go anywhere together without someone assuming we are a couple and this has been happening the whole time we've known each other, I'm pretty sure his mom and sisters have a bet going on whether we end up together or not because of the way they react to us hanging out, we will constantly spend so long talking about absolutely nothing it was a real problem when we were teenagers because we lived like, 2 blocks away from each other, so we would walk back towards home, sit in this bench that's in the midway from my house and his and then suddenly both our parents were calling because we missed curfew by an hour but we've been sitting somewhere we can see both our houses for like, 3, like that guy cannot get me to shut up lol, we have a pact to get married in 2029 if we fail to find love until then, but we also promised to be each other best woman/man of honor, he's not big on physical touch, he doesn't like people in his space, but I'm a physical touch person, and he always lets me play with his fingers when I'm stressed and that's legit the nicest thing someone constantly does for me because sometimes I don't even notice and the dude is giving me his hand, I have a tendency to surround myself with things his favorite color when I miss him, if I'm around he constantly just looks at me to fact check whatever story he's telling because he thinks I remember more stuff about his life than he does, and I'm typing this out and thinking about the past 12 years for the past week and I'm sitting here like "for the love of god am I in a fucking 500k words slowburn friends to lover fic" I don't know, it's very complicated but here I am. I don't know if you ever watched Love, Rosie, but I feel like what I imagine Rosie felt finding the letter and calling Alex just to find out he's engaged aoskaokaoskaksasss

[buggachat]

one of the funniest things ml canon did was completely ignore the trope of "adrien loves seeing marinette dressed like chat noir, it drives him crazy" and instead go "actually, seeing chat noir in red and spots makes marinette go absolutely feral. it is actually a miracle that lady noire does not tear mister bug apart with her teeth and devour him at any given moment"

[14dayswithyou]

💖 Day 3.5 is now available! 💖

For the last couple of months, only Server Boosters had access to the 3.5 update... Buuuuut now it's available for everyone to play in the 14DWY Discord — and soon itch.io once I'm happy with the QA and state of the game — so please don't feel pressured to join unless you want to!!

The full devlog + even more screenshots are under the cut ^^

What's been added to the 3.5 version?

📺 Streamer Mode!

I've been told that it's difficult to stream and monetise age-restricted videos on YouTube and Twitch, so I added an option to remove the sexual content and strong language used in the demo.

Now y'all can invite Ren into your bed for cuddles without putting your streamer career on the line /silly /lh

This won't affect the 18+ rating or dark themes/elements of the game, however! Although Streamer Mode will prevent you from seeing any "gruesome" CGs in the future, most of the core elements of the game will still be tied to the choices and decisions you make. So you won't miss out on the overall experience by using streamer mode!!

⚙️ Custom Pronouns!

It only took me one entire year to get around to it, but you can finally choose your own preferred pronouns (or use a set of pronouns instead)... At the cost of being able to change them mid-game ^^;

Since the original pronoun screen wouldn't update until a new scene was displayed, I temporarily disabled the feature. But once I find a workaround, I'll bring it back!

💗 Choose how others perceive you!

You can now choose how the cast and narration perceive you! Originally, the narration was kept strictly gender-neutral (outside of pronouns and genitalia picked by the player), but this will soon change in future updates.

For more clarity: you don't get to choose the words specifically, but you can choose between masculine, feminine, and androgynous terms!

📋 Separate top and bottom genitalia!

You can now choose your tatas and pps separately! >:3

Alongside that, you can also choose your preferred body type!

I removed the "both" genitalia option because a few players still assumed it was an obscure version of "intersex". That wasn't my intention and I don't want to mislead anyone, so I took it out for now ^^;

I also didn't want to include a screenshot of the new genitalia choices in action (because it's NSFW), so y'all get the same character menu screen for the nth time instead lmao

📱 Relationship Screen Overhaul!

You can now change your own status for more immersion, and long-term Server Boosters will eventually be able to submit and use their own icon within the game as well!

Stalking finding your friends has now become easier by using "Buddy Maps"; a new app that allows you to see the location of all the cast members!

I want to offer players more incentive to check the relationship screen since they tend to miss the status updates, so hopefully this might help ;v;

It also says it "updates every few hours" so folks don't go overboard and check every 5 seconds to see where Ren is gdsghf (also keep in mind that he's a hacker lol)

🖤 Additional Scenes Update!

Day 2 received a brand new CG!!!!! Originally, I planned on only adding a few CGs sporadically throughout the game, but it didn't feel right to leave Day 2 so... empty... so I added a brand new CG to (hopefully) make things feel more balanced and natural!

If you decline Teo's offer on Day 3, Leon will now call and try to convince you to reconsider. However, players are still allowed to decline, and if they do, they'll reach a dead end.

After listening to feedback on itch, I changed some of the dialogue during Days 1-3 to make it seem more consistent! They're only small changes though, so it's honestly not worth looking for sdgjssga

🎶 Updated BGM and SFX!

I wanted to try out a different style of music to see if it fits the vibe of 14DWY more! The BGM features more acoustics to suit the "beachy" theme of Corland Bay, though I made a conscious effort to include piano elements as well to stay true to the original!!

