#like there is a huge infinite supply of it to use

[ghostreblogging]

Just some random ass au.

Like what if Danny's main language becomes ghost speak. So ghost speak is like a magic language. Meaning when using this language and putting intent into it you can do magic.

But still he can work around it since all he has to do is be super casual about every word he says. So it wasn't a problem

Until it comes to light that anything Danny writes becomes a magic spell, because he's in all of his half dead glory and is now a native to the language . Since Danny is writing and has an intent. Like pass this as a good essay for his class.

So like every school assignment becomes a mini magic scroll. Which every one of them is either luck magic or whatever things he had to write. Like he had to write about marine biology. And ended up with a paper that spews out water.

Even computers don't help. Since technically unknowingly he's still writing it in ghost speak just romanized. So it's a little bit better but still.

Anyway. This becomes a huge problem when a new nobody rogue tries to use his school assignments bunched together with staples as a magic tome.

In other news , when the bats finally get the powerful magic tome the new unknown was using they are faced with subfar school assignments. Like graded. The mini tsunami spell is a paper on ocean currents.

Well at least it's super easy to find the maker of the tome.

[urstarlitharlot]

more of my infinite supply of hjp headcanons 💋

has the undefeatable sad eyes and resting bitch face combo

not the biggest music fan but is a huge nirvana fan

will sneak scissors to secretly cut his hair even shaggier to piss off petunia

has like.. idk how to describe it the permanent eyeliner thing? like he naturally has a pretty dark waterline

his voice gets super high pitched when hes excited but he gets embarrassed about it

a huge romantic but not in the traditional way

his two biggest love languages are acts of service and physical touch like he cant really vocalize how he feels but he'll do small little things to show it and esp after the war constantly needs to be touching the people he cares about like his fingers are perpetually on rons neck/wrist

during his first year he tried to use a shrinking charm on his clothes but it didn't fully work on his pants and eventually he just gave up and now rocks flared/bootcut jeans

constantly wears the same beat up ass converses like those shits have been through hell and back 😭😭 judas was wearing those fucking shoes

petunia is catholic and vernon is kind of an atheist so growing up he had that catholic guilt engrained into him and esp paired w him being abused he has a bad guilt complex 😭😭

curls up like a cat when hes asleep

can't whistle

(following the whole amortenia three scents thing) his are cigs (hes def a smoker), that grass/rain smell during late fall after it storms, and some like fruity cherry smell

post war taught ron how to drive

he def had a bigger friendship w neville than he heard and i feel like he would visit nevilles parents with him

agreed with rhe concept of spew but though hermione went about it horribly (she kinda did)

keeps every letter from ron in a shoe box

is comforted by small spaces

[zombielesbean]

Long post incoming! Since my minecraft creative world has been getting a lot of attention lately, I thought I'd do a post about the history of it!

previously I had thought it started in 2018, but looking into it it turns out I started it in 2017, which is the first year I played minecraft before that point, my sibling was really into it, but I'd never really been into it that much. the switch came out in 2017 and we got one pretty close to launch, and, not long after that, minecraft released for the system, and we got it so my sibling could finally play, and I gave it a try myself, too

I ended up getting very into it, my first base was this big building built into the side of a mountain :) after that, I got very into the building aspect of minecraft, much more than I liked survival, so I ended up trying out building in creative mode, and built this big house

it had a pool in the basement and lots of simulated furniture like a sink and refrigerator in the kitchen hehe

after this experience, I realized that building in minecraft creative mode is essentially having an infinite supply of legos, and I'd been really into videos about people's giant lego cities or terrain builds or big model train dioramas, and I realized this was the perfect way for me to get to build my own landscapes and such

and so, I generated a flat world

in minecraft for nintendo switch, you could generate a flat world with structures, plus some trees and water features, so that's what this was

the first thing I did was just, plant a huge forest, with little terraforming, and then I built a giant castle

and then I built a mountain

and then I started building an ocean

and here's just some other things I built around that time:

after that, I didn't play for awhile, until 2018, when they ported bedrock to the switch, and I picked up the game again because the performance improvements were really good, and also, it just spurred me on to play again in general ehe

here's a look at basically the entire world at that point:

not terribly long after that I met @da-mous and we started playing minecraft together and building stuff in this world together :)

After that there was another pretty long hiatus, I didn't really work on it more until 2020

before that it'd basically just been me and my sibling working on the world together, me doing all the terrain and that kind of stuff, and they were adding lil buildings to the village, but after meeting cass I started playing with more friends, such as @bisthefairy, who added trains to the world :)

at this point my plan was to build a big cliffside around the entire area and make it into a big valley, and then build more stuff (like an "evil" village and castle to oppose the "good" one I'd already built), and I'd started work on the cliff on the side of the world where I wanted that castle to be

but shortly after that, the first real breakthrough occurred: cass gave me new tools, using command blocks

she gave me tools that could do things like build a massive pillar of dirt below me every tick down to the world limit, build a massive square sheet of dirt below me, fill in a space with water, or paint blocks in front of me into whatever type of block I wanted

this absolutely changed everything, and the cliff project and the ocean project turned from things that would have taken me weeks or even months to complete working by hand, down to only days

and, my landscape structures no longer had to be simply hollow facades, but they were now solid all the way through and I could more easily make things like caves, too!

things started going so fast after that point, the entirety of the world I had built went from this area:

...to this (above pictured area is circled, and not everything pictured here was already built back then)

everything I had done in the last three years was suddenly dwarfed in only a few months

I finished the cliffs, I finished the ocean, I built a custom desert (based on the high desert in Oregon), I built volcanoes, I built mountain ranges, I built the evil castle, I built villages across the ocean, I built huge sloping plains, I built a huge underground cavern with a fairy village in it and fake stars on the ceiling... my projects had gotten so much bigger and more numerous

some time after this, I had to move to the PC version finally, because of an incident involving 14,000 end crystals being spawned into the world, which ruined my save file by creating an inescapable black hole of frame rate loss, and we needed to fix that lol

but anyway, that opened up a lot to me, I had much greater performance and draw distance, and I could play with using structure blocks to steal things from normally generated minecraft worlds, like buildings and just pieces of already generated landscapes, and the plop them into the world and then smoothly integrate them into my already built world, which was really fun

structures can only be of a certain size at a time too, so I had entire notebook pages dedicated to mapping out the pieces I was taking so I could copy paste them all back together seamlessly, ehe

also now that I was on PC, I started dabbling a little bit in external tools, mostly so that I could change the biomes; as a flat world, the entire world was the plains biome, and that really bugged me

I found one that was, honestly, pretty clunky, but did what I wanted with biomes, and that was pretty cool! there weren't a lot of tools for bedrock back in those days, so I did what I could haha

but, now my desert was actually a desert! it would actually snow on top of my mountains! huzzah! and I also took the opportunity to just copy paste ocean all around my world, so that it would become a continent surrounded by water, and I built a jungle island far away

after that, I played a little bit here and there, but wasn't really focused on it too much, I didn't really play at all in 2022 or 2023, I was just doing gamedev nonstop pretty much all year last year

that is, until Grey Area finally released, and @chemkitt had showed me a really cool mod for java edition called 'axiom' that's made specifically for terrain building, like a supercharged version of cass's command block tools, and the fire to work on my minecraft world was lit anew

it was just like the renaissance that occurred when cassie made those tools, suddenly things that had previously taken weeks now took mere days, I was able to completely finish the continent and surrounding lands in mere hours, built a giant archipelago in only a day, and could now change biomes and copy paste millions of blocks in an instant

finally satisfied with the size of the world, I also figured out how to go into the files and complete another long held dream I'd had for the world, to change it back to a normal minecraft world, and let the outer edges generate like normal, essentially kind of sealing in my world, and making it so that the outer edges are no longer endless nothing, which I felt was kind of creepy ehehe

and that's where we are today! my little flat world has grown so much :) my current project is building a new entire (even bigger!) giant continent to the east of the original, and another, smaller, southern continent as well!

and most recently, I've been building a big flower garden type of place full of lots of trees and foliage over on the original continent :)

it's been so so nice seeing so many people enjoy the work I've done here! I'm hoping to do a whole video tour of the place sometime soon, there's so much more to see and talk about than I even did here, ehe!

and there's lots and lots of space to decorate and build things and plant forests and all that, so I hope to invite more people over to add to it in the near future, too!

thanks for reading :3

[lookismaddict]

Lookism Characters and Their Tastes in Music ♪ (Headcannons)

Daniel Park:

Daniel likes alternative/indie pop, Soul, and R&B. He likes any song that gives a chill vibe to it and songs with nice lyrics.

Khai Dreams, mxmtoon, Keshi, etc.

He enjoys listening to Lo-Fi too, while he just lays on the ground in his house, relaxing, contemplating about events in his life until he accidentally falls asleep.

Sometimes, he sends Jay a text message asking what songs he’d recommend and Jay would send him a three-page list of songs in an online document

Zack Lee:

Hip-hop, Rap, and R&B

Consists of hyped artists like Drake, 21 Savage, A$AP Rocky, Lil Uzi, etc.

He used to be a big fan of Kanye West, but after Kanye’s multiple controversies, he stopped listening to his music because he now believes that he’s trash.

But on days when he feels down, he listens to artists like Joji. *insert Glimpse of Us here while Zack cries a river*

Vasco:

Vasco is into the older classic 60s-80s bands: Queen, Bon Jovi, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Journey, etc.

Prefers the oldies with meaningful lyricsm rather than the new songs on the radio

However, he enjoys listening to more of the earlier 2010s boy bands like One Direction, and Backstreet Boys from the 90s. (He even listens to that one song that Daniel and Duke made, on repeat since he asked Duke to send him a copy of that song.)

Doesn’t mind listening to some classic 70s songs from Air Supply, Bee Gees, Earth, Wind, and Fire, etc. in peaceful late night jogs

Jay Hong:

R&B and Soul (boujee tastes 💸)

Frank Ocean, Daniel Caesar, Steve Lacy, Khali Uchis, etc.

He has similar tastes to Daniel as well, and recommends Daniel tunes that provides relaxation and chill vibes.

The both of them would sometimes sit together during classroom break, and Jay would share one of his Airpods with Daniel. He’ll play songs that he thought that Daniel might like while he helps him do homework.

Jay even tried to ask Duke if he could get a copy of the song that he and Daniel performed at the festival. It took Duke a while to understand what Jay was trying to say, but he did manage to send it to him at some point. Once he got the song, he secretly played it on repeat for over a month.

Mira Kim:

Pop, Alternative/Indie (But a lot of people don’t know that she’s interested in this genre. Many assumed that she’s into K-pop like Zoe, since they’re both close.)

Clairo, Mitski, Marina and the Diamonds, Halsey (Especially her Badlands Album), Melanie Martinez, Lana Del Rey, etc.

Sometimes listens to R&B/Soul too (like NIKI, Justine Skye, Kiana Lede, etc.) whenever she chills on her bed

Whenever she studies in her room, she likes putting these songs on in the background to help her get in the zone

Zoe Park:

HUGE K-Pop fan

Other than BTS, she’s also a fan of other groups like NCT, ATEEZ, Stray Kids, ENHYPHEN, The Boyz, Blackpink, TWICE, Red Velvet, G-IDLE, LE SSERAFIM, STAYC, NewJeans, etc.

Also listens to older groups too and goes on a K-pop marathon late at night while doing homework with BIG BANG, Super Junior, INFINITE, VIXX, EXO, ToppDogg, iKON, etc.

She also loves listening to the older girl groups like 2NE1, Girl’s Generation, Wonder Girls, F(x), Girl’s Day, AOA, etc.

Eli Jang:

Eli likes to listen to bands such as Cigarettes After Sex, The Neighbourhood, Arctic Monkeys, The 1975, etc.

Loves the cool vibes of these Alternative/Indie bands with a hint of low sensuality to them.

He’s also interested in listening to artists like Chase Atlantic.

But of course, he doesn’t listen to these songs around Yenna. He doesn’t want her to acquire such vulgar words, and he doesn’t want to ruin her innocence. (Listening to these types of songs was like a guilty pleasure for Eli.)

