#next generation of growers

[storydays]

Brozone Older Brothers' NSFW Headcannons

🧡John Dory:

Whew, boy, are you in for a treat!

So it'd been 20 years-ish, since he'd been in Pop Troll culture, so he is out of practice when it comes to intimacy.

100% an ass and thighs man: You bend over in front of him, no matter what you're doing, instant hard on.

He's more of a grower than a shower: 5.1 inch normal and 5.3 when hard (Correct my if this is wrong bc I know nothing about penis education lmao)

Play with his ears, or even his tail, and he is instant putty in your hands.

Turn-ons include: edging (giving or receiving), eating you out/blowing you, (loves receiving more than giving but will still pleasure you as well as you did him) tying you up (and he knows some different knots from his adventuring days) and many more that I can't think of lol.

Def gives me top vibes but once in a while you'll catch him off guard and top the hell out of him

When you do top him, he is such a whiny little bitch, and you hold him there for hours until the sunshine peeks through your curtains.

Leave hickeys on his neck and he'll happily wear them and preen when you press a soft kiss to them when you're jealous.

When it's jealousy sex, angry sex, or sex in general, the bed will be creaking, Rhonda will be shaking, and anyone who happen to walk by the armadillo-bus will know exactly what's going on and run away in horror at the noises they heard.

He is a caveman when you first meet but starts to clean himself up a bit.

Is a total mess when it comes to cum. He cums buckets in you (if given consent), on your face, stomach, anywhere really.

Bruce:

Ooh, this is gonna be fun

So Bruce has had his fair share of lovers, and knows his way around different genitalia and how to expose his partner's feel good spots.

Ugh, please please pull his tail

Just like the rest of him, he's pretty girthy down there, but is still long enough to hit those special spots.

His hair is beautifully tamed, which means he is tamed down there too, and even learned to make different shapes and designs out of pubic hair.

Def a a shower and grower: 3.5 when flaccid, but a whopping 5.5 when hard

He knows how to use his mouth, hands, and tail to make his partner scream

Def a power bottom; watches you through half lidded eyes as you take what you want from him, occasionally praising or degrading you, depending on his mood.

He's a attentive lover, and will cherish everything about your lovemaking, and make sure you're okay.

Turn ons include: hair (only time) and tail pulling, you making eye contact with him while making lewd gestures, being a brat and teasing him, morning 69, and loves when you surprise attack him; so many emotions flood through him, and he allows you to take some control, before he takes over and pushes you over the edge, with a smug smirk.

Sex is like a game to him: the end goals are making you feel like a million bucks and making you drunk on his love. Will tease you by cumming first, before he allows you to cum.

He is one smug son of a bitch when you can barely walk, or when someone makes a comment about the hickeys on your body (he leaves them everywhere), or about the scratches and bite marks on his back.

📚 Clay:

Okay, so he wants to be the best you've ever had, so this bookworm absolutely studied up on how best to pleasure you. STUDIED FOR DAYS, and even studied while they were attempting to pleasure you.

Annoyed, you snatched the book from him, and turned the tables on them.

He's pretty average, right in the middle both length and thickness so pretty enjoyable for both parties.

Prefers giving than receiving, adores when you use your hair to hold him in place

THEY ABSOLUTELY ADORES THICCCCC THIGHS; (Yall see how thick Viva's thighs are? #CLIVIA )

Would spend hours in between your legs if you let him

Quite noises escape him....unless you bring out the dark green strap on and/or cock ring...then it's the Theatre Du Chatelet in y'all bedroom!

(Their brothers' overheard y'all one time, and the next day they all avoided your smirk and Clay's bright purple blush when you make a smart comment.)

Everyone sees him as serious/fun, but when you two are intimate, it's just Daddy and Baby Girl, it's up to you to figure out which is which, (😉)

Always uses protection just to prevent any accidents.

With you, he can let go of labels and just be Clay and they love you for that.

Turn ons: that strap on/cock ring, dem thighs, being pulled closer when they go down on you, you taking control, just you in general, teasing him in public, making suggestive comments in his ear while his brothers' and friends are around and he can't do nothing but try to make the blush go away and ac natural, glaring darkly at you when no one was looking.

He is clean and trimmed down there.

[artsandculture]

The Water-Lily Pond (1899) 🎨 Claude Monet 🏛️ The National Gallery 📍 London, United Kingdom

For Monet, gardens offered a refuge from the modern urban and industrial world, although he and his fellow garden enthusiasts benefited from modern advances in botanical science that were creating new hybrid flowers in a wide choice of shapes and colours that could be produced on an almost industrial scale. He made modest gardens in the homes he rented in Argenteuil and Vetheuil in the 1870s, but from 1883, when he moved to a rented house in Giverny, about 50 miles to the west of Paris, he had more scope to indulge his passion for plants. He became a dedicated gardener with an extensive botanical knowledge, and sought the opinions of leading horticulturalists. As Monet’s career flourished his increasing wealth enabled him to fund what became a grand horticultural enterprise: by the 1890s he was employing as many as eight gardeners.

Monet began by refashioning the garden in front of the house, the so-called ‘Clos Normand’, replacing the existing kitchen garden and orchard with densely planted colourful flower beds that were filled with blooms throughout the seasons. He was able to buy the house in 1890, and three years later he purchased an adjacent plot of land next to the river Epte beyond the railway line at the edge of his property. The plot had a small pond with arrowhead and wild water lilies, which he wanted to turn into a water garden with a larger lily pond ‘both for the pleasure of the eye and for the purpose of having subjects to paint’.

The idea may have occurred to him after he had seen the water garden at the 1899 Exposition Universelle in Paris created by the grower Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac, who bred the first colourful hardy waterlilies. Monet began by requesting permission from the Prefect of the Eure to dig irrigation channels from the Ru – a branch of the Epte – to feed his pond, but the Giverny villagers objected, fearing it would contaminate the water and that the foreign plants would poison their cattle. Monet was furious, but three months later permission came through and he began to enlarge the existing pond, replacing the wild water lilies with Latour-Marliac hybrids available in yellows, pinks, whites and violets.

The pond was enlarged on further occasions – in 1901 and 1904 – tripling the size of the water garden. Together with the flower garden on the other side of the railway track it became the principal preoccupation of the last 26 years of Monet’s life. While the Clos Normand garden was laid out along fairly traditional lines, harking back to the formal French gardens of seventeenth-century Europe, with a central alleyway and geometrically arranged beds, the water garden was more Eastern in inspiration. Its less regimented, more natural design and more muted colours created a quieter, meditative atmosphere. Monet erected a Japanese bridge over the western end of the pond that took its inspiration from the bridges in ukiyo-e Japanese prints. He was a keen collector of these prints and he owned a copy of Hiroshige’s Wisteria at Kameido Tenjin Shrine (1856), one of the many prints that features a curved bridge. In a more general sense, the water garden reflected Monet’s admiration for the Japanese appreciation of nature.

Monet had to wait for his water garden to mature before he could begin to paint it in earnest. As he later recalled: ‘It took me some time to understand my water-lilies. It takes more than a day to get under your skin. And then all at once, I had the revelation – how wonderful my pond was – and reached for my palette. I’ve hardly had any other subject since that moment.’ In total, Monet painted 250 canvases of his water garden. Around 200 of these represent water lilies floating on the surface of the water, while the remainder also show the Japanese bridge, the weeping willow trees and wisteria and the irises, agapanthus and day lilies on its banks. In all these pictures Monet was painting a subject that was already ‘pictorial’ – a landscape that had been carefully composed according to his personal aesthetic. The National Gallery has three further paintings of the water garden :Water-lilies, setting sun; Irises; and Water-lilies.

Monet painted three views of the Japanese bridge in 1895, not long after it had been constructed, but then took a break from the subject, only returning to it in 1899. By now the pool was overhung by vegetation and surrounded by plants, but to judge from contemporary photographs it was never as enclosed as Monet painted it, and he exaggerated the feeling of claustrophobia. In December 1900 he exhibited 12 paintings at Durand-Ruel’s gallery in Paris, all of which showed more or less symmetrical views of the Japanese bridge.

In this painting, as in the others in the series, we are looking down onto the surface of the water, where the lily pads float into the distance, meeting the dense foliage on the far bank. Weeping willows are reflected in the pond and clumps of iris border its banks. The perspective seems to shift so that it is hard to find a single focal point; it is as though we are looking up at the bridge but down on the waterlilies. The picture, like the water itself, seems to oscillate between surface and depth. The mainly vertical reflections provide a counterpoint to the horizontal clumps of the lily pads. Different colours, applied with thick brushstrokes, are placed next to each other. This way of painting has more in common with Monet’s early Impressionist works than his more recent paintings of mornings on the Seine, where he had used softer, more blended strokes to convey hazy atmospheric effects.

The Japanese bridge series marked a turning point in Monet’s art. From now on his subjects were painted from an increasingly confined viewpoint, conveying the sense of an enclosed world. In later paintings of the pond, he would dispense with the banks and bridge altogether to focus solely on the water, the reflections and the water lilies. The culmination of Monet’s water lily paintings were the Grandes Dėcorations, 22 enormous canvases each over two metres high and totalling more than 90 metres in length, which he completed months before his death and donated to the French state. These are now on permanent display in two oval rooms in the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

[headspace-hotel]

More complete list of ways that websites and books about gardening shamelessly misinform and confuse people

Using any combination of cultivar names, species names, genus names, and common names to refer to plants, leaving well-intentioned gardening noobs fighting for their lives in a lawless wasteland. Just look at this Better Homes and Gardens article on salvia.

