#the place I work decided to use image generators

[ladyrosemone]

Open arms

This life is amazing when you greet it with open arms

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LADS x No-Mc

Tw!: Thoughts about attempting to take one's life (superficial but there), reference to depression, reference to therapy.

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The time after a breakup shouldn't hurt this much, but you have the right to feel this way after going through five in a row in the space of half a year.

Eros must hate you, what did you do to him? Did you offend him in some way? Is it because you said Valentine's Day was a day dedicated to compulsive, capitalist buying and selling without any real love? You was kidding! You were younger and wanted to be cool, not because he should curse you like Apollo after mocking your archery skills!

Maybe if you hadn't done that, you wouldn't be in your apartment right now, eating chips and drinking sugary Coke, watching a romantic comedy that's not funny at all, suddenly crying as if your brain wanted to remind you in every scene between the protagonists that you're not experiencing that, that you're the filler character who helped the male lead realize he actually loved the female lead and leave her at the altar on their wedding day. Yes, that specific.

So what now? What's next for the poor extra in her own movie? The one who didn't ask to be the woman in the trial? What's left for her?

You don't believe in destiny, or in happily ever afters that come out of nowhere, or in all that Valentine's Day nonsense (Yes, now it's against you, Eros), but maybe, just maybe…you need a divine sign, something to push you out of the hole you've been hiding in since your last breakup.

…

Of course, nothing would happen, why would it? The universe is just a collection of molecules about to collide and cause another Big Bang at any second—

Ring Ring! Ring Ring!

- Hello? -

- Hey! - Ryan, your dear paramedic friend, whom you've unfairly been avoiding since Zayne admitted to loving someone else - How are you? I heard it didn't work out with that colonel -

There was no need to reply; your silence was the only response you'd been using lately - Look, I have this pass for a hike to Mount Huangshan, all expenses paid, the girls are going too! -

- I don't know, Ryan, I don't feel ready -

- I understand - He sighs - But it's not fair that you rot in your house while the others go off in some kind of…polyamorous relationship, It's not fair! -

- …What about them? - In the background, his friends could be heard scolding him for being so direct, for saying that over a phone call, for saying it in the first place, while the man tries to defend himself, even he sounds remorseful.

- We didn't want you to find out like this - admits a female voice, her friend Minji, the most sentimental of the five, a creative soul who, indirectly, was the one who encouraged her to go out with the artist.

- Come on! It's time to leave your cave! - Yinou's voice chimes in, strong and demanding, a leader who doesn't leave any of her people behind.

- Come on! Please come with us! - chimes in a smaller but no less strong voice. Daiki was the most protective of the five, also the most vocal in his thoughts and a guiding light on their craziest adventures, just like the one you can experience if you decide to go out.

But can you? Leave your nest, your dark but comfortable home, safe from the pain other people can cause you…

- Sorry guys, I…- The television flashes with a colorful commercial, the happy music and vibrant images catching their attention. She's a presenter, a smiling woman who talks about support groups, techniques for leaning on someone when you can't do it alone.

"And remember, if you have to lie to yourself to be happy, you have to get out of there"

Even if it was a generic phrase, a self-help brand slogan, a product being sold with a yellow phone number, those words echoed in your head.

What are you doing? Why are you letting yourself get so down? Why do you give so much weight to the pain? There's a whole world out there! But what if…

No, you shouldn't think like that even if it's the easiest thing to do, you shouldn't believe that even if it's the most comfortable thing to do, you shouldn't give up - Come pick me up first thing in the morning -

The echo of the celebration had never made you feel so happy before.

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Trust the process, you always tell yourself, trust the process.

Accepting that outing was the best decision at the time, the fresh air felt like a respite for your cramped limbs, walking made your muscles remember how to move, you'd even say you enjoyed catching up with your friends, each busy with their own lives and careers who still made room in their schedules to hang out with you.

But when the euphoria wore off, when the trip ended and everyone went their separate ways, you felt that loneliness again, suffocating you until you were breathless, with the thoughts that were once your allies now the most powerful enemies that have tormented you. You don't want the solitude of your apartment, suffocating and tense, like a horror movie playing every minute and every second. The saddest thing is to think that once this place was your sanctuary, your safe place, and now it's nothing more than a memory of things that were.

It shouldn't feel like this. You don't want to feel like this anymore, but you don't know what else to do or where to look…

Unless…no…you won't sink that low, you can do it on your own; but the way it's gone with this, taking it on yourself only makes you sink deeper into a grave you don't want to reach yet. A broken heart really shouldn't feel like this, but it feels like the world is ending, like nothing makes sense anymore and the only way out is the unthinkable.

No! Stop thinking like that! Why do you suddenly think like that?! You're not like that! You're brilliant! Smart and charismatic! You're interesting and feisty! Loyal and caring! Kind and honest! You're so much more than they thought you were worth…! Why do they keep showing up?!