Vin Jin:

Vin Jin listens to rap artists that inspire him and his style in rapping and hip-hop

Listens to K-Rap by Flowsik, ZICO, DPR LIVE, Jay Park, Dok-2, Simon Dominic, Dumbfoundead, etc.

His celebrity crush is Jessi and he’s a major fanboy if he ever sees her in person

Wants to reach international levels of Asian rap, like Rich Brian’s level someday, who’s a part of 88rising

Mary Kim:

Mary mostly listens to female rap artists that give off BBE ✨

She LOVES Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, Saweetie, Lizzo, Doja Cat, etc.

Also listens to badass female K-rappers like CL, Jessi, HyunA, Lisa from Blackpink, etc.

Sometimes, she even listens to other artists like Audrey Nuna, REI AMI, BIBI, etc.

Johan Seong:

Listens to edgy rock bands (post-hardcore, metalcore, and punk) 💀

Consists of Pierce the Veil, Sleeping with Sirens, Bring me the Horizon, I Prevail, Of Mice & Men, Breaking Benjamin, etc.

On nights when he walks his dog Eden, he likes listening to bands such as Paramore, My Chemical Romance, Green Day, etc. (Edgy bands that give off low vibes.)

His fav song is Take me to Church by Hozier, even though it isn’t even close to punk.

Since Zack is a fan of hip-hop, he discovered darker hip-hop genres one day and he thought of Johan while listening to them. He then recommended Johan to listen to Hip-Hop Punk Rap and Horrorcore Trap Metal. Mostly artists like Suicide Boys, Freddie Dredd, and even CORPSE.

Johan digged the song reccs that Zack offered, and now he goes to him for more artists to listen to.

Jake Kim:

Jake is into love songs by Justin Bieber, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, even Big Time Rush. (Similar to Vasco’s tastes)

He also enjoys listening to R&B and Soul music by Chris Brown, Jason Derulo, Usher, Ne-Yo, etc.

Sometimes when he’s home alone, he’d sing in front of the mirror while pretending to serenade someone by smoothing out his hair seductively, blasting these songs all night.

I like to believe that this man got a good voice, so of course, he’ll nail these songs if you take him to karaoke.

Samuel Seo:

R&B and Trap Soul is his way to cope

Certain nights when he likes to feel sexy while standing naked in front of the window to his condo, he blasts music by Jeremih, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Tory Lanez, Bryson Tiller, Trey Songz, etc. (similar to Gun’s type of music but thank god he doesn’t know that they have similar tastes in music)

When he feels low in spirit, he drinks to songs that are relatable to him and has the same vibe as his mood like 6lack - PRBLMS, SZA, The Weeknd, Travis Scott - Power is Power, blackbear - do re mi, Russ - Overdue, etc.

Samuel listens to these types of songs on occasion though, and doesn’t have time to sit down and actually listen to them since he’s always been so busy with work.

Gun Park:

Similar to Jay Hong’s taste in music, he got “expensive” tastes in music as well ✨

Late at night while drinking alone, he likes listening to sensual R&B. (Some days, The Weeknd, Bryson Tiller, Tory Lanez, etc.)

During his workouts, he enjoys listening to rap and hip-hop from artists such as, 21 Savage, Meek Mill, Kendrick Lamar, Schoolboy Q, Denzel Curry, etc. (Songs that get his blood pumping, while working out.)

Sometimes, he also listens to K-Chill R&B artists, like DEAN, Sik-k, Crush, DPR LIVE, Jay Park, etc. whenever he goes out on late night drives in an expensive car.

Gun HATES the music that Goo puts on whenever he’s driving themselves to any destination. He gets annoyed whenever Goo takes the AUX chord and plays weird songs from “sus” artists such as DBangz, Lil Boom, and sometimes Yung Gravy.

Gun punched Goo one time when he started blasting “Thick ****** and Anime Tiddies”. Gun would yell at him saying, “What is this trash?!” and the fight would eventually escalate to another one of their side-of-the-road brawls

Goo Kim:

This man’s taste in music is ALL OVER THE PLACE. Just chaotic.

Although, he has some shared music tastes with Gun. (Mostly similar tastes in Hip-Hop songs.)

He enjoys listening to fun and bouncy music, that goes with his moods really well (Pop or hip-hop, it doesn’t matter to him. Just no country music. He, “can’t stand that shit.”)

On days when Gun is annoyed with Goo, he’ll intentionally play country music just to annoy Goo just to get back at him, while going on long drives anywhere. Goo would eventually punch Gun on the arm, almost causing the car to swerve, until Gun decides to pull the car to the side of the road and fight him then and there.

LOVES listening to very weird, unhinged music. Mostly by artists like Yung Gravy, Bbno$, Lil Boom, Dbangz, etc. (probably even Pink Guy)

Goo is a big fan of Tyler the Creator, since he’s also a big goofy guy who doesn’t care about anyone else but himself and making money (through his music). Not only does he like his unique style and music, but he finds him very admirable for not caring about people’s thoughts on him, no matter what type of outrageous or unusual things he says.

He definitely enjoys listening to popular anime OPs and OSTs from anime that he liked when he’s at home.

DG:

DG doesn’t have a preferred taste in music, but he enjoys music outside of his own demographic.

Since he always listens to K-pop 24/7 (because of his job), he doesn’t mind listening to other types of music as well, and seeks out for new music to listen to.

He is very open-minded. Some days, he’ll listen to American Hip-hop or Rock (Kid Cudi, Childish Gambino, etc.) and other days he’ll listen to Latin Trap. (Farruko, Bad Bunny, Ozuna, etc.)

During his trips overseas, he’ll listen to traditional Japanese instrumentals to relax while riding in his private jet. The music would often lull him to sleep, as it is calm and perfect for someone who’s constantly busy.

Eugene:

🎼 Likes listening to classical music while reading a book, or doing paperwork. (Mostly dark academia classical music.)

Beethoven, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Franz Liszt, etc. makes him focus and concentrate.

Also, he’s an enthusiast of the historical American “Jazz Age”, which was music from the 1920’s. (But his interest in jazz is not limited to just that era. He likes jazz all the way to the current jazz of today.) 🎷

Eugene has exquisite tastes in music. Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Chet Baker, gives him comfort and puts him at ease.

He collects vinyl records of these famous artists, and likes listening to jazz music while sipping on a cup of tea or coffee, admiring the sweet tunes of the Roaring Twenties while looking out the window from his office.

Not only does he like classical, and jazz music, but he’s also interested in Traditional Pop. (The forefathers who started pop and got famous in Las Vegas shows.)

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Paul Anka, etc. puts him in a very festive mood, especially while sitting in his office while putting together a blueprint of his devious plans.

[avelera]

Andor brings the importance of money and economic systems back to mainstream sci-fi/fantasy

So fun fact, one reason I love "Andor" so much is that they have money in it.

Right off the bat, in episode 1, they start establishing that things cost money in this sci-fi industrial town where we find ourselves. People have jobs. There are things people can't do because they have money. There's things that even people with money, like Mon Mothma, can't afford because money isn't infinite and it requires logistics to move around. There are haves and have-nots in this society and the Rebellion will sink or swim based on if it can pay its people and purchase equipment. One of the first major arcs is a bank heist.

Ok, so why is this so huge? Shouldn't it be obvious that money makes the world go 'round, even in a sci-fi setting like Star Wars?

Well, here's the thing. Think about all the Disney-owned movies you've seen. How many of them talk about money in any kind of concrete terms? It does happen, but it's quite rare and it's almost never to the extent that money matters in "Andor". A character might have "rich" or "poor" as a character trait, but economic systems are rarely discussed, why certain people do or don't have money isn't discussed.

This is for a very good reason. Back in the mid 20th c., entertainment companies like Disney made a conscious choice not to talk about economic systems in their stories. Why? Because to do so forced the story to take a stance in the existential battle between Capitalism vs. Communism. Even seemingly innocuous story choices like the injustices a poor kid might face in a story could be seen as taking a stance, not something you wanted to invite with things like the Red Scare going on.

But it's really a shame that this choice, which was in response to the political conflicts of the time, has been so perpetuated and that companies like Disney still avoid the concretes of money in most of their works. And that warps the conversation within those works and within society at large as a result. More often in mainstream genre fiction stories as a result, stories must play to fantastical elements and undefined Good vs. Evil to explain why a conflict is taking place between two sides. Certain "So what?" factors and plot elements don't quite line up. Money and resources are at the heart of most real world major conflicts, but by focusing on "good" and "evil" instead you obfuscate the interests involved, the motivations involved, what everyone is getting out of a conflict when they choose to help or not to help. You can't feed yourself on idealism alone.

By leaning into the existence of money, resources, and the haves-and-have-nots of a society, Andor is able to couch its story of revolution in real world limitations for the characters and real world obstacles. It makes everything deeper, more satisfying, more understandable as to why anyone is doing anything. It's hard to talk about fighting a fascist state like the Empire if you don't talk about complicit corporations, or forced labor (because even the Empire can't afford to pay for the sheer amount of labor it needs otherwise) or how everyone on the Rebellion side can afford these fancy X-Wings.

I hope shows like Andor will be taken to heart, not just by more mainstream works of genre fiction using the inherent conflicts that arise from a defined economic system, but also by younger creators who may have grown up on a steady genre fiction diet of "money only sort of exists when it's needed for the plot, if at all". So much worldbuilding is impossible if you don't understand who has resources and what economic systems are being employed. So much character conflict is shallow if you can't define who has money, who has resources, and who has obstacles from not having a limitless supply of those things, and what are those obstacles?

It's super refreshing to see and I will reiterate, Andor is perhaps the best show out there right now from a writer perspective and everyone should watch it.

[musclesandhammering]

But How Strong Is the God of Stories in a Fight?

I’ve been browsing through mcu ‘who would win’ posts on social media (bc they’re unavoidable and I like to torture myself) and I noticed a few common themes when it comes to our new GOS!Loki. First, people act like it’s a given that he’s never gonna be able to get up from that chair, which is… highly unlikely.

There’s a nearly unanimous consensus among meta bloggers and theorists and industry leakers that he’s going to have a huge role in the rest of the multiverse saga (particularly Secret Wars), and one of the most reliable marvel leakers said recently that he’d likely rejoin the fight by timeslipping into a past version of himself (so that he can exist on the throne and in a seperate place on the timeline simultaneously without having to let go of the branches- think quantum superposition). And we know Loki retains all his new powers when he timeslips (see: citadel scene in 2x6), so my point is: it’s highly probable that we will see the new and improved Loki out of his tree and back in a fight setting eventually. (Now a lot of people have said that’s impossible bc he’s now so op that any fight with him in it would be either 2 seconds long or just unrealistic. I disagree- when he’s not on the throne, he’s not omniscient or omnipotent. Strong asf, yes, but still usable in battle as long as his opponent is also a multiversal being.) But that brings me to my next point:

Most people on marvel twitter/Tiktok/Youtube/etc seem to be missing the point a bit. Every argument I’ve seen for ‘Loki solos [insert name here]’ has been based on the fact that he’s currently holding all of time together. Stuff along the lines of “he can move his finger and delete ~so and so~ out of existence!!”. And I mean.. sure. But like… him sitting in a chair, holding onto the branches is not what makes him badass. That’s not the feat. In fact, I would argue that there are several other op characters that could sit and hold just as good as he can. If that was the main takeaway from that ending. But it’s not. So what were his actual feats in the finale, if not that? Well-

first of all, he’s immune to temporal radiation. He’s also immune to spaghettification (see: 2x5 when everyone is stringing away except for him). This isn’t just a few gamma waves- this is the force that destroys entire universes (implying that no one in those universes can withstand it- not Thor, not Thanos, not Captain Marvel, etc). The fact that Loki remains, even when whatever universe he’s in ceases to exist, could imply that he’s a nexus being. But it could also imply he’s just really powerful.

his telekinesis (I’m guessing that’s what he used?) is strong enough to destroy the loom- the giant piece of technology that was responsible for controlling all of existence.

his magic is nearly infinite- he has a nearly limitless supply of energy. He was able to revive every universe in existence with ease, and is now acting as a battery powering the ever-expanding branches of time (a mini multiverse) completely on his own, indefinitely. So, theoretically, it would be impossible to drain him of his power (like Agatha did Wanda, Wanda did Maria, etc) because his power isn’t finite. I’m assuming this has a lot to do with what Victor Timely explained about entropy & time (see: 2x3).

he can open a rift in spacetime to anywhere- even the end of time, which is supposed to be inaccessible. This is essentially an advanced version of America Chavez’s powers.

he has a rightful place on the throne at the end of time- more so than He Who Remains, even. This is pretty obscure and wouldn’t really help in a fight- but it’s an impressive feat, nonetheless. When he starts toward the place where the citadel used to be, a staircase forms for him & the gold from the kintsugi cracks in the walls all flows to his throne, causing the remains of the citadel to break away- almost as if it had been waiting for him to arrive.

he was able to reorganise the structure of part of the multiverse (theoretically infinite universes) to his liking. He changed it from its original linear shape to the shape of a tree, so that it could expand & grow infinitely (which was really clever of him actually).

