#its so finicky but like. i like how it looks <3

[shokushii]

more blahaj doodles 🦈

(because its midnight and i cant sleep lmao)

honestly these look p good! might even polish em and turn them into like, actual stickers (even if theyre just like. for me) if i have time. blahaj my beloved <33

[tragedybunny]

To Make You Feel My Love - Chapter 1 of 3

༺Summary༻

Astarion and Serafina continue to pursue their relationship as the confrontation with Cazador looms, and then during the fallout afterward. A couple of chapters that explore their deepening bond and their struggle to build "something real".

༺Pairing༻ Astarion x Serafina (Female Tav/OC)

༺Warnings༻ Angst, Hurt / Comfort, Attempted Sex

༺Word Count༻ 2776

༺A/N༻ Another fic featuring my Tav as a name character! Very excited to share more of Serafina. Thanks to my lovely friend @icybluepenguin for the beta and support!

Read on AO3

Astarion was a wretch, and he knew it. He was finicky, selfish, obnoxious, and difficult. But he also knew so much of that was because of life under Cazador. It was who he was outside of that life that he didn't know. He wasn't sure how to find out, either, or how much he wanted to. 

He’d expected it to be asked of him though, that eventually he should find a way to make himself more palatable. Serafina never did though. Sometimes it stuck in his throat like bile how kind she was to him. She never asked anything of him, only gave and gave, while he took and took, with gentle words and warm smiles until sometimes he worried there would be nothing left of her. 

It drove him mad, for several reasons. First, he was convinced that one day that fount of affection and understanding would run dry. She couldn’t love him as he was forever. Then there was the sensation that he somehow needed to repay it, even if it was never asked of him. Maybe it would balance the scales, maybe it would keep her from tiring of him. No matter what she claimed, she must expect something of him. Finally, and most strangely for him, he wanted to repay it. Didn’t she deserve it, after everything? And she most assuredly needed it. 

Despite her protests that everything was always fine and that she didn’t need anything extra, he knew different. It was ridiculous. He’d seen her going through days with tired eyes, giving smiles that only lasted as long as they needed to, and the way her shoulders would slump when things would upset her, but she wouldn’t say anything. 

Like earlier today, when he’d opened his mouth and ruined everything again.

Flowers. That’s how it had all started. They’d passed through a garden in full bloom, and words had tumbled out of him before he could think. 

“Bright and gaudy.”Inane prattle, complaining about something that had no effect on him simply because he could. He just had to lash out at something.

Cazador was looming over him, the plan already in place to take the fight to him sooner rather than later. His siblings' surprise visit the night before had spurred that decision. Fear gnawed its way into his mind, biting and clawing, ripping away the fragile sense of safety and comfort he'd built.

That didn't change the fact that when Karlach's elbow had collided with his ribs, he'd looked over to see Sera's shoulders drooping and her mood soured. How could he forget about one of the few things she’d let slip about her home. She couldn't reveal much about her past thanks to that pesky warlock pact, but there had been a garden of some sort. And he'd managed to shit on what she had. He was already terrified and he felt himself spiraling back into the thought that he didn’t know why she bothered with him. 

“What should I do?” he whispered desperately to Karlach.

She shrugged. “I don’t know, buy her flowers or something?” 

Which is how he’d ended up here. Everyone had made their way back to the Elfsong  but Astarion had excused himself with a hasty lie about needing to think. Sera’s brow had crinkled in concern for him and he felt a twinge of guilt when he pulled her close and gave her a quick kiss. He’d make it up later, or he planned to anyway. 

But now he was stuck, wandering around this shop that was an overwhelming riot of color and scents. Something about cut flowers didn't seem to fit, and he'd been paralyzed in front of the rows and rows  of them for minutes. They looked nice enough, but they wouldn't last. His gaze wandered to the other side of the shop through the crowd. Maybe a potted plant…?

“Can I help you?” A bubbly elf with blonde hair and tan skin appeared beside him. 

Her gold eyes looked up at him with such sincerity, he almost sneered. As if this shop contained some life changing secrets and not flowers.

“I…” He cleared his throat- he was not lost, just thinking. “I’m looking for something for my partner. Something that will last longer than flowers in a vase.” There, that wasn’t so bad, he could do this. 

“Of course, let me show you our selection of potted plants,” she said, gesturing enthusiastically. “Can you tell me a bit about them?”

“She, well, she… ” Why was this so hard? He felt so much for her, but speaking of her made him feel awkward and inadequate. She was the first warm light of morning washing over him and a comforting touch in the night. She was a hasty kiss after a hard won fight, and lighthearted laughter around the campfire. “She’s…”

“Newer relationship?” the elf said with a light giggle that made him want to reach for a dagger. The insinuation that he knew nothing about Sera was clear. 

“What does it matter anyway,” he hissed, drawing looks from the other patrons. 

The girl was thrown off balance by his sudden aggression and her gleaming smile faltered. “It might help to pick out something she’d like, but you’re free to browse for a while.” Turning away, she disappeared into the crowd, leaving him to fend for himself.

He almost went after her, but stubborn pride rooted him to the spot. With resolve, he eyed the shelves in front of him. Rows of bright-colored, glazed pots gleamed in the sunlight streaming in from the large shop window. Inside each one, a scrap of greenery he knew nothing about. Many had small blooms, some sported colorful leaves, and none of them were the right thing.

He began to sink into despair. This whole thing had been a stupid, impetuous idea. “Buy her flowers.” Apparently he couldn't even figure out the most basic of gifts for her. He'd just head back to the Elfsong, empty-handed, another day the scales between them were left uneven. If he just left now, it would be less time wasted. 

Just as he turned to go, it caught his eye. A delicate plant in a pot glazed in the colors of twilight, with a few small, blue blossoms. He stepped closer, drawn to it. The rich blue was the same color as Sera's eyes, he was sure of it. But it was tiny, like it would hardly survive the trip across town if the wind picked up. 

“Find something?” The irritating clerk was back, somehow having snuck up on him.

“That one,” he pointed. 

“Oh, the little forget-me-not!” 

Astarion cringed at the name as she reached for it. 

“Do you know the origin of it?” 

Of course not. It was a flower and before now, he wasn't exactly able to frolic in the sun and enjoy them. And it wasn’t like they were part of Cazador’s decor scheme. 

“No,” he said through gritted teeth, sure he was about to hear it. He should have just stolen it. 

“Humans didn’t come into being until long after elves. During those times, elves only coupled with one another, only knew lovers that would live as long as they did. But, eventually, an elven man met a human woman, and they fell deeply in love. The elf stayed by her side, even as she grew old and died, having only lived a fraction of his life. He buried her in winter and when he returned to her grave in the spring, he found these beautiful blue flowers had grown up over it. They were nothing like anything that anyone had ever seen before. They spread from her grave throughout the land, so that wherever he went, he was reminded of her. In that way, they earned the name forget-me-not. What a beautiful tragedy- a love so true, but one will live without the other for so long.” She sighed dreamily after she finished. 

Astarion swallowed the lump in his throat. “Right, well, that's lovely and all, but I have somewhere to be.” 

The elf huffed and silently led him back to the counter. He'd pay double if it meant she'd let him go without more chatter. 

“Oh, one more thing,” she said, taking his money, “this can be planted outdoors. Perhaps if you and your lady love have a place of your own someday.” 

Those words swirled around and around in Astarion’s mind as he gingerly carried the little plant back through the streets to the Elfsong. “A place of their own.” As if that was something he could even begin to aspire to. But why not? Why couldn’t he and Sera have a home of their own, and a  happy, beautiful life? Because that wasn’t him. Who would want a vampire for a neighbor? And why would she want a lifetime with one?

He took a deep breath and tried to silence those thoughts. Sera loved him. He knew that was true, even when it was hard to remember. He just had to keep it that way. His eyes glanced down to the plant nestled in his hands. It seemed a silly gesture in that light, a plant in exchange for her love. The whole thing was a bad idea. 

He should have done better. 

When he finally made it back, the rest of the group was eating dinner in the raucous common room of the inn. He’d never admit it, but sometimes he missed the quiet nights under the stars. For two hundred years, he’d known this type of hustle and bustle; its opposite had grown on him. Not to mention, it had given the two of them so many calm nights to get to know each other. A thought that caused his chest to tighten; he’d thrown so many of those nights away with his “perfect plan”, time he’d never get back. 

Cutting through the fringes of the room, he avoided the group, not wanting a public display of what was likely the most ridiculous gift he could have thought of. Natural stealth let him blend into the crowd and slink his way to the stairs. Bad luck put Jahiera right in front of him. 

“Bat pup, what are you up to, creeping around like this?” From her tone, Jahiera was only really half suspicious. 

“I…”  He glanced down at the plant his hands were protectively wrapped around. 

Jahiera’s gaze followed his. “I never took you as one for greenery, Astarion.” 

“It’s not for me, ” he blurted, cringing inwardly. What if she told someone? All of them? Would they get a laugh out of the vampire trying to play the lover?  

She lifted an eyebrow and smiled a small, knowing smile. “I see. Should I let her know you’re waiting upstairs?” 

For some reason lately, Jaheira had started to behave with the infuriating air of someone older, and wiser around him, despite the fact that  he had years on her. It was almost maternal in a way, and usually grated on him to no end. But today, he was quietly relieved to have her step in.

 “If you must interject yourself.” He shrugged, struggling to put the mask of calm indifference back on. 

“I think I will let the attitude slide for tonight, Astarion. Mayhaps tomorrow I will box your ears for it.” 

He opened his mouth  to snap back at her but she cut him off. 

“And I’ll expect a thank-you when it’s all said and done.” 

“Yes, Mother,” he sighed dramatically and began to walk away. 

As soon as he was sure he was out of sight, he hurried his pace, not wanting to be caught out in the hallway when Sera came upstairs. With the door to the common room shut behind him, he took up position in their shared corner. Two beds and a folding screen, the most privacy they could manage right now. Another reason to miss the outdoors. Even if sleeping on the ground had been hellishly uncomfortable, the tent had walls at least. 

It always struck him to see Sera’s things mixed in with his. A physical reminder that she had chosen this, him, even after his confession. And it gave him hope that she would keep choosing that way. 

“Astarion, you wanted to see me?” Her voice interrupted his thoughts from across the room. 

“Yes, darling, sorry to disturb your evening.” Perfect, just keep going, don’t screw this up. 

The distance between them evaporated and she was standing right in front of him, waiting for him to continue. He kept his arms behind his back, keeping the plant hidden, still doubting it. 

“I just wanted to apologize, for earlier today.” 

“Oh, you don’t have to. You didn’t realize-” 

“No,” he spat out more harshly than he intended and watched her eyes widen for a moment. Gods, why did he always lose his silver tongue where she was concerned. “Please don’t do that,” he softened his voice. “You’re always worried about my words when it comes to our companions, random strangers, and even my siblings. Don’t dismiss your own feelings so easily, hold me accountable for them, like anyone else’s.” Don’t make yourself tired of me, he added silently. 

“With everything going on, I just didn’t want to make things harder for you. But, thank you.” 

“See, that’s better, isn’t it?” He smiled, recovery made, things were going well. 

“So, what’s behind your back?” She craned her neck, trying to peek around him playfully. 

No avoiding it now. “I wanted to get you something to make up for it. It seems a bit foolish really.” Hesitantly, he presented the little plant to her. 

She took it from his hands with reverence. “Forget-me-nots,” she beamed at the small flowers that matched the color of her eyes. “They’re beautiful. Thank you, Astarion, I love it.” 

A small, awkward laugh escaped him. “Well, that’s quite a relief.”

And then she was moving, placing the plant on the table near their bed, before practically lunging at Astarion. The sudden force of her embrace knocked him from his feet and they collapsed back onto the mattress in a heap. 

“Sorry,” Sera said through a soft laugh before kissing him. “You're wonderful, you know that?”

“I mean, I do, but I could stand to hear it more.” 

“How about I show you instead?” She leaned in, kissing him again, lips parting tantalizingly. 

He wanted to devour her, to pull her in tight and taste every bit of her. His tongue darted inside her mouth, eliciting a soft moan. 

Ice ran up his spine, and he felt himself go rigid.

She pulled back and looked at him with concern. “Is it too much?” 

The hells take his traitorous body. “No, I-I want to try. Please.” He bit back a growl of frustration. It killed him to want her this bad and to have the only thing stopping him be himself.

“Alright.” 

She'd barely answered before he was pushing her back to the mattress by her shoulders and crawling between her legs.