You're tired of feeling like this; helpless, exhausted, and tearful, as if any breeze would knock you down, you hate how it feels, the weakness in your bones and the weight of the world on your shoulders. Seriously, of all the things that could have brought you down, was a bad love the reason? Pathetic.

- You're not pathetic - you find yourself whispering, your subconscious (or maybe conscious) trying one last time to put up a fight -Just tired…-

You should seek help.

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Years ago, you believed in fairy tales.

Obviously for your age, a child who imagined himself flying on dragons and ruling castles that were actually playgrounds. But at the end of the day, you believed in happy endings and in love that triumphs in the end.

But you had to grow up, and when you grow up, you must forget that.

You don't have a tragic story, you weren't a laboratory experiment, or an enchanted princess thief, your parents didn't die in a dramatic accident or anything like that, just one day…you decided to open your eyes, to understand that not everything is like in fairy tales where the righteous always win and the wicked are punished. Life isn't black or white, it's a blurred gray that swings like a coin about to fall, these are lessons you learned like anyone throughout their life. Perhaps what's different about you is that you hide the emotional aftereffects that come with the lesson, good or bad, you repress it inside like someone who keeps jewels in a safe.

It wasn't fair, but it was the cards you were dealt that made those relationships not work out; but if there's one thing you should be clear about now and always, it's that it wasn't your fault they ended this way; no, repeat it in your head, you did enough.

You loved enough, listened enough, cared enough, and now you've suffered enough. Look in the mirror one last time and begin your own relationship with yourself; heal yourself little by little, but return to being that person who shines on their own.

It will take time, a lot of time, but you have the patience and companionship to achieve it. You don't need a partner or a spouse, not right now.

And that's okay; now is the time to heal.

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[heyclickadee]

So, first off I wanted to say that I mostly agree with all of your points, and that the priorities on AI do need to shift somewhat. The one point I have a slight niggle with, though, is the point that image generators are mostly going to be used to replace the kind of art no one wants to do and that no one would do if they didn’t need the money to pay for it. I currently work for a medical animation company, but what I hope to eventually do is to either be a storyboard artist or a creature artist. It’s not fine art, it’s never going in a gallery, but if someone told me I’d get to sketch out camera angles and character acting or design funky looking monsters all day for the rest of my career? I’d be delighted. It’s the kind of art I love to do.

And, of course, image generators aren’t very good at either of those things. They have no consistency or narrative, like you said, never mind a specific (and sometimes personal) acting choices, all of which you need for good storyboards; and even though image generators are fairly good at rendering and aping styles, they’re actually terrible at design. So, no, an image generator can’t realistically replace either a good storyboard artist or a creature artist. The problem is that a lot of executives who don’t know the first thing about visual art think they can, and that has the potential to end up looking like the same situation. If I ever got to do either of the art jobs I really want to do, but I was told that I had to do it by putting prompts into a computer and letting an image generator do it for me, I would quit that job. Immediately. I’d maybe even cut the power to the air conditioner that cools the server room on the way out. And then, if I managed to avoid jail time for doing that, I’d go try to find a factory job or something and try to draw in my spare time or something, because I’m honestly not good for much else that’ll put food on the table. Nothing I prompted an image generator to do would be something I did or something I imagined. I wouldn’t really even have that much input; it’d be an aggregate of whatever it can find that’d seem to fulfill the prompts, and a lifetime of doing that, without exaggeration, would make me want to kill myself.

Im not opposed to AI as a tool to make artists life easier. There’s a place for that. And I’m not really that afraid of losing either my current job or any jobs I want to have in the future to AI; I’m afraid of losing the parts of it that make it worth doing at all. Automation can be good, but it can also separate artists from their work, and the threat of AI (more than the reality) has the potential to discourage people from ever learning to draw or sculpt or whatever at all. For every art job that seems soulless, there’s probably at least one artist out there who actually really enjoys it and who would probably still choose to do it even if needing money to live wasn’t a consideration.

It isn’t the biggest issue with AI, like you said. There’s the environmental issues, the fact that it relies heavily on underpaid labor, largely in the global south, to even function, the way it sorts resumes, and so, so much else that matters a lot more.