Those were the bits just in that finale sequence that are impressive as hell. These are all things he can do when he’s not sitting on the throne, when he’s not holding the branches. That doesn’t even include his other time-related powers from earlier in the episode & ep 5. Such as:

He’s a living version of HWR’s master tempad. He can travel freely via interconnected timelines & beyond them, to any time and any place- even ones that don’t exist anymore/yet.

He can timeslip to any point in spacetime he wants with his current body or he can timeslip into a past/future version of himself (as I mentioned in the intro, that second part will probably be very relevant in upcoming movies).

He can read people’s temporal auras & use them as coordinates to locate those people (or those people’s variants) across the timelines (and even in places outside the multiverse).

He can time travel in places that theoretically have no time- or at least, they’re separated from the multiversal flow of time (the TVA, the citadel)

He can affect & even rewrite stories/timelines without creating a new branched reality. (Him timeslipping back & tampering with events in A.D. Doug’s lab or in the loom room or in the citadel didn’t create new branches with variants etc, it just changed the trajectory of whichever branch he was currently on.) He’s essentially the exception to the mcu’s established time travel rules.

When he goes back in time, he can choose whether to rewrite a timeline or simply allow a new branch to form. When he had his conversation with 1x1 Mobius in the finale, he created a branch which was then deleted, but at other points in the episode, he instead altered future events on a single timeline.

He can create variants without a nexus event. When he takes his friends from their timelines in 2x5, we can tell that those timelines didn’t branch any further because we see Don still talking to Loki right in front of them.

He can pause time, step outside of time, and presumably fast forward or rewind it. That big climactic moment in 2x5 when he learns to control his powers? That wasn’t timeslipping- that was him rewinding time. If you look closely, after he goes back a few seconds, you can see the spaghettification strands reverse & actually leave the frame while he’s talking to Sylvie, whereas a few seconds earlier we saw them entering.

He can delete entire timelines at will (even while he’s on them). He created a branch to go back & talk to Mobius in the finale, then when he was done, he deleted it.

He can repel existence erasure (at least temporarily, on a small scale). Again, we saw him reverse the spaghettification strands & make them go away to protect his friends at the end of 2x5.

This one is theoretical, but since he was able to cause an entire timeline to spaghettify, it’s highly likely that he can spaghettify things/people at will. (courtesy of @emotionalflamingo <3)

Those are things directly related to him becoming God of Stories, but there’s also a few other new powers they introduced/old powers they expanded on throughout the course of both seasons:

Pyrokinesis. Setting the sword on fire (1x5). This is inconsequential in the way it was used, but it creates potential for Loki to do some pretty cool stuff.

Transmutation. Turned his TVA clothes into a guards’ uniform in 1x3.

Elemental Manipulation. Dried his clothes in 1x2. Also his story in Thor 1 about veiling himself & Thor in smoke/mist.

Energy blasts. This is one of those things that we all knew he obviously had to be able to do, but they never showed it on screen until this series.

Stronger telekinesis. We saw him use it a couple times in The Avengers & Thor The Dark World, but I would argue that catching an entire skyscraper about to fall on you is a lot more consequential than tossing a few chairs around.

Teleportation. This is another thing that was implied he could do but was never outright shown until the series. And it’s worth mentioning that he can also teleport other people/objects (see: him sending the asshole to the pig pen in 2x3)

Enchantment. Yes, I know he’s shown using mind manipulating powers in the movies, but I think enchantment is different because it essentially allows you to possess someone. Like you can just hop in & pilot their body. And the fact that he was able to help enchant Alioth on his first try implies that his enchantment is extremely powerful.

Shadow Casting. That’s just what I’ve decided to call it. Casting pseudo-autonomous shadows that can actually interact with the physical world… isn’t that sorta like a watered down version of what Gorr the God Butcher was doing? Very cool.

EDITING to add the other abilities he’s always had in the mcu:

Asgardian/frost giant strength, speed, durability, longevity, & regenerative healing. He’s extremely durable to all sorts of attacks

Extremely skilled combatant, proficient in knives/swords/spears. So if he’s up against someone who only uses magic- if their magic was somehow blocked or bound- he would have the absolute advantage

Illusions.

Shapeshifting. He can also shapeshift other people (hello turning Thor into a frog)

Astral Projection.

Duplications, Projections. Apparently they’re two different things

Presence Concealment. Strong enough to hide from Heimdall

Conjuration, Pocket Dimension.

Cryokinesis. And immunity to cold

Mind Manipulation. This is different than enchantment in that he doesn’t have to entirely possess somebody- he can just whisper suggestions to them, read their mind, force them to relive memories, etc.

Expert Trickster/Master Manipulator. Don’t discount it. It’s gotten him out of a lot of sticky situations so far.

So yeah. I honestly don’t even know where I was going with this, but I’m just annoyed with people acting like Loki sitting in a chair holding some vines is what makes him formidable, or that once he gets out of the chair he won’t be formidable anymore. The op-ness everyone’s talking about? That’s all about what happened leading up to his tree-sitting. Not the tree-sitting itself.

It’d be so nice to see debates about what he can do now that don’t just revolve around him holding timelines. :/

[thewebcomicsreview]

ridafi14 said: Youre about the last person i expected to be cool with AI art filters

My contrarian hot take about AI Art that makes everyone mad is that there are inherent limits to what a pattern-matching neural network can do and we're approaching those limits very fast, if we haven't hit them already, and will settle on being a novelty toy for surreal stock images and highly-rendered images of anime girls with big hullabalungaloos, and thus not really be a huge threat to any artist who can survive in a world that already has a nigh-infinite supply of mediocre hullabalungaloo art. AI Art can produce mediocre crap more cheaply than a human artist, but so can a crap artist, and crap artists already exist. I am one! Nothing's changed! I've tried using AI Art for a project so that I could do more projects, and it failed pretty miserably at doing anything I wanted it to do. And if it's not good enough for a hobbyist to make a Legend of the Hare visual novel for fun, what is it good enough for?

Same with, like, ChatGPT. I've tried it. I like that it "remembers" things. It's only a matter of time before someone plugs the Dungeons and Dragons SRD into it and makes a super cool mod for a Virtual Tabletop. But it hallucinates too much to be useful for nonfiction and it's too boring and generic to be fiction, so what's it actually gonna do?

And, yeah yeah, "The tech'll get better". But maybe it won't! Google Translate has been around for decades and yet the Universal Translator still eludes us. Self-Driving cars have been around the corner for ten years, and that tech has seemingly hit a wall (and several children). There's no guarantee that MidJourney in 2030 will be much that better than MidJourney now. The people saying AI art will replace artists were also saying Bitcoin would replace money and then NFTs would replace art.

To me, Clip Studio's "Shade Assist" is the first "AI Art" tool (Actually Clip Studio doesn't call it "AI" at all, to my knowledge) that I've seen and gone "Okay, this probably matters". Not because it'll keep me from having to learn shading, because AI will always be a bit fucky and require a human eye to fix, (even I can tell that furry's legs ain't right, the whites of her eyes got made purple, etc) but because it'll save real artists a bit of time. And that, to me, is where all these "AI" tools will ultimately end up. Novelty crap no one likes and productivity tools artists use happily alongside 3D models.

[scoopertrouper]

could you write about steve and nancy's first major fight (and reconciliation) after they got back together post s4?

anon, i hope you're happy. this prompt ate my brain, chewed it up, and then decided it didn't like how it tasted and spit it out. i was at the ZOO with an adorable little toddler, watching him watch the turtles in wonderment while also thinking "yeah, but WHY are steve and nancy fighting??"

ultimately i think the characters here still need some fine tuning/fleshing out and the premise really only works if you don't think about it too hard. i will probably revisit this in the future with a much stronger editorial eye. 😬

that said, i hope you still very much enjoy this impulsive, self-indulgent 5k words of breaking up (not really lol) and making up schmoop (+ warning for tasteful-ish spice at the end - sorry if that's not your thing).

***

can’t let you slide through my hands

“I don’t like this.”

Nancy hates her voice right now. It’s a quivering, slip of a sound, and she can barely hear it over the slamming echo of her heart inside her ears. 

But Steve hears it. He always hears her, even when it’s something he doesn’t want to hear. 

And if he’s trying to ignore her – trying to pretend the slow, careful grind of whetstone over the edge of his ax has drowned out her words – well, the brief glance he can’t help but flick in her direction gives him away entirely. 

“Steve.”

“Nancy.” 

Each syllable is even, practically toneless, and she hates it. 

“Why are you doing this?” Normally she’d work a lot harder to quash the weak, plaintive note that suffuses the word why, but he’s not listening to her and she doesn’t know what else to do. How else to get his attention. 

“You heard Hopper,” he says with that awful, carelessly empty inflection. “They need all the help they can get.”

Nancy’s fingernails bite into her palms. The sting of it somehow grounds and incenses her, all at the same time. 

“He only said that after you asked him if you could go.”

And hadn’t that been a kick in the pants – Nancy, resigned to staying behind playing bodyguard at Hopper’s request, while Steve only too eagerly offered to tromp off into the woods with Team Distraction like some kind of kamikaze lamb for slaughter. 

(That’s not fair. She knows that of the two of them, she has what could be considered the more important job. Stay at the cabin. Protect El. Make sure nothing happens to her if this frankly suicidal diversionary tactic doesn’t work and they’re attacked during yet another round of psychic Marco Polo with the biggest, baddest ugly they’ve faced yet. 

And she knows Hopper wasn’t lying – they probably could use Steve’s help out there, his seemingly infinite supply of athleticism. Just like she knows that it’s actually a huge compliment that Hopper's trusting her to help keep his daughter safe. So no, she’s not being fair. But also – it’s not fair.)

Steve finally looks up, and he’s wearing that face she’d gotten all too familiar with during the last couple months of their relationship, round one – the one that says he’s trying to see where she’s coming from, but he’s getting annoyed in spite of himself. She hasn’t seen it in quite some time, but she supposes it would’ve been silly to assume it had been retired for good. Neither of them has changed that much.

“Nance. Come on. You know I’m gonna be way more useful out there than I would be here. I’m a garbage shot, anyway.”

Nancy scoffs.

“So you’d rather be cannon fodder instead?”

He props the ax next to the door to the front door of the cabin and crosses his arms, looking a little wounded. 

“Jesus, give me some credit. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?”

“Sure, as long as someone’s there to follow your ass through a gate, and beat off the demon bats, and bandage you when you’re bleeding out all over the place!” 

She knows she’s probably starting to sound unhinged. She knows it. But she can’t help it. She does not want him to do this. This is not a good plan.

His face twists, and he looks like he wants to grab her – hold her like he would’ve if this were still September of senior year – but he pulls back at the last second. He does that a lot, now, like he’s still not totally sure what he has permission to do. 

She wishes he hadn’t. Touching him would be infinitely preferable to shouting at him. If she was touching him, she could grab on tight. Refuse to let go. Keep him anchored here by sheer force of will. 