He covered the exposed flesh of her neck with soft nips, fangs barely raking the skin. One hand found its way under her shirt, groping at her pebbled nipple. 

Whimpering, her hips bucked against his, the sweetest pressure on his hardening cock. He groaned against her skin, both hands now pushing her shirt up, exploring her soft curves. 

Head tilted to the side, she offered without words that delicious nectar he could never resist. Fangs burrowed into their favored spot and bliss filled his mouth.  

Fingers tangled into his curls as he rutted against her. Her tongue lapped at the shell of his ear before she moaned his name.  She was lost in him. Like a thousand others before her…

He froze, the world around him going hazy. 

“Astarion,” she called to him softly.

“I can't,” he gasped, hot shame washing over him. Sera wasn't just another one of them, it shouldn't be like this. “I'm sorry.”

Gentle hands guided him to the mattress, arms enfolding him, so his head was buried in her neck. “Hush,” she kissed his forehead. 

Neither said anything further about it, there wasn't need. He knew she didn't expect it of him, and she knew he had needed to try.  

“Drink if you want,” she whispered, stroking his hair. 

Gods, he loved her, even if he wasn't sure he'd ever told her properly how much. He bit back into the open wounds and drank lazily, eyes drifting to the bedside table and the little plant. Maybe there would be a someday with a place it could bloom outside, a place they both called home. 

Tag list:

@micropoe10  @writingmysanity @mxxny-lupin @azu21

 @tallymonster  @dependsonthedream @sunfire-ancunin 

@bambamwolf87 @fayeriess @lumienyx @lisrelly

@elora-the-slutty-songstress @bhaalbaaby @spacebarbarianweird

@satanicspinosaurus @darlingxdragon @wanderingisobel @astarionsbeloved

@vixstarria @claryvoyantfray @misscrissfemmefatale @bg3obsessedsideblogg @captainaceofspades @wickedwitchofthewilds @asterordinary @talented-bitch @waking-electric @snowfolly

[pokestudentjune]

In all honesty I'm pretty new to this whole rotomblr stuff, and I'm not all to osure how to work it that well.. But I'd still like someplace to document my life and experiences, as well as share my knowledge about pokemon and plants! Got plenty of cute pics of my pokemon and the ones I meet as well! Please feel free to reach out with asks about myself, my pokemon, or anything in general-- I'll do my best to answer to the best of my ability :)

Here is my current travel team!

Lotus the Ivsaur

Modest, highly persistent. A water lotus variant Ivysaur with a water/grass typing, and practically my soulmate. My first officially owned pokemon, gotten from my grandmothers venusaur as a child. Lotus has grown and matured with me through the years, and is always looking out for me! Shes trained in battle and performance, but we have since retired from coordinating and she'd rather sit back and experience life as it comes.

Scout the Lopunny

Sassy, likes to fight. One of my first wild-caught pokemon, and both me and Lotus's best friend. Shes quite a fan of my more feminine interests, often asking to share my clothes and music. Shes definitely one of my more battle + performance savvy pokemon, and we're working on learning mega evolution together! She wears a light blue letterman jacket I bought for her once, she wanted to dress similarly to an idol group we saw online once!

Grim the Joltik

Jolly, very finicky. He is literally the sweetest little baby ever. He was an unexpected capture, having hopped onto my phone one day and refusing to leave. He loves to suck out the battery life from practically my devices which drives me insane, but I wouldnt trade him for the world. Despite being small for the past few years, I think he doesnt want to evolve which is fine by me! I think he enjoys riding on my head or shoulder.

Jasper the Typhlosion

Rash, quick to fight. A large, bulky, fluffy, shiny typhlosion with a scar across his muzzle. Rescued from a "backyard zoo" situation, it took a long long time to fully gain his trust, but it was worth it. Hes very standoffish but protective of me and the team. Lotus was a big help in calming him during the beginning, and now he enjoys battling to blow off some steam.

Harlequin the Banette

Quirky, impetuous and silly. Perhaps my first ever pokemon friend. We met when I was a small child and he was still a shuppet. Its a bit of a long story, but he stuck through with me during some negative times within my early years even as a wild pokemon, and would frequently visit to keep me entertained through the years. I didn't catch him for many years, but one day after being a trainer for a while, I asked him if he'd like to join my team and has stuck around since. He wears a chunky bandana on his neck thats practically the size of him.

Jade the Noivern

Adamant, alert to sounds. One of the newer additions to the group, i had caught her within a cave and she showed fighting spirit right off the bat. I took the time to train her in between my studies and she evolved into a speed demon. She absolutely LOVES flying and I myself had always wanted to ride on a flying pokemons back, so its a win-win. She looks up to Jasper, and they often spar together.

I have plenty of other pokemon back at home that I'll introduce when the time comes, but these are the ones I think are best suited to help me during my studies! Perhaps I'll switch around the team, maybe I wont. It takes a while to transfer pokemon across regions but who knows where life will take me!

// OOC

Hello hello! Just like June, I am very unfamilliar with tumblr as its been years since I last used it, but I've been religiously stalking rotomblr for years now and i figured its my time to make a blog! Heres a few things about how I'll be running this blog :3

• This will be a mix of anime and game, keeping it semi realistic as I love biology and science but still want to keep some magic from the pokemon games included!

• June is basically a self insert so no weird stuff!

•For Junes universe, fakemon, sentient pokemon, or pokemon/human hybrids or anything similar to that doesnt exist-- again, I'm keeping it a bit semi realistic. Pokemon crossbreeds are fine though!

• This is very casual!! Just for fun slice of life blog :3

• In this world, legendaries are gods and greatly affect the environment, so June may not interact with those who "own" legendaries because she greatly frowns upon messing with the natural order of things.

• Feel free to dm me or send me asks ! I'd love to get to know the community more :)

• Also i might not do many fully pieces and more colored sketches because I am very busy irl unfortunately

• Im okay with interactions from other OCs and canon characters !

If you want to see my art look at #june pics ! working on tags for informational stuff but #june talks will have some fun pokemon info + junes story so far!

• Pelliper Mail is : OPEN

• Magic Anon is : CLOSED

[slowd1ving]

PRIORITY POLLLL

my fingers are itching to write for either sunday or ratio.... yk what that means.....

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

1. pope!sunday + knight! m!reader: it's not everyday you're shoved into the shitty b-rated romance novel your friend read, but derailing the plot by looting this world before the fl and her ml entourage can is the least of your concerns as you fuck around and gain your own recognition. journey around the land of argo as you best monsters with your legendary sword and armies with the magic imbued with Earthen scientific loopholes! whether it be just a novel or a world in its own right, your actions are either meaningless (as it's just a novel) or meaningless (as it's truly a different world). although, such recognition comes at a price; as a newly-minted war hero against the chaotic, demonic forces, you're assigned the most dangerous male lead to guard as your next assignment - the obsessive papal figure for the order, sunday. but this too is perfect for you; might as well brush up on your theology skills in this world as you seek answers. outside his faith to ENA, second to only his absolute devotion to the female lead, there's no way you'll catch his eye like that, right?

2. cursed prince! ratio x alchemist m! reader: all knowledge comes at a price. cursed by his imperial tutor NOUS after accessing heretical material, he's fated to live entrapped in stone forever. a hundred years later, a scientist is transported to the kingdom of metis; a place where academia thrives but only the approved content. you're not sure why the hell you're in the indie rpg lament of ouroboros, but you do know it sucks and you'd rather die than come across the irritating main cast. what better way to have fun than to access the hidden side of magic through use of scientific formulae? unfortunately, the practice of alchemy is heretical to the kingdom and so you daylight as a sculptor! strange, this particular rock you started carving out of a whim looks like the deposed prince of a century back, your apprentice aventurine notes. how odd! how strange! veritas ratio is name you've never come across in-game; maybe it's because you didn't read enough lore about its stupid collectibles. regardless, every time you cast a detail - a smoother ear, a more textured iris - the ever-conscious prince ratio regains just a little more of his senses. and maybe it's your knowledge, or the intuition you possess, but something tells you there's a deeper meaning to the statue you started carving out of boredom. and what a coincidence that alchemy transmutates materials!

3. theology student! sunday x m reader (roommate au): something tells you the finicky orchestral conductor and theology student sunday quite dislikes you. is it the purse of his lips as you walk past in crooked formal wear that informs you? is it the jarring chords scraping against the fluting lilt of the strings and brasses? is it the harsh glare in his eyes as you walk past him on campus? it's perhaps the worst and unluckiest week in your life as soon as the new school year starts: your girlfriend's dumped you after her crush on the aforementioned halovian grows too pressing for her to stay quiet about, while you're assigned sunday as a roommate to rub more salt in the wound. but maybe his fluttering wings aren't as indicative of his frustration as they seem, and maybe you're not as headache-inducing as he quite imagined. when two sets of philosophies and grudges clash abruptly like this, what could possibly remain standing from the fallout?

[plasticfangtastic]

American Royalty. Ch. 10

A Homelander X F! Reader/Dadlander fanfic.

A/N: sorry for the delay, I wrote another fic and that ate my time, hope y'all like the chapter, there's only 3 chapters left and the epilogue and now that kinktober its done I should be able to post the remaining chapters on time, if ya like to be on the taglist plz leave a comment with a request. prev. chapter here:

Tags: mild gore, angst, slow burn, fluff, oc characthers, child neglect, dadlander, romance, some spicy and murder.

Chapter Ten

Reconsidering

A lavish prison.

More rooms than ideas to fill them with– mere latrines for kisch. 

Floors that screamed ugly opulence, the kind that made you yearn for the simplicity of owning nothing, of forced minimalism... or tasteful decor.

When you cracked your neck to witness the enormity of the seven story mansion (not counting the cellar basement and the terrace) the price tag had frightened you to the core more than the height, making you feel more than inadequate in visitation, as you had come in jeans and an ironic t-shirt to accompany him (not that you had a choice)--  as Homelander pulled you around from floor to floor, forcing you to walk alongside him from beige rooms to white rooms, past rich dark wood doors. So heavy they hurt your wrist, you worried for your future.

These were the things you could only witness in pictures.

“I hate the carpet.” He said coyly, trying to stand close to you without frightening you.

Looking down at the rug you’ve taken your shoes off for-- it was luxurious, it was nice for the somewhat dark library, the smell of curated cedar and walnut genuinely intoxicating. From a second glance it matched his taste in your mind, but you guess he was a lot more finicky than he already was– perhaps it wasn’t soft enough for him, you thought.

“I'd rather we just have the floors bare– it’ll be easier to clean.”

“Concerned about the maids already?”

“Maids?”

“Honey, you don’t think I expect you to clean this thing by yourself?” He gave you a playful pat in the back– even with superspeed you’ll wear yourself out…”

The real estate agent who kept rubbernecking at your direction, raised his eyebrow as he saw how stiff you were next to your fiance.

Pressing yourself against the aged stone of the terrace fence, the city seemed so far away as you looked down from so high up, wondering if you could fall quick enough, if he would catch you right on time or make it easy for himself and play the tragic broken hearted hero. The cold breeze kissed your temples as you processed the jarring passage of time.

Kaleem, his wife Alessia and your co-worker Chrissie dropped what they were doing when you broke the news that you’ve gotten engaged, they’ve already gotten it from the breaking news report and online but actually hearing it out of your mouth cemented it, it wasn’t a lookalike sharing your name marrying Homelander! But you! Their hardworking and worn out cook. 

Who never once mentioned him before, who never described your baby daddy, who gave no hints… yet to them who thought were your friends–if not confidants, felt betrayed.

They were friends of yours but the fear of Homelander’s and Vought had been so great you never wanted to disclose who’s Helena’s father was to anybody, they had formed very strong opinions over the time they’ve known you but at the sight of half a dozen black suits entering their pizza shop– you probably would have never been able to tell them on your terms, anyways.

 You had no choice now but to divulge.

After having been made to lose a day’s work and being informed they would have to agree to some sketchy stuff regarding selling your situation to the public, you owed them an explanation– at least the financial compensation for their cooperation was generous.

Right now you were a stranger.

You told a version of your story, adding to what they already knew, like everybody else their image of Homelander was firmly cemented after 20 years of exposure to the bastard, it was hard to view ‘The Nation’s Favorite Dad’ was the one who threw you on the streets, nobody spoke much while you melted into the booth, your sight so far away, as the light’s buzz drilled into your brain.

“Is the dick at least good?” Chrissie slurped loudly on her coke– I mean go get your bag bitch, just don’t let him make you sign a prenup and when you get divorce take half his shit.”