Salvia is a genus of plants containing hundreds of species, including culinary sage, rosemary, and many species used as ornamentals. The Better Homes and Gardens list ruthlessly mixes common names for sage species with cultivar names, without giving the binomial Latin species name at all for a single one...

...and refers to two totally different plants only as "purple sage" in the same listicle

On that note, acting like "variety" is just as important as, or interchangeable with, "species." Just read an article that said "some varieties of this plant can be invasive, so make sure to check which ones are prohibited in your area!" No. NO. No specific cultivar of an invasive plant species is going to be non-invasive. In fact, introducing new cultivars of an invasive plant will make the invasive species problem WORSE because that's new genetic material. 'Bradford' pears are invasive in the US, 'Cleveland' pears are also invasive, because they're BOTH PYRUS CALLERYANA, but the website you're buying them off of doesn't SAY that, AUGHH

Referring to plants that are enthusiastic or aggressive growers as 'invasive.' I falsely believed so many native species were invasive simply because some dumbass article decided to call them "invasive" for the crime of being able to grow in a lawn. The same websites will turn around and say that a 100% virulent invasive species "can become aggressive in some gardens" WHSFDHHKKK???

Gardening books describing a gorgeous native flower that doesn't die instantly when you think a negative thought about it: "Invasive. Evil. Kill on sight." Gardening books describing one of the worst known invasive plant species in human history that's decimating ecosystems as we speak: "This plant can be a teensy weensy bit vigorous."

totally failing to explore what it means for a cultivar of a plant to be "sterile." Here's the thing. The 'Bradford' pear was supposed to be sterile, but it was not, the cultivar was just made up of clones of the same plant, and most plants can't fertilize themselves. When another cultivar of Pyrus calleryana is planted close to it, such as the 'Cleveland' pear, surprise surprise, THEY AREN'T STERILE.

IIRC it is possible to produce truly sterile cultivars by breeding a plant that can't make seeds/fruits and cloning those plants by vegetative propagation. A cultivar of cloned, genetically identical plants with completely unchanged reproductive ability is NOT STERILE, it is just banking on no other cultivars of the plant ever existing nearby. Which is deeply stupid.

Yes, "cultivars" (the names in single quotation marks next to the name of the plant in a nursery label) are generally just groups of clones of the same founding individual. I'm not a fan of cultivars because they're basically Petri dishes for breeding disease. E.g. The Emerald ash borer was able to so thoroughly decimate ash trees in the USA partly because the gene pool of planted ash trees in American cities was 2-3 individual trees big. Now ornamental boxwoods seem to be dying off en masse in my area, and the reasons are probably similar.

[kopfkino-o]

it's been a minute since i did some theory rambling and i've got a long train ride ahead of me so let's get at it! this is more of a general elain post but there is some pro elriel thinking sprinkled in. thanks for reading!!

was Elain blessed by the Mother so she might cure the corrupted Cauldron? are there two primordial forces warring within it? does Elain have the power of Life? bear with me while i ramble about all this.

warning: the following thoughts probably aren't cohesive lol.

okay but does anyone else think that there's a small part of the Mother, the original creator, left within the Cauldron and that's what recognized and loved Elain? Like a part of me thinks that some aspect of the Mother remains locked away or maybe weakened by what the Asteri did to the Cauldron that recognized the inherent goodness in Elain and that's why she was "blessed."

What if the last lingering ember of the Mother's will recognized Elain's gentle heart, her brave soul, and gifted her with the power to break the corruption and restore the order of things?

"Her gaze shifted to the carved wooden rose she’d placed upon the mantel, half-hidden in the shadows beside a figurine of a supple-bodied female, her upraised arms clasping a full moon between them. Some sort of primal goddess—perhaps even the Mother herself. Nesta hadn’t let herself dwell on why she’d felt the need to set the rose there." - ACOSF, as told from Nesta's point of view.

SARAH, GIRL I SEE YOU!!!

We know that Elain is associated with roses from the description of her drawer, her love of gardening, from Feyre telling us that Elain would trim the roses without gloves and get thorns in her hands, amongst other associations. Nesta placing a symbol associated with Elain next to this primordial goddess figurine, PERHAPS EVEN THE MOTHER HERSELF, feels just so...prophetic. It's like Nesta is almost passing the mantle of being the storyteller or the FMC on to Elain. And maybe even hinting at what's to come.

BLESSID. BELOVED. BENEVOLENT.

Okay. So back to the Cauldron, the Mother, all that. We know Nesta took something from the Cauldron (but this is a post for another day) and that Elain was given something. We know that Elain is a seer, blessed with the gift of foresight and clairvoyance, though we don't exactly know what the innerworkings of this sort of magic are.

But what if Sight wasn't the only gift Elain was given?

My theory is that Elain was given the gift of Life by the remaining aspect of the Mother to counter/compliment the power of Death Nesta stole from the corrupted aspect of the Cauldron--or the power of the Asteri, which I think might also be the power of Deanna from the Throne of Glass World (but again, that's a post for another day). And I can't help but think that, for the gentler grower of things, this theorized "Life magic" would manifest in the form of earth/soil/plant manipulation. We saw this in HOFAS with the official introduction of earth based magic and it has me thinking!!

And with that thinking, I'm wondering if the lingering essence of the Mother might have blessed Elain with these powers in the hopes that she would be able to master them, in the same way the Nesta mastered the power she claimed, and help finally banish the corruption from the force of the Cauldron. I've got a little headcanon that all three sisters will have some role in this but it needs to stew a bit more lol. And what if Elain's bond has some roll in all of this?

A THREAD TIDED TO A RIB

I don't want to speak for everyone, but to me there's something off about Lucien and Elain's bond. He is able to live far away from her with seemingly no issue. She shrinks into herself when he's around. Lucien just seems...sad whenever the bond is mentioned. Could this be the result of the same awkward/push-pull tension that we saw between Nessian and Feysand? Maybe.

But what if it's because SJM Is using them to show us what a "Cauldron-given bond" looks like? Rhys theorizes about the bonds in ACOWAR and brings up a very interesting comment:

"There is choice. And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some … preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring. At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.” A smile at me—at the rareness, perhaps, of what we had. “Even so,” Rhys went on, “there will always be a … tug. For the females, it is usually easier to ignore, but the males … It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through, but some believe they are entitled to the female. Even after the bond is rejected, they see her as belonging to them. Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. It is savage, and it is ugly, and it mercifully does not happen often, but … Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason. Only years later will they realize that perhaps the pairing was not ideal in spirit.”

IM SORRY BUT IS THAT NOT SARAH SCREAMING AT US?

Sometimes the bond picks poorly! She gives us TWO examples of this with Rhys's and Tam's parents. Two bonds that I think were CAULDRON GIVEN bonds. Then, as a foil to this, she gives us Nessian and Feysand. Vivienne and Kallias. Three bonds gifted by the Mother--the primordial being, the gentle creator of things. Could this be Silba from the TOG world? Kythona from Crescent City? Is she Wyrd? And could the Mother have given both Elain and Lucien other bonds--blessed bonds--that are currently being surpressed by the corrupted bonds bestowed on them by the Cauldron?

Personally (and especially after HOFAS) I think the Cauldron's corruption needs to be addressed. And I think Elain is the one to do it. Her entire character is steeped in themes of choice, fate vs freewill, destiny vs self-actualization, and gods, the set up for an AMAZING story is right there.

TO CLOSE THIS MADNESS OUT

I can't say what SJM will do in the end. But I can theorize based on the last few books and the foreshadowing she's lain. And for me, I see the angsty, unprecedented chosen love story she's building between Elain and Azriel with a rejected mating bond incorporated into the heart of their love story. Could she change the direction of her books and abandon this? Absolutely. But I think the story would be so much worse for it. The crumbs for something amazing are there. The crumbs for something that has the potential to be genre-defying is there. And based on what Sarah commented to the Times, I can't help but she's knows this and can't help but write it.

ok bye thanks for reading!! i'd love to talk more about this to anyone else who is down to yap! dms are always open.

[plantanarchy]

ty for your post about perennial and native gardens!! as someone who is very new to plants but would like to learn, what signs of health should you look for when choosing plants at a nursery?? obviously its different for every species, but if theres any general tips/other resources to learn more id love to hear about them!!

It really does depend on the specific plant tbh but healthy roots are a must.

You can check roots by peeking in the drainage holes, squeezing the pot gently, or carefully poking around the base of the plant and through the soil. When you're looking for depends on the plant. But if it feels mushy, there's a bad smell, or you can't find roots at all, you may want to pass on that plant.

As a grower to check roots, I will physically flip the plant upside down and remove the pot, but that requires some finesse or you get dirt everywhere. Especially if it turns out that there's a root issue. If you're going to poke about, do so carefully and respectfully.