“Nancy, I don’t get it,” he says, tossing his arms up helplessly instead of putting them around her. “This was exactly what your plan was the first time. Cause a ruckus. Create a diversion. Fly in under the radar. It worked once. Ish. We can make it work again, at least long enough for El to try and flush the creep out of hiding.”

Nancy’s jaw drops.

“Worked? Define worked, Steve!” Her eyes are burning. “Eddie is dead! Max is in a coma, maybe…maybe…” as good as dead “…forever. There is a gate to hell splitting the whole town open down the middle, and Vecna is still alive. Only now we have no idea where he is or what he’s doing! In what way would you say any of what we did worked?”

“Because we hurt him,” he responds immediately, low and hard. “We hurt him, and now – now we know he bleeds. We can hurt him again, Nancy, I gotta believe that.” His mouth thins. “Eddie dying, losing Max –” his voice cracks on the “a”, but he soldiers through it “– it all sucks. I hate it. But it wasn’t your fault. They knew what they were getting themselves into.” He pauses, and squares his shoulders. “They weren’t like Barb.”

Nancy’s mouth tastes like ash, and for once she can’t blame it on the air toxicity.

“Barb? Who said anything about Barb?” She’s trying to keep her breathing under control, but her voice sounds far away. “This has nothing to do with her.”

“Bullshit.” 

He looks at her dead on as he says it, like he knows she knows exactly what he means, and she sees red. She’s not sure what’s about to come out of her mouth, but she knows that whatever it is, she’s probably not going to be proud of it – and this time, she won’t be able to use spiked punch as an excuse, nor will she be granted the dubious mercy of drunken amnesia. 

“This has nothing to do with Barb,” she says slowly, “And everything to do with the fact that sometimes, I wish you weren’t so fucking stupid.”  

He flinches back like she’s slapped him and honestly, she might as well have. She feels sick. 

It’s the worst fight they’ve had – actually the only fight they’ve had – since they decided to try again, and what does it say about them that they didn’t last more than ten minutes before they started ripping out the stitches on old, barely healed wounds?

“Well you asked for this,” Steve finally replies, voice quivering minutely. “You’re the one who came to me and wanted to give this another shot. So you tell me which one of us is stupid.”

It hurts. It was supposed to. Nancy immediately feels herself deflate, like he’s sucked away all that was keeping her upright and angry. 

For once, she doesn’t have an immediate response and Steve doesn’t wait for one anyway, whirling on his heel and storming back into the house. 

He’s forgotten his ax. The blade gleams at her, mocking, from where it sits against the door frame. 

She’s a bit shaky, and she needs a minute to collect herself before she goes back inside. Everyone in the cabin is gonna know they’ve been fighting – the walls are not soundproof – and it’s humiliating.  

More humiliating is the fact that this is coming when they’ve hardly been back together two months (and when she’s barely been officially broken up with Jonathan for five). She knows what it looks like,  what she looks like – bouncing back and forth between two men on a whim because she can’t manage to choose once and for all who she wants.

But it’s not like that. Her relationship with Jonathan had been dead long before she’d been able or willing to admit it, and this thing with Steve is so new and old at the same time that it’s just – it’s hard to find her footing, sometimes. 

They’ve both changed so much, but now she’s realizing that there are ways they’ve stayed the same, too. And with the good always comes the bad.

Okay. Okay. She takes a deep breath, then two. She can’t stay out here forever. She has to go back inside, and hopefully they can awkwardly circle each other until they’ve cooled down enough to talk it over like the adults they almost are. 

Because she’s not giving up after one (shitty) fight. Rather than make her second guess her choice, Steve’s parting shot had the reverse effect – it had clarified exactly how stupid a decision it wasn’t. She had wanted this. She still wants it. 

It’s only been two months, sure, but she’s been happy, really happy (a miracle considering the world is literally ending around them). 

She hopes he’s felt the same, last ten minutes notwithstanding.

Damn it. She shouldn’t have said those things to him. That one thing. Guilt is settling over her like a blanket, thicker and more noxious than even the poisonous air of the Upside Down. 

Nancy’s not sorry about getting mad. If he wants her to be his girlfriend again – and she hopes he still wants her to be his girlfriend again – then he has to understand that she’s going to have an opinion on when and how he hurls his body into the line of fire. 

But being mean on purpose? That one, she’s pretty sorry for. Calling him stupid hadn’t been intended to do anything but inflict damage, and she knows she owes him an apology (once the thought of talking to him again doesn’t make the confused snarl of anger and regret and affection that’s all tangled up in her chest tighten to the point of pain).

First things first, though. 

Chin up, go back inside.

*****

At first, she’s grateful for how simple it is to avoid him all afternoon. The cabin is tiny, even taking into account the hastily constructed add-on that had come once the Byers realized that returning to California wasn’t an option, their house was no longer theirs and Hopper’s cabin in its original state had nowhere near enough space to house them all.

But as the unofficial headquarters for their little hodgepodge Upside Down insurgency, it’s also in a near-constant state of low-grade chaos, which is pretty easy to disappear into – or, in this case, use as a convenient excuse to avoid someone.

(That said, tension is tension, and in this case it’s so apparent that even Hopper – whose unspoken approach to any relationship that isn’t his own generally veers toward the less he knows, the better – shoots them both some pretty unimpressed looks when Steve volunteers himself and Robin, unprompted, for the second of the day’s supply runs.)

Her relief edges into anxiety, though, as they get closer and closer to nightfall and Nancy still hasn’t had a chance to get him alone or even do more than accidentally catch his eye over the sad cans of stew they scrounge up for pre-op dinner. It sits like sludge on her tongue (and based on the look on El’s face as she dutifully shovels down spoonfuls, that’s probably not just Nancy’s guilt talking).  

In fact, it’s only as they’re packing up to leave that she realizes she’s probably going to have to go out of her way to corner him, because while Hopper’s come inside to say his goodbyes, Steve's nowhere to be found. 

And part of her really, really wants to be petty and leave it at that. Wants to keep stewing in her resentment and let him go off alone because he was too much of a coward to spare her a fifteen-second goodbye.

But the larger, louder half of her brain won’t shut up about how she’d feel if something happened and the last thing she said to him was…that, so she sucks it up and stomps toward the door, flinging it open and –

– startling Steve so badly that he jerks back a step, eyes widening with alarm.

“Jesus, Nancy, you scared the shit outta me!” She can’t muster up more than a couple blinks in response, and he scuffs one of the dirty planks of the porch with his boot. “Look, I know I’m not, like, your favorite person right now, but I still wanted to come say, uh, see you later. You know…just because.”

Oh, he is such an asshole.

She doesn’t know how to tell him this in a way that would help him understand what she’s actually trying to communicate, so instead, she yanks him down and kisses him hard, something she hasn’t done in public much this go-around. It’s a frankly awful smash of lips and teeth, and may in fact be the worst kiss Nancy has ever given or received.

Regardless, she thinks it gets the point across. 

She pulls back, mouth throbbing, and stares at him again, fingers clenched in the collar of his jacket as he stands there, stunned and swaying. 

“See you later, Steve,” she says pointedly, instead of “please, come back”, or, better yet, “don’t fucking go.” He softens immediately, and inches forward.

“Nancy –”

“Later,” she interrupts firmly. “When you get back. Okay?”

Steve eyes her for several long seconds, then relents.

“Okay,” he says, then he kisses her for real this time (gently, because ow), a brief little soft–as–silk press that leaves her wanting more than she can possibly hope to have at this specific moment.

When she goes back inside (she refuses to watch them roll off into the distance like she’s some kind of war bride, she carries a gun for Christ’s sake), she pauses for a moment, debating checking for the third time since midday that her rifle is loaded and ready. 

Jonathan is there, sitting tense at the two-person kitchen table, staring out into the woods as the rest of the gang helps prep El (or "helps" in some cases).

Most of the time, they’re pretty civil with each other. The breakup had basically been mutual, and she only gets a little livid mad now when she thinks about how he lied to her about Emerson. And kept lying to her. Until the only goddamn reason she found out was because – anyway.

Most of the time, if she ignores inconsequential context like that, they’re pretty civil. 

“Trouble in paradise?” he says, almost inaudibly. 

She takes her rifle to the living room. 

****

In the end, the night and the operation are both total duds, and doesn’t that just add insult to injury?

El searches for what feels like hours, pushing herself farther and farther until her nose is bleeding thickly enough that Joyce sternly calls time on the whole exercise. 

No go, is what El says afterward, wiping blood off her face. Some of it ends up smeared under one of her darkly ringed eyes, and she lets Mike fuss over her until it’s gone. 

Whatever psychic plane she usually ducks into is dead silent, and in the corporeal world, there isn’t a single peep out of anything Upside Down-adjacent, as Hopper reports via walkie-talkie. No stray demodogs, not even an errant vine around what’s usually one of the most active sections of the gate. 

And nothing from Max, who Lucas has taken to watching like a hawk – “just in case” – whenever they can spare him. Nancy’s not sure what’s meant to follow “just in case”, and she’s always been a tiny bit afraid of what Lucas might come back with if she asks – so she doesn’t. For once, she doesn’t need answers.

It’s eerie, and anticlimactic, and it leaves Nancy with an uneasy pit in her stomach. Under the circumstances, no news doesn’t always feel like good news.

With how the night has fizzled, she doesn’t expect much when Hopper’s group rumbles down the drive – so the jagged, ugly cut she can see arcing down the left side of Steve’s forehead from even as far off as the front window comes as a nasty shock. (Though honestly, should it?)

“What the hell happened?” she demands, running to meet them before they can even climb out of the truck. “I thought you said it was quiet.”

“It was,” Hopper confirms, killing the ignition. “Not a crawler in sight. Wanna fill the lady in on what went down, Harrington?” 

The laughter is plain in his voice, and Nancy instantly relaxes. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been serious.

Steve looks downright mutinous as he crawls out of the back cab alongside Wayne. Good. See if he wants to abandon Nancy to go play Rambo after that. 

“Got into it with a tree branch,” he mutters, mortified. “Tree – one, Steve – zero.” He gestures up at his forehead. “Obviously.”

The fact that Nancy manages to mostly keep a straight face should probably automatically shortlist her for inclusion into some kind of Greatest Girlfriend Ever hall of fame. As it is, Dustin, (who’s been uncharacteristically quiet all night), does the dirty work for her.

“Jesus, Steve, is there anything you can beat in a fight?”

“Excuse the shit outta me, Henderson, but did I or did I not save your ass from goddamn Russian soldiers?”

“One Russian soldier, Steve. One. And I don’t even know if it counts when you mrrflmgh –” Dustin gurgles helplessly for a few seconds behind the iron hand Nancy clamps over his mouth before eventually giving up and going silent.

“I think what Dustin is trying to say is that he’s glad everyone’s okay,” she says with as much brightness as she can muster. “Right?” she asks pointedly, releasing him. There’s a long pause, and then he sighs.

“Sure,” he says with all the enthusiasm of a dental patient undergoing a root canal. “Glad to have you all back.” 

He shuffles back into the cabin, and Nancy knows that one of these days, someone’s gonna have to have a talk with him about his wild mood swings. But she doesn’t really want that someone to be her, so she’s refrained from bringing it up thus far.

“Someone’s gotta check that kid,” Steve utters almost inaudibly, agreeing with Nancy’s silent train of thought (and sounding more concerned than irritated). He’s sneaking glances in Dustin’s wake like he thinks he might be able to get away with following him.

Nancy clears her throat, ready to disabuse him of that notion.

“Some other time, Rocky,” she says, and she means it to be teasing, but it comes out too fond to be entirely successful. “Why don’t we get that cut taken care of, first?” 

She holds out her hand, and he only hesitates a second before he takes it firmly in his, palm to palm.

***

They stay linked like that as she leads him all the way to the tiny half-bath at the back of the new addition, and he only lets go when she shuts them in and urges him down onto the closed toilet so she can comfortably reach his forehead. 

For a few moments, he allows her to work in silence, wincing when she has to pour hydrogen peroxide over the cut (she still doesn’t know if you can actually get Upside Down rabies, but better safe than sorry with all weird dust particles floating around). 