“Slightly above mid… his mouth tho…” You did smile there.

“Is it little?” 

“I wish… shit hurts. Can’t sit straight afterwards... he's just so quick! Thank god his mouth isn't just good at speeches” You chuckle dryly.

Chrissie began spacing her fingers until you rolled your eyes in embarrassment, poor Kaleem sat in his corner pretending to be blind.

You both shared an ugly snorting laugh, cackling from the absurdity of the situation.

“You wouldn’t be the first woman to marry for benefits– trust me I seen a lot of ‘90 day fiance’ and my aunt Lucia’s been married to my uncle for 32 years– she met him a month before the wedding and only for the green card.”

“32 years?” That was dreadful.

Alessia was quite relaxed about the whole ordeal, if anything it was the most stimulating thing that had happened in recent years and seeing a six-year- old tutor her teenage son was exhilarating.

“She said he has a big dick and uncle works the night shift… works great for her– pretty sure 2 of their 7 kids are his” 

“Is this the aunt Lucia that came and did our light fixtures? I feel sorry for your uncle.” Chrissie said.

“Yes– she's happy, and don’t be… Uncle Frank may have a whole other family in Mexico, but that’s a whole other business.” She said loudly– look you had it rought, and fuck him. I thought killing the dude at that rally was a bit much, but dumping you in the streets– way worse than murder! Look, we got three kids and if this dumbass died on me– I don’t know how I would cope and if some hot rich asshole asked me to marry him… I might ‘cuz college ain't cheap.” You could laugh, watching Kaleem agreeing he would do the same if she died– Homelander is cute and has money. You said it yourself�� you don’t have to love him. He’ll meet somebody else and end it, but Helena it’s your main priority here not him, and I mean after everything you’ve been thru you deserve to cruise thru life.``

“I don’t think John is going to let me fuck around…” You groaned, resting your head on your forearm as you sunk deeper– I don’t have to be happy, right?”

“It’s overrated.” Chrissie said– Helena would probably finish college by 12, and that if she takes her time.”

“Thank you guys for encouraging me in my new ‘Sugar Baby’ journey– I always knew I had it in me to be an amazing hoe.”

It wasn’t what you wanted to hear… to them who just like you had to break their backs to keep the roof over their heads, it was an enviable golden opportunity and in this economy one couldn’t really afford to miss out on such opportunities… 

“Just pretend you like him if he’s ever around, I guess.” you mention.

“It’s gonna be hard ‘cuz I like Noir more.” Chrissie says leaning across the table to pat your shoulders.

So here you were admiring the Upper East Side, in the nicest street, in a coveted building that he had every desire in the world to make you ‘Lady of the House’, it was beyond extravagant it even had an elevator… so there was some appeal.

Ashley followed him like a lap dog as he listed a billion much needed remodeling decisions to bring back the home into the office spaces by force, in case he decided to purchase the edifice.

“So you like it? This is the fifth house we’ve seen… you said you wanted a yard and space.”

“Needs more plants… is a great location…” you said softly, still looking down, pretending to not notice Ashley was writing that down too.

“But do you love it?” he pressed rubbing your shoulders– we can still get the penthouse… even if it's only four bedrooms but great open concept! Or the condo right in front of Central park– but that one is only 3 bedrooms which might tamper with our plans… although the one in 63 street, classy and it has a cinema.” 

He kissed your forehead, after speaking quickly.

“Do you love it?” You asked, fixing his hair once he got too close to you– this will be your home too.”

“Is pre-war” He whines playfully– is so pretty… the brownstone… the history…” He gives you the most pathetic attempt of ‘puppy eyes’ you’ve ever seen, a smile creeps onto your face without permission which he takes graciously– I can see us here.”

“You’re not hanging a giant american flag anywhere in this house!”

“A small one?” He pouts.

“In your office… and it better be small, John.” You rested your head on his chest– The kitchen… is awful.”

He was touchy, your skin numb to his touch at this point, he wanted to kiss you and hold you until you cherished him, but he wouldn’t force it. 

You just had to keep smiling and thwart most of his approaches, but you know if you gave him just enough affection he would be unable to notice the wicked game you were playing– forcing him to move at your dictated pace, to keep him on his toes yearning that you would turn and pamper him, never knowing if his affections were welcomed or not, but knowing you gave yours to him and he welcomed it.

You could see Ryan and Helena growing up happy, and safe. 

You and those two children sitting by the fireplace, enjoying hot chocolate and opening Christmas presents.

You would in fact not choose this house just to spite the man, who had fallen in love with his grand vision– not that the chosen house was worse, just one floor shorter, just as massive as the other and still in a great location… so Homelander didn’t complain too much… just a little.

The boxes increased but there was still so much to fill up, even with his stuff it wasn’t enough to fill the gaps… he would not spare you from the American flags, tragically as it sounds. 

At least it was framed and matched the decor of the gallery and dining room. As you unpacked and watched the movers bring the beds while the kids argued about who kept which floor– Helena demanded the fourth floor already making executive decision to turn the empty rooms into labs and  offices for her future endeavors, while Ryan wanted to be normal child and stay in the same floor as his sibling, ultimately pushed to the fifth floor after multiple rounds of rock-paper-scissors, and a paternal mediator who said they had to settled it with another round of games which sadly Ryan lost.

After a laborious day, you two just sheepishly laughed as you stared at your bedroom, both leaning against each other as you laughed, staring at the wooden cross dividing the two beds and matching nightstands– all so very circa 50’s catholic chic. 

You two just laughed about how absurd this was in execution, a part of you wished to just put the beds together instead of making your great-grandmother proud.

“Y’know we could’ve fit two kings in here…” He said while staring at the space.

“I thought you wanted me close-by.”

“Double’s were the perfect choice.” He replied quickly.

It took weeks before you reached a boiling point with your live-in situation, to see him walk around your home in that stupid suit, his mind longing for the familiarity of his abandoned penthouse was frustrating, he himself didn't expect to miss it either– He felt like a guest that refused to leave instead of your fake fiancee, this wasn’t him staying overnight at your previous domicile levels of awkward, that had been a challenge on its own, even if now you skipped the pillow walls and sleeping on the floor… God knows how many times he picked your unconscious self up from the ground and laid you to bed, while he sat next to you reading a book in the dark– this was an alien living in your house calling himself the owner. 

Before you knew it your heart stung as you dragged the two kids to the nearest Target to bulk buy the man some loungewear, both from exasperation and as request from his son who mentioned he didn’t really own much clothes, and what little he did own he didn't feel like washing every 2 days just to chill around the house... and as his future wife you gave yourself automatic permission to buy him clothes… just anything that would get him out of that suit.

Ryan had never been to many stores before, much less a Target, it hurt a tad to see him fascinated by the colorful aisles and the abundance of people…knowing he had grown in a compound, the mother in you just wanted to squeeze him and apologies for it all, but you instead just squeezed the handle bars and let him pick snacks that caught his fancy.

It was hilarious that you would find yourself doing this again– back then buying for him had been difficult, he wore very little but he liked your input, he simply wore what you told him, but after so long you had no idea what he liked anymore– this wasn’t food… this wasn’t easy… so the plainest sets were your best bet.

There was something fresh about this, as you perused the aisles with the kids in tow, thinking of buying him some jeans and clean button ups, Ryan picking up colorful socks while Helena opted to pick him a shirt just to fit in.

You had fun, you looked forward to sprousing his wardrobe, watching this scene play out made you feel as if you were normal, until somebody took your photo at the checkout in your least flattering angle.

It took another week before he opened up to being undressed and exposed in cheap pajama pants and white t-shirts, it would take three weeks for him to do so without being told to– plus enough complaints about people trying to photograph them after seeing the Homelander lounge in the terrace, served as added motivation.

You told yourself it wasn’t too bad to cohabitate, as you saw him slowly get more and more comfortable in his new environment, as you watched him become softer with your kids, as you found yourself having pleasant breakfasts, found yourself being welcomed home and conversed over coffee about your day or his day– not even bringing up his concerns about you still choosing to work in Lucci when you could do so much better too often, giving up on teasing you with buying you a restaurant, or upcoming publicity stunts when you weren’t in the mood to listen to the drivel.

Staring down from the roof garden looking at the brownstone buildings around and the pale light, pleased by the subtle fragrance of flowers behind you, he seemed so normal as you watched him from across the coffee table.

He kept sipping on his latte looking miffed before turning around and asked about why Elmo had been staying over for the last 3 days, to which you reminded him he sent his dads to sort some business in Singapore.

“Does he have no other family?” He thought of Singapore– it was quite urgent… they decided to fuck us up.”

“You and them booked them for acting classes plus they have their first suit fittings tomorrow… easier for them to leave Elmo here and have us take care of that– they’re a team-up. They should be close.”

“I know! But why does he have to sleep here? He’s a boy.” He seemed concerned.

“‘Cuz we got the space…?”

“It doesn’t seem appropriate.”

“Oh you freak.”

 He was still stiff around the edges but you could bear with it, as you saw him and Helena bond you knew your daughter was handling him well– your target was Ryan now. 

You asked him to help you around the kitchen more, taking your time to teach him without pressure, scolding his father when he acted like it was undignified of him to help around the kitchen and forced him to eat whatever he'd made, making him feel proud when he took charge of dinner even if it was slightly too salty at times and his impenetrable skin resulted in chipped knives… 

 You helped him make those cute films and took him out to the cinema, buying him books on the subject, encouraging him to join art clubs, to try as many extracurriculars he was interested in and to ignore his father as he pushed Ryan to join sport related clubs, when all he wanted was to make dioramas with his new found friends, instead. 

Homelander didn’t have any issues with Helena for her selections were sparse, just the chess club, and some science club she was quickly losing interest in… if anything he was being pushy about piano– and god knows how he managed to bring that piano to the fifth floor without breaking anything.

Is not as if she was already taking too much in-between physics, science and math classes… and working casually at Vought, but he didn’t seem to care. Helena assured you she could handle it, telling you to focus on your tasks without worry and you listened.

Ryan liked your support, it helped you get closer as you allowed his friends to enter the house for his little projects, he liked when you twisted his father’s ear to let him be just in case he began to disapprove, he began to trust you.

Helena wasted her afternoons in the office between daycare, superhero training and shadowing her father or Ashley, reading his meeting notes, writing them for him, or as he called it assisting him, learning about the company and the labs from her privileged position– the whispers of curious passerby wondered why Homerlander would keep his daughter so close, it had taken the building by surprise to learn that this little girl had been his child all along even if rumors had spread prior… but the once cute anomaly began to gain a insidious reputation in the underbelly of this company, something that made them more uneasy than just her strange demeanor from before.

“What’s that on your dress?” You noticed a brown stain on the hem of her dress.

“Iodine.” She said while taking her clothes off, Homelander said nothing as he picked after her.

Homelander gave you a stiff smile as he scrunched the clothes into a ball before your kid ran up towards the bathroom, mentioning she’s a tad clumsy with the equipment as he walked past you.

You didn’t need to know that the duet had some quality father-daughter time to the misfortune of some lab rat.

He stared at the chunky bloodstain sliding down the wall.

“I can explain.” She panted, staring at her work as her eyes spun around the room.

“It’s pretty obvious what happened, no?” He said stepping on top of the unidentified– "I'll have somebody come clean it up, darling.”

“You’re not mad?” She asked, genuinely nervous, fidgeting with her fingers as her head throbbed.

“Why did you kill him?” He stared at the smashed patty with curiosity.

“He resisted termination… forcing me to defend myself… he took my assistant.”

Homelander looked at the other corpse and its mangled remains, spilling around her boots.

“Why?” He spoke with a boor.

“Self-defense.”

“You took your time doing it… you could have cut his oxygen supply and killed him in a few minutes, instead you” He kicked a shattered bone– made it agonizing.”

“Tch… if he attacked me I would’ve lost control of the bubble…” She gasped lightly trying to kill the headache inside her– the math… the math makes sense. My formulas make sense. But it's them… these samples aren’t fit, they aren’t meant to be like us. They are worthless!”

She leans towards the wall, smacking her forehead against the wall full force, Homelander jumps on his heel but doesn’t reach her as she mutters incoherent curses under her breath, his hand stop just inches from her.

 “This one wasn’t too bad… I thought I cracked it but then I noticed…” Helena was pensive looking at images he wasn’t privy to, as she spoke with a light airy voice as her lungs emptied for her to speak once more— I cull it.”

She squatted picking up a loose tooth from the ground, examining the perfectly structured canine, for the first time Homelander felt uneasy about her.