Usually, a plant with a root issue will start to have foliage symptoms like yellowing leaves, and leaf veining or browning but those symptoms can also mean other things like underfertilzation, underwatering, or sun damage... but also could signal viral, fungal, bacterial issues. This has been the least helpful paragraph in the world sorry lmao

When in doubt, look for green leaves and a decent root system. Also, keep in mind that the perennial you are buying now will not look its best until next year or even the next. So don't pass by plants that aren't growing upright or are crooked or aren't in bloom or even look a little chewed on by insects.

[sunshine-for-serotonin]

Hii, can I request some yandere! Eric Destler headcanons? Preferably NSFW ;)

Now this, this is beautiful- thank you for this request my dear!!! I’ll get to everyone else in due time!

General behavior, positions, and anatomy

Let’s start of with the basics- Erik tends to give up control in the bedroom, and if you so much as kiss him a little bit sweeter than normal, he becomes putty in your hands.

Erik will cry, there’s no way around it. He loves you so much, and the fact you are there with him in that moment is enough to turn the normally intimidating and obsessive man into a teary-eyed, clingy, red faced mess.

Please, kiss him until he can’t think straight. Erik soaks up any affection you give him like a dry sponge, and kisses and long cuddle sessions are great for aftercare or even during sex!

Now how about turn ons? Place him in your lap, facing you as you kiss him all over his face and neck while moving your arms along his back (I don’t care how weak you think you are, I am giving you the power to put this man in your lap) and you can bet within minutes he’s trying to subtly grind against you and begging for you to touch him. Eriks also a fan of you gripping his hips, no matter the context

If you are a fan of marking your partner up, you are in luck my dear! After you explain to Erik what hickeys are (and trust me, you will have to explain) and place an experimental one on his neck, he will beg for you to put them all over his body! It makes Erik feel loved and wanted by you, that you would so proudly say he’s yours all over his body. This is also a quick way to turn him on!

if you speak to him in French, even just calling him a pet name or telling him you love him, he will in fact be on his knees, pressing desperate kisses to your thighs and core within seconds all the while he has a very obvious bulge.

Eriks neck and ears are highly sensitive, and I encourage you to tease him in those areas with your mouth, and if you’re gentle you can even use your teeth. Fair warning though, his hips will start to buck uncontrollably and he will start whining. Truthfully, it’s adorable!

Now for anatomy- I would say he’s more of a grower not a shower, being four inches long flaccid and seven inches hard with an average amount of veins close to the surface, and just wide enough to where you will feel a stretch but not be sore after. I personally believe he has little to no body hair, and the amount that he does have is well groomed.

Eriks behavior during sex can vary, but the one thing that never changes is how vocal he is, his need to have you as close as possible, and his need to please you above all else.

Yes, Erik is very, VERY, vocal! He wants to communicate with you how good he feels, and even if he tries to hold in his moans, he fails miserably no matter how long you two are together. “S’il te plaît, s’il te plaît, mon amour!!! G-good, feels so good!!! Mon ange, je t’aime, je t’aime!!”

Erik cums a large amount and it’s relatively thick in consistency, so not the greatest for swallowing, but luckily for you he’s not a fan of blowjobs. But you know what he is a fan of? Eating you out!

Erik is 100% willing to beg you to let him put his head between your legs with actual tears in his eyes. Seriously, it is actually his favorite thing to do besides you fucking him into next week, like, he could actually spend hours in between your thighs while he grinds against whatever he can to get friction. Erik is actually very greedy about eating you out as well, and if you try to pull away before he feels like he’s gorged himself as much as he can, he’s gonna let out an absolutely pathetic sounding whine of your name before dragging your hips back to his mouth and pleasuring you with even more vigor. Also when you cum on his tongue, he is for sure orgasming as well, even if he isn’t actually grinding on anything. The only thing I would caution you with is that Erik probably also wants you to sit on his face, which their is nothing wrong with, except for the fact that you may irritate his facial deformities, but he’s definitely still going to beg so you will have to be the one to say no.

another thing with eating you out is that Erik absolutely craves to be smothered. I’m talking about him gripping your thighs so tight it’ll leave bruises and him shoving your thighs against his face to the point he almost passes out, and yet all he can do is beg for you to let him keep eating you out. (Once again, you will have to be the one to make sure his face doesn’t get irritated because Erik really doesn’t care about anything other than making you orgasm)

“please, please, please, mon ange, mon cheri, just one more orgasm for me, please!”

Eriks absolute favorite position is The Face Off, because this way he can be absolutely surrounded by you while he has his arms around you and his face buried in the crook of your neck or desperately trying to kiss you, like I said previously, Erik is probably the clingiest partner you will ever have. But also honestly, he enjoys any position where you are on top or where you are domming him.

He won’t last long for a while, and by that I mean Erik will cum within five minutes just from shakily rutting his hips against you.

kinks, turn-offs, and aftercare

Praise kink, praise kink, praise kink!!! Erik loves to be told how good he’s doing, how handsome he is, etc! To the point where you decided to not give him any friction and just praise him, just to see what would happen, and much to your (not) surprise, he was able to cum just from that!

Overstimulation- this might be Eriks favorite kink, because it reminds him just how much you love him to be touching him like this and you praise him for doing so good.

Edging- Erik likes edging because he feels like it makes your sessions last longer, and it feels even better to cum after being denied for a bit. Be wary that if you edge him for to long however, he may become a bit temperamental!

if Erik is in one of his moods and won’t take his mask off, just do any combination of the above and he’ll rip it off

Also I’m willing to bet good money he has a mommy kink, but the only way you’ll find out is by pure accident when you were overstimulating him probably, the poor man just wants to be nurtured and to be absolutely drowned in your love

he doesn��t have many hard turn offs, but degradation towards both you or himself as well as bondage is something he will never do, because it reminds him of his insecurities and traumas.

Erik has a relatively high sex drive, and as long as you initiate it, you can end up railing him from four to five days a week for about two hours at a time after he gets some experience with you.

Before Erik kidnapped you, Erik is ashamed to admit that he used to steal your dirty clothes like bras and underwear so he could enjoy your scent while he desperately fucked himself into one of your (also stolen) pillows. And if you wear modern clothes like hoodies, he always makes sure to put said hoodie on a pillow, so he can cuddle it at night and pretend it’s you he’s holding.

“oh mon amour, I wish you were here with me right now- I want to make you feel good. One day, but for now I must have patience. Je t’aime, mon cheri.”

After care is a must for both of you!! Truthfully this is basically just cleaning each other up, drinking water, and Erik laying on top of you while he listens to your heartbeat as you both drift off. If you are wearing a pajama shirt afterwards, Erik really likes to crawl inside so that he can have skin to skin contact and be nestled as close to you as he can be.

( I don’t care who you think Christine should have ended up with, Erik is my babygirl and I will die on this hill)

[maks-punchout-hyperfixtion]

Punch out headcanons take one

Sorry super punch fans, this is only wii/nes versions

Minor circuit

Glass Joe

Pretty good baker, can't make complex stuff without help though.

Actually retired once after the arcade/nes version of punch out, came back after Gabby jay retired, has had thoughts about it again but keeps remembering that his life would be dull without it. Also his score rested and he still got 99 loses (102 after the wii game)

Has trouble sleeping, uses weighted blankets to help.

Von Kaiser

Your meaning to tell me that dispite being 42 canon years old with some of the most out of pocket head canons ever im the only one that thought it would be funny for him to have a kid be the near opposite of him? Aka he is a dad.

Knows how to cook, doesn't often anymore but still knows

I believe he would like coconuts.no i won't elaborate.

Disco Kid

Likes all kinds of songs, not just disco. Still loves disco though.

Is a relative of kid quick, nobody knows what relation though.

I like the idea that he is friends with aran, i don't ship disco clover but its still a nice pairing we need more.

King Hippo

Can speak English but prefers grunts or noises.

Likes to explain his culture, specifically gifts and other stuff other find meaningless.

Also has a lot of tropical recipes he gives to everyone.

Major circuit

Piston Hondo

Still has that restaurant from the Wii live action ad.

Piston honda? Oh that's his twin.

Definitely has a manga collection. He also has 3 sets of everything. One for display one for reading and one for borrowing. He does not trust aran,soda, bear hugger, and king hippo with them at all.

Bear Hugger

Dad energy. He essentially went and adopted all the boxers with daddy issues, or parent issues in general.

Forced the WVBA to give maple (the bear) a seat in the crowd so she could watch the match, they had to make an entire separate area for her.

Has walked out in the snow with nothing but his overalls and shoes on. That gave everyone a scare forgetting he's used to the cold.

Great Tiger

Uses his clones to do/help with his chores. Once got beaten up by them (a reference of the century here folks)

Once his jewel was stolen and was found in a pawn shop selling for 3 dollars. He was mad at how low the price was then anything.

Once brought his tiger into the shared house, and it immediately broke the couch. The tiger is not allowed in the house anymore.

Don Flamenco

He and Carmen broke up after his first lost, got back together shortly after and forgot the whole issue.

Used bull fighters techniques on bald bull, he would have won if bald bull didn't right hook him into next sunday (literally)

Has tried multiple different types of hair growers, wigs, and more. He is still Balding.

World circuit

Aran Ryan

Actually got in the world circuit fair and square, not by cheating.

He started cheating after some idiot tried to stab him in the ring, good times from the WVBA!

I have a feeling he would say he likes to eat limes raw just to get on everyone's nerves.