Anyway, sorry for butting in. I just wanted to share my two cents on that one point.

i've been seeing ai takes that i actually agree with and have been saying for months get notes so i want to throw my hat into the ring.

so i think there are two main distinct problems with "ai," which exist kind of in opposition to each other. the first happens when ai is good at what it's supposed to do, and the second happens when it's bad at it.

the first is well-exemplified by ai visual art. now, there are a lot of arguments about the quality of ai visual art, about how it's soulless, or cliche, or whatever, and to those i say: do you think ai art is going to be replacing monet and picasso? do you think those pieces are going in museums? no. they are going to be replacing soulless dreck like corporate logos, the sprites for low-rent edugames, and book covers with that stupid cartoon art style made in canva. the kind of art that everyone thinks of as soulless and worthless anyway. the kind of art that keeps people with art degrees actually employed.

this is a problem of automation. while ai art certainly has its flaws and failings, the main issue with it is that it's good enough to replace crap art that no one does by choice. which is a problem of capitalism. in a society where people don't have to sell their labor to survive, machines performing labor more efficiently so humans don't have to is a boon! this is i think more obviously true for, like, manufacturing than for art - nobody wants to be the guy putting eyelets in shoes all day, and everybody needs shoes, whereas a lot of people want to draw their whole lives, and nobody needs visual art (not the way they need shoes) - but i think that it's still true that in a perfect world, ai art would be a net boon, because giving people without the skill to actually draw the ability to visualize the things they see inside their head is... good? wider access to beauty and the ability to create it is good? it's not necessary, it's not vital, but it is cool. the issue is that we live in a society where that also takes food out of people's mouths.

but the second problem is the much scarier one, imo, and it's what happens when ai is bad. in the current discourse, that's exemplified by chatgpt and other large language models. as much hand-wringing as there has been about chatgpt replacing writers, it's much worse at imitating human-written text than, say, midjourney is at imitating human-made art. it can imitate style well, which means that it can successfully replace text that has no meaningful semantic content - cover letters, online ads, clickbait articles, the kind of stuff that says nothing and exists to exist. but because it can't evaluate what's true, or even keep straight what it said thirty seconds ago, it can't meaningfully replace a human writer. it will honestly probably never be able to unless they change how they train it, because the way LLMs work is so antithetical to how language and writing actually works.

the issue is that people think it can. which means they use it to do stuff it's not equipped for. at best, what you end up with is a lot of very poorly written children's books selling on amazon for $3. this is a shitty scam, but is mostly harmless. the behind the bastards episode on this has a pretty solid description of what that looks like right now, although they also do a lot of pretty pointless fearmongering about the death of art and the death of media literacy and saving the children. (incidentally, the "comics" described demonstrate the ways in which ai art has the same weaknesses as ai text - both are incapable of consistency or narrative. it's just that visual art doesn't necessarily need those things to be useful as art, and text (often) does). like, overall, the existence of these kids book scams are bad? but they're a gnat bite.

to find the worst case scenario of LLM misuse, you don't even have to leave the amazon kindle section. you don't even have to stop looking at scam books. all you have to do is change from looking at kids books to foraging guides. i'm not exaggerating when i say that in terms of texts whose factuality has direct consequences, foraging guides are up there with building safety regulations. if a foraging guide has incorrect information in it, people who use that foraging guide will die. that's all there is to it. there is no antidote to amanita phalloides poisoning, only supportive care, and even if you survive, you will need a liver transplant.

the problem here is that sometimes it's important for text to be factually accurate. openart isn't marketed as photographic software, and even though people do use it to lie, they have also been using photoshop to do that for decades, and before that it was scissors and paintbrushes. chatgpt and its ilk are sometimes marketed as fact-finding software, search engine assistants and writing assistants. and this is dangerous. because while people have been lying intentionally for decades, the level of misinformation potentially provided by chatgpt is unprecedented. and then there are people like the foraging book scammers who aren't lying on purpose, but rather not caring about the truth content of their output. obviously this happens in real life - the kids book scam i mentioned earlier is just an update of a non-ai scam involving ghostwriters - but it's much easier to pull off, and unlike lying for personal gain, which will always happen no matter how difficult it is, lying out of laziness is motivated by, well, the ease of the lie.* if it takes fifteen minutes and a chatgpt account to pump out fake foraging books for a quick buck, people will do it.

*also part of this is how easy it is to make things look like high effort professional content - people who are lying out of laziness often do it in ways that are obviously identifiable, and LLMs might make it easier to pass basic professionalism scans.

and honestly i don't think LLMs are the biggest problem that machine learning/ai creates here. while the ai foraging books are, well, really, really bad, most of the problem content generated by chatgpt is more on the level of scam children's books. the entire time that the internet has been shitting itself about ai art and LLM's i've been pulling my hair out about the kinds of priorities people have, because corporations have been using ai to sort the resumes of job applicants for years, and it turns out the ai is racist. there are all sorts of ways machine learning algorithms have been integrated into daily life over the past decade: predictive policing, self-driving cars, and even the youtube algorithm. and all of these are much more dangerous (in most cases) than chatgpt. it makes me insane that just because ai art and LLMs happen to touch on things that most internet users are familiar with the working of, people are freaking out about it because it's the death of art or whatever, when they should have been freaking out about the robot telling the cops to kick people's faces in.

(not to mention the environmental impact of all this crap.)