Without the dried blood crusting it, it actually looks very superficial. Nancy breathes a sigh of relief, though she’ll still layer it with some antibiotic cream to be safe.

“I guess I just…don’t get it.” Apropos of nothing, Steve chooses this moment to speak quietly, picking up the loose thread of a conversation they haven’t even started yet. “The last time we were together, you were pissed because I didn’t want to get involved. Now I’m all in, and it doesn’t seem like you like that, either.”

Nancy’s fingers freeze on the cap of Neosporin.

“Steve.” She sets the tube aside and makes an executive decision – she needs to be touching him if he’s gonna insist on talking about this here. “Before we do this, can you do me a favor, first?” 

Nancy picks up his hands and haphazardly plants them on her hips before slipping her own up to cage his face. His brow furrows, but he doesn’t move an inch from where she’s arranged them. “Can you just…stop stopping yourself from touching me? I know we’re in kind of a weird place right now, but I promise you – if you want to, then there’s a pretty damn good chance I want to, too.”

The confused lines in his forehead don’t ease, but his fingers adjust and tighten around her sides until he’s holding her with surety. Surrounded by the warmth of him, the invisible string that’s been holding her shoulders taut all day loosens.

“I didn’t think you’d notice,” he says slowly, eyes skimming her face like she’s this entirely new person who just happens to still look and dress like Nancy. “I – of course I’ll stop. It’s not like holding you is some kind of hardship, Nance.” He looks down. “That still doesn’t answer my question, though.”

Nancy refrains from noting that he hadn’t asked a question, he’d merely made an observation. That level of pedantry probably won’t help much in her “get Steve to touch her more” crusade.

“I know,” she says instead. “But Steve, it’s not – I don’t get mad because you get involved. I love that. I think it’s…” She can feel a dull flush start to creep up her neck. “This can never leave this room, okay, but it can – it can be very hot when you go all action hero.” The flush has extended all the way up through her cheeks. Mercifully, he doesn’t comment on it, though a faint little glimmer that she hasn’t seen all day is creeping back into his gaze.

“Right back ‘atcha, Wheeler,” he returns with a trace smile, and oh! That’s flirting. That’s a good sign. “But then…why did you…?”

“React the way I did?” He tilts his head in the slightest nod. “Because I wanted you to stay with me,” she finally admits, feeling more naked in front of him now than on the night she’d given him her virginity. “The hero thing – it’s nice and all, don’t get me wrong. And sometimes it’s necessary, but I – I don’t need that. I don’t need a hero. I just…want a partner. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” 

“Nancy…” In a blink, the amused glint is gone. In its place, he looks raw, like she’s torn him down to the studs.

There’s a lick of hair curling over his ear that she’s taken to mindlessly stroking, and it’s easier to keep staring at that than look into his eyes while she gets this off her chest.

“When we got back together,” she continues on, “you made me a promise. Remember?”

“Yeah,” he replies, and his voice is achingly soft. “I promised you we’d come out of this okay.” He turns his face into her hand, lips brushing against her palm with every tingling syllable. “I meant it.” 

“Yeah, but.” Nancy chews her lip. “If I can’t convince you that you matter more than how hard you swing or how many hits you can take, if you won’t stay with me so we can work together and watch each other’s backs, I don’t see how that’s possible.”

Abruptly, Steve’s standing, nudging his way deeper into her space, and the way he can tower over her a bit, dark and solid – well, Nancy fancies herself a feminist, but not so much that she’ll pretend it doesn’t make her shiver in a good way.

“Goddammit, Nancy,” he croaks, and then he’s folding her in his arms, curling tight around her body. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t – I didn’t even realize,” he mumbles into the nook of her neck and shoulder. “Shit, I am stupid.”

“You’re not,” Nancy chokes, tightening her arms around his neck like she’d wanted to earlier. He’s still wearing his jacket, and the zipper is digging painfully into the V of her collarbone, but it barely registers. She thinks it would take a literal earthquake to dislodge her right now. “I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry. You weren’t even wrong, it’s just that – sometimes it’s still really hard to talk about her.” 

She doesn’t need to specify who the “her” in question is. There are definitely a few tears leaking into the leather of his collar, but no one can see them, so it’s neither here nor there.

“I get it,” he says, “but I wanna talk to you about this stuff. If – if you want to. With me. I know I wasn’t there for you before but I swear I can be that guy now.”

“I know,” she gasps, because he’s holding her so tightly that it’s hard to breathe, but if the tradeoff is losing this hot–all–over feeling of his hands on her, then it’s fine, air is overrated anyway. “You are. You are that guy. I want you, I want us. I want you to believe that.”

Their bodies are so constrained in this tiny space, but there’s something wild crackling in the air, something that raises goosebumps on her arms and makes it so that one minute she’s mouthing reassurances into his jaw, and the next, he’s tilting his chin and kissing her quiet, stealing her words with one wet, electric sweep of his tongue.

Yes. She fists his hair between her fingers, soft and a little overlong, swallowing down his helpless whine as she angles his head so she can open wider under him. 

This – this is why, so far, she’s barely been able to kiss him outside of the privacy of one of their rooms. 

Because every time, almost as soon as it starts, they’re set ablaze, twin infernos trying to consume each other alive. It was never like this before, so she has no roadmap for how to cope, how to process the overpowering need that has her spreading her legs to draw him closer and shoving her hands under layers of leather and cotton to get at sweaty skin. 

“Steve,” she whimpers into his lips, rocking her hips up in a pale facsimile of what she truly wants (but it still feels so good). “I need…”

“I know,” he groans, sucking gently at her sensitive pulse point until she’s keening quietly and grinding harder into the rigid seam of his jeans. Everything is tight, and hot, and she thinks she might vibrate right out of her own body if she can’t get what she’s craving.

The night they got back together, they’d had every good intention of taking it slow, of getting to know each other again before jumping back into the physical. 

But that had lasted about as long as it took for him to get a hand under the band of her bra, and eventually he’d ended up fucking her nice and slow behind the locked door of her childhood bedroom, trailing scorching kisses from her swollen lips to the tips of her breasts until she was shaking apart into the mattress, vision white and head empty of anything that wasn’t him – his scent, his body over hers, the quivering place where he nestled inside her.

They don’t have time for that now – they hardly ever have time for that, which probably doesn’t help quell the desperate desire – so they make do, as always, with what they can. 

They make do with his hips, pushing into hers again and again in easy, dirty twists, sensation blunted between two layers of jeans but still enough to have her choking back moans, nipples pebbled hard into two pinpricks of pleasure against the stiff padding of her bra. They make do with deep, messy kisses, which also muffle the needy noises they can’t contain as their bodies strain higher and higher toward a mutual peak.

They make do with hands, scratching up his back and through his chest hair. Squeezing at her ass and guiding her movements until all Nancy has to do is hang on for dear life and enjoy the ride. 

When she finally crashes over the edge, it hits out of nowhere, in flashing, pulsing waves that come hard and fast until she’s digging fists into his shoulder blades and sucking on his tongue in a frantic attempt to stay silent. He’s not far behind, and when he tears himself away from her lips to bury his head in her shoulder, she can feel more than hear the deep shudder of his groan as he trembles in her arms.

Finally, they both still, slumping back against the wall in a frazzled tangle, and reality comes seeping in one mortifying realization at a time. 

“We‘re…still in Hopper’s bathroom, aren’t we?” Nancy asks faintly.

“Yup.” He pops the “p” against her skin, but doesn’t look up. 

“And…we’ve been in here a really long time.” Way longer than it would take to treat that cut on his head, anyway.

“Probably.” 

“My brother is out there. With his girlfriend. And his friends. Our friends.”

“He sure is.”

He sounds way more cheerful than anyone about to face down a firing squad of nosy teenagers ought to be – but then again, she’s remarkably relaxed, too.

Huh. Could it be that in the end, all they really needed was to get off?

(Probably not.) 

Steve finally shoves away from the wall and adjusts his pants, grimacing. 

“Okay, being honest, this might not’ve been our brightest idea,” he admits.

Nancy catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror just over his shoulder. Her face is flushed, and her eyes are bright. She looks pleased. Happy.

“Probably not, but can’t argue with results,” she teases, stepping back into his space and slipping an arm around his waist, under his jacket. 

He grins down at her, and he looks like such a man – handsome, and kind, and hers – that her heart skips. 

They’re not kids anymore, playacting at some great love that, in the end, was mostly smoke and mirrors. If they make it out of this, like he’s promised they will, they’ll be – they’ll be basically grown ups.

This time, it’s real. Maybe even for keeps. 

That should freak her out, but it doesn’t. 

He presses his smile to her forehead, chaste and sweet, and slings an arm around her neck. 

“Who am I to argue with the beautiful Nancy Wheeler?” he says with more than a bit of irony, and she laughs, because she wants to and he wants her to. “Ready to face the music?”

“Together?” Nancy doesn’t shield the hope in her voice. He dips his forehead to rest against hers, nudges their noses together.

“Wild demodogs couldn’t drag me away,” he says softly, sincerely, and the warm, secret feeling in Nancy’s chest – the one she’s been carrying around for months, waiting until she’s absolutely sure she has a name for it – balloons outward. 

Soon, it’ll be too big for her body alone to bear. One day, it will demand to be shared, and she’ll give it freely and joyfully. 

Not yet, but soon. 

“Come on, then,” she says.

She tugs him forward, and he follows.

***

(normalize panicking and giving an established character an extensive home reno complete with plumbing work smack dab in the middle of an apocalypse simply because you realized that the house's canon layout was not conducive to the main pairing getting it on as you had originally written.)

[der-unverantwortliche]

NESTLED IN DREAD: THE ART OF HARRY MORRIS

It would appear that Harry Morris has the maximum contempt for reality. On the other hand, he has performed the service of distilling away its dross in order to picture its essence: pure dread. So this contempt also pays homage to its object, honoring it with scorn and raw exposures. No decor­ative comforts are allowed in his work, no natural light of day, no human reference points. No, no, no--the cry of a mind protesting its dreadful revelations and at the same time finding them well worth the revel. Dread: both reality and escape from it. Dread: both the sum of things fled from and the ticket out of town. Not to mention the ultimate destination. Next stop, the Haven of Dread. It is not fear that inhabits such a series as Scenes from Lautreamont's Maldoror. Fear implies hope, and these images are as far from hope as they are from the morning newspaper and the evening news, as well as from all the daily agitations which fill the hours between. Neither is it shock or fright, horror or terror that forms the center of these scenes. Or rather, such states so permeate Harry Morris's collagework as to institute them as the norm, to expand these irruptions in reality until they come to fill every square inch of it. And thus reality's volatile moments are smoothed out into an even atmosphere of dread, a climate of all horror and no hope, a place where nothing bothers to move toward or away from doom and desolation. Every­thing already lives there, and there is nowhere else to turn. This is, above all, a stable universe; its scenes, in dread, are forever fixed. Let us look at some of them.

One of them could be called "Bedside Scene." The "action" is all crammed into the corner of a room where leaden walls meet: one wall displays two four-paned, shutter-type windows; the other wall reflects eight ghostly segments of those panes, through which shine the lights entrusted to illuminate an eternal blackness. (Those two staring pinpricks in the night beyond the windows might, after all, be a pair of moons.) Below all this window business, of which more later, a pallid-faced thing with eyes like huge jeweled broaches lies bedridden. Another thing, with a tiny beaked head out of which grow great corkscrew horns, is nursing the thing in the bed, feeding it a serpentine fluid which gushes from a ruddy-textured bulb. A third thing, headless in the lower right foreground, motionlessly looks on. All three of these things were once good women of the Victorian epoch, this is meant to be known. But whatever identities they may have formerly possessed, whatever creditable activities they may have formerly been engaged in, they are now freaks in a mysterious world where they are compelled to carry out a mysterious ritual--automatons performing the rites of dread. Impossible to tell if this scene depicts a perennial situation of panic or one selected from an infinite series of emergencies. In either case, a reassuring constancy is supplied by dread, the dread which is forever. It is always there watching, like those cosmic dots peering in the windows. Yes, the windows. Where they lead is one of the most engrossing questions of Harry Morris's work. They are not like the windows we know, which always give out onto scenes we know, or think we know. These windows give out onto different scenes. Sometimes there is the suggestion of the star-speckled hollows of space beyond the windows, the vast vacancy of infinity. Sometimes there is only a cluster of splotches or an infernal glare, cluttered cul-de-sac. Whatever the backdrop, open cosmos or blind alley, it is an uneventful and unpopulated empti­ness. Nothing and no one resides there, except perhaps a few eyeless entities of a vaguely destructive bent and demonic mysteries as strange as a thunderstorm in outer space. So don't stray too many steps beyond the scene before you. As in a dream, what you see is about all there is to see. And like the windows of a dream, these windows lead, if anywhere, merely to another set of windows in another dream.