Has also gotten confused with his Older brother, spo Aran Ryan, who promptly got a name change after aram started to cheat.

Soda Popinski

None of the boxer can drink his soda because its a legit health hazard to all of them.

Has no clue what the hell is going on 68% of the time.

Has actually used dry ice as a ice pack. This guy isn't human anymore.

Bald Bull

Hates don flamenco with a passion after the bull technique incident.

Is actually calm outside the ring, any public out brust is to get rid of potential paparazzi's (it doesn't work often)

Makes a pretty good calming tea.

Super Macho Man

Once had a horrible movie shoot that made him lose alot of viewer, proceeded to have an early mid life crisis and dye his hair gray.

After his loss with little mac he was more upset at the ladys chasing after little mac rather then him, rather then the sudden drop of viewers (which wasn't even a dent)

Probably had alot of talks about his boxer outfit, you know what im referring too.

Mr. Sandman

Dispite his name, he gets very little sleep. Not like glass joe but still.

He's so strong the WVBA actually has a ambulance on standby whenever he fights.

One time was put up against glass joe, actually laughed, realized it was serious, looked the referee in the eyes and said "if im put up against him ever again we'll need to find a new glass joe" and forfeited the game. Technically if joes score didn't reset it would now be 2-299.

[belit0]

Since we’re on the topic of Uchiha cock, let’s compare, shall we?

Indra: the founder of all Uchiha Cock

Honestly, I don’t know much about this man. But didn’t he pioneer the clan in the first place? So literally every single male in the clan sort of is blessed by his cocks genes. Phew, I hope you have a pair of underwear to change into. 😈😈😈

- Proportionate from crown to base, this man’s cock was almost painted for a portrait once.

- Not exceedingly veiny, but they’re there. And in all the right places, and if you’re a good girl, he’ll show you just where those places are.

- Dark head, semi lighter shaft, definitely exotic. His cock is the focal point of his southern region, neatly adorned with beautiful carpet that matches the drapes.

- Uncut, the ridges on his foreskin sort of are stimulating. Especially on first entry, so he will tease and tease you until he slams it in, fast without warning.

- Exceptionally thick, you’ll feel stretched stupid by this man’s cock. And when he presses a hand to your lower abdomen, you instantaneously start to flutter and come. It’s like magic.

- Exceedingly long, cervix taps all around for you. And he’s not gentle about it, he wants to make sure that that every drop of his seed shoots near it, especially when you ovulate.

Rating: 8/10 length 9/10 girth and 10/10 cock whipped @belit0 into oblivion 🫠

Madara: the shameless Uchiha cock

Similarly to Indra, he is at the starting line of the next generation for all Uchiha males. And outside of beating someone in battle, he beats pussy even better with cock. It’s glorious—picturesque. Even his enemies are green with envy, their wives RUN to Madara, but he shuns them. Truly a man made from the hands of the gods themselves. Hushed rumors between loose lipped women in their clan praise worship to him, and although he is a private person. He enjoys the secret whispers about his cock. It’s free advertisement and plenty of women throw themselves at him when he is out and about.

- Big fat head, ok? His foreskin doesn’t even cover his tip.

- Exceptionally sensitive. Madara has stamina for days, but if the right pair of thick lips wrap around him and suck that fat fucking head, he’s going to thrust into your throat until he comes and then drops you off where he found you. Sorry but he has more important things to do and this was a quickie.

- Drippy, excited when a new woman falls into his sheets. His cock leaks happily. A new hole to fill and another potential pregnancy. Which leads to the next point.

- His pullout game is weak despite being unbridled in battle. The man is fully enslaved to the Uchiha breeding kink. The more mini Madara’s the better, though he only exclusively fucks Uchiha women. No exceptions.

- Not incredibly long, nor short. He is a shower not a grower, and will make you suck him soft until he is hard.

Rating: 6/10 length 10/10 girth 12/10 has kids he doesn’t know about.

Izuna: eh—Uchiha cock

Another Uchiha I am uncertain about, but this man strikes me as a mix between Sasuke and Shisui. Sasuke because he can be emotionally dormant. Doesn’t want or like kids, but will eventually one day have to make sure he has at least one. And Shisui because the guy has drip and a sort of fun bad boy side that he doesn’t show anyone other than the woman he shares all himself with. It was as if the gods split his personality and reincarnated him into the two younger Uchiha because each side of the coin developed better between the two.

- Small-ish, but it grows and grows and grows. You think twice before shunting him aside. Extra long, a half inch or so doesn’t fit to the hilt.

- Sort of skinny, not in a bad way—he just wasn’t blessed like the rest of them. Ask him for a back stroke though, it’ll make up for it and have you crying for air several orgasms later, pleading for a break.

- Will reluctantly cum inside his wife. After 6 years of marriage though, and hounding from his brother to give his niece/nephews play friends (and cohorts in war).

- Realizes he likes coming inside his wife and has 3 more kids. Sorry Izuna, you’re a family man now.

- Secretly gets a vasectomy.

Rating: 10/10 length 4/10 girth 8/10 secretly a happy dad

Obito: the man of the hour Uchiha cock

This guy. Doesn’t even know what he has. Unknowingly is the most modest about his junk out of all the Uchiha. Thinks it’s genetics and never once thought he was adorned with the most beautiful cock out of all the Uchiha bloodline. When he finally feels comfortable to bed his new girlfriend he is shocked by your reaction and it awakens a whole new side of Obito.

- Big. Just big, big everything. Hands, torso, thighs. Toned, muscled and ripped up back. The man is built like a fucking 56k tonne Mack truck. Even when he is careful, and he worries a lot about that, it’s still rough. You love it though.

- Thickest cock game all around. It’s not overtly veiny but they do protrude when he has been properly edged and driven to the brink of insanity by him, lucky you. Cause she’s gonna get it and then some.

- Slow, fast, hard or soft. No matter the pace, Obito takes pride in his clan genetics little by little when he fucks 6 or 7 orgasms out of you.

- Big and fat aren’t the only things. When he comes it’s nearly cataclysmic. And he’ll secretly pretend he didn’t finish yet, just to fuck it back into you. Savage man I tell you.

Rating: 10/10 length 10/10 girth and 20/10 fucked stupid by him.

Shisui: legendary Uchiha cock

My light. The vision with no place to go. I love him wholly. But I’ll be honest, he is a filthy slut—because he fucks everyone. Pullout game on fleek—unless you’re on birth control, he’ll live out his wildest breeding fantasy with you, and maybe even gift you a real baby if you’re not on the pill. Who knows. This man doesn’t use a condom, ever. He won’t fuck just anyone though, their yearly physical has to be clean of STIs, emotionally fit and exceeding core strength. He’s going to have you in situations where sex is the least of your concern because nothing, and literally nothing, gets him off more than the element of surprise. Just killed an enemy in front of him? You get fucked, propped up against anything he can lean you over, and if there isn’t anything to support you with, you’ll be standing. Legs trembling, cramping and giving out. That’s just his lip service. I haven’t even talked about his cock.

- It’s not shy. You know it’s there even if he isn’t hard. Can fuck you with a half hard chubby if time allowed it and if he is too tired.

- Not entirely long, but that is ok. Shisui LOVES, LOVES to be close. Cradling you in his arms, pounding flesh until it echos, alerting everyone and anyone.

- KISSES. Cervix kisses, lip kisses. He wants to put his cock, EVERYWHERE that you allow him to—king of consent. Always jokes that your belly button is under developed because his cock should fit there too.

- Please, please, please tug his testicles. Unlike the other Uchiha, Shisui is the only one who loves to have them tugged, especially when he comes.

- His nick name is the super soaker. Not because of how big his load is, but given his lack of superior length, it’s not that short but still, he works a little extra hard to overstimulate you, making you squirt all on his cock. And even if he’s already came inside you, he will still lick and suck all that lovely marinate you guys just made.

Rating: 7/10 length 9/10 girth 10/10 if you fuck around, you’ll find out what’s it’s like to be folded like a lawn chair underneath him.

Itachi: dark horse of the Uchiha clan

This man here. Certified undercover freak. If he even senses you are giving him the opportunity, though he will ask first, just know that whatever dark paradise this man unleashes on you will forever be seared into your front temporal lobe. Not only will he emotionally lobotomize you to think of him and only him. He is physically capable of eliciting even the most deplorable desires you never dreamed of recreating with someone. Itachi has his own private theatre which you take center stage. The break down:

- Tsukuyomi. This is your playground. Anything you can imagine, dream, think and even feel is at the hands of Itachi. Though using his genjūtsu is saved for special occasions.

- Incredibly heavy headed. The crown of his cock appears to swell a bit more than most Uchiha males. Stretching your tight entrance repeatedly, just so he can watch it disappear and dissect your dribbling cunt.

- You get an Itachi and you get an Itachi and everyone here gets an Itachi. Or at least every hole that is. Just like Shisui, this man wants to fill every orifice of your body. Simultaneously. And Tsukuyomi is capable of just that.

- If you’re exceeding sensitive to pressure, he’ll feather his tongue over your clit from below, while his clone impales your weeping cunt, and another clone to muffle out the cries of pleasure is in your mouth.

Rating: 8/10 length 8/10 girth 10/10 leaving you fucked up beyond belief.