[j-femmescoli]

its been hard but i went back and reread some of my own writing on the subject(s) and god damn i am good. i love being catholic, i love being queer, i love being pro-choice. all of those are intrinsically connected by my love for women.

[sirfrogsworth]

Do you remember that Aussie sword guy who used to talk about medieval weapons?

And, like, he seemed pretty good at talking about swords and shit. He seemed to have a good grasp of the history and tactics. He'd analyze movie weapons for their realism and that was fun. He did demonstrations with real weapons. For a time I really looked forward to his videos popping up in my feed.

He seemed like a harmless sword-fighting aficionado.

But then I guess he wanted to spread his wings. So he started down an anti-woke path. Giving questionable critiques about media and feminism. He started defending boob armor by showing historical examples even though most of those were decorative and not battle ready like in the games.

Then he admitted he was a fan of The Daily Wire.

And that was disappointing.

I missed him nerding out about swords, ya know?

Well, Shad decided to spread his wings again.

He has become...

*bad French accent* An artiste.

You see, he types words into a little box. Then a little robot does a google image search and steals a bunch of art. Then that robot reconfigures that art to be nearly indistinguishable from the source material. Well... aside from the occasional artist watermark.

Whoops!

A.I. art is very difficult. Sometimes when you type words into the box you get a woman with 5 lopsided anime tiddies. Or 20 fingers on one hand. It takes time and effort and experience to type in the perfect magic words so that you get something close to your imagination that doesn't belong in some sort of Lovecraftian horror ripoff.

For example, check out this cool "pirate hat" I asked A.I. to place on my head.

Clearly, I am not skilled enough at typing words into a box to get a proper pirate hat.

It. Is. Not. Easy.

I heard someone say you have to type things in a box for 10,000 hours before you start getting truly masterful generations.

I mean, you can't type "marathon runners" and expect that to actually work.

THIS REQUIRES SKILL, PEOPLE.

And I am a lowly amateur. I can only dream of becoming the box-typist Shad has honed himself into.

The thing is... Shad is very upset.

He is upset that you don't like his "art" and he is ready to die on this hill.

So... before he croaks on a mound of bullshit, he has something to show you. He has created something truly brilliant and when you see it, he is convinced you will validate his considerable efforts.

Before I show you his "Not. Easy." artistic masterpiece I'd like you to sit with what he has said for a second.

Ruminate in the verbiage.

Process the ideas and points of view presented.

Digest his plea for you to accept and love his hard won battle after typing words into a box to manifest his imaginings.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Have you sat?

Ruminated?

Processed?

Digested?

Okay, here it is...

[jjjjisun]

Younger sis minji (newjeans) having an OF. Reader found it and instantly subscribed, getting himself off multiple times a day and uses it to chat with minji. Minji then finding out that it was her brother (from his pc, phone, or username) and then gets turned on but she doesnt know why. Chats w her brother and asks for cumtributes or just video sex (starts with just jerk off instructions so there’s no video, and minji decides to masturbate as well and turns on her cam, saying hello to her bro) and eventually inviting him to make a breeding video with him

Million-Dollar Experience

NJZ/NewJeans Minji x Male OC | 2663 words

TW: Incest

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In the quiet of his sprawling penthouse, Jae poured himself a generous glass of Scotch, the amber liquid casting entrancing shadows in the dim lighting. He was a man of detailed observation, a skill honed by years of handling high-stakes business deals. Tonight, however, his attention was not on market trends or acquisition targets but on a curiosity that had piqued his interest over the past few weeks.

His laptop screen displayed the homepage of OnyFans, a website known for its risqué content. He'd stumbled upon it while investigating a potential business venture, but one name had caught his eye: Minji. His little sister, nine years his junior, was a mystery to him. She'd left home at eighteen, pursuing a life he'd never quite understood. Now, here she was, living in Seoul and working as a model and an idol. But in the dark, intimate world of OnyFans, she was "Minki," an irresistible blend of innocent and sultry.

Jae clicked on Minki’s profile. The image was evocative: Minji lying back on velvet, her hair a dark cascade, eyes coyly peeking over her shoulder. The video thumbnails promised a captivating mix of sweet and sensuous. He felt a pang of guilt, of betrayal, but Crimson had always been his refuge, his secret place of escape. He'd figured out Minki's account, just as he figured out everything. Besides, he rationalized, he was just looking out for her.

Jae settled into his favorite armchair, the leather creaking softly under his weight. He selected a video titled "Wicked Whispers" and clicked play. The room filled with Minji's soft humming, the sound of a shower running, and the rustle of fabric. She was getting ready, her body visible in glimpses, a tantalizing dance of flesh and shadow. She was gorgeous, a fact he'd always known but had never quite acknowledged like this.