The next scene—think of it as the "Mummified Wonder"—appears to be about shadows and light and bandages. But possibly the first two phenomena are merely variant forms of the third. Shadows as a first-aid for dreadful illumination. Light as a fine white gauze hiding a great gaping wound that bleeds blackness. What gashes are hidden beneath this wounded one's wrappings? Such dread in her eyes. Or are they his? This is part of its wonder. But what good or evil would it do for this creature to be one or the other? In these scenes, all differentiations and categories of the waking world are defunct or irrelevant. You may be man, woman, or child across the street of sleep, but here--in the land of dread--you are just one more object among many. Is that you tapping on those windows back there? Welcome, sweet companion, dear old thing.

The last collage to be examined really begs to be given the simple title "Empty Rooms with Decapitated Head." Perhaps this is the same head that was stolen from one of the things in the "Bedside Scene." (Harry Morris's universe seems to have its own laws of conservation of materials.) But actually there are two heads, are there not? That is to say, a head within a head or a head behind a-mask; possibly the relationship is that between core and covering, or could it be some twisted evolution or decom­position going on here? Look at the apples at the base of its neck! Apples, or some kind of bulbous fruit. (Another link with the "Bedside Scene"?) Whatever they are, tempting they are not. At least not in the usual way. Attention should be paid to the windows, once again, and then expanded to take in the whole cryptic architecture of this scene. More than walls seem to have been knocked out, more than rooms have been sunken and split­-leveled. Is this place some hybrid between cathedral and condemned house? Despite the windows and doorways, these rooms offer no way in or out. Cer­tainly not to the wide awake wanderer, that much is sure. But perhaps a sleepwalker could get up those stairs at the back, could climb into the disintegrating glare of dreams. And perhaps only an experienced somnambulist could step out that door at the left and actually end up somewhere. And the artist of these scenes is both. Dream overlaps dream. Dread piles on dread. Thanks to the art of Harry Morris, pure dread finally possesses a geog­raphy, a home deep in some interior landscape where we watch ourselves rave in scenes of contorted glory, where we watch ourselves sleep in the paradoxical peace of perdition, and where we watch ourselves watching ourselves with the infinite eyes of dread.

Thomas Ligotti

[realityshiftingblog]

things i’m excited for in my waiting rooms!

saw a post like this and I had to make my own for both of my waiting rooms :D

Waiting room 1 (a house in the middle of a peaceful forest):

Looking out my window at the beautiful nature in my backyard

using the lifa app to script and create anything out of thin air

watching any show in the universe FOR FREE!

buying a truckload of scrapbook supplies for my paper scripts and having it show up AUTOMATICALLY on my doorstep!

summoning my DR friends and loved ones with the lifa app and hanging out with them FOR REAL!

the original poster had a way to text/video call their DR peeps so I might do that as well with the lifa app :)

LIFAPEDIA. Hear me out, it’s basically Wikipedia but for shifters and it has an infinite database with information on all your shifting and scripting needs. You want ideas to script? YOU GOT IT! You want to find a new DR to shift to that doesn’t have too much danger? YOU BETCHA! just apply the necessary filters and you’ll find a good match from ALL THE REALITIES YOU CAN THINK OF AND MORE! Plus the pages for these realities have information on all you can expect from that reality! AND DID I MENTION IT COMES WITH YOUR LIFA APP PREINSTALLED? Yeah, pretty excited about that one, hehe 😅

BEING AWAY FROM MY PARENTS.

eating as much sushi as I want and not having to spend money on it because money doesn’t exist there

Waiting mall:

Being able to buy as much as I want with no worries about money because I have infinite money

hanging out with my DR peeps because they all live in an apartment complex connected to the mall

the indoor theme park!

LIVING the peak of mall design because it’s based on 80s-90s malls

the arcade!

the food court!

The infinite amount of places that I could shop, and not being able to see the other end of the mall because it’s so huge! That’s exciting to me!

the bookstore that’s also pretty infinite and even has a selection of books about shifting!

being in a frickin mall! Like the best mall in the universe! Omg!

everything in the first section that mentions the lifa app! Because i have it here too :)

[formulatrash]

Hi Hazel,

I hope you are the right person to ask about this. So the way I understand it, in formula e, formula 2 and indycar all the teams have basically the same car, but it's still very clear that some teams are better than others. What are the teams actually changing to make that difference? I know that indy has two different engines but there has to be more to it. Can you change everything except for the chassis in fe? What is up with f2/f3? Idk this really confuses me from series to series.

no worries, it is confusing tbh.

so all the series you've mentioned have a spec chassis, which means every car looks the same. it has the same parts, from the same supplier. in Formula 2 and 3 it also has the same engine, again all from a single supplier (Mechachrome).

F2 and 3 are supplied a biofuel mix by Aramco (as of this year), IndyCar is fuelled by a biofuel made by Shell and all of Formula E use the same Williams Advanced Engineering battery. so it's not like F1 teams where every garage has a different fluids supplier.

Formula 2 and 3 teams can then change the setup of the car. that's sometimes very important for maintaining a good balance; it's why having an experienced team or a driver with good setup knowledge can make a huge difference and why some ultra-rich drivers like Amaury Cordeel pay for their teammate to share setup and essentially do the work for both cars. that's stuff like front and rear wing angle, ride stiffness, etc.

in Formula E teams can then make certain parts of the car themselves (brake ducts, for instance) and there is also a range of powertrain suppliers. initially, the Porsche powertrain looked unbeatable this season because it had the best race efficiency, whereas that seems to have swung the way of the Jaguar powered cars towards this late stage. the powertrain and the teams management of it make a very big difference to the efficiency of the car. you can also make small tweaks to the physical setup of the car but in FE they're not massively major just because there's no real aero to adjust (FE cars have less downforce than a GT car) only things like tiny increments of ride height and stuff - the overall efficiency is much more important.

in IndyCar there's a common chassis and then Honda and Chevrolet are the engine suppliers. sometimes it's clear that one or the other has the upper hand in terms of outright or sustained speed (so it's pretty noticeable in some years at the Indy 500) but teams can also make substantial setup changes that will vary how quick they are or the way the car behaves. this is a good article about the aerokit options available for IndyCar teams this year.

so, in terms of mechanical or technical things they can change, there is some stuff across all the series and in Formula E or IndyCar it's quite a wide range.

then there's what I'd broadly call operational factors. this is basically how good is the team at competing in their respective series.

that can come down to how well the cars are prepared for and looked after over a race weekend - generally, bigger budget teams will have more mechanics available to work on the cars and so be able to give them more attention. no garage is slacking but if you have more resources, better analytics tools, more option to change parts, etc then you will have an advantage. drivers also pay for parts across the year, so things like crash damage and wear-and-tear might mean that they're re-using parts if they're on a budget that they're replace, if they had infinite funds.

something that's affected all the series recently is the supply chain problems that Dallara (which makes the F2/3 and IndyCar chassis) and Spark (which is a subsidiary of Dallara that makes electric racecars, in FE and XE) has had. so there has been a lack of spare parts at various points across the board and FE currently has a severe lack of Gen3 parts - not at all helped by the carnage in Rome.

then there's how well the teams work with the drivers. how much data processing power they have, how good their performance engineers (the people who translate data to the drivers, basically) are and how well the team can execute strategies. in F2 or IndyCar that can include being slick at pit stops and knowing when to call them but there's also other factors.

take qualifying in F2 and 3, for instance. F2/3 cars use the F1 pit lane, with temporary pits set up in the bays outside the garages (basically where F1 teams do a pit stop) but they can't get inside the garages. which means that they are not allowed to refuel once the car has left the support series paddock, since refuelling is only allowed in garages.

for qualifying you want to run low fuel but also give yourself enough options to get a few runs in. if the track turns out to develop super quickly towards the end but you don't have the fuel to go out again, you'll lose out on position - this happened a weird amount with Prema last year, in F2, even though they're normally one of the best teams, operationally.

and there's lots of little things like that. understanding the tyres so you can get them up to temperature the best, knowing what calls to make if it rains, having the experience and confidence to do that even in series where, since they're literally for training, the drivers don't.

in IndyCar the strategy is super complicated because there's tyres and also fuel and obviously you want to get over the line having spent the least amount of time in the pits but that's going to take being clever and as in all sports a little bit lucky. then there's also the role of the spotter, which is basically to be the opposite of the Ferrari pit wall by accurately and promptly telling the driver about everything happening around them on track. it's not an engineering role, more purely about that sporting awareness and communication - F1 could prob learn.

in FE things are slightly different because FE is slightly different (no different tyre compounds, no pit stops, etc) but basically the teams that can correlated simulator data to put together the best on-track package will be in the lead. and if the mechanics can stay up all night fixing a car from the ground up and still be on it enough to fully prepare both cars the next day then hell, they're the best in the business.

so lots of factors affect how the car performs. generally the biggest constraint for teams is budget because money can fix a lot of the other problems but experience is the next hurdle. Sacha Fenestraz was talking quite a lot about how his engineering team in Nissan is all quite new to Formula E and how much they've had to learn together during the rookie practice on Friday.

[aquaquadrant]

Thoughts about the angsty Tango AU—

How long has Tango been captured for? If he was captured when he was younger would he have known how to read and/or write? How would he have learnt his redstone?

What made Tango want to escape? Like was he taken forcefully from his home and wants to return, or he can’t stand the tumblr sexy man ‘Doctor’ Atlas anymore?

Tango was successfully made to be a farm and ‘Doctor’ Atlas was talking something about investment. So more money to capture more people to become a farm or more money for more research to brainwash the player to become something like a robot to provide resources? That would be dark…

Were there other players who became farms? I’m pretty sure that with the success of Tango, Hels Tek would have wanted to expand. So enderpearl farms? Gold farms? Villager trading halls? Man the potential of Hels Tek is huge.

If thought 4 is correct, does Tango know about them?

And yeah that’s all my thoughts so far. Ill probably come up with a few more as the AU descends to it’s angst :D

OOOOO lots of things to consider here! number 1 will take a bit of explanation for how i headcanon minecraft to work, as a fictional universe. so the way i’ve envisioned it is that all players (ie. sentient humanoids that can respawn) are spontaneously spawned in their home worlds around the age of a small child (but not an infant, kinda like villagers LMAO). then they mature up to a certain point in adulthood before their physical growth kinda plateaus and stops? (like vampires HAH) so that’s how you have ‘ancient’ players like etho who still appear young.

for tango, he was spawned in hels and spent his ‘childhood’ kinda running amok and getting into trouble, like any hels kid (i view hels as basically an anarchy server, so there’s no infrastructure in place to take care of newly spawned players). he took an early interest in redstone and started fiddling with contraptions as a young teen. he was probably an older teen when he first encountered hels tek, and they didn’t actually take him by force. it’s a more complex story that i’ll save for another day 👀

2. tango wants to escape purely because of how miserable life at hels tek is. he’s trapped in a little 1x2 block enclosure, constantly experiencing both wither effect and regen, having his blaze rods farmed, and even occasionally dying. and the malicious treatment by the scientists certainly doesn’t help!

3. after the success of their tango tek farm, hels tek is definitely interested in doing research for more hybrid-sourced farms. their next goal is to fund a large-scale expedition across hels to locate and capture any player that’s a mob hybrid and potentially useful, and then develop farms for them (hence the need for investors who can provide resources and manpower).