“Is not often that I feel…”

Homelander raised a curious eyebrow, taking a step closer towards her, Helena tilted her neck to look at him, her sight so detached it didn’t seem possible for a child to make such an expression.

“Excited. The simulations always succeed but the human variant poses an interesting angle I hadn’t previously considered… truly successful adult specimens… V24 almost recreated the perfected serum but with nasty side-effects… programming the serum is obtainable but adult humans continue to reject it or somehow create variants as if the host alters the code live”  She flicks the tooth– Is like Frederick left me a puzzle.”

“So are these just pieces” He waved his fingers nonchalantly at the messy remains.

She scoffed standing up and patting her knees clean.

“You know why I play piano?”

He shook his head.

“Because in order to be good at it… you have to foster talent… but no amount of practice can’t beat those blessed with a gift… supposedly. So I have to solve his puzzle because I cannot believe that that coward was blessed more than me.”

“You think Vought has beef with you? So what will you do with all your failures? Murder them?”

“Is it murder to cull a deformed goldfish? No… that’s just mercy.” She stands up fixing her hair– It’s not beef. Is a challenge he left us with.”

His smile is so wide his skin creaks as it stretches. 

He picked her up to plant a kiss on her chubby cheek.

“You’re such a messy child.” He kissed her again– you got your pretty dress dirty.”

“Sorry.” She moped– sorry about all of it… you must think I'm a hack.”

“Is okay princess… daddy will just buy you a new one… and a new dress.”

You didn’t question the stains on her dress, god knew what sort of chemicals and stuff she had to play with, and how much of it wasn’t built for the size of her hands.

The more you saw him return to that man you once loved, you felt down the spiral of considering giving him a second chance– Helena was happy, she was smiling, she was playful, your quiet daughter had blossomed under your mutual care, seeing him domesticated, seeing him interact with genuine joy with her had began to melt your heart. It didn’t help that he look so delectable in compression shirts, as he came back with the kids without a sweat on his brow, Ryan just as dry with nothing more than messy hair and then your daughter dropping to the ground half-dead from the walk… what you had stared at mostly had been his ass in those black tights.

“Honey it was only 20 miles.” He sounded a bit frustrated– gotta get her fit otherwise she will get outperformed.” He turned to you sounding a tad aggressive– she’s my daughter she should be able to handle it just like me and Ryan.”

“Mommy!” she cried.

“Most humans can’t even do twenty!”

You picked her up, not caring she was covered in sticky sweat but as you draped your child over your shoulder kissing her head as she whined, you caught an improper glimpse at him, no doubt he caught a couple looks from passersby on his way here– even by this city standards he was wearing too little.

“Go change…” You said with a light blush on your neck– don’t be a dick to her, she wasn’t born a copy of you.”

He pestered Helena for the rest of the evening, giving up once she barricaded herself in her bedroom.

“Spending all her time inside books is not gonna do her any good… she needs exercise.”

“I think you got the kids mixed up, dear.”

He moped in the living room pursing his lips, one sentence away from crossing his arms and whining like a child.

“Look I think it’s great that you want to train her but… she’s not like you. I would love for her to have inherited some of your physical skills– it's just not gonna happen.”

“I know. I don’t know why she’s so different from me… yet she has to get better…” His sight lingered on the roof– You think she’ll move her dresser out the way.”

“She’ll move it when she wants to– and don’t think about getting in there thru her window!” He almost complains but chooses to stay quiet scooting closer to you on the couch– What?”

“You seem mad…”

“You harassed our kid all day and made her upset… but I was mad before it...I made the mistake of googling myself after somebody at work made mention–  have you seen the shit that people are saying ‘bout me online ‘cuz of you.”

Homelander shook his head lightly.

“I only google myself.”

“People are saying nasty shit. Hurtful shit… saw my mom getting interviewed… that was nice… she certainly made me feel like shit.”

“Want me to kill her?” Homelander spoke in such a bored tone, his head finding his way on your lap with the smoothness of a cat, unconsciously your hand took to his hair– Or something else?”

You stared at him and considered it, your mom sort of had it coming if she was going to paint herself a saint for her 15 minutes of fame.

“Don’t kill my mom, John. I just don’t want people saying I’m a bad mother because my kid went to a “shit public school” in the projects.” you said annoyed.

“I’ll see if Vought can write you a fluff piece.”

You believed him, choosing to put your anxieties away as he nuzzled into your stomach and let you watch TV without care as long as your hands kept pampering him making little commentary as you watched true crime videos.

Rolling in your bed you turned to see his back on the bed beside you, you signed readying to play dirty, your body awoken to something sickening.

“I know you ain’t asleep, John.”

His ears perked, he turned to see your silhouette in the dark.

“I can’t sleep.” You whispered– mmm…so” you signed lightly– can you get your dick up?”

His ears perked up, lifting himself by his elbows as he adjusted to face your darkened silhouette, your cheeks reddened, mildly embarrassed, your mind wandered back to the sight of his clothes, to the tussling of his hair and the glint in his eyes as of late… and of that last sudden night of intimacy.

“Oh. O-okay… might need some stimulation is not like I got a crank down there.” he faked being annoyed by your request.

“I stopped taking the pill…” His piercing eyes illuminated the room for a brief second just to catch a sly smile ‘bout to fade away off your face– so you wanna put the mommy in MILF or not?”

He tripped out of the bed to jump into yours, clawing his way back towards you, as the little voice in his head blared sirens.

Latching on your neck, ripping your clothes open as you tried not to chuckle at his messy desperation to fuck you, you closed your eyes and thought of nothing but the hundred different pleasurable sensations prickling you– it had been so long… your body sensitive, writhing over his hungry touch, wherever his hands and his lips got to taste you felt it twice as strong.

Whatever he was imagining in his head was happening none of it was relevant– this was simply a mutually beneficial exchange. Nothing but lust, it had to be lust because you didn’t see Homelander underneath you, as you rode him, as he let you fucked him just as hard as he wanted to fuck you– you saw the John that he had killed so many years ago... but somehow you didn't hate the sight.

He wanted to devour you, he was needy and pent-up and you took it all graciously, for one night you two used each other equally.

Finding himself delighted and more aroused at the squeals and mewls coming from your delicious lips just as much as you enjoyed the moans and guttural grunts that came from him as he cried against your chest, crying for your kisses and directions, liking the way he craved your scent once again.

You were better than his molasses drenched memories.

Homelander teeth gilded over your neck, the thought of him ripping and gnawing on your flesh lingered as he brought you to an orgasm. 

To be so close to death as you touched heaven… you heaved, melting into the mattress letting him lumber atop of you, too delighted with the end result to complain… looking down to find him kissing your chest, whispering sweet grunts as your hand pampered his hair, you tried not to smile at that satiated goofy expression on his face, at the flickering light illuminating your skin as he purred around your touch.

He was so easy to win over… it scared you.

My Taglist-- @demodemo909 @immyowndefender @fromforeigntofamiliarity @ghqstfqce

[cupidspup]

hello! congrats on 50 followers!

#9 from your 20 questions game? as a queer disabled regressor i love hearing other people’s experiences!

~ @littletism 🎀

Eeee hello hi! ^^ Thank you for your question I'm so so excited to answer! ૮ ᴖﻌᴖა

The question is:

"If you have other marginalized identities (lgbtq+, neurodivergent, poc, ect...) how do they figure into your regression?"

And my answer is...

It incorporates into my regression in a lot of ways!! X)

I know you all don't know a lot about me so this is sort of a deeper dive into me along with being a fun lil game! :] So strap in its a bit of a long one x)

I'm a person of color, I'm in the lgbtq+ community (not straight and my gender identity doesn't align with my assigned sex at birth), I have autism and adhd AND on top of that I have other mental health/physical health problems that can take a huge toll on me too! :")

Regression isn't always sunshine and rainbows for sure. I come from a very troubled background, my regression comes from a place to heal that child that was hurt from that time. To give me back what I lost as a child or to give me what I never had.

I'm a trans guy and I'm proud, but online I get really finicky about it because I'm always scared that no one will respect it (or my pronouns) because I'm a hyperfem trans guy so I try to hide my gender/sex a lot which is something I'm working on ૮ ◞ ﻌ ◟ ა

On top of that with the mental health problems I have, they make me incredibly sensitive and extremely clingy no matter what age I regress to. I have chronic back and joint pain which makes it hard to do a lot of the "typical" regressor things and sometimes it can put a damper on how I feel about myself as a little too (╥ᆺ╥；)

This all translates to a very big crybaby little, who seems like nothing will satisfy them, very high maintenance along with the constant energy just MOVING!!! I'm not a skinny person either and my feelings get so confused too :< "why don't I look like that person? I want to sit criss-crossed too!! Wait I don't want to be a little prince I wanna be a princess!! Princesses are cute!! Oh I hope I'm not being too much...I'm too much...Oh but my cg loves me still!!" Most of the time when I'm small, my Pronouns change too because in my little brain the feminine girly stuff feels way better than all the little boy stuff!! It's a really hard thing to navigate but I'm happy the people around me are open minded and accepting of that 🩷

With all the trauma I've experienced certain words and actions can trigger me even easier :"] it can be a lot for a lil guy with anxiety. Not to mention that my regression doesn't look anything like my childhood (I'm Latin-Hispanic) so sometimes it feels like it's just a game of pretend or like I'm dressing up as a white person so that I can fit in with the "rest of the kids" ૮ ◞ ﻌ ◟;;;ა (I, of course, mean no offense to anyone)

Thoughts and feelings are fast and troublesome.

But it's not all that bad either!!

With the big thoughts come even bigger hugs and kisses! With the back/joint pain comes back rubs and tickles (With consent of course🩷) and soft pillows n plushies to rest on!! When I feel like stimming I (very luckily) have a cg who's willing to rock me n do all the stimmy things with me! ૮( ˃ ꒳ ˂)ა He's always willing to work around the stuff I like and don't like and knows what food is safe and not safe :3

I feel that because I'm so different a whole other world gets unlocked through my regression!! I want to experience so much and rewrite the story that little me had to live through. I want to bring comfort to those who don't exactly have any guidance or the means for said comfort.

My regression is different from most but also valid and very common! I love this community and I love that it's been here for me for my hardest times 🩷 I'd love to be an older figure in the community (since I'm so grown up now!! I grew from 13 to almost 21 in the blink of a eye!!) that guides the new generation one step at a time :] There's so much more that I can say about my regression but this is getting long and I think I've covered a good amount of it ૮ ᴖﻌᴖა

Thank you so much @littletism for joining the game and asking me this question!! ૮ ᴖﻌᴖა (also I love your blog its so so cute and it'd be so cool if we could be friends maybe ८,,◐⩊◐,,ა /nf)

Anywho until next time!!

- Kyupie ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

[eachuisge-cc]

How to make regular TS4 clothing compatible with digitigrade legs: PART 1

This tutorial assumes you're converting for my digitigrade leg mesh used in my satyr legs and werewolf override, but it should also apply to any other funky-shaped legs you might want to do this with. Useful either if you want your digitigrade sim to be able to wear a piece of vanilla maxis clothing, or for converting cc (please get permission from the creator where applicable before doing so, especially if they make their own meshes).

I'll do my best to make this tutorial accessible to relative beginners, but I'm assuming that you already have some basic blender knowledge. If you don't, there are a lot of good tutorials that explain its clusterfuck of an interface better than I could, so I recommend finding a few of those and familiarizing yourself with the software before you continue.

You'll need Sims 4 Studio, blender, and potentially an image editor like gimp or CSP (anything that can handle transparency) depending on the clothing.

This first part will cover shorts and anything else that ends above the knee (along with some extra s4s stuff like category settings and CAS thumbnails that I do to make them look better and behave properly in-game); next section will cover long loose pants which is a somewhat different process, as well as cuffed pants, skintight leggings, and other things that might require some heavier editing and altering of the shadow map, UV, and textures.

Getting Started

Digitigrade base meshes are available for download here. Please don't reupload them unaltered, and I highly recommend not changing the edited part of the leg mesh (knees down, basically), or it may mess up their ability to match up seamlessly with other digitigrade leg parts. The most effective way to use them is to append them to the project you're working on and frankenstein them onto your mesh as needed rather than modifying the blend files themselves, especially if you're making WW parts since these don't include Turbodriver's rig.

Mesh Editing For Shorts

Shorts, miniskirts, and anything else that ends above the knee are great because you don't need to do much, if any, actual sculpting, and once you know how it's relatively quick to do.