Suddenly, a chat window popped up. "Miss Minki, you look ravishing tonight," a user typed. Jae felt a twist of jealousy. He knew it was irrational, but he didn't want anyone else complimenting her.

Minji laughed, a sound as bright as a laugh could be in the intimate setting. "Why, thank you, handsome. You're making me blush," she typed back, her fingers dancing over the keyboard.

Jae saw his opportunity. He'd been watching, observing, and now he wanted to participate. He created a new user account, "J-regex," and sent a message, "What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

Minji's eyes widened slightly, and her face showed a hint of surprise. She took a moment before typing, "A girl like me? What kind of girl do you think I am?"

Jae felt a thrill. This was going to be fun. "A girl worthy of better company," he typed, his fingers flying over the keys with an ease belied by his serious demeanor.

Minji smiled a slow, intriguing smile. "Is that so? And who would you suggest?"

"Someone who can appreciate the delicate balance you strike," Jae replied, his eyes never leaving the screen.

Minji leaned back, her body stretching in a way that made Jae's mouth go dry. "Well, J-regex, you might be just the company I'm looking for."

The room was silent except for the soft hum of the laptop and the clink of ice in Jae's glass. He felt a stirring in his loins, the first tendrils of arousal. He was playing a dangerous game, but he'd never been one to shy away from risk.

Over the next few weeks, their exchanges became a routine. Jae would watch, would chat, would tease. Minji would respond in kind, her smoldering looks and suggestive words driving him to the edge of madness. He'd never felt so alive, so recklessly drawn to someone. And yet, he was painfully aware that this Minki was not his little sister. No, this Minki was a temptress, a siren, a woman he couldn't help but crave.

One night, as Minji lay back, her body glistening with baby oil, she looked directly into the camera and whispered, "I wonder what it would be like, J-regex. Would you be gentle, or would you take me hard and fast?"

Jae's breath hitched, his cock straining against his pants. He knew he was playing with fire, but he couldn't stop. Not yet. Not ever.

"I'd start slow," he typed, his fingers trembling slightly. "Let you feel every inch of me. But once you're begging for it and breathless and needy, I'd give you everything. Hard, fast, until you're screaming my name."

Minji bit her lower lip, her eyes sparkling with desire. "I like the way you think, J-regex. Let's make that a reality, shall we?"

Jae's heart pounded. He'd crossed a line, a forbidden one. But he couldn't stop now. He was too deep, and Minji, Minki, whoever she was, was the most intoxicating woman he'd ever known.

Their relationship was evolving, becoming more than just a chat in a dark room. It was dangerous, delicious, and utterly forbidden, and Jae wouldn't have it any other way.

Jae stretched out on his king-sized bed, his laptop propped open before him. Minki was just coming online, her "Busy" status flashing to "Available." He felt a familiar thrill course through him, a dangerous mix of anticipation and guilt. But tonight, he decided, he would push the boundaries.

Minji appeared on screen, her hair damp from a recent shower. A towel wrapped around her hid what Jae knew were tantalizing curves. She blew a kiss at the camera, her smile mischievous. "Hello, everyone. Who's ready to have some fun tonight?"

Jae typed out his message, his heart pounding in his chest. "Say 'Oppa,' Minki." He knew it was a risky move, a taboo and intimate demand. But he wanted to hear it, wanted to feel closer to her.

Minji's eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed, a hint of a challenge in them. She knew it was him. He'd hoped, had feared, but now he was certain. "Is that what you want, J-regex?" she typed back, her voice sultry as she spoke aloud, "Oppa, is that what you want to hear?"

The sound of it, the way it rolled off her tongue, sent a jolt of lust through him. He knew he should stop, should pull back, but he couldn't. Not now. Not when they'd come this far. "Show me," he typed, his breath coming faster.

Minji's lips curled into a slow smile. She stood up, letting the towel drop to the floor. She was naked, her body a work of art. She sat back down, spreading her legs, giving the camera, Jae, a perfect view. She started to touch herself, her fingers tracing a path from her collarbone down to the curve of her hip. "Like this, Oppa?"

Jae gasped, his cock straining against his pants. He should stop this, should put an end to it, but he couldn't. He was addicted, enraptured, entirely at her mercy. "Yes," he typed, his hands shaking. "Touch yourself, Minki. Make yourself come."

Minji moaned, a soft, sexy sound that seemed to envelop him. She followed his command, her fingers finding her clit, circling it slowly, then faster. She threw her head back, her hair cascading over her shoulders, her body writhing on the bed. "Oppa, I'm so close," she whispered, her voice ragged.

Jae couldn't take it anymore. He unzipped his pants, his hand wrapping around his cock, stroking it in time with her movements. "Come for me, Minki," he growled, his voice barely recognizable.

Minji's breath hitched, her body tensing, then she cried out, her orgasm coursing through her. Jae followed her, his release ripping through him, his body shuddering with the force of it.