Merry Christmas you filthy animal. 😈😭

i.......... i can't even............ i mean................. FUCK

I have to admit Obito's is just how I always imagine him (did you read my mind?), perfect portrait of him🫱🏼‍🫲🏼

I agree with literally everything (except one part), so I'm going to dive into my personal opinion of one particular section (my favorite), let me elaborate:

IZUNA HAVING A SECRET VASECTOMY, YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I must say I differ a bit with his profile cause he is my special boy, I think he would finish up inside any woman who tells him she is on the pill (and if he's too horny, sometimes he doesn't even ask) just because of how incapable he is of controlling his breeding kink.

I think there would be more little Izunas running around (which he wouldn't take care of unless they came to throw the kid in his face) than Madaras.

Madara has to take care of an image, he can't have huge amounts of unknown children, on the other hand, Izuna escapes that responsibility and jumps from bed to bed as he pleases because no one can stop him.

Izuna is the real slut of the Uchiha clan, always hungry for a new pussy and never stopping in the same bed for two nights. He fucks all the women of the clan (leaving more than one unrecognized child lying around) and then starts with the village women once it's founded. No one can stop him, Madara literally forces him to marry.

I love the description of him being a combination of Sasuke's emotional inability and Shisui's wild side, I think they both got more genes from him than from any other ancestor (they are probably offspring of one of the children Izuna never recognized, linked directly by blood).

His high sexual experience gives him a development capacity in bed that no other has, he is not tied to anyone and always changes person, without discriminating genders (if he likes a man very much, nothing stops him). He is the physical description of Uchiha passion, pure fire running through his veins constantly.

I believe his dick loses importance in the equation because Izuna has the best hand-and-mouth game in the whole clan. That man destroys you under his wet caresses before even fucking and leaves you so sensitive you come over and over again on his cock. It is a tactic he finds necessary because nothing makes him come better than the desperate cries of a woman under his body.

welcome to sam's ted talk pips, i hope u guys enjoy as much as I did

now if u excuse me, i have to use all this information for prolific writing🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠

[simslegacy5083]

NSB (Straud Legacy) Gen 9 Ep 87: A Reality Check

Their classes didn’t make it easy to schedule, but Luigi and Noemi arranged an appointment with a therapist shortly after their heart to heart.

For Luigi their first session couldn’t come soon enough. Even after the initial shock wore off, all kinds of fears around fatherhood had his heart and head all tangled up. He had no idea how to straighten them out and was afraid that trying to do it himself might cost him Noemi forever.

So, when Dr. Velasquez greeted them at her office in uptown and invited them to “jump right into it”, he didn’t need to be asked twice!

He started to explain the worries that had been troubling him, the Doctor’s calm prompts helping him put individual concerns into clear words one at a time. Some of them surprised even him, like when he confessed that the pregnancy seemed suspicious.

Asked to clarify, he explained that he’d been so good about using protection and Noemi had said she had an IUD too. Then she got pregnant right after they had been a bit too busy with school to “get busy” for a little while. The therapist said “Unplanned pregnancies bring out those fears in a lot of sims, even when they're completely unfounded. Fortunately, a simple paternity test can prove the baby you’re expecting really is the start of your legacy, and no-one else's.”

Luigi stiffened at the word “legacy”, while Noemi was taken aback by the topic in general. “Do you really think I lied about my IUD, or about being exclusive, and I blew off classes to woohoo with someone else in the few hours we haven’t been together this semester!?”

Luigi turned to her with an unusually intense expression. “I trust you, and more importantly I love you. I want to raise this baby with you, whether it’s an alien from Sixam, a slow grower from that Jairo guy you were seeing just recently, or a strong swimmer of mine who was really good at punching through rubber.”

She still looked hurt and confused as he continued, “There’s just so much I’m not sure about right now. Getting a firm answer on where this baby came from would be one less unknown in a world that feels like it’s suddenly trying to change everything all at once.”

He looked at Dr. Velasquez. “I’m in this for the long haul, but what you said earlier about my legacy… if I’m going to accept this kid as the next legacy heir of my family, I have to be sure its my biological child.”

As the others looked at him in confusion, he felt a rush of embarrassment. Taking a deep breath, he launched into the explanation of watchers, legacies, and his own “special status” as it had been explained to him by his papa.

The therapist’s professionally interested expression was stable as a rock while he rambled on, but Noemi seemed to zone out into her own thoughts until suddenly she snapped, interrupting him angrily.

“Luigi, just stop! I know you’re self-absorbed but thinking that you are literally the only sim that matters in the whole of SimNation?! You know that sounds pants on head crazy, right? That hasn’t escaped your notice??”

Dr. Velasquez cleared her throat. “It’s not crazy to consider yourself the main character of your own story, but have you ever heard of sonder?”

When Luigi shook his head, she told him “It’s a term that describes the realization that every sim is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, with their own ambitions, friends, routines, and worries. There are countless epic stories continuing seamlessly all around you, all the time. In those stories you might appear only once, if at all, as an “extra” sipping coffee in the background.”

She reached over to her desk, searching out a small card, which she handed him. “It’s wonderful that your papa thought you and your father were the most special sims in the nation, but holding that same belief about yourself puts you at risk of devaluing others and may make it hard to participate fully in healthy, loving relationships. There are some videos and readings listed here that I strongly suggest you review, maybe together with Noemi.”

Luigi looked over to find his girl had turned away towards the opposite wall, her judgment coming through as clearly as if she was still yelling at him.

The rest of the session covered much less controversial topics. Dr. Velasquez encouraged Luigi to attend Noemi’s OB appointments as a way to show support and bond with their baby to be. She also suggested they make a team project of telling all their family and friends the good news.

Luigi wasn’t worried about his clan. They all liked Noemi, and he was certainly old enough to have a baby even if the timing was terrible, but Noemi’s face paled. She’d been so overwhelmed adjusting to the idea of motherhood, she hadn’t even considered that Luigi would be meeting her parents for the very first time not just as her boyfriend but as the father of their grandchild. It was a whole new angle for her social anxiety to fret over.

The therapist provided some tips on handling the meetings before setting a follow up appointment to check in with them next trimester. Neither sim broke the awkward silence as they left her office, but both secretly felt this visit had been much more painful and less helpful than they had hoped.

View The Full Story of My Not So Berry Challenge Here

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

The Invasion of Locusts

1 The word of the Lord that came to Joel son of Pethuel.

2 Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors? 3 Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation. 4 What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.

5 Wake up, you drunkards, and weep! Wail, all you drinkers of wine; wail because of the new wine, for it has been snatched from your lips. 6 A nation has invaded my land, a mighty army without number; it has the teeth of a lion, the fangs of a lioness. 7 It has laid waste my vines and ruined my fig trees. It has stripped off their bark and thrown it away, leaving their branches white.

8 Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the betrothed of her youth. 9 Grain offerings and drink offerings are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests are in mourning, those who minister before the Lord. 10 The fields are ruined, the ground is dried up; the grain is destroyed, the new wine is dried up, the olive oil fails.

11 Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers; grieve for the wheat and the barley, because the harvest of the field is destroyed. 12 The vine is dried up and the fig tree is withered; the pomegranate, the palm and the apple tree— all the trees of the field—are dried up. Surely the people’s joy is withered away.

A Call to Lamentation

13 Put on sackcloth, you priests, and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar. Come, spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God; for the grain offerings and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God. 14 Declare a holy fast; call a sacred assembly. Summon the elders and all who live in the land to the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord.

15 Alas for that day! For the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty.

16 Has not the food been cut off before our very eyes— joy and gladness from the house of our God? 17 The seeds are shriveled beneath the clods. The storehouses are in ruins, the granaries have been broken down, for the grain has dried up. 18 How the cattle moan! The herds mill about because they have no pasture; even the flocks of sheep are suffering.

19 To you, Lord, I call, for fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness and flames have burned up all the trees of the field. 20 Even the wild animals pant for you; the streams of water have dried up and fire has devoured the pastures in the wilderness. — Joel 1 | New International Version (NIV) Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® All rights reserved worldwide. Cross References: Genesis 4:12; Exodus 10:2; Exodus 10:5; Exodus 10:14; Leviticus 23:36; Deuteronomy 12:7; 1 Kings 8:5; 1 Kings 17:7; 1 Kings 18:5; 1 Kings 21:27; 2 Kings 10:20; Job 8:8; Psalm 43:4; Psalm 50:15; Psalm 78:4; Song of Solomon 2:3; Song of Solomon 7:8; Isaiah 5:6; Isaiah 13:6; Isaiah 15:6; Isaiah 17:10-11; Isaiah 22:12; Isaiah 32:10; Jeremiah 1:2; Jeremiah 8:13; Jeremiah 9:10; Jeremiah 9:12; Jeremiah 12:4; Jeremiah 30:7; Lamentations 1:4; Ezekiel 30:2; Hosea 9:4; Joel 2:2; Joel 2:14; Matthew 6:26; Acts 2:16; Revelation 9:8; Revelation 6:17; Revelation 11:3

[beyondtheglowingstars]

Mario x GN Reader NSFW Headcanons

As the title implies, NSFW content here so MINORS DNI!!!

🔥 - He was definitely a little embarrassed to tell you what he wanted from and when he wanted to start spicy times with you the first few times you did it.