To start, export the mesh for the shorts you want to convert the same way you did the legs, all LODs. If you're converting cc, it's possible the original creator won't have made proper LODs (some don't because it's incredibly tedious, but it's good practice and improves visuals and performance in-game), and if that's the case you might want to make some LODs, but I won't tell you how to live your life.

For this, I'll be using these base game vanilla shorts, since I need to convert them anyway. Because when I think of satyrs, obviously I think of khaki shorts.

Yeah.

Append the digitigrade leg mesh via File>Append. navigate to where you put the legs, pick the mesh you want (make sure the one you're importing is the same LOD and frame as the mesh you're altering), select the object folder, and import s4studio_mesh_1.

You'll end up with a situation that looks something like this. Do not be alarmed.

I don't know why it imports these things along with the mesh (there's a non-zero chance someone will yell at me for doing it wrong and it's not supposed to be like that) but in my experience you don't need any of it, so deselect the mesh and delete everything else that imported.

At this point, to make things easier on yourself, you'll want to hit numpad 3 for orthographic side view, set viewport shading to solid, and hit alt+Z to toggle x-ray view.

Take note of how many objects make up your mesh. For most maxis shorts (and probably a lot of cc ones) there are three that divide up the legs, and it's important that you maintain that number and don't remove/replace any of them, otherwise the mesh will be broken once you import it to S4S. It's finicky like that.

Select the digitigrade legs and go into edit mode, then select everything up to here:

Separate this bit into a new object (P>Selection), then go back to object mode. Select the separated lower leg bit you just made, then select the lowest piece of the vanilla leg (select them IN THAT ORDER, very important), and hit ctrl+J to join them into one object. Go to edit mode for the newly joined leg bits, and delete the vanilla part, leaving only the lower piece of the digitigrade leg. If you've done everything right up to now, your mesh list will still look like this.

or whatever it looked like when you started, plus the one appended mesh.

Now go back to the main digitigrade mesh and select up to here:

separate it and repeat the process you just did, replacing the next leg segment up.

Now go into the topmost part of the vanilla shorts, and select only the leg part and delete it (it's almost always detached from the shorts in vanilla clothes and very easy to select, but with cc this might be a mixed bag and could take more time/effort to do). At this point you should have only the digitigrade leg and the shorts themselves.

You now want to go back to the uppermost section of the digitigrade mesh and delete most of the top part of it, trimming it down so that the leg ends just inside the shorts.

For a lot of shorts and skirts, especially shorter ones, this is all you'll have to do, but in this case I'm going to move those very top/front vertices back a tiny bit, just to make sure there won't be any clipping during animations. I also like to switch viewport shading back to material preview mode at this point to make it easier to see if there are any bits poking through that shouldn't be.

At this point you join the upper legs and shorts like you did with the other two segments (again selecting the digitigrade mesh first and the vanilla shorts second) and by the end your objects list should be back to this:

Now you're done, you can save and import to S4S. the digitigrade legs are already weight painted and have their UVs set up and everything so you don't need to do anything more to them, they'll just work, and as long as you don't edit the mesh or uvs they should blend seamlessly with the goat hooves and/or werewolf paws just like the naked leg.

Now do the same thing for the other three LODs. Maybe while singing a sea shanty to stave off the tedium (personally I like listening to podcasts while I do batches of these, it's kind of like knitting for people who love eye strain take breaks from your computer, kids).

S4S Categories/Thumbnails

The three main things you want to do with any digitigrade conversion are disable it for random, restrict opposite frame, and uncheck all occults. That should prevent any broken leg situations. Don't forget to apply to all swatches (I say this because I forget about 30% of the time and end up having to go back and fix it).

At this point, you don't have to do anything more. The clothes will function as they should in-game. If you want nicer looking thumbnails though, and you have the digitigrade werewolves override, there's one more thing I like to do.

Make sure all the thumbnails are blank and check only the werewolf occult in the categories tab, then save and load up the game. Find the clothing you just made in CAS (it will probably show up by default on werewolves of whichever gender you made it for) and cycle through all the swatches to generate new thumbnails that look like this:

instead of this:

Once all the thumbnails are generated, exit the game and export them all (if some of them appear blank, restart S4S and they'll usually show up), uncheck the werewolf occult, clear the thumbnails again, and re-import the werewolf ones. This ensures they won't randomly switch back to the human ones. And it's way faster and easier than making your own custom thumbnails with screenshots and cropping/editing, which is important if you're doing a large amount of these things.

And voilà, you've got your own digitigrade-compatible clothes. I'll be updating the tutorials as needed for clarity/any information I forgot to include, so please message me if something doesn't make sense or I need to go into more detail on something, and I'll edit it with more/better info. I also entirely learned this through trial and error, so if there's a better way to do any of it that you happen to know, tell me that too, this is just the best way I've worked out to do it.

[leahnardo-da-veggie]

A Perfectly Normal Schoolgirl, part 10 (FINAL)

Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, and Part 5 here, part 6 here, and part 7 here. Part 8 here, and part 9 here. This is really short, and if y'all give me 5 more days I'll be done editing the second draft for y'all to enjoy :)

My brother went home without a backward glance. And curse my heart, but I thought of following. The room was dusty and reeked of a dead woman's failure, the corridor beyond holding none of the emotion that so horrified Dane, and the mortal world so very peculiar to me.

“Kat?” That plaintive voice, warbling from the corridor, dragged me back to Earth. “Are you still there?”

I took a final glance at the gateway, one final wayward glance, and waved it closed. “I'm coming,” I called back. “Give me a minute.”

Damn that sweet, innocent child. How many times had he saved me, again? Rescued me from my own folly, pulled me out of my darkness, protected me from making choices I would regret? Did he even know what he had done to help me? Of course he didn't, innocent fool that he was. I got up to go look after him, to go check on him and his family, and stopped midway.

I don't know what perverse desire compelled me to glance back at the security camera. I don't know what might have happened if I had not glanced back, had not pulled back the facade and looked at the thing beneath. I don't know if I regret glancing back. 

You see, the cloth covering it had slipped at some point in the chaos, and its clear glass eye stared into my soul. The red hid flames like no other, flames that would scorch even me.

Heart sinking, I gave it a nervous grin. Damn, but it hurt to be caught at the last moment. To fail, after everything we'd done. To lose this wonderful world that had just accepted me into its heart. The security eye held my gaze for a horrible eternity.

Then it winked at me.

Taglist:

@coffeeangelinabox, @dorky-pals, @calliecwrites, @kaylinalexanderbooks, @shukei-jiwa

@thewingedbaron, @pluppsauthor, @cowboybrunch, @wylloblr, @possiblyeldritch @ramwritblr, @urnumber1star, @fortunatetragedy, @bigwipscholar, @ratedn

@vampirelover890, @possiblylisle, @illarian-rambling, @the-ellia-west

@finicky-felix, @evilgabe29, @glitched-dawn, @rivenantiqnerd, @dragonhoardesfandoms

@drchenquill, @everythingismadeofchaos, @owldwagitoutofyou, @dimitrakies, @beloveddawn-blog

@riveriafalll, (Anyone else who wants to get added can tell me in the comments, pm me, or send me an ask about it!)

[lilliesofinspirationvalley]

Soul Eater Revised Overview!

In case you didn’t know, I have a fan project in the works called Soul Eater Revised, a rewrite/personal interpretation of Soul Eater’s world and narrative. It’s primarily a written piece, but I also have a lot of designs and stuff for it too! has its own blog @souleaterrevised and chapters of the fanfic here on AO3 (they're only accessible if you have an account just to prevent AI scanning).

There’s so much I can get into, and I want to leave at least some surprises… but I can’t help myself. I might as well give some sneak peeks at everything I’m cooking!

Obviously there will be a good amount spoilers for everything I’m planning, so reading all of this is to your own discretion!

Lore & Worldbuilding

Y’know the whole thing at the end of Fire Force where it ends as like… a “prequel” to the SE world out of nowhere? Yeah, some people find that cool while others find it incredibly forced. I… I think it’s both. I have some thoughts on how I would rework Fire Force myself, and part of that is the ending and how it connects to SE. Essentially, the world of flames and infernals dies, but is reborn into a world of souls and magic. The supernatural and fantastical become inherently tied to this new world thanks to Adolla’s whole deal with shared human perception and all that.

Excalibur is the most obvious piece of evidence of the Old World existing— He’s essentially the personification of Arthur’s escapism and loneliness. He got pulled out of the spiritual realm and can’t really get back… so he’s just kinda been hanging out in the physical world for multiple centuries. Truth be told, he just misses his dad, man.

So yeah, Shinra, Iris, Tamaki, etc… they all kinda die??? But they also like… become these fun deities known as Patrons. Much of what’s known about them in the New World is this weird mix of myth and fact.

Speaking of deities, I got more information on how those work!! Essentially, there are multiple deities that work with and look after their associated cultures. For example, death deities such as Anubis/Anpu focus on collecting the souls of those living in Egypt.

Most deities focus on their respective groups (but obviously intermingle and all that), but there are a few deities who work more internationally! These include Lord Death (obviously, lol), Lady Gaia (also known as Mother Nature), and Arcane (Observer of Magic)

There may or may not also be a goddess of madness and chaos whose stuck in a distorted realm of flesh and black ooze. But she’s not trying to get back out into the physical world or anything… right? @hollyhuedhorror may know more about her ;3

Due to deities and magic and all of this fun stuff being more commonplace, not only has global transportation developed a little earlier (especially for supernatural communities), but there was a lot of intervention (especially when LD shows up and sets up DWMA) of “HEY. DON’T COLONIZE AND ENSLAVE EACH OTHER.” Immigrants learn to coexist with indigenous communities, people travel across the world because they wish to and not by force, all that good stuff. Essentially we replace most of the racism/cultural prejudice with… soul type prejudice. Call that what you will.

Soul types are a lot more developed as a concept— it honestly deserves its own post, but to get a major, mostly relevant thing out there: Monsterfolk (associated with animals and magic as a whole) and fae (associated with the elements) were essentially the overseers of humans in much of ancient history due to their sheer power and longer lifespans. Witches are initially created as the offspring between Monsterfolk and humans, though their soul type can pass down through further generations. Enchanters are essentially the same thing, but the offspring of fae and humans. Many of these magical people were genuinely benevolent and helped humans… but a lot of them were also very tyrannical, finicky, all that stuff

Living weapons generally discover their powers around puberty (the average being around 13-14 years old). Just about every soul type is capable of carrying weapon abilities (through genetics and whatnot), so it’s not too uncommon for powerful soul types to unlock their powers much earlier. This is the case for Fire and Thunder! They’re 5 year old nymphs (Fae) and already have phenomenal control of their gauntlet forms.

Aside from deities and corrupted souls like kishins/afreets and phantoms, there are 3 categories for soul types: Human, Monsterfolk, and Fae. These three categories each have their own “enhancements”— incredibly rare variants of the average soul’s capabilities.

Humans - Warrior, Seer, Grigori, Pixie

Monsterfolk/Witches - Sorcerer

Fae/Enchanters - Shaman

Lord Death was… essentially sent down to the physical world as a “janitor” in the Middle Ages (around the 1200s to be more specific). A lot of deaths have been happening to the point where people aren’t really performing the proper rituals to help souls pass on. So LD is sent in to help collect leftover souls and figure out the sorta things causing so much destruction

While he’s getting adjusted there, he ends up meeting some supernatural people such as the sorcerer Eibon and witch Arachne. They form a fun little travel group going around the world and helping people/hunting down corrupted souls. Arachne was incredibly passionate about wanting humans and the supernatural to see each other as equals.

During these adventures, Arachne finds an orphan child who’s village had gotten destroyed and he lost his parents. Arachne, having so much maternal instinct as she does, takes the boy in as her own kid (even though her sisters aren’t too much older than him lmao). This totally doesn’t have a domino affect on anything, I promise :)

But yeah, what do you do when you’re personally hit with the fact that humans are far more vulnerable and die easily compared to you and your supernatural companions? That this vulnerability is what many supernaturals exploit for their dominance in society? You want to find ways to help humans defend themselves, right? And if you already travel with what is essentially an overpowered living weapon… you’re gonna get some ideas, right?

Just because you may have the ability to bring the dead back to life… does that mean you should? What if the revived have no idea what to do with the sudden powers and rejuvenated, unnatural body you’ve given them? What if they don’t remember their past lives? What if they eventually or already do? To literally die and be reborn… it could cause u to go a little cuckoo bananas one way or another.