As they both came down from their high, Minji looked directly into the camera, her expression serious. "We need to talk, J-regex. Or should I say, Jae Oppa?"

Jae felt a jolt. She knew. He should never have crossed that line, but it was too late. He typed a response, his heart pounding, "What do you want to talk about, Minki?"

Minji smirked, a hint of triumph in her eyes. "I know who you are, Oppa. And I think it's time we took this... relationship offline."

Jae felt a mix of shock, fear, and exhilaration. He'd always been the one in control, the one calling the shots. But here, now, he was at Minji's mercy. And she intended to use that to her advantage.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he typed, a lame attempt at denial.

Minji laughed, a sound as musical as it was taunting. "Really? Because I think you do, Oppa. And I think you'll like what I have in mind." She paused, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "I want you to make a video with me. A special one. A million dollar experience."

Jae's eyes widened. He knew what that meant, the kind of content she was suggesting. It was explicit, intimate, entirely forbidden. But the thought of it, of being with her like that, made his cock stir again. He wanted it, wanted her, even if it meant risking everything.

"What kind of video, Minki?" he typed, his curiosity piqued.

Minji leaned in, her voice low and seductive. "A breeding video, Oppa. A million-dollar experience that you will get for free. All you have to do is say yes."

Jae stared at the screen, at the woman who was his sister, his seductress, his temptation. He was standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump. Prepared to risk everything for this forbidden dance with Minji. Because even though he knew it was wrong, even though he knew it was dangerous, he couldn't stop. Not now. Not ever.

"Yes," he typed, his heart pounding in his chest. "I'm in."

Minji smiled, a smile that promised a world of pleasure and danger. "I'm glad you are, Oppa. Because this is going to be one hell of a ride."

The door to Jae's penthouse clicked shut behind them, sealing them off from the world outside. Minji leaned against the cool, hardwood door, her breath coming in short, excited gasps. She looked up at her big brother, whom she'd once idolized. He stood tall, his eyes fierce with desire, a wolf ready to devour his prey.

"Minji," Jae growled, his voice hoarse with need. "Get on your knees."

Minji felt a shiver run through her. She should protest, should remind him of their blood tie, but the words stuck in her throat, swallowed up by the raw, primal desire coursing through her veins. She sank to her knees, her heart pounding in her chest.

Jae stepped closer, hisaconda unzipping his pants, his thick cock springing free. He tipped her chin up, forcing her to look at him. "Open your mouth, Minji. Show me what a good little sister you can be."

Minji's lips parted, her tongue darting out to swipe at the bead of pre cum at the tip of his cock. Jae groaned, his grip on her chin tightening. "Tease," he hissed, but there was no anger in his voice, only desire.

She took him into her mouth, her lips stretching to accommodate his width, her tongue flicking against the sensitive underside. She sucked him, her head bobbing back and forth, her hands gripping his thighs for balance. Jae's fingers tangled in her hair, guiding her, controlling her. He fucked her mouth, his hips moving in sharp thrusts, hitting the back of her throat with each stroke.

Minji gagged, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, but she didn't pull back. She wanted this, wanted to give him pleasure, to feel his control over her. As if reading her mind, Jae groaned, "That's it, Minji. Take it like a good little sister. Big brother's cum."

His words, so dirty, so taboo, sent a surge of heat between her legs. She moaned around his cock, the vibration making Jae gravelled, "Fuck, Minji!"

He thrust one more time, deep into her throat, his cock pulsing as he came, filling her mouth with his hot, salty seed. Minji swallowed it all, her eyes never leaving his, a sense of power and satisfaction washing over her.

Jae pulled her up, his hands cupping her face, his lips claiming hers in a fierce, passionate kiss. "You're mine now, Minji," he whispered against her lips. "Mine to protect, mine to please, mine to breed."

Minji felt a shiver run through her at his possessive words. She wanted that, wanted to be his, to belong to him. She nodded, barely whispering, "Yes, Oppa. I'm yours."

Jae led her to his huge room filled with dark wood and leather. He sat down on the edge of the bed, pulling her to stand between his legs. He undressed her slowly, his fingers tracing paths of fire on her skin. When she was naked, he leaned in, his lips wrapping around her nipple, sucking, teeth nipping gently.

Minji moaned, her hands tangling in his hair, holding him to her. Jae switched to her other breast, his hands roaming her body, cupping her ass, her pussy. He slipped a finger inside her, then another, his thumb circling her clit. She rode his hand, her body seeking release, but Jae pulled back, a wicked smile on his face.

"Not yet, Minji. Not until I say so."

He laid back on the bed, his eyes raking over her naked form. "Come here. Ride me."

Minji straddled him, her pussy aching to feel him inside her. She reached down, guiding his cock to her entrance, then sank, taking him in inch by inch. Jae groaned, his eyes closing, his hands gripping her hips. She started to move, her hips rolling, her body gliding up and down his length.