4. tango is the first (and as of right now, the only) player that hels tek developed a farm for. once he escapes, it’s not really a matter of the resources (his farm was so efficient, they have a virtually infinite supply of blaze rods). no, it’s more about what he represents- the promise of future farms. and without him there to demonstrate the proof of concept, they’ll have a hard time convincing investors to fund them. so hels tek is quite motivated to get tango back.

5. tango isn’t aware of hels tek’s future plans, and doesn’t care much to speculate. all he’s concerned about is the chance of them coming after him, which haunts him constantly.

[shamelessequilibria]

You are so deeply out of touch with reality. Speaking as someone from the 3rd world, if the US disappeared today the world would be an infinitely better place

I wasn't going to answer any of these, but quite a few echo this sentiment. It's a farfetched hypothetical anyways. So let's get one thing straight.

The US disappearing overnight would not end capitalism. It wouldn't end oil wars or genocides. It wouldn't fix our world fucked up by years and years of corruption and humans rights abuses.

My firm belief is if the US disappeared on any short timeframe, there isn't anything better to take it's place. What happens? China and Russia can bully the world much easier. Corporations might see short term issues, but it's not like Shell or Exxon or BP would disappear. The world still demands goods made by slavery, child labor, blood money, and war. That doesn't change a single iota.

What gets worse though is any foreign aid the US does provide. Huge institutions of research are disrupted, shuffled, or lost. Any of the supply chain logistics the US provides. Any stability afforded by the grotesquely large military is gone, the intelligence provided to other allied nations is gone. Mutually assured destruction is suddenly not quite so mutual.

The only difference is that the folks shouting death to America might have a nice moment of catharsis. The crushing global power vacuum, however, has a lot of potential to make that short lived.

[copperbadge]

One of the nice things about the Shivadh romances is that even though I obviously care about them being reasonably well-written, they’re also very much written to satisfy the emotions, so I can kinda wander into whatever part of the book I want, write something self-indulgent, and wander off again. 

So if you wanted an update on what’s going on with the Wine Hole from Infinite Jes, there’s one coming up in Twelve Points...

Out in the bunker's main room, Noah was sitting at the conference table, working on something on a tablet. Michaelis was with him; Caleb wasn't sure he was ever going to get used to seeing the King Emeritus slouched in a chair, feet up on the conference table, glasses perched on his nose and a book in his lap.  

"Noah, we need your help," Caleb announced. Noah looked up. "We need to take a pretentious dramatic album cover type photo."

"Wine hole," Noah said.

"Beg pardon?" Buck asked. 

"Come on," Noah said, rising. "I'll show you the wine hole, I can take the photo for you." 

"If you die, don't come running to me," the King Emeritus said mildly, without looking up from his book. 

"Nobody's going to die, it's been reinforced," Noah assured them, as Caleb and Buck followed him curiously down a hallway. "The bunker used to be like an actual bunker, with food supplies and stuff. There's a wine cellar, we call it the wine hole because the first time we found it I kinda fell in," he added. "It's super atmospheric."  

There was a roughly shored-up gap in the hallway wall about halfway down, and inside was a small room full of support scaffolding, with a dimly lit gap in the floor where a series of steep steps led downwards. Caleb followed Noah down, then blinked when Noah flipped a breaker and the room was illuminated. 

"Whoa," Buck said, when he reached the bottom. 

The wine cellar was actually a cavern, a huge oval shape with an arching natural roof; empty wine racks had been grouped into a mass to one side, and bright bare bulbs hung from support scaffolding, thick electrical cords winding up and down temporary metal columns. Noah led them through it, picking up a lantern on the way, and slipped through a large gap in an elderly brick wall at the back of the cavern. 

"Here ya go," he said, holding up the lantern. 

Someone had carved something deep into the rock, at what would be eye level for someone slightly taller than Caleb. Two lines of text, and a rough oblong shape below them. Buck leaned in close. 

"What's it say?" he asked. "It's not in English." 

"It's Latin," Noah said. "Michaelis says it says We have conquered both above and below." 

"Latin? Like...from ancient Rome?" Buck asked. 

"Well, someone could've put it there any time before the forties, I guess," Noah said. "That's when the wall went in. But the archaeologists are pretty sure it's from at least 1800 years ago. Maybe older. That's when the Romans were here. And there's the dick." 

"The what," Caleb said. Noah pointed to the oblong shape, which on closer inspection had a specific bend to it, and two ovals beneath it. Buck sniggered. "Well, someone had a high opinion of himself." 

"Michaelis says I have to ace my Italian exam this year before he explains the Latin to me, but I'm pretty sure the literal translation says something a lot more obscene than 'conquered'," Noah said. 

"There," Caleb said, pointing to one of the words. "Futavimus. Fottere in Italian means -- ah, it's a rude word." 

"We've fucked 'em both above and below," Buck inferred. 

"Taking your picture with a Latin engraving automatically looks cool," Noah said with a grin. "And if anyone does read it..."

"I'm pretty sure we can't put the dick on Photogram," Caleb ventured. 

"No, but you can block it out. Here," Buck said, gesturing him forward. He held up his hands, and Caleb nodded; Buck guided him into place with a light grip on his shoulders, turning him so that he was in profile, his head blocking the carving. "Stay put," Buck said, and moved around behind him, passing his phone to Noah. 

"Oh, I see," Noah said, snapping photos. He moved the lantern around a few times, taking more.

"Come on, get the good shot," Buck said.

"Can't hurry art," Noah replied.

"I do that all the time," Buck replied. 

"Just hold still for the love of -- Caleb, hang on, don't move your body but turn your head," Noah said. Caleb twisted a little, looking at Noah. "Okay, right into the lens -- there. Pretentious, gorgeous, perfect." 

He hadn't realized how cool and dry the wine cellar was until they climbed the ladder back up into the warmer, humid air of the bunker, which had an almost plantlike smell to it compared to the cavern. 

At the conference table Buck and Caleb both leaned over Noah, studying the photos. In them, Caleb and Buck stood back-to-back, at one end of the inscription; Buck's head was next to Futavimus, and Caleb's neatly blocked out the obscene image below the rest of the inscription. Most of the shots looked dramatic and interesting, but Caleb couldn't deny the best one was the last, where Buck was still looking off to one side, but Caleb's face was turned to the camera, his eyes big and dark as he looked into the lens. 

"That's the one," Buck said. Caleb nodded. A hand came into view; Michaelis, still not looking at them, reaching out for the phone. Noah rolled his eyes and put it in his palm. The old king held the phone and studied the image, lips twitching upwards. 

"Caleb told me what Futavimus means," Noah said, tone reproachful. 

"It's always good to have two sources for your data," Michaelis told him. "I know Photogram has an obscenity filter, but I don't think it speaks Latin. Approved," he concluded, and passed the phone back to Buck. 

"You can't adopt them, they're too old," Noah said, as Buck dropped the image to Caleb, who opened Photogram and stitched it onto the audio file. 

"I can adopt anyone I please, I'm incredibly old," Michaelis replied calmly. 

[voraciousvore]

The Half-Blood Giant (17/51)

***Contains unwilling soft and hard vore, blood/ gore, violence, and fatalities***

Chapter 17: Feast

After wandering for a while, Jacques rested for the night, finding a secluded corner to sleep in. He woke up hungry for breakfast and ready to hunt. He followed the scent on the breeze toward the nicer side of town, leaving behind the dilapidated wastes. As he prowled closer to the giant dividing wall, the tantalizing smell of humans grew stronger, seductive in its promise of a full belly. The overpowering aroma suggested a virtually infinite supply: Jacques could scarcely believe his good luck. 

With his gargantuan height, he was able to peer over the wall to view the other side. He was astonished to behold a miniature city, alive with tiny cars and people. He had never seen a community of humans in his life. The only humans he met had been those unlucky enough to be struck by magical lightning and stranded in the Land of Giants, and they were usually isolated, afraid, and short-lived. He was amused to see that they lived much like giants, just on a minute scale. 

Jacques hauled himself over the wall, trying to be sneaky so as not to scare off the easiest prey within reach. His immense shadow gave him away, however. Several humans going about their business halted in place and gaped up in horror as they watched the unfathomably huge man clamber over the barrier. The giant’s great clomping boots sent a seismic wave through the ground when he landed on the opposite side. He grinned, flashing his big blocky teeth at the tiny people far below. 

Crossing the barrier in such a manner was a blatantly illegal act. Giants were strictly forbidden from entering human territory by their own laws, for obvious safety reasons, except under extreme circumstances. The act was so taboo as to be virtually unprecedented. Many humans feared giants, but even those who were more comfortable around giants realized they were in immediate peril. Shrill screams pierced the air as all the humans nearby panicked and ran for their lives. 

Jacques took a tremendous step forward, crushing a parked car under his boot like a tin can. The buildings didn’t even come up to his knees. He crouched on his haunches, extended one of his long arms across a city block, and grabbed a woman trying to run. She shrieked as he lifted her up to his maw and tossed her inside. He scrambled her around in his mouth as he reached out and snatched up another human within his radius, a man this time. He swallowed the woman alive and engulfed his next victim, who soon joined her in his spacious belly. His guts filled with pleasure as the small humans squirmed frantically inside him. 

Jacques was giddy with excitement, like a starving man at a free, all-you-can-eat buffet. With so many food options available, he used his sensitive nose to distinguish the choice humans that would taste the best. He ripped the roof off a nearby house and chased around the tiny denizens inside, pinching them with his fingers and popping them in his mouth like potato chips. He swallowed some whole, while others he crunched between his teeth, slurping up their blood with delight. 

Sniffing the air, he stood up and lumbered a few steps forward, crossing several intersections. He paid no mind to his feet: He stomped on cars, kicked over light posts and street signs, cracked the sidewalk with his weight, crushed buildings into rubble. He was having fun; he felt big and powerful and he loved every second of it. He came across a park with a playground and a lake and smashed the play area underfoot. His boots sank into the grass and dirt, destroying the turf with massive footprints. An old man out walking his dog tried to get away, but Jacques blocked their path with his hand. Both the man and the dog disappeared down his gullet. He washed them down with some water from the lake and continued on his rampage. 

Pedro, asleep in his apartment, became aware of rumbling that shook the earth from far away. He opened his eyes with confusion and listened. He could hear distant screams and crashing sounds that suggested chaos and destruction. He got out of bed with a stretch, yawned, and trudged sleepily over to the window to see what was going on. 

He gazed out upon a scene that looked like it belonged in a horror movie. A behemoth of a man, significantly taller than any of the giants Pedro saw yesterday, clomped over to a movie theater near Pedro’s apartment and kneeled down, still towering over it with his prodigious mass. He ripped off a chunk of the building with his hand and discarded the crunched bricks and metal away. His hand snaked through the opening, to the greeting of tiny screams, until it reemerged, holding a handful of wriggling people. More people poured out of the exits running and screaming frantically.  

Pedro’s breath caught in his lungs and his stomach dropped to the floor. He feared the worst, and the worst happened. The giant opened his mouth and shoved all the people inside, making a considerable effort to cram them all in at once. With a substantial gulp, they all traveled down his throat and were gone. The giant emitted a satisfied sigh and rubbed his belly.  

He glanced into the theater, noticing with mild disappointment that the rest of his prey had already evacuated. He sniffed the air and turned his attention in Pedro’s general direction. Pedro froze up and held his breath as the giant slunk over to the daycare center just up the street. He demolished a big section of the roof, throwing it carelessly to the side. He reached in and pulled out a handful of young children. 

“No!” one of the daycare workers yelled, running out of the building. “Put them down!”  

Jacques cocked a brow and looked down at the little man, amused. He leaned over, pressing his immense hand into the earth beside the defiant human. “Or else what?” his enormous voice rumbled. 

The man stopped in his tracks, overcome with fear as the giant’s massive body loomed over him. He opened his mouth but no words came out. Jacques smirked and lowered his hand full of children down. The children sobbed and wailed and reached out their tiny hands from between the giant’s fingers. The man strained to reach them, jumping and flailing his arms, but the giant held them just out of range, letting out a deep chuckle like ominous thunder. With a dreadful sneer, he began to tighten his hold on the children, squeezing tighter and tighter as they let loose agonizing squeals. Crunching and cracking heralded a thin stream of blood that drizzled down over the man’s head, drenching him. 