None of this leads to the divorce between a Reaper and the Spider Witch. Or the first fully corrupted Kishin to be born. Or an octopus merman becoming eldritch. Or witches fearing for their lives on all sides and creating their own pocket dimension for refuge. Nope. Not at all. (In case you genuinely can’t tell, this is sarcasm. So much shit goes down but we don’t have time to unpack all of that)

DWMA Details

The Death Weapon Meister Academy/Association is an international organization that focuses on fighting against corrupted souls, along with teaching living weapons (and meisters) how to control their powers.

The DWMA has several regional branches, each with their own overseeing staff and representative Death Weapon (also known as Death Scythes).

Normally Overcome Target (aka NOT) courses are available at each region’s headquarters, while the Especially Advanced Talent (EAT) program is held exclusively in Death City, Nevada.

The academy predominantly teaches middle-high school students, between (U.S.) grades 7-12. They also provide a large amount of university/college courses for graduates. In most cases, students enroll in whatever grade they would continue in normal school, or the grade most applicable for their age.

If a weapon or meister in a partnership graduates before the other, they remain with their partner but don’t have to continue schoolwork (or they simply move forward with higher, college-level courses)

In order to be in EAT you have to be at least in 9th grade/3rd year, which usually means you spent at least 2 years in NOT courses.

If you enter the academy at an older age, you still need to be enrolled in the NOT course for at least 2 years (some exceptions depend on whether your partner is also able to enroll)

Character Notes

To be completely honest I plan on expanding more background and development on almost every character (because lord knows we need it) so I don’t think I can list everything and everyone. However I will cover some general highlights and details I think are very swag.

First things first, I don’t write Blair as a gross fan-service baiting creep! She’s still very playful but only gets coy and flirtatious around actual adults. I’m making her the big sister/maternal figure bad bitch she deserves to be! She’s also getting more of a backstory— She was adopted and raised by an incredibly powerful sorcerer who… will be quite involved in the later stages of SER’s main storyline. Blair gets her own sample of the horrors, I’m so sorry queen.

Ah yes. We’ll be diving a lot deeper into horrors and madness as a whole. Of course I’ll do more with Soul, Stein, etc… but we’re gonna make madness a little more gender inclusive. That is to say, Maka’s gonna have more unhinged grinning to do! Tsubaki’s gonna become an Omori kinnie! Not even Liz and Patty are safe!

Get ready to explore and learn about more characters’ families and upbringing! It’s… it’s actually a pretty big recurring topic.

I will be including and reworking NOT as the first few months of the school year before the main SE plot kicks in! You will learn to enjoy Tsugumi and her girlfriends… hopefully.

Shaula has more of an independent and chaotic personality compared to Medusa and Arachne. She has a history of pulling major conspiracies and stunts, especially around DWMA. Why does she do this? Mostly for shits and giggles. Don’t be fooled, she is not above manipulating an already traumatized girl and making her memory repression even worse.

Princess Ponera and Nars Garnier from the Wii Game, Monotone Princess, are included! They’re gonna be associated with Noah. Ponera is a haughty, pompous princess dead-set on vengeance. Nars is an arrogant, deceptively friendly man who blends Phantom of the Opera with Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Ponera and Shaula are girlfriends. They’re actually very healthy despite being y’know. Evil.

While we’re on the subject… Noah Grimoire is a sorcerer Eibon took in and mentored 600 years before the main story (but sadly, Eibon thinks Noah died in an accident… this isn’t the case). His associated animal is worms, and it’s very easy to joke he is a major bookworm himself. That term goes even deeper than you can imagine :)

Noah thinks he’s the next Xehanort Kingdom Hearts (guy who makes multiple copies of himself and seeks knowledge no matter the ethics to become a god). He negotiates/coerces multiple people to work with him— including a teenage boy from early 19th century Russia. The kid’s a real angel, he doesn’t experience anything bad ever.

Ragnarok is going to be known as the Dragon Sword! He’s a dragonborn (type of monsterfolk) that just. Showed up in Norway 200 years ago and started causing havoc. Marie’s ancestors at the time were the ones who imprisoned him in his weapon form, and he was sealed away for a long time. Until… someone managed to steal him for Medusa Gorgon herself. You already kinda know what happens next

Pls don’t kill me for this but… Crona is going to be a very tragic character (I’m following the manga plotline because I think it’s super interesting). They doom themselves in the narrative more than anything. You can’t wait around for everyone else to figure out how to deal with you, after all.

Crona and Maka’s relationship is… not that healthy, all things considered! Their “guardian angel” needs to survive a codependent, homo-ambiguous teenage friendship.

Everyone pour one out for Soul as his meister repeatedly ignores his obvious discomfort over being around the person who nearly killed him. And for all their friends kinda getting ignored by Maka too, and also being pushed into hanging out with someone where neither party is that comfortable.

Marie becomes a school counselor/therapist for EAT students (and especially Crona) when she arrives after Asura’s revival. She is the Death Weapon of Northern Europe (Scandanavia) and looks after Justin a lot until LD felt he was “ready” (since he becomes a Death Weapon at such a young age and all). She’s going to go through so much guilt of feeling like she failed to guide the young people she cares so deeply for!!!

Justin is like. Baby Claude Frollo to me. If that makes sense. Tezca (“I can fix him”) and Giriko (“I can make him worse”) both take him in as their lil brother

Giriko doesn’t do the gross descendant possessing thing because that’s just. Not fun to think about! Instead he’s more or less a living golem, frequently creating new bodies for himself out of the earth. He absolutely still has a ton of kids/descendants though like the deadbeat sleazeball he is. If Denji Chainsaw Man were in SE, we unfortunately all know who would be the father.

Eibon’s narrative relevance actually becomes a big thing!! I love when all-powerful characters are actually just. Really chill and nice. He’s like that with so much guilt from all of his past actions. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.

Proper background, time, and development for characters such as Mifune and Angela, Eruka, Free, the Mizune Family, Tabatha, and Taruho (aka Lisa and Arisa from Chupa Cabra’s)

More on the Hoshi family of meisters/martial artists and how the Star Clan branched off from it! BlackStar doesn’t just have to deal with strangers associating him with corrupted assassins, but much of his actual blood family is really restrained and they don’t want Shiroto (WhiteStar)’s kid to end up the same way.

Mabaa and the Witch Realm! The fox Witch Judge is named Netsuki and she’s Mabaa’s wife <3

Kid getting flashback dreams of Asura and more of him playing detective to uncover the mysteries his dad keeps hiding from him. Some are easy to expect and others… not so much.

Tons of OCs

Maka’s mother, Kumiko Kami-Albarn! She was originally Azusa’s partner until she caught onto Stein experimenting on Spirit when they were all students. She’s a bitch who needs to be better than everyone else (and gets jealous of her own kid rip). I like her so much

Chupa Cabra’s owner, a literal chupacabra vampire! His name is Raul, he’s the brain cell and wants to convince everyone he’s sane and normal.

Squirrel witch Nui Harime kinnie who can checkout people’s mindscapes!

Shadow fae butler dad so Kid isn’t in Gallows Manor all by himself as a child! His name is Lungelo, he’s super cool and dilf material.

EAT classmates based on several things! Magical girls! No Straight Roads! ENA! Undertale/Deltarune! They all get their own little bits to shine and be interwoven in the narrative

More Death Weapons and their meisters to match more distinct regions! For example, Southern Europe, Southeast Asia, South America (Tezca is Central America because... he's Mexican. Literally based on Aztec myths which is in Mexico), South Asia, actual regions of Africa (North, East, etc).

Characters created by my friends such as @starkitters @chalkanthit @teaableu and @silvvergears!

[guardevoir]

Fiber arts update!

The postal service gods have smiled upon me and gotten me my wheel a day early, huzzah!

I might just be developing kit-based stockholm syndrome, but putting this thing together was actually kinda fun. Easier than the loom and, hilariously, less frustrating than the fucking bobbin winder, even if it did take absolutely forever. Also, I like the way it sounds (or... doesn't sound like much, as the case may be), I like the way it looks, I like how sturdy it is. And I think I'm starting to really enjoy the way it spins, too.

On the other hand? I have thoughts.

Why is there no convenient place to put fiber. Why are the sliding hooks so goddamn hard to operate smoothly. And, honestly, I don't mind the double treadle, but I also still do not understand why it exists. It makes direction control harder, with no notable upside that I can see.

I'm also fighting a desperate battle against the concept of scotch tension. I mean, I did pick a single drive wheel kind of deliberately, because there's upsides to it that double drive does not have (like how the drive band isn't a non-euclidean nightmare of horribleness)... but goddamn it, I really didn't appreciate the smooth, incredibly even take-up of my old wheel enough until now. You put the tension somewhere, and unless something catches in the orifice, that's the tension you're gonna get, no ifs and buts. The Kiwi 3, meanwhile, likes to periodically tug at my fiber and it's weirding me the fuck out. At least tension's about as easy to adjust as my double-drive wheel (which, thanks to its center-screw setup, is probably a great deal easier than average for double-drive), but also just as finicky.

The "no convenient place to put fiber" thing is annoying, though. The vintage wheel has all kinds of bits and bobs that you can fix your WIP to in a pinch, plus a nice handy distaff, while the Kiwi 3 spins, and anything beyond that single function is kind of a "not my goddamn job" kinda deal.

I do appreciate the orifice hook slot, though.

I have also somehow STILL MISPLACED the orifice hook about half a dozen times in the last few hours. I am incorrigible.

The most interesting takeaway is that I was kinda scared that I'd get a new spinning wheel and realize that my old one is crap. This is definitely not what happened. Despite all my grumbling, I do like the Kiwi and I'm very happy to have it, but I'm also realizing all the upsides of the vintage wheel that I took for granted. Like how easy it is to get it started in the right direction with barely a tap of my foot, (almost) no matter which position it's in. The even take-up. The feather-light tension. The distaff. The nub I can wrap my spin around when taking a break. The fact that, when I stop treadling, both flyer and bobbin stop at the same time.

On the other hand, I will admit to never taking the bobbin off of that vintage wheel unless I absolutely have to. To wind off, I usually just lower the tension all the way and let the bobbin free-spin, because fuck that. And the Kiwi also doesn't make me smack my shins into a wooden base on a regular basis. AND I got the high-speed whorl for it so now I have ratios from 5.5:1 all the way to 15:1, and it's glorious. Plus, it's a whole lot quieter. And as much as I don't like the specific way they set up the sliding hooks, they're still much, much more pleasant than the double-threaded nightmare I had to pull off on the vintage wheel half the time.

TL;DR: new wheel good, once I get my blending board and really figure out the tension on the Kiwi, I'll be so fucking powerful you folks

[the-valiant-valkyrie]

[meandering prose: Red Herrings]

I went to an escape room for my birthday.

It was me, my brother, and my mom. We had all done escape rooms in the past before, but we were excited to try this one out because it was a new establishment close to our home. We figured if we liked it, we could try out some of their other rooms when we found the time.

Well, we didn't finish the room. I was a little bitter about it (it had ruined my winning streak, after all), but was engaged to hear our game master talk about what we would have needed to do to complete the room.

He walked over to a drawer with two locked compartments, showing us that we had left it shut ("aha!", the back of my mind piped up, delighted, "yes, i remember those locks! how foolish of me to have forgotten them! but where are the keys?").

The keys, the game master explained, were tucked away in the top pocket of one of several lab coats. He reached in and showed it to us- a ring of several keys, maybe ten or so. This was fascinating to me, if not for one very specific reason:

Earlier in the game I had looked at those lab coats. And while true, I suppose it was my own fault for missing that ring of keys, I consider myself absolved of blame because I, too, had found a different ring of keys in the pockets of one of the lab coats. His looked identical to mine. I hadn't used mine all game.

Our game master took the ring of keys to the drawer, flipping to one (again, out of the ten or so on the ring) and unlocking one of the two locked drawers. I pulled out the key ring I had found from my pocket, showing it to him. I asked him whether these keys were supposed to unlock the second drawer (I had tried to do that earlier in the game, of course, but escape room locks are notoriously finicky... For all I knew, I simply did it wrong).

My game master smiled widely at me, and said: "Oh, those don't do anything." I didn't really know what to say, at first. They don't do anything? None of them? On the whole ring?

"Nope." He responded, aglow with delight, "That was a red herring."

I'd come to find out that we had a good handful of red herrings in our little room. A camera with a code inside of the lens. A full deck of playing cards. Three pairs of lab goggles- one for each member of our party. A gramophone with interactive dials. A box with the letter L painted on its side. We gave some of the objects more attention than others, but all of them were meant to be misdirections.