Jae opened his eyes, watching her, his expression intense. "Fuck me, Minji. Hard and fast, like you want to."

Minji moaned, her nails digging into his chest as she did as he commanded. She rode him hard, her body slamming down on his, their skin slapping together, their bodies fused in a dance as old as time. Jae's hands gripped her ass, guiding her movements, his hips thrusting up to meet her, their bodies coming together in a synchrony that was sensationally intimate.

"Come for me, Minji," Jae growled, his thumb finding her clit, rubbing hard, fast. "Come on your big brother's cock."

Minji's body tensed, her orgasm washing over her, her inner walls pulsing around Jae's cock, milking him. As if that was his undoing, Jae groaned, his cock throbbing inside her, filling her with his cum.

They lay there momentarily, their bodies still joined, their breaths coming in ragged gasps. Then Jae rolled them over, his body covering hers, his mouth claiming hers in a soft, tender kiss.

"Minji," he whispered, his eyes searching hers. "What are we going to do?"

Minji's fingers traced patterns on his back, and her heart filled with a sense of peace and love she'd never known before. "I don't know, Oppa. But I want to be with you."

Jae nodded, his expression serious. "I want that too, Minji. And I promise you, if you lose this legal battle and can't be an idol anymore, we'll face it together. You'll be mine; I can make you my wife, and I will provide for you."

Minji felt a surge of love and desire. She smiled a slow, sultry smile. "And until then, Oppa, we'll make the most of our time together. Don't you think?"

Jae grinned, his eyes sparkling with mischief and desire. "I was hoping you'd say that, Minji. Now, turn over. I've got a date with your beautiful ass."

Minji laughed, rolling over, her body already anticipating his touch. As Jae's lips traced a path down her spine, she knew she was exactly where she was meant to be. With him, in this dance of forbidden love, they were ready to face whatever storm may come their way.

[xitsensunmoon]

My first ever comic con! And first cosplay too. Of course it's gonna be my boy :] Ramblings about the process are under the cut(Let me know if?? You would want me to elaborate with process images for any of the steps?)

The costume took me forever to make, as I've never done any machine sewing, sculpting, fabric dying or spray painting before but learning all of these was so fucking fun!! I never realised just how many different skills go into making a cosplay but it was so worth it!!!

Almost all of the clothes(except the hat) were purchased first as bases, but all of the detailing was added by me. All of the fabric used was originally just scraps that I was given for free so I needed to learn how to dye and dye all of the stars, they were originally white.

The sewing machine was its own beast that brought me tons of frustration from the lack of skill and knowledge (it was devastating to find out that 95% of fuck ups were my fault and not the machine's lmao). But as a result, a hat sewn from scratch, all of the fur trims, embroidery on the corset, stars and the collar(which is very hard to see on the pictures unfortunately) was all added manually. The stars and the stripes(on the back of the cape) were attached using heat-and-bond adhesive (I WISH I knew about such thing just when I started working on this. It would save me so much time and nerves.)

Then I found out about polymorph(mouldable plastic) and it has become the next thing I wanted to learn, to sculpt the claws and the fangs(yes, they're handmade jfksjs). The claws I then primed and painted in trillion coats because I wasn't satisfied with the colour of the spray paint. The fangs I moulded to my own teeth and then stained with tea to match the colour of my teeth :)c

As for makeup, I used Mehron Paradise water activated paints. At first I wanted to try to save money and bought myself Snazaroo instead, which unfortunately turned out to be a waste. Snazaroo didn't hold on my face for longer than 2 hours, cracking and peeling awfully. Mehron on the other hand survived 11 hours of me smiling, talking, emoting and such and didn't even crease at the smile lines(I'm actually shocked about that). It obviously works like any other makeup which means your skin texture and wrinkles won't go anywhere but Mehron's elasticity pleasantly surprised me. It did obviously smear from sweat and saliva(if you're eating and licking your lips) but if you don't touch the skin it just dries again, self setting. But if it's dry it's fully smear-proof. Highly recommend!

And last but not least, I've decided against painting my hands as it was very risky that I will stain everything I touch at the smallest hint of sweat. So instead I got myself gloves-tights(? Not sure how they're called but it's made from the same fabric as tights) and painted them with normal acrylic paint(did you know you could dye fabric with acrylic paint? I personally didn't), then heat set with an iron and voilà, they're reusable, my hands are not stained after an exhausting day and I don't stain everything I touch. It worked wonderfully which honestly was a surprise as I was really sceptical that acrylic paint will somehow stay in place.

I think this whole thing took me minimum of 6 months with big-big breaks for my school and life in general. But I'm really proud! This project taught me so many new skills and I couldn't have been happier about learning new knowledge, even if it sucked to fail in the meantime.