“Stop!” he choked in horror. He collapsed to his knees, arms raised. 

“PUT YOUR HANDS UP!” giant masculine voices boomed overhead, making the little man flinch as he was startled by the loud volume. The giant turned his head to see pistols pointed in his direction. He opened his bloody hand, dropping a pile of wet bodies to the ground. Miraculously, all the little kids were still alive, despite a few injuries and broken bones. They whimpered pitiably. The man, acting fast, hastily sought to lead the children to safety. Two adults hiding in nearby buildings, a man and woman, ran out bravely to help him, carrying the children too injured to walk. 

Jacques slowly raised himself to his feet, holding up his hands cautiously. The humans with the children below paled at his lofty stature as he towered above them, his legs like towers and his back like the slope of a mountain. Two police officers, Joey and Ray, had their guns pointed at the dangerous giant. They had just vaulted over the wall, having received desperate pleas for help from the human police department, and were ready for action. They crept closer, but they struggled to close the distance with all the miniature buildings at their feet. Neither of them wanted to cause more of a tragedy than what had already occurred, but they didn’t know how to incapacitate the giant without causing damage to the surrounding infrastructure. 

Joey, being the smaller and more agile of the two and accustomed to having a human living with him, moved faster than Ray. He deftly stepped over buildings and placed his feet in strategic spots in the narrow streets, avoiding cars as he went. Fortunately, most of the tiny people had the common sense to evacuate the streets and hide when Jacques began his feast, so the roads were devoid of humans. Ray was sweating as he struggled to follow with less grace and more mass. He had huge, clumsy feet, and he was terrified of accidentally smashing a human underfoot or kicking over a house. Pedro, watching the scene unfold from his apartment, recognized Ray and felt his heart flutter. His hero! 

Jacques glared at the two giant cops, his mind racing. His eyes darted down to the ground, where tiny police cars, sirens flashing, surrounded him. The bravest of the diminutive cops got out of their cars and approached, aiming their weapons at his ankles and calves. While Jacques didn’t see them as a significant threat, he realized their wimpy little pea shooters could still pierce his flesh, perhaps even fracture his bones and cause damage. He gritted his teeth, muttering curses. 

Jacques wasn’t sure what to do, but he knew he had the advantage. Those other giants were clearly concerned about the wellbeing of the humans, so they wouldn’t be able to move freely within the human city. Even so, they had their guns, and he was unarmed. He couldn’t run without getting shot. Would these cops even have the balls to try and shoot him? 

“Get on your knees!” Joey yelled. He carefully sidestepped a taller building that blocked his path forward as he got closer. He was worried Jacques would try to flee, resulting in more destruction. 

“I can’t,” Jacques replied calmly with a grotesque sneer. “There isn’t enough room, I’d crush that building under my leg.” Despite his words, he acted as if he would comply, crouching down to the ground. Quick as a flash, he snatched up one of the human cops to use as a hostage. The tiny cop shrieked and dropped his gun in shock. The other human officers retaliated and fired their weapons. Jacques swore as his flesh was peppered with microscopic bullets. They dug deep, producing trickles of blood, and hurt more than he anticipated, like hard little rocks grinding on his bones. Explosions from anti-giant grenades nipped at his legs, but his thick sturdy boots protected his feet and ankles. 

Joey realized immediately that he needed to respond, before the evil giant tried to run. Obviously, Jacques wasn’t going to cooperate, and whatever collateral damage Joey generated would be less than the intentional harm caused by the other giant. Joey surged forward, dodging the tiny obstacles in his path. The human cops, sensing the earthquakes of his approaching footsteps, scrambled to avoid his clomping feet. Joey tackled the bigger giant and grappled to incapacitate him. Jacques dropped his hostage, and the human cop hurtled towards the ground with a scream. He landed in a tree, the leaves and branches cushioning his fall. 

Ray tried to hurry over to help Joey, but he was having difficulty navigating the maze of roads with his oversized feet. With Joey’s additional weight, Jacques was brought down on one knee, demolishing the daycare under his leg. Luckily, all the humans had left the structure after he ripped the roof off, so nobody was squashed. Jacques groaned and tried to buck Joey off, but the giant cop held firm, attempting to put him in a chokehold. The human cop stuck in the tree had lost his gun, but he still had anti-giant grenades in his belt. He threw a grenade with all his might up at the evil giant towering above him. The grenade exploded near Jacques’s face, stinging his eyes, but not close enough to injure him. 

Jacques wormed one of his arms loose and elbowed Joey hard in his solar plexus. Joey gasped in pain, fighting to hold on as he lost his breath. Jacques surged forward in a jerky motion, flattening a cop car under his hand. The human cops rushed to get out of the way. Pedro, still watching the action unfold from his apartment, backed away from the window with fear as the two giants wrestled with each other right outside his building, shaking the structure down to its foundation and turning the surrounding buildings into rocky pancakes. To his horror, the bigger, stronger giant was beginning to overpower the cop. Jacques slammed his elbow into the apartment building, crumbling the bricks with a deafening crash. Pedro’s window shattered, shooting glass everywhere, and the wall collapsed inward. The floor shuddered under his feet, knocking him down. As the ceiling sagged, Pedro realized he needed to get out, before the building lost its structural integrity. He scrambled to his feet and raced to escape, but he wasn’t able to make it to the exit before the whole structure caved in on him, trapping him inside. 

Ray finally made it over to Joey and jumped in to help, grappling the giant with his powerful arms. The extra muscle enabled the pair to subdue the giant and slap some cuffs on his wrists. The buildings beneath him had been reduced to rubble, and the giant officers could only hope nobody had been killed. The human cops had brought giant tranquilizer with them, and with Ray holding Jacques’s head, one of them injected the serum into the major artery in his neck. He passed out, and Ray and Joey worked together to carefully carry the unconscious giant back over to the wall, making sure not to drag his feet behind them. They handed off his body to some of their fellows waiting on the other side, who took him to the police station. 

As much as Ray wanted to leave human territory, he realized the humans needed their giant strength to aid in rescue efforts. Humans were trapped in the smashed and damaged buildings, and having a giant around to remove the heavy rubble in a timely manner could save lives. Reluctantly, he accompanied Joey back to where they had fought the deranged giant, where the damage was the worst. Ray felt abashed, as he could plainly see most of the humans were shaken by the attack and were frightened by his giant presence, even though he was there to help. 

Joey seemed immune to those feelings, as he strode in without shame and lowered himself down to the ground to help. Ray had to admire his confidence. The emergency rescue workers and police, though unnerved initially, were grateful for the aid of their giant hands. Joey and Ray gingerly picked through the wreckage, pulling aside heavy metal beams and bricks and searching for survivors. They were heartbroken to find a few humans that had been crushed to death, but others survived with nonfatal injuries. Joey wasn’t shy about picking them up, even if they were afraid of him. He set them down in stretchers and the human paramedics transported them to the nearest hospital. Ray was more nervous about handling humans, since he didn’t have as much experience as Joey. He always asked for permission first, and if the human refused, or recoiled in blind fear, he backed off and let the human rescue workers handle the situation when practical, clearing a path if necessary.   

As Joey picked through the smashed buildings, Ray moved on to the partially collapsed apartment complex. There was a good chance that people survived, since the building wasn’t completely destroyed. He dismantled the roof piece by piece, trying his best not to knock over the fragile shell remaining. He found a few humans stuck inside pockets of rooms, conscious and unharmed. They were petrified of him, but without any way for the rescue workers to enter the building, Ray had no choice but to grab them between his fingers and pull them out by force. His heart cramped up as he tore the humans out of their homes, even though he was saving them, especially when they cried out in fear. Ray was a sensitive man and didn’t like being viewed as a monster; he felt like nothing more than a big brute. He felt worse and worse as he picked apart the building, rescuing more survivors, his heart sinking into his bowels as he witnessed their terrified faces. He wanted to just run away and hide his face in shame, but he knew he needed to do the right thing. He held back tears at the sad sights. 

“Ray!” a tiny voice shouted from the depths of the building. “Help!” Ray, not expecting to hear his name, did a double take. He peered into the shadows and saw a miniscule man wedged in between two big chunks of concrete. 

“Pedro?” he questioned in disbelief. 

“Oh my goodness, Ray! You’re a sight for sore eyes!” Pedro gushed. “I thought I was a goner! Get me outta here!” Ray nudged one of the blocks to the side with his hand and tenderly closed his thumb and finger around Pedro’s delicate body. He lifted him out and placed him in his palm.  

Pedro blushed hot, his heart pounding in his chest as he basked in the enchanting spell of Ray’s giant masculine aura. “Thanks...” He stared up into those huge, sky-blue eyes and perceived the turmoil within. “Hey, you alright, big guy?” 

“Y-yeah, of course...” Ray wiped his eyes on his sleeve and collected himself. His heart was warmed by having at least one human happy to see him. “I’m fine, just some dust in my eyes. What about you? Are you hurt?” 

“I think I’m okay,” Pedro answered, checking his bruised body for injuries. 

“That’s good,” Ray said. He set him down gently on the sidewalk and went back to searching the building. 

Pedro hesitated, but he realized this might be his only chance. “W-wait!” he called up to Ray. The giant gave him his full attention, crouching down over him. Pedro’s heart thrummed like hummingbird wings. He absently reached into his pocket, hoping to exchange numbers, only to find his phone completely smashed. “Oh...” His face fell. Suddenly, he felt his courage drain out of him. A big, handsome giant like Ray probably wouldn’t be interested in a measly shrimp like him. “N-never mind,” he mumbled. 

Ray scrutinized the tiny human for a long moment before a small squeal from inside the building captured his attention. Somebody needed his help. Distracted, he turned away from Pedro and extended his hand into the crumbling structure, reemerging with a small crying child. He handed off the child to one of the humans down below. He returned his attention to where Pedro had been standing, but the man had disappeared. Puzzled, Ray went back to work. 

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

[zefrind]

Hello everyone, Zenri is in touch. And here is the long-awaited twelfth episode of Trigan Hurricane 2023. I, like the whole fandom, are simply in a huge shock from this series. Wesh is back in his new outfit. By the way, he was, only in the form of a figure, he was not shown in the 1998 Trigan manga and anime. The battle between the brothers was mesmerizing, the way the animators worked on these animation geniuses. You need to try to convey such smoothness of movements. And this gun is incredible. It could be seen that the cartridges that Vesh used had diligent silhouettes. And this means that he created them and gives him an infinite supply of ammo. He does not yet know that Roberot is dead. But sooner or later he will find out. After the Ilyule disaster. As it was destroyed, it happened. I can say with confidence that Knives survived, you can’t just kill him like Vesh. I also heard that Nicholas allegedly died. But he's alive. Even though he didn't contact Meryl. They were outside the city, and witnessed the destruction of the city. It also seems to me that it is Nicholas who will find Vesh as in the manga. After all, Nicholas was looking for him for two years. Vesh is grieving, it was clear from the loss of his brother in what state he is. Also, Vesh did not lose all his memory. He does not remember what happened after the fight, and how he ended up with Lina. Meryl remained in journalism and was joined by Millim Thomson. We could see in Meryl's car, on the ashtray there was a monkey from the Blood Blockade Front anime, namely Sonic. So is the fate of Kuroneko he is alive. According to radio data, out of 100% of the city's residents, 10% survived. The same melody that Vesh played on the piano could be heard after the credits. It was a special wave that was heard off the planet, it was another signal for the new ones, visitors from Earth, so that they found Gunsmoke. This is the name of the planet where the events take place. I also noticed that the ship of Brad and Luida was without a shield and it scares me. Zazie knows the location of Vesh and Knives but he doesn't talk as he likes to watch everyone. But why did Zazi tell Meryl about the guests? Because he does not know whether they will be enemies or friends of the worms, and since Vesh has already saved the planet, Zazi will trust him. The same was confirmed about season 2, but no date yet. Well, that's all for the connection.