I figured it'd be better to give players a live example before I make a poll (to see if they prefer the change or not) and publish it to Itch.

Some new SFX have also been added, though it's very minimal and honestly not that noticeable.

How to download and play the update?

(warning: clicking on the following links will open Discord!!) To download the Day 3.5 update, simply join the 14DWY Discord server, verify your age, and visit the "14dwy-updates" channel!

Alternatively, you can also wait until the update is publicly released on Itch to play it as well!! (It normally gets released shortly after a round of QA testing/getting feedback from the server, though I may release it earlier if I feel like it hehe ^^)

Enjoy!!

[woof-squiggles]

nitten adoption day!

(psst, you can fill out an adoption form here)

[choccy-milky]

insatiable clora and (barely) resisting seb from my latest chap🌡️💕

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Assisting Acquaintance Acquired.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[pcktknife]

IQ

[wardengrill]

Hotch in Natural Born Killer

[wizard-finix]

LU Star Wars AU: Part 2

feeling very validated by the fact that people like this SO LETS CONTINUE

Next up, Four and Wind!

PART 1

Four

A droidsmith and technician by trade, he and his grandfather run a shop dedicated to repairing ships. However, Four is also skilled enough to make his own technology out of parts when he sets his mind to it, and as a result he has expanded his skill set to making and repairing droids, and he's even learned how to forge and repair most kinds of weapons.

When Four was young, he met an older man named Ezlo and learned how to make droids in the brief time Four knew him. Four has made hundreds of tiny miniature droids in the years since, and is very fond of all of them. (Four named his first one EZ-10.) Ezlo also taught Four how to meditate and attune himself to his surroundings, but it wasn't until much later that Four learned that these were actually basic Jedi training techniques— and with that, the fact that Ezlo may have been a Jedi, and that Four himself had the ability to use the Force.

Four has no interest in having a lightsaber, and claims he has better weapons of his own suited to him. Vaati showed up shortly after Ezlo, and he causes problems for him and his grandfather. Four was also friends with Shadow until his death at Vaati’s hands.

Wind

Wind is young, but like Legend he has spent much of his life traveling across the galaxy, and he feels most at home in his small spaceship, the King of Red Lions.

Wind originally got his start as a crewmember of the famous intergalactic pirate Tetra of the Outer Rim territories as a way to rescue his sister Aryll after she was wrongly arrested by the Empire. He then later traveled on Linebeck's ship not long after parting ways with Tetra. Wind found** the Red Lion during his adventures, and has been traveling the galaxy with it since. He's still close friends with Tetra.

Wind is very in tune with the Force, especially spirits, and better learned how to use his abilities when he was traveling with Linebeck. He doesn’t have a saber, but he still has a weapon or two of his own and plenty of tricks up his sleeves.

**(stole it from spice traders)

[golyadkin]

Last night was scary

[greenteacology]

maybe it’s just me but I got weird vibes from the “teen slang” bit last night? it felt uncomfortable…Aabria even mentioned how it was all AAVE and “why did y’all wait until I was here to do this” and they still kept going with the bit…

idk I know she said it in a lighthearted/joking way but I feel like the cast could have taken a hint and like. Stopped

[the-bi-space-ace]

Okay I’m going to talk about cutting off Crosshair’s hand because while I know plenty of people see a lot of symbolism in it and think it was a good decision I have things to say about it.

I have CPTSD which has a lot of different symptoms. One of them is trembling or shaking. There’s a lot of complexities tied up in it but I’m not going to go into more detail because it’s not a fun thing to talk about.

What I liked about Crosshair’s trauma was that it impacted him not only mentally and emotionally but also physically. It’s very representative of what it’s actually like dealing with symptoms from something like PTSD and CPTSD (there are differences between these two that I won’t go into rn). I loved that we got to see a physical symptom of something psychological. It’s so rare that it’s handled well. Because yeah meditation and safety will help, certainly, but oftentimes it’s not the end all be all. I’m safe. I’m protected. I take care of my mental well being. But I still have symptoms that say the opposite. Because it’s not as simple as ‘no longer in the bad situation therefore the symptoms will stop’. I’ve made my peace that it’s lifelong and, honestly, Crosshair’s symptoms would be lifelong as well.

Cutting off his hand…

Here’s the thing.

The show really makes it seem like cutting off his hand is something he needed to move forward. He needed to be rid of the symptom because it was a physical reminder and it was holding him back from moving on. Cutting off the hand means no more shaking which means he’s healed. No more shaking hand=no more trauma. He can finally move on with his life.

And to that I say ouch.

There’s been plenty of times my symptoms are inconvenient to myself or others. Times when I wish I could just make it stop. Times when I’m terrified that it’s holding me back and I’m screwed up and that’s all I’ll ever be: broken. There are plenty of times I know people wish i could just knock it off and get over it and cut it out but that’s not how it works. Like I said. I’ve made peace with this thing that’ll be with me forever.