🔥 - Lost shame later on and became more direct with you; but nothing too crazy, he just tells you when he’s in the mood and asks you if you’re up for it. And don’t be afraid to tell him when you also have any needs that must be taken care of, he loves to service you in any way he can.

🔥 - And hiding your needs from him wouldn’t be a very wise decision since he’ll find out eventually and push the right buttons to get you to relax and succumb to your desires.

🔥 - A bit of an exhibitionist. As in, LOVES to show off his own body in front of you. And even if he’s fully clothed, undress him with your eyes and mind and he’ll be over the moon, he absolutely relishes in having your undivided attention on him.

🔥 - Buy him any type of underwear you want, he’ll gladly put it on to show what it looks like on him.

🔥 - If you encourage him enough, you can get him to be risky in public.

🔥 - Would send you teasing or outright explicit pictures to your phone on those days he’s feeling too pent up and knows he won’t get to see you in a while or when he’s able to get away from his duties for some time.

🔥 - His cock is about average but is kinda thick. However, he has big balls that hang (and may or may not use this to his advantage whenever he wants to tease you).

🔥 - Also, he’s for sure a grower rather than shower.

🔥 - Tends to get rid of armpit hair and the like in general, but keeps a good bit of his happy trail. And usually just trims down there instead of shaving when he sees its getting a bit bushy, unless he thinks its time for change every once in a while.

🔥 - Thought he was fine for the most part until he found out he has a bit of a short fuse whenever your touch is involved, and he’s very embarrassed about it even if it’s not that bad. So it’s a good idea to learn what his limits are and to reassure him it’s not an issue.

🔥 - Don’t worry though, even if he can’t hold it in for too long, he recovers fairly quick and is ready for more in no time. When he gets too into it it’s almost like he has no refractory period.

🔥 - Not opposed to quickies if either of you won’t have the time for the real deal later in the day.

🔥 - Pull or maybe don’t if you value your own ability to form coherent thoughts his hair when he gives you oral, he’ll lose all restraint.

🔥 - Doesn’t mind trying out new things just as long as you enjoy it.

🔥 - Not too vocal in general but you can expect some moans or other sounds depending on how close he is to orgasm or how good his release felt. Other than that, you’ll hear a lot of pants and heavy breathing.

🔥 - More of a gentle sex kinda guy. Not that he doesn’t like it when it’s rough, but it’s just what his mind defaults to.

🔥 - Kind of related to the exhibitionist side of him, he loves holding eye contact with you. Besides liking the feeling of being watched, he just likes to show you how good he’s feeling and also needs to know you’re enjoying yourself.

🔥 - Whether you say his name in a drawn out moan or in a more commanding tone, he loves it all the same and his body visibly reacts to it.

🔥 - Get ready for lots of making out, he can’t go having sex without also having your mouth on his.

🔥 - Has the best aftercare in the world. Will help you clean up, catch your breath and tend to you if you need the aid and would totally bring some snacks for the both of you to share and recover your energy.

🔥 - If you’re both too tired to even have proper aftercare, he’s sooooo cuddling with you and holding you gently. You’ll be greeted the next day to praises in his sleepy voice.

[ausetkmt]

The Gullah and Geechee culture on the Sea Islands of Georgia has retained ethnic traditions from West Africa since the mid-1700s. Although the islands along the southeastern U.S. coast harbor the same collective of West Africans, the name Gullah has come to be the accepted name of the islanders in South Carolina, while Geechee refers to the islanders of Georgia. Modern-day researchers designate the region stretching from Sandy Island, South Carolina, to Amelia Island, Florida, as the Gullah Coast—the locale of the culture that built some of the richest plantations in the South.

Many traditions of the Gullah and Geechee culture were passed from one generation to the next through language, agriculture, and spirituality. The culture has been linked to specific West African ethnic groups who were enslaved on island plantations to grow rice, indigo, and cotton starting in 1750, when antislavery laws ended in the Georgia colony.

Enslavement

Courtesy of Georgia Archives.

Rice plantations fostered Georgia’s successful economic competition with other slave-based rice economies along the Eastern Seaboard. Coastal plantations invested primarily in rice, and plantation owners sought out Africans from the Windward Coast of West Africa (Senegambia [later Senegal and the Gambia], Sierra Leone, and Liberia), where rice, indigo, and cotton were indigenous to the region. Over the ensuing centuries, the isolation of the rice-growing ethnic groups, who re-created their native cultures and traditions on the coastal Sea Islands, led to the formation of an identity recognized as Geechee/Gullah.

There is no single West African contribution to Geechee/Gullah culture, although dominant cultural patterns often correspond to various agricultural investments. For example, Africa’s Windward Coast was later commonly referred to as the Rice Coast in recognition of the large numbers of Africans enslaved from that area who worked on rice plantations in America.

Language

Photograph by WIDTTF 

Gullah is thought to be a shortened form of Angola, the name of the group first imported to the Carolinas during the early colonial period. Geechee, historically considered a negative word identifying Sea Islanders, became an acceptable term in light of contemporary evidence linking it to West Africa. Although the origins of the two words are not definitive, some enslaved Africans along the coast had names that were linked to the Kissi group, leading to speculation that the terms may also derive from that particular culture.

Linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner researched and documented spoken words on the coast during the 1930s, traced similarities to ethnic groups in West Africa, then published the Gullah dialect lexicon, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1949). His research confirms the evolution of a new language based on West African influences and English. Many words in the coastal culture could be matched to ethnic groups in West Africa, thereby linking the Geechee/Gullah people to their origins. Margaret Washington Creel in A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community-Culture among the Gullahs (1988) identifies cultural and spiritual habits that relate to similar ethnic groups of West Africans who are linked by language. Her research on the coastal culture complements Turner’s findings that Africans on the Sea Islands created a new identity despite the tragic conditions of slavery.

Cultural Heritage

Documentation of the developing culture on the Georgia islands dates to the nineteenth century. By the late twentieth century, researchers and scholars had confirmed a distinctive group and identified specific commonalities with locations in West Africa. The rice growers’ cultural retention has been studied through language, cultural habits, and spirituality. The research of Mary A. Twining and Keith E. Baird in Sea Island Roots: African Presence in the Carolinas and Georgia (1991) investigates the common links of islanders to specific West African ethnicities.

The enslaved rice growers from West Africa brought with them knowledge of how to make tools needed for rice harvesting, including fanner baskets for winnowing rice. The sweetgrass baskets found on the coastal islands were made in the same styles as baskets found in the rice culture of West Africa. Sweetgrass baskets also were used for carrying laundry and storing food or firewood. Few present-day members of the Geechee/Gullah culture remember how to select palmetto, sweetgrass, and pine straw to create baskets, and the remaining weavers now make baskets as decorative art, primarily for tourists.

Image from Richard N Horne

Photograph by Sharon Maybarduk

In 1997 the two women met in the African village to share and reenact what was understood as a Mende funeral song, sung only by the women of Jabati’s family lineage, who conducted the funerals of the village. Evidence suggests that a female member of Moran’s family had been forced into captivity from the village nearly 200 years before. The return of the song and the visit from the Moran family led to a countrywide celebration that can be viewed in the documentary The Language You Cry In (1998). The discovery of the song and subsequent linguistic research confirmed yet another link between the cultures of West Africa and the Georgia coast.

Such corresponding practices as similar names, language structures, folktales, kinship patterns, and spiritual transference are but a few areas that suggest a particular link between the southeastern coastal culture of the United States and Sierra Leone in West Africa.

Migration

Thousands of enslaved laborers from Georgia and South Carolina who remained loyal to the British at the end of the American Revolution (1775-83) found safe haven in Nova Scotia in Canada and thus gained their freedom. Many returned to Sierra Leone in 1791 and the following year established Freetown, the capital city. Members of that group are identified today as Krio.

Fugitives from slavery were also harbored under Spanish protection in Florida prior to the Second Seminole War (1835-42). Native American refugees from around the South formed an alliance with self-emancipated Africans to create the Seminole Nation. The name Seminole is from the Spanish word cimarrón, meaning runaway. The 1842 agreement between the United States and Spain, which ended the Seminole hold on Florida, caused a migration to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Some Seminoles followed Spanish protectors to Cuba and to Andros Island in the Bahamas.

Photograph by Jennifer Cruse Sanders

During the 1900s, land on some of the islands—Cumberland, Jekyll, Ossabaw, Sapelo, and St. Simons —became resort locations and reserves for natural resources. The modern-day conflict over resort development on the islands presents yet another survival test for the Geechee/Gullah culture, the most intact West African culture in the United States. Efforts to educate the public by surviving members of the Geechee/Gullah community, including Cornelia Bailey of Sapelo Island and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, help to maintain and protect the culture’s unique heritage in the face of such challenges.

[thestudentfarmer]

🥳🥳🥳🥳

The cucumbers are starting to come in, ive picked 8 that are about 11-13 inch long with more to come :)

The front side pics only today, since the back is weirdly sparse at the moment.

Guranteed there will be a few hidden ones ive missed too. This is 3 or 4 plants, a couple died before taking off almost overnight so I'm not entirely sure.

These are a striped variety of armenian cucumbers, I like them because~~~~~

🌱once they get going they are very prolific producers on few plants.