As aforementioned, I've been to a couple of escape rooms in my day. I've worked in one briefly as a game master myself. For those who've never experienced the pleasures of one, let me let you in on a little secret: They don't have red herrings. Not if they're good. Not if they're worth your money.

And it bugged me. Obviously it bugged me. We'd been played for a fool! By the game master, by the escape room studio, by those innocent souls conned out of giving the company a five star review. But there was something a little deeper than that that was really grinding my gears. Something I couldn't put my finger on until I let it stew for a little while.

I finished I Expect You To Die 3 just a day before my birthday. Seeing as the game is pretty much just a virtual escape room, experiencing the two back to back had me subconsciously comparing the two of them from the moment I stepped out of the physical escape room space. Even if I hadn't processed it yet.

Red herrings are dangerous in puzzle games. They're dangerous because your player needs something to trust. You as the designer give your player rules; and while these rules can be turned on their face, they can never be broken. If a rule must change, that change needs to be communicated to a player. Otherwise, there is little difference between a 'red herring' and a lie, is there?

It's bad to have a player that second guesses everything that you tell them. It's worse when your player doesn't know that you're lying to them yet. They'll run into a wall until their face gets bloodied, trusting your word all the while. And once they learn you're lying, they'll almost certainly drop your game no soon after.

IEYTD3 includes a lot of lasers (all of the games do, but this one in particular uses them in a very unique way). More often than not, they all come from an identical looking object. The player is inevitably trained to register this object as a laser hazard, regardless of whether or not the laser is even active at all.

And the game makes sure to train you on this concept, too. Lasers originally come at the player slowly, with a good bit of build up, and even a reticle to show you precisely where the laser's going to fire. As the game progresses, the lethality increases, and the lasers get faster and more threatening as the player gets used to them.

The last time a laser is ever introduced in game, the player is expected to deflect it. There's only one slight issue with this: this particular puzzle is very late in game. And every single time a laser was introduced up until that point, it could NOT be deflected. At all. Regardless of the surface you tried to bounce it off on.

Is this not, in some strange sense, a red herring, you ask? The game has changed the rules! How are you supposed to explain a rule change like that one without blatantly explaining it through text? The player will be acting upon an incorrect assumption!

But before the player makes it to that very specific puzzle, there is a different laser puzzle that they must encounter first. At first, this only seems like it's making the issue worse. If one puzzle would already confuse the player, how would a second do anything to help?

Well, it's quite simple, really. The game separates the player's preconceived notion of lasers from the precursor puzzle. It involves a laser, but what the laser fires out of is different. The player isn't expecting that sort of hazard from that sort of object.

The laser also isn't static, as it was at all other points of the game... It moves, drifting from left to right, veeerry slowly, as to allow the player ample room to study it from a safe distance. Ever so coincidentally, within the laser's inevitable path happens to be a mirror.

The laser bounces off the mirror, and though the player remains safe from the reflection, it registers in their head all the same. "Ah! It deflected it!" Gears turn. New rules are established. And because it came from such a vastly different source than all other lasers up until this point, the knowledge is frictionlessly installed in the player's mind.

Then comes the first puzzle I mentioned. It's faster, far more lethal, puts the player on their toes. But the second the word "laser" is uttered (and make no mistake, even the script writing here is an intentional game design choice), it clicks in the players head. "Laser. Deflection. Hey, I know how to do that!"

AND ITS CRAZY. Because- especially for a puzzle game- there is NO riskier decision than changing the rules! Let alone deeply pre-established ones! But the game does it so smoothly that I didn't even stop to question it. It wasn't even until I first replayed the game that I learned that the rules had even altered to begin with!

It wasn't necessary. Sure, it definitely would have pissed a lot more players off without the seamless rule-change tutorial, but it wouldn't have been a major hurdle. Most players would have (if not sooner or later) tried deflecting lasers, even after being previously taught not to bother. Lasers get deflected in video games. That's just what they do.

But the fact that the game cared enough about their players to teach them. The fact that they respected them enough not to lie to them. That's what really got me. A puzzle isn't about beating a player. A puzzle isn't about making a player feel stupid. It's about making a player feel smart, and it's about helping them get there.

Anyways if you ever go into an escape room and they start fucking lying to you, for the love of god do NOT rate them 5 stars online!!! Rate them like. TWO stars at the most. But those ones better be for set dressing ONLY

[tau1tvec]

Hi, there! I love your simblr and sim style dearly! What are your favorite worlds to play in? I recently got a new setup and can FINALLY play all the larger worlds but am lost on where to start looking. My current family is in Greymont Bay but it keeps crashing on me which sucks because I really do love the world :(

I’m happy to hear you like it, and congrats! 🎉

Greymont Bay is gorgeous, I remember downloading it to check it out, but I never stopped to play in it, I think mostly bc I didn’t have the patience at the time to populate it. I have heard some people having similar issues with it however, and it’s anyone’s guess why, honestly The Sims 3 is so finicky.

Luckily I’ve played enough of The Sims 3 however to realize what works and doesn’t work, and a mostly good enough idea why. When it comes to custom worlds I tend to stick to ones that are No CC or Low CC. Main reason why is bc your game files and CC files load into the game a bit differently, so unless your CC is merged or optimized for gameplay, it will absolutely give you hell. So if a world requires a lot of it, you're just bound to run into problems, no matter how good your PC is. Main reason why is bc of memory leaks ( or was idk whether 1.69, or the Mac update helped this ), but if you’re playing on Windows, even with it up to date, the game craps out at 4gb bc it’s still 32bit. Much of this memory is accumulated from what content you’re loading, how high your settings are, and how big and active the world is.

Now, with all that techy shit aside, I’m currently playing in a couple of Nilxis’s smaller worlds ( Suvadiva and Pinewood Island ) which work wonderfully, and look amazing. Pounawea by Awesims is another gr8 small world. For a slightly bigger world, you can’t go wrong with Willapa Valley, it’s one of my absolute favorites, and is just big enough to feel like a real location, but just small enough to feel cozy, and less overwhelming on your PC. Many of @99simsonthewall’s worlds I’ve enjoyed in general, and rarely give me issues.

For even bigger worlds, in all honesty, you can’t get any better than EA worlds. They’re optimized to play in, I can spend hours in them going in and out of buy/build without a single hiccup, and its bigger population never seems to be an issue for me. Idk, perhaps I’m just lucky.

Downloading Ella Charmed’s fixes for them off of MTS will get them to work even better.

[19thperson]

19th's Next Fest Impressions - Day 7

Day 0/Day 1/ Day 2/Day 3/Day 4/Day 5/Day 6

Last day, and only day where I had zero other obligations. Lets go out with a bang.

Keylocker

In a grim cyberpunk future where music is banned, you're music. Therefore, you're banned

I wanted to like this game, but aside from the writing not landing with me, there was a key mechanical problem constantly getting in the way.

The game has a timed hits and timed defense system that's punishingly strict, and enemy damage is tuned under the assumption that you'll be getting at least partial dodges consistently. Which I wasn't. It was worse on the first try when I unknowingly chose a class that could only damage on counter.

This isn't usually a problem for me... until I realized a 2nd problem. One that's probably just restricted to the prologue since it's about escaping the anti-music jail

There's no music. Nothing to mentally time beats and inputs to.

I got frustrated and ended it early.

Tenebris Somnia

Horror game whose main claim of interest is that it's mixing retro pixel art with high definition live action footage. In demo this was presented by solving a series of puzzles, then it cut to live action to show the monster that appeared, then you run away from the monster. There is something interesting going on beneath this. It seems to be setting up a story specifically about film. You are playing as a girl who is checking up on her shitty ex, because she's had nonstop nightmares of him being killed by The Creatures and she needs to reality check herself.

Both you and the ex are severe film buffs, both worked together on a short film. When you arrive to his apartment, it is beaten to shit, broken film trophies, his film reels in the oven burning, the poster for his short film "Devourer" shattered. While it's not stated, I'm guessing that the monster that attacks us is from said film.

Shitty ex seems to have turned to the occult both due to dissatisfaction with how his film career is going and out of being torn up about you leaving.

There's roads for this to go some really interesting places. There's also roads for this to go pretentious places. But I still wanna see.

Simulacro

Greek art student goes out to a mysterious island recently uncovered by a massive lake's water level going down due to climate change. She's here to paint the nature. While there she discovers artifacts talking about "The true nature of reality," and at one point is overtaken by inspiration to draw the ruins she imagines would have been there in its heyday. The ruins then appear in real life.

There's a core problem with this game that feels really unfair to say considering it's a small Brazilian team's first game. It's a painting/photography game, and the main character is constantly talking about how beautiful her surroundings are. But they're writing a check that their rendering ability and art direction can't cash. I would accept the island looks kinda off if the game wasn't constantly trying to convince me otherwise. The two types of puzzles the game has in the demo are painting puzzles, find an angle where you get certain targets all in one frame, and artifact puzzles, arrange these broken pieces so that they're one again. The former is more interesting than the latter, but the system to recognize if something is "in the shot" is kinda finicky. The trailer shows more types so hopefully there's more variation in the final release. Most interesting thing about this game thematically is that it takes place in the 2080, and climate change has gotten bad bad bad. The game is selling itself as being a philosophical exploration, and ideally it seems like it's trying the difficult maneuver of "What's the point to these abstract questions when everything is dying?"

Boyscout - Patrick's Town

Your name is Patricio and not Patrick and you are a kid who likes helping people in your town. In the demo your day is spent getting ingredients and then delivering an apple pie to your grandma for her birthday. Then in the middle of the night a UFO crashes near the town. The pixel art ranges from competent to fantastic depending on the mode (although I do not like the artist's propensity for Usopp lips.) Music is really good. Aside from the combination of aliens and idyllic towns, this is where the homier mother influence feels really noticeable. Although that specific style is not really reflected in the trailer... Writing is… they need a 2nd pass on the translation. Sentences missing a lot of punctuation, an apple pie also being referred to as an apple cake interchangeably, awkward wording throughout. It's thankfully a text lite game, not as detrimental as a visual novel or RPG with the same problems, but still a very visible roadblock.

SoulQuest

2D DMC. 2DMC.

I will say this: they've gotten the combo game down. Chaining shit together feels good. If that was the only metric this was being judged by, the game would be exceeding all expectations.

but there are a few problems:

1) It is not just combat. There is platforming. Platforming where the hitbox of the platform seem slightly thinner than the sprite. And there's no coyote time. The game also likes to place spikes underneath you in these sections.

Did I mention checkpointing is frugal?

I'm not mad.

2) Unless I'm crazy/misreading things, your dodge roll doesn't have I-frames on startup, just during the middle of the roll. IT feels like I'm getting hit by things I shouldn't be hit by.

I'm not mad.

3) Say you got overconfident and chose hard mode, and want to change the difficulty:

turns out each difficulty is on a separate progression track so if you got to stage 3 and then decided "I've trapped myself in a bad situation" well guess what you gotta redo stages 1 and 2 again on normal to try stage 3 on normal.

I'm not mad.

Sky Oceans: Wings for Hire

I've heard people describe this as a successor to Skies of Arcadia. I've never played that so I can't really comment on how accurate that is Plot and tone wise its a typical JRPG. You start at an Idyllic home town that might as well be a stack of firewood prepped and ready to burn. You and your friends complete your coming of age ceremony to become Pilots. Oh no here comes The Empire Alliance burning everything to the ground because your dead dad and live mom know about the void century lost history. Try to escape but mom sacrifices self to save you. There doesn't seem to be any on foot combat, all air. While there's an interesting "advantage" system I was expecting more about positioning to be there, who is on whose tail. still, early JRPG battle systems are always kinda thin, so it'll probably get more complex later. Presentation wise, I kinda wish the models emoted a bit more instead of relying solely on the character portraits. The eyes and mouths are flat textures on the face so they could theoretically be swapped out contextually. Overall if you are JRPGpilled, this'll be to your taste, and if you aren't then this won't change your mind.

Boyhood's End

A very very very loose adaptation of Night on the Galactic Railroad, from the devs behind Needy Streamer Overdose.

In a scifi future where humanity is overseen by a massive AI program spanning the galaxy, ranking all humans and directing all activity, Giovanni Stylus is the lowest ranked, namely due to his father, who once attempted a hack said galaxy spanning AI system. He attempts to support his comatose mother by doing petty hacking jobs, such as hacking into security cameras to confirm infidelity. All while being bullied the shit out of.

When his health insurance is pulled, he takes a desperate job to infiltrate said AI system and shit goes wrong. But he is saved by Campanella, who may or may not have been the one who set the job in the first place. Now they are on the run.