It was refreshing to see him try to adapt to dealing with it instead of ignoring it or trying to get rid of the part of him that was hurting. I loved that. It was such a freeing thing to see. Someone who will live with the hurt and the symptoms and it doesn’t make him any less. It just makes him have to do life a little different.

I hate that they cut off his hand. I hate that it wasn’t handled with any sort of nuance or delicacy. And I hate that this thing that made me so proud of him, so proud to share something with him, just got cut off for… what? Shock? To ‘fix’ him?

If we had gotten more time with the loss of his hand maybe I’d feel differently. Hell, I’d love to see how Crosshair adapts to losing his hand, see how he learns to accommodate. It would give him and Echo something to bond over and talk about, finding healing with each other. I think this could’ve been done well. I’d still be on the fence about it but I would’ve held my breath and saw how it played out.

I fully expect people to roll their eyes at me here. I expect that people will say that I just don’t get it or that this isn’t what they intended. I’m sure this isn’t what they intended. At least I hope it isn’t. But what they intended doesn’t change how insensitively this was handled after a whole season of him unpacking his hurt and trying to learn to adapt to it. No one reacted to it, not even Crosshair, and we got no unpacking of what happened. I’m not happy with this but it is what it is I guess.

[cupcakeslushie]

three reacts to galios from third from the son (if you've read it)?

OF FLIPPING COURSE I’VE READ IT!!!!

As if it could be that easy to convince Gale those stalkers that keep popping up are telling the truth. I know @faiakishi wouldn’t end our pain so soon (which I can certainly appreciate 💕).

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Errors, “Errors,” and Sci Fi

@strawberry-crocodile

tvtropes calls stuff like the wolf example "science matches on" which I think is a pretty fair shake

This.  This is what’s got me thinking so much about errors.  There’s a certain danger, here.  A certain way that this particular effect — delicious dramatic irony — tempts the mind when reading old stories, even true ones.

What do you know about R.M.S. Titanic? I ask my class every year, and the first hand rises.  “It was unsinkable,” the student inevitably says, and everyone is nodding, “or so they thought.”  I write the word UNSINKABLE on the board, underneath my crude drawing of a ship with four smokestacks.  It will be crossed out before the end of the hour, but not for the reason they expect.

“I find no evidence,” Walter Lord, preeminent biographer of the ship’s survivors, wrote, “that Titanic was ever advertised as unsinkable. This detail seems to have entered the collective mind so as to create a more perfect irony.”  Indeed, historians’ examinations of White Star Line documents show the shipbuilders themselves worried it would be so large as to risk collision; they stocked several more lifeboats than 1910s regulations required.

The War to End All Wars (deep breath, satisfied exhale), also known as World War ONE. Chuckle.  Shake of the head.  What if I told you that this phrase, used primarily in American newspapers after the fact, wasn’t meant to be literal? Nowadays we’d say The Mother of All Wars, or One Hell of a Fucking War, but we wouldn’t mean literal motherhood, literal intercourse.  What if I said the armistice and the Lost Generation and the Roaring 20s were all braced for another outbreak of European conflict, and yet we still failed to prevent it?

Did you know they were so confident in the safety of the S.S. Challenger that they put a civilian schoolteacher onboard? I do, because I’ve heard that one repeated many times.  Only, see, it’s got the cause and effect reversed.  Challenger launched on a day the shuttle’s engineers knew to be dangerously cold, because the first civilian in space was on board. And NASA knew its shuttle project would be cancelled entirely, if they couldn’t get that civilian’s much-delayed entry into space in the next two weeks.  So they launched on a cold day, and killed her instead.

These are all what cognitive science calls Hindsight Bias on the personal level, what sociology calls Presentism on the cultural level.  Social psychology’s a little of both, is primarily interested in why you’re sitting on your couch in a Colonize Mars shirt watching PBS and chuckling at the fools who believed in El Dorado.  It wants to know why the mind flees straight from “marijuana will kill you” to “marijuana will cure cancer” without so much as a pause on the middle ground of its real benefits and drawbacks, its real (mild) risks and rewards.

And they can paralyze the sci-fi writer, if you think too much about them. Jetsons is futurist one decade, retro the next.  “There are no bathrooms on the Enterprise,” the creators of Serenity say smugly, as if Gene Roddenberry should’ve simply known that decades later it’d be acceptable to show a man peeing in full view of the camera, nothing but the curve of the actor’s hand to protect his modesty.  “No sound in space,” the Fandom Menace says, “No explosions in space,” and “A space station can’t collapse in zero-G.”  Only then NASA burns a paper napkin outside of atmosphere, transmits music using only the ghost of nearby planets’ gravities, and logs onto Reddit long enough to point out the Death Star would implode in its own gravity field.  And now we’re the ones pointing, the ones laughing, at those earlier point-and-laughers.  Self-satisfied, smug in superiority.  As if we did the work to find out ourselves, instead of just happening to be born a little later than George Lucas.

[cable-salamder]

Children but sleeveless hell yeah

[yet-another-haven-of-dollya]

Just Nyan and-

-Kariya