🌱Fruit can be 12+ inches long and I've found some as thick as a watermelon once (was not tasty. The chickens loved it tho!) Bigger than 1.5 inch wide tends to start getting seedy.

🌱They can get some whacky shapes.

🌱If established and given a watering 2x a day for about 10-15 (early morning, sunset/dusk) before heat hits heavy, they will generally continue producing long after most other plants have finished. For my area that's about 3 days of sustained 105+*f. These cukes kept producing right through the summer with little stuttering.

🌱Did I mention they produce a lot? I'm not kidding, we grew I think 6 plants the very first grow (other varieties have done very poorly) and got over 200lbs of cucumbers. It felt very much like the zuchinni grow season joke. We had enough for us, The chickens and regular gifts to at least 5 other households with plenty extra to gift to coworkers and classmates. 😂

🌱They are pretty set em and forget them, trellising them this year is something new im trying so I can work out ways to produce more food on a urban sized lot.

🌱personal notes, no cucumber urps :D so if ya suffer from them, this could be a variety to try.

I've tried a few other varieties (pickling, lemon, straight 8s, english) and not been as successfully as these have been. At this time their gonna be the ones we grow from now on. I'll try others, but like said just haven't had luck with them.

They either grow too slow, weak and sickly or the 2 times we got fruit they were waaaay to bitter.

These seeds came from a packet at one of local libraries seed library. I'll be trying to figure out how to save the seed this year to return some back (which is all they ask folks to do, is return seed if possible) if it's viable.

I'll be for sure bringing some nasturtium and hollyhock seeds in the next time I'm up since both produced well this time :)

I don't wanna endorse any one seed page specifically at this time for addutional grow info, Since I like to get seeds from local or regional growers (small business's or gardeners and hobbiest most preffered), thankfully there's at least a Wikipedia page with some interesting info and an edu page too :)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_cucumber

https://extension.usu.edu/yardandgarden/research/cucumber-in-the-garden

That's it for today :)

🌱🌱Happy Homesteading and Gardening 🌱🌱

6.15.2024

[sam-glade]

Gifts of Fate - WIP Intro

(Original fiction, Days of Dusk book 1)

The Witcher x Fullmetal Alchemist

Pitch: The hero was chosen by the villain to become might incarnate. With all due respect, he'd like to decline.

Genre: NA hard fantasy

Word count: 107k

Status: Querying.

Lissan's Sword materialises in the nick of time, to save his and two children's lives. He accepts that the law requires him to enlist with the Army and leave his home behind. He refuses to be treated as a test subject by an officer gone rogue, who puts a blood-thirsty demon in his mind, which threatens to kill everyone around him with his own hands. Outmatched and outnumbered, he is desperate for help.

Two unlikely friends – the Prince Successor and the resident prodigy who clawed his way up the Army's ranks – work with Lissan to dismantle the conspiracy and free him from the demonic influence. They face opposition both from the Army's generals who are unwilling to accept that there is a traitor among them, and from the traitor himself, who has no qualms about forcing people to believe in his lies with the power of his Sword.

While the demon is vying for control over Lissan's powers, body, and mind, the traitor strives to usurp the Sun King's throne.

Features:

⚔️ Found family ⚔️ Cool Swords - with self-indulgent superpowered HEMA fight scenes ⚔️ Platonic relationships ⚔️ Elemental powers ⚔️ Inner demon/enemy within ⚔️ Secondary world

Content Warnings (CW) for recurring elements:

Character death, gore, body horror, weaponised gaslighting

I will post specific CWs with each snippet.

Character Intros

Lissan || Gullin || Ianim || Varré

Setting

The Sunblessed Realm is inspired by Slavic folklore and Central and Eastern Europe in the 18th century. When people live for as long as they have the will to and the reality is measurably affected by their beliefs, the developments in sciences take a different turn.

Info dump list (to be updated):

Map || Magic system || Fashion || Architecture

Taglist for Days of Dusk (please message me to +/-): @acertainmoshke @another-white-hole @poetinprose

First chapter below the cut

CW: description of injury

“Lissan?” Marrik tugged on the cuff of Lissan’s sleeve. His voice struggled to pierce through the buzz of the market crowd.

Lissan tore his eyes off of the steel barrels of clouds that rolled sluggishly overhead, and pressed the laden basket to his hip before it started slipping. He looked down at the child with an inviting smile.

Adya jogged towards them, holding her goatskin jacket tight where the button had popped on the way to the market. In her other hand, she had a half-eaten apple that Lissan had bought her when she’d complained about being hungry. She stopped next to Marrik, bit into the apple, and caught his hand, as their mother told her to do. They were the neighbour’s kids, but they tagged along with Lissan to the Triash market often enough. Ella, their mother, had never said it, but he had an inkling that she was grateful to have them out of her hair.

“I wanna go back,” Marrik announced a little louder with a stomp of his foot. He was thirteen, with the top of his head barely reaching Lissan’s ribs, and Adya was half a head taller. Their faces were round, their hair still long, woven into silky, almost black braids that swept down their backs, and their clothes were plain tunics and thick stockings that children tended to wear.

Lissan’s smile grew. It was a good excuse to leave now, hoping to get home before it rained.

“All right, let’s tell my Dad, and then we’ll be off.”

They nodded eagerly and followed him like ducklings.

Dad was sitting on a bench outside the pub, the closest one to the heart of the market. Someone had put an oiled wooden flagon in his hand — probably the first one for the day. He was listening more than talking, while his two companions…

“I’m tellin’ ya,” Ilyan slurred. “Freeloaders, all of them. Nothin’ but a drain for our taxes.”

He was a son of one of the apple growers from Beetletun, in his prime at just over a hundred years old, and too outspoken for his own good. Lissan sighed and glanced around, checking that there wasn’t anyone angling to approach Dad. There didn’t seem to be; Dad conducted most of his business in the evenings at the pub, and it looked like he’d bartered all of this week’s wood carvings already.

The other companion — Zhinna, was that her name? — clapped Ilyan on the shoulder.

“Right you are. We’d be better off without the Army. There aren’t enough monsters for them to kill, not nowadays.”

Lissan bit his lip. While he agreed with her complaints, Dad was about to—

“Lissan! There you are. Did you see Nalda with the white ribbons in her hair?”

He needed a moment to remember. He’d definitely run into Nalda earlier in the morning, but did she have…?

“Yeah, I saw her, but we didn’t have time to chat,” he said. By Dad’s standards, the change of topic was exceptionally smooth. “I’m taking the kids home. I’ll pick you up at sundown?”

Dad grunted dismissively and took a swig from the flagon.

“Don’t worry about him.” Zhinna’s tone turned more serious. “I’ll see to it that he gets home all right.”

It was one fewer thing to worry about.

“Thank you!” he called over his shoulder. “We’re off.”

#

The downpour started when they were half way to Beetletun. Lissan walked with his head held low, blinking away rivulets that ran from his temples. His hood and jacket had soaked through in minutes, and water had gathered in his boots and sloshed with every step, no longer cold.

The children ran ahead of him for a bit, then turned back. They jumped through puddles and moved incessantly; Lissan supposed it kept them warm. He watched them for a bit longer, until the basket started slipping from his numbed fingers. He shifted the grip on the handle, begging the Elements that the oilcloth was going to keep the contents dry enough.

Adya’s shout interrupted his musings. She ran to him, dragging her little brother, all mirth gone from their faces, their eyes open wide. She pointed over the stover fields to the right of the causeway, and Lissan followed her trembling arm.

The skies were torn open.

Darkness stood out against the clouds as if someone slashed them with a knife, then pried open with cruel fingers. Lissan squinted at it through the rain, batting away unbidden thoughts of fables told to children to get them to behave. He motioned for Marrik and Adya to get behind him. Maybe he should tell them to run instead, while stood there, rooted to the spot.

This was wrong. Ruptures belonged in the legends, together with the Sun King and the Winged Riders. The spawn of Primeval Darkness no longer prowled the Earth; the Army was meant to ensure that. The Swords weren’t supposed to let this happen. But there was no Sword there, no legendary figure, only Lissan and the two terrified children.

Marrik screamed when something started moving inside the rupture, black against black. He choked on the scream as the head of a grotesque monster emerged. Its body followed, round hooves clawing at the edge of the opening. It fell to the ground from a height that would have easily killed a person, and picked itself back up as if it was nothing. Even at a distance of over fifty paces, it looked enormous.

A bull, Lissan thought, his heart pounding, his breath quick and shallow. It was twisted, and corrupted, and repulsively wrong, but its shape and features, and the way it stomped its legs, still resembled an irate bull. Lissan wanted to laugh at how the comparison made a normal bull into a creature as docile as a newborn kitten. The sound that escaped him was more of a whimper. He clamped his jaw shut.

The monster’s head was held low, two horns — each the size of Lissan’s arm — pointed at him as they curved to be in line with its jaw. The mountain that was its body was covered in black, hairless hide, with muscles bunching underneath it like slithering slugs and leeches. Its hump rose to well over twice Lissan’s height.

The children sobbed behind him, but he didn’t dare to look away from the demon. He didn’t dare to blink. He hoped that it would lose interest if they stayed still. A Dark One, that’s what the monsters were called in tales he’d considered no longer true. It shook its head and took a step in their direction.