Pixel art is very impressive, at least when it's on close up portraits. Also has a really nice fake PC interface for menus, alongside reading fake websites and chatlogs.

The hacking system was very simple "find password" that's basically just following story prompts, but I can see it having fun uses later.

It's now on my wishlist.

Heart of the Machine

Going from fighting the overlord AI to being the overlord AI. I am very bad at being the overlord AI.

I half remembered the trailer and thought this was going to be mostly branching story events and stat balancing. When I got to managing and customizing units I knew I was in unfamiliar territory.

There is something interesting in this basically being a stealth 4x, with a major factor being "how aware is the world of your machinations" and individual units having different security clearances and the like. But I couldn't figure out how to effectively utilize any of that before I felt like my time was spent going other demos. I've heard good things so I assume that 4x heads will like this.

The Operator

You play as an Operator in the not-FBI, who gives assistance to on-site agents from your computer. It's another fake-computer-terminal database mystery game, involving going through files and finding relevant information. Also aliens may or may not be involved.

Two major things of note so far:

1) Every one of these games handles their database a different way, trying to do some means of keeping the sprawl of info digestable. This one does so by just having a handful of files related to the case immediately sent to you, with the only outside help being a persons database and a car database to cross-check details, at least so far. Torn on this. On one hand it keeps things incredibly intuitive, on the other hand "pruning through fluff" feels like it should be part of the challenge.

2) Game is very intuitive on how to put in "answers" though. You're given a question and then once you figure something out you turn on answer mode and click the relevant text or image on the screen. No messing with a prompter or choosing a whole file or whatever.

Dungeons of Hinterberg

Modern fantasy setting where monster slaying and dungeoneering has become touristy sport, like mountaineering or skiing. You play as someone who is aiming to clear all 25 of the tourist town Hinterberg's dungeons.

Gameplay is split between previously mentioned dungeoneering, exploring areas and fighting monsters, and persona-ish town stuff, buying gear and making social links.

They are genuinely skilled at beautiful dungeon design. The one in the demo was a tribute to mario galaxy with a lot of circular land masses you run around. The actual hitting things… needs more impact. It does have bayonetta timeslow on perfect dodge though.

Only got one day of town stuff so I can't really pass too much judgement there.

I am worried about "how do you squeeze pathos out of this concept if all risk has been essentially gentrified in-setting" but there is a stinger at the end of "something is rotten in hinterberg"

Has promise but not top of the list.

[nightingaletrash]

Hey friend! I hope you're doing well. After admiring it from afar for a long time, I bought the Dragon Age games on mega sale. Do you have any suggestions for mods I should use to play? Thank you!

okay so, first off, welcome to hell I hope you enjoy your stay because there is no being normal about Dragon Age once you're in deep enough <3

second off

how much time and disk space do you have? because I use *a lot* of mods

First off, there is a learning curve to modding Dragon Age. DAO is deceptive in how easy it is to mod because for many mods, the installation is as simple as 'drop file in the override file' but there are some caveats based on how the engine works and it pays to understand what files are what, and what they do. DA2 is an almost identical process but tends to be much less finicky in practice, and DAI is infamous for being trickier by comparison due to the fact you have to use the Frosty Mod Manager, but you don't necessarily need to know the different types of files like you do with the other two.

If you have any questions about anything, feel free to ask, I'm happy to share whatever I know ^^

So starting with DAO, here are some mods I'd recommend:

Unofficial Remaster - what it says on the tin, this mod includes higher resolution textures and introduces some updated models to create consistency with the later entries in the series. There used to be a lot more involved, including other mods that help increase cohesion between games but a lot of that was cut because people bugged the mod author too much about it.

Natural Lighting - makes the character creator less dark ^^

Female Proportion Fixes - there are three versions of this mod, one for humans, dwarves and elves respectively because the originals are pretty damn bad. Humans come with two variations, Sensual and Seductress - you only need to choose one.

Elf Update - this is entirely optional, as it essentially swaps the elven designs with the less-human elf designs used in DA2. Elf Update comes with its own version of the proportions fix, so if you chose to use this, you don't need Elf Proportion Fix.

Neutral Female Armours - does away with the atrocious boobplates that plague Origin's ladies. Luckily, a similar mod wasn't needed for DA2 and DAI because Bioware largely got their shit together. There is a compatibility patch for the proportion fix mods - those files need to overwrite the corresponding files in this mod. The Unofficial Remaster also includes some retextures for this mod as an optional file.

Extra Dog Slot - because the Dog is a very good boy and deserves to come along on quests without taking up a companion slot.

Dragon Age Redesigned - again this is optional, as I use this mod solely for non-companion NPCs, as bioware's originals sometimes look a bit odd. If used with Elf Update you'd need to delete all of the elf headmorphs included in this mod to avoid getting the wrong heads showing up. There's three options to choose between, Lore, Balanced, and Aesthetic.

Goblet De-Gobbler - tackles a pretty well-known bug with modded armours and rectifies some little inconsistencies with a particular sequence.

Thedosian Grey Wardens OR Grey Wardens of Ferelden - DA2 and DAI gave Wardens a uniform, yet there's none whatsoever in Origins. Which is odd because everyone seems to recognise you as a Warden on sight. Thedosian Wardens uses the Inquisition armour models while GWOF uses the DA2 model so it comes down to personal preference. Personally I'm a Thedosian fan and use it and it's related mods - searching Thedosian on the Origins nexus will bring them all up. It's pretty much everything you need for GWOF is pretty much included in the mod however. There are also some good retextures for both available by VagranDreamer.

Origin Unique Grey Warden Armour - adds some GWOF style armour with some unique flavour. These are included in Vagran Dreamer's retexture series.

Thedosian Wardens Arsenal - new Warden themed weapons. GWOF does include weaponry as well, but this stuff is my preference. It also contains scripts that allow it to replace all NPC Warden loadouts with this weaponry

Complete Bi Overhaul - because it could be gayer. Also includes some optional files to either stop certain male NPCs hitting on a female Warden or to get them to hit on a male Warden.

There really are so many more that I could like like character creation mods and NPC morphs I use, but I don't want to overwhelm you with info. I literally use too many mods XD

For DA2, here's my top hits:

Kirkwall Expanded - a really cool mod that adds new little quests to the game, a bounty board, and just livens up the city.

Automatic Chargen - opens the CC in the transitions between the acts (this game is divided into three acts with time skips between them), so if you want to mess with the idea of your character changing over the years, this mod is 10/10

NEW Import Vault Fixes and Editable Vault - essentially a bug fixer oriented around the content imported from your Origins save, and adds the ability to tweak the worldstate in game

Sapphim's Dialogue Mini Mods - a collection of little mods that alter some conversations to tone down some unnecessary sexism and to let the game be a lil bit gayer (and shut Gamlen's damn mouth)

Wardens of Weisshaupt - puts all Warden characters in Warden gear, and gives you a choice between shiny Inquisition ported armours like Thedosian Wardens or the original DA2 models ^^

Again there are dozens more mods I could recommend in regards to armour, headmoprhs, companion gear etc but those largely come down to preference so it's best to find what you like for yourself ^^

Then there's DAI. Keep in mind that for a long time, the go-to mod manager was DAIMM. Mods from that period are DAI.mod files; nowadays most people use Frosty Mod Manager and a lot of mods are made with Frosty, as its more powerful. Some dai.mods do work with Frosty, but it can be hit and miss.

Complete War Table Operations Without Waiting - For Frosty - DAI's war table operations take real time to complete, which is terribly impractical if you actually want to just clear them out and get them done. This mod changes the waiting time so the operations are completed automatically or have a very short wait time

Less Shards Please - An Oculara Rebalance - you might have heard of the tedious shard side quest; this mod makes it significantly less tedious.

Party Banter Tweaks - Inquisition's banter is unfortunately kinda buggy, so this mod gives you a better chance of hearing your companions talk to each other! There's a lot of great convos you don't wanna miss ^^

Enhanced Character Creator - adds even more sliders and options to CC, as well as a hair slot unique to the Inquisitor that some modders use so that Inky's hairstyle isn't shared with random NPCs. It can be a lot to take in, but once you have a grasp of it, you can really customise your character extensively

Dialogue Wheel Overhaul - completely changes the way the game’s dialogue wheel works to make it more cohesive, universal, and functional

Modded Hair in DLCs - what it says on the tin; the DAI DLCs are a bit finnicky with hair mods, and this is one of the ways around it

And as usual, there's loads more I could add but if I did, this post would need links for potentially hundreds of mods lmao

sorry this took me a while, I may have overwhelmed myself a bit because I literally use hundreds of mods in these games, and I didn't want to overload you with mods and information. If you need any help, let me know because there's a lot to know. Origins can be deceptively tricky thanks to the engine and its the one that has caused me the most headaches lol

[candledgrave]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who wishes this gate was compatible with this fence, and while there is cc out there to make the gate bigger, I personally wanted to keep it 2 tile wide, so here's a quick and easy tutorial to force this gate into looking how you want, accessible to people who know exactly One (1) TOOL command (dont worry me too)

What you need:

Horse ranch (obviously)

Twisted Mexi's TOOL mod [here]

The pillar I used* comes from growing together (below), but you can use whatever you have available, as long as you're fine with the gate posts being bigger than the fence posts. Note that from close up the original posts may poke through a little, but it's easy to ignore.

*Can't confirm if the colours match decently to any other fence swatch, as I only used the black fence.

To start off with, you obviously have to place down the gate where you want it. You can add in your pillars now, or after you've raised the gate. Now toggle TOOL with Shift + T.

To lift the gate, select it and use the elevate command. (If, like me, you've never touched TOOL before deciding you want to fix this gate, you'll know it's selected when it's green and seethrough.) Type in ".3" to raise the gate in line with the top of the fence. Unless you wanna mess with smaller decimals anything higher is too high, and if you wanna go lower that's personal preference.

Now, onto the pillars. If you haven't whacked em down already, place your pillars onto either side of the gate, and select with tool. From my (limited) personal experience selecting and deselecting pillars with tool is a little finicky and its easy to accidentally move them, and if that happens just undo.

Again, we're using the elevate command, but in reverse to lower the pillars. In order to get them flush with the height of other fence posts, type in "-1.5". Making the command negative will lower the object. Make sure you do this on both pillars, obviously.

Now, with all of that done, you should be able to exit tool mode and have a beautiful gate that spites EA's gate sizing.

Cheers!

[salad-006]

Wait how did you do the eddsworld vhs tape and may I do it too

Ok first off im not associated with eddsworld, so im not really one to ask if you Can. Technically it is bootlegging, but as long as it remains something you only have for personal use i dont think they'll care too much. Like its vhs, no ones profiting off of vhs bootlegs anymore. Multiple members of the crew saw my tape and I've received zero cease and desists

I documented the entire process so i plan on making a video out of it eventually, but in the meantime here was the basic idea

Its actually pretty easy to record footage onto tape. It's just Very finicky. all you need is a specific hdmi to av adapter, a vcr, a tape (obviously) and a computer

I used this video for learning the actual recording process, which was pretty useful given this was my first time trying anything like this. They also link the specific adapter in the video so you can get it there.

A few tips

Keep footage under 2 hours. If you're using a blank tape that's usually the limit unless you record in LP/SLP mode, both of which will give you worse-looking footage

Crop everything down to fit a 4:3 aspect ratio, then stretch the footage back out to fill the screen. When you're recording on the tape it captures your entire screen, and will simply squish it all down to fit the aspect ratio. Even when I set my computer monitor to the same ratio it still left me with black borders, so stretching it out is your best bet

Save the video at 60fps. While i havent had issues with it myself, I've been told that anything lower can cause issues with the visuals. I had mine set at 60 and i had no issues, so if possible I'd suggest that

Have a blank section at the beginning and end of the footage. The greatest enemy you'll meet in doing this is having the stupid media player menu pop up and botch the whole recording. Having a few seconds of nothing at the beginning gives you time to make sure the menu goes away before you hit record.

I also had a few seconds of dead air inbetween episodes, which helped greatly because i actually had problems with the audio getting out of sync. Rather than start over from the beginning i was able to start over from the beginning of episodes without there being a noticeable cut

That should be enough i think. As a whole the project was pretty expensive, just coming over a hundred bucks when you combined the prices for the case, sticker, tape, etc. I probably could've saved money buying cheaper stuff (or not shipping it all to me) but regardless, personalizing the tape further than just slapping episodes onto a tape is gonna cost some cash. Just as a warning