He set the basket at the side of the road with slow, minimal movements. Now that he wasn’t holding anything, his hands shook. He squeezed his eyes, desperate to clear his head and force the dread to subside. What can one person do against such monstrosity?

He felt a small tug on the hem of his jacket. Adya gripped it, holding Marrik close to her with her other arm. Lissan gently removed her hand.

“I’m going to distract it.” He heard his voice falter, but he continued despite it; “When I shout ‘run’, you run home and don’t look back. Got it?”

He saw her nodding out of the corner of his eye. He nudged them towards their home and skidded off the causeway, onto the fields, slipping on mud and soggy shrubs, and ignoring all instincts screaming at him to save himself. He walked sideways in the direction they came from, away from the children. The demon’s eyes —  four of them — followed him.

Lissan yelled, throwing his arms in the air and waving madly, a wordless, primal scream, into which he poured all of his terror.

The Dark One charged.

“RUN!”

The demon’s head twitched, but it stayed focused on Lissan. Good. Now what?

He couldn’t outrun it, he realised with a sinking feeling. The black mass was gaining more speed that he’d imagined was possible. He inched left, so that the monster was going directly at the causeway. As it lowered its head to swipe up with its horns, Lissan dived to the side.

The demon rammed its bulk into the causeway, crushing the sodden shrubs and bushes. It needed a couple of heartbeats to locate Lissan again. He didn’t think he could repeat this trick, but at least he was back on his feet, and the Dark One’s charge was broken.

It stomped its hoof, leaving a deep imprint in the squelchy ground. It was too heavy to lose its footing, as much as Lissan prayed for a smile of Fate right about now. Or a Sword. Where was the Army when they were for once needed?

He stopped thinking when the monster charged. It didn’t have enough distance to gain speed, but it felt even more inevitable this way. Lissan leapt to the side again, grasping for what else he could do. He wrestled a young bull once, at a village fair, showing off for a guy. It was a miracle that he didn’t end up with a broken bone back then. He wanted to laugh in mad desperation at the thought of trying to catch this demon by the horns. 

It closed the distance and tossed its head sideways. Lissan slipped on the mud. The horns hit his side, throwing him a few yards into the fields. He rolled onto his back, but the demon was on him before he even attempted to stand up, its reeking breath enveloping him. He wasn’t sure if he screamed — the rush of blood in his ears drowned all sounds. Warmth spread over his groin and thighs. In that moment of distraction the monster stomped its hoof on his calf, crushing his muscles. Lissan yelped; his vision blurred with pain.

The horns speared the ground above his shoulders, one of them an inch away from his head — he hit his ear on it as he tossed. In the first reflex his hands flew to the horns, trying to push them away, but everything was slick with rain. His heart pounded painfully against his ribs. He ended up pressing his back into the ground as the enormous teeth chomped closer and closer to his face, while the horns were driven further into the soil.

He raised his right arm to shield himself, aware of the futility of the gesture. He begged the Fate, the Elements, the All-Mother, any deity that would listen, for something — anything — more substantial.

He didn’t want to die. He refused to. He couldn’t die. He had to make sure that Marrik and Adya made it home, that the groceries were kept dry enough in his basket, that his father got back home later in the evening.

The monster didn’t care.

Lissan moved his arm out of the way of the teeth in the nick of time and pounded on its snout. Its jaw hit him in the chest and knocked the wind out of him. He gasped for air and hit it again, which only irritated the demon more.

He couldn’t keep it up. How long until the monster simply powered through his blows? How long until his strength ran out? Was he even—

No. He refused to give up; he couldn’t, not until he knew the children made it home safe. He reached for the horns to the sides of his head and pushed himself down, under the mouth, then rolled to the side. He was too slow. The demon yanked the horns out of the ground, catapulting clumps of soil, and clipped him with a tip of one on the shoulder. Lissan rolled further, disoriented, losing coordination. Mud got into his mouth, and he choked on it, his vision going dark. The demon reared and he dragged his legs out of the way of the hooves in the nick of time. The horns came down — he couldn’t tell if one of them speared his bicep or just his sleeve, but he couldn’t move his left arm, and couldn’t get away from the teeth that were so much closer than before.

Please. He choked on his tears.

He raised his right arm across his face. His left tightened into a useless fist, and pain jolted through his arm.

Please, give me something to fight with.

He was going to first lose the arm, then his life.

I want to fight.

The Sword appeared in his clenched right hand out of thin air. His fingers were pushed apart to wrap around a comfortable grip. Its weight dragged his arm further across his body as the tip fell to the ground to his left.

The monster opened its jaw. Lissan slashed up and across, in a wide arc. He ground his teeth, pouring every last bit of his strength into this one attack. His last chance to live. The blade was driven deeper into the demon’s head than he’d anticipated, and black ichor spilled from the wound. Lissan rolled, ducking his head under the monster’s jaw. He heard the liquid sizzle on the ground behind him, moments before the body of the Dark One burst apart, covering him in oily black ash. The demon was dead.

He lived.

The Dark One was dead, and he survived.

He fell on his back and his arm dropped across his chest, his hand still clenching the Sword. He looked up at the weeping clouds, and let the rain wash the demon’s remains from his face. Eventually, he convinced himself that the Dark One was truly gone.

He could have laid there for hours, cold and still. Alive. Exhausted, hurt, but alive. He twitched his hand to pump the air and whoop in triumph, and the Sword weighed it down. Fuck.

It wasn’t that heavy, he supposed, four pounds at most. It was lighter than some axes he’d used, and it had a more comfortable heft to it. He lifted it and took a closer look. The grip was long enough to fit his two hands, and at its end was a detailed wolf’s head the size of a large walnut — a nice counterbalance to the blade. On the other side of his quivering hand was a simple cross-guard, followed by a straight double-edged blade, as wide as his three fingers at its base, tapering towards the tip. It was longer than he’d imagined the Swords from the tales. It also seemed antiquated — city guards in Siltwood carried curved, single-edged sabres, as he recalled. Not that he had much interest in weaponry.

Lissan looked down its length one last time, muttering another curse, closed his eyes, and drifted towards nothingness.

[johnschneiderblog]

Get real

Could it be true, or are commercial Christmas tree growers just whistling past the artificial-tree display …?

On Monday, the local newspaper published a story about a local tree farm selling out of trees before Thanksgiving Day. They had to close down the operation until next year.

The paper quoted a Michigan State University extension official - a Christmas tree specialist - as saying live Christmas trees sales have taken a big jump since 2020.

That goes contrary to a long-running trend; currently 85 percent of Christmas trees on display in the U.S. are fake.

The extension guy said the new trend is "generally attributed to various pandemic effects."

Which pandemic effects ....? He didn't enumerate. I wish the local reporter had pressed him on that.

[rinwellisathing]

So my BG3 next generation tabletop campaign has had some fun moments these past few weeks, stand outs include a young lesbian Aasimaar paladin who looks up to Dame Aylin learning to fly with her help and sitting down with her, Halsin, and Karlach for relationship advice.

The goblin wine aunt who grew up during Gortash's reign and is convinced at this point she's seen everything but also wants to climb every taller adult NPC like a tree.

Auntie Ethel owns a bar.

Gortash got brought back to life by a redeemed Durge who just couldn't let him go and has to deal with his estranged daughter learning that her adoptive parents lied about him and he was actually kind of a terrible person.

Said baby lesbian aasimaar went to visit Aylin, who was chasing an alleged "ground hog" who was destroying Shadowheart's garden only to discover it was Boo and Minsc had come for a visit.

There's three polycule families: Wyll, fem!Tiefling Tav, Karlach, male Githyanki Tav. Halsin, Astarion, transmasc tiefling Durge. Aylin, Isobel, Shadowheart.

The game is magical girl inspired and Astarion's fifteen year old son with Durge is acting as a bit of a Tuxedo Mask expy, which has been hilarious because he's a failwife like his dad.

We have a player whose parents are brewers and she keeps asking awkward questions to Astarion about how different kinds of blood taste and asking Shadowheart if the Corpses under Reithwin make the grapes from her vineyard taste different.

Wyll's sixteen year old daughter, Alyce Ravengard, who is well liked, popular, and viewed as the perfect diplomat and a 'people's princess' secretly made a Warlock pact behind her father's back to allow her to hunt down devils. Also Gortash's sixteen year old daughter has a crush on Alyce and takes the ingame quest to impress her.

Barcus Wroot is married to a boisterous, friendly Dwarven coffee grower, they turn The Waning Moon into a coffee shop together where the player characters hang out and get information.

Rolan, Cal, and Lia have been helping the players out with their quest and half the party has a crush on Lia (she doesn't know that and would be weirded out by this because they're mostly teenagers, hence magical girl theme).

Two of Gortash's subordinates are still alive and in the city, one immediately returns to him on behalf of her patron when he's revived, the other is now a bartender at Auntie Ethel's establishment and is afraid if he speaks to Gortash, Bane will punish him too.

Halsin is currently hosting a fellow archdruid whose daughter went missing as part of the plot so currently his home where the players are staying is 90% wolves and bears and 100% dad jokes because this other druid is very similar in personality to Halsin.

The Circus of Last Days is in town again and Lucretious has recruited the party to help in dealing with a pesky ghost ex.

Raphael somehow returned and the party immediately bullied him and launched aforementioned goblin wine aunt at his face with knives drawn.

All in all I love running this game.