Everyone at the con was really nice and gave me a large confidence boost even tho it was my first time and I had no idea what I was doing. Taking photos with other people was really awkward/new for me as I hate cameras so I really had no idea how to pose/behave in front of one. But that's okay I think. This whole experience definitely made me want to do this again, so I think that will come with experience. Thank you for reading this far, hope you enjoyed this little summary :)

[lotusbxtch]

A New Year's Distraction

Pairing: Javier Peña + f!Reader Word Count: 3.3k Rating: Explicit, 18+ MDNI Summary: Javi doesn't realize that you've got a surprise waiting for him at home.

Tags/warnings: PWP let’s be real lol, secret established relationship, foul language, (1) suggestive note, mentions of food and alcohol, foodplay, consumption of alcohol, mention of masturbation, brief masturbation, brief sex toy usage, spitting, squirting, oral sex (f receiving), unprotected PIV sex (wrap it up people), creampie, (1) pussy slap, Spanish nicknames and phrases, (1) use of the word 'slut' (but Reader is into it)

a/n: I saw these GIFs of Javi and @for-a-longlongtime convinced me to turn my little drabble thought into a fic. Is it after New Year’s Eve? Yes. Shhh. Pretend it’s not, for me. So here it is, unbeta’d and minimally edited. This is my first Javi P fic, so pls be gentle but also let me know how I did with writing him! Happy belated New Year to this little Tumblr community - I love you so much! (Banners by @saradika-graphics, GIF by @pedrohub) 

MAIN MASTERLIST

In any other year, you’d have been out on the town, dancing with friends and drinking cocktails while men tried to woo you for a midnight kiss. You’d drink too much, wake up hungover, and potentially with a stranger in bed.

This year, however, New Year’s Eve in Colombia looked markedly different.

Since you’d started at the embassy at the beginning of the year, helping the US track and take down narcos, the work never stopped. (Drug trafficking, it seemed, did not take note of the holidays.) You’d thrown yourself into the work, desperate to prove that you belonged here - which was already an uphill battle given your gender. Women have to work twice as hard as men in general, but here? Even more so. The machismo patriarchy wanted Columbia to chew you up, spit you out, and send you packing. You wanted - needed - this job to work out, so letting the place eat you alive wasn’t an option.

On this New Year’s Eve, partying with friends was out of the question. Recent intelligence reports needed to be analyzed, and it fell onto you this time. You sigh, rubbing your temples as you continue to leaf through and take notes in the margins. The office was relatively quiet, a couple of your coworkers waving bye to you on their way out to the bars. You check the clock - 7pm - and stretch, deciding enough is enough.

Earlier in the week, you’d planned out a little surprise for Javier Peña – DEA agent extraordinaire and the man you’d been dating secretly for months – at his place for the evening, both of you preferring to stay in this year. Plus, there was really only one man you wanted to kiss at midnight. Smiling, you grab a manila folder. You tear a page out of your field notebook, scribble a note, then stick it into the folder. Getting up from your desk, you gather your things and walk across the building to the DEA office, a mischievous smile on your lips.

In a nearly-dark conference room, Javi stands hands akimbo, poring over the various maps, satellite images, and transcriptions of tapped conversations with other members of the team. They’d been trying to make a decision with the latest batch of intelligence gathering, but as per usual, egos began to butt heads and office politics started to come into play. He runs his hand through his dark curls, frustration etched into his features as he listens numbly to the arguing going on around him. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees you round the corner, spotting him and smiling. You’re carrying your purse and a manila folder with what he’s assuming is more intelligence reports for him to look over. Javi struggles to school his features, tamping down the desire to smirk at your arrival. Steve, of course, notices his partner’s distraction, and puts two and two together when you knock on the conference room door.

“Agent Peña?” you chirp, popping your head into the room. 

He nods at you, holding his hand out for the folder. You place it in his hand, all business. “Thanks. Are these the –” Before he can finish his sentence, you’ve already turned around, striding out the door and towards the exit. He’s a bit confused, staring at the folder in his hands.

Steve gives him a look, but continues discussing the current leads with the rest of the team. Javi places the folder to the side of the table, giving it little thought.

Two hours later, Javi is done.

The discussions had turned into arguments, and the conversation was going nowhere. An ashtray sits in the middle of the table, a smoldering cigarette in front of Javi. All he wants to do is to go home, take off his shoes and belt (god, how he hates wearing belts), loosen up his tie, and have a stiff drink.

Suddenly, he remembers your folder. Bored with the current conversation, he picks it up to skim the reports you gave him. However, the folder is far lighter than he’d expect for reports. Puzzled, he opens it to find a torn piece of lined notebook paper with a note scrawled in your handwriting. 

Going to your place for New Year’s Eve. Steaks, champagne, and me naked in your bed. See you later xoxo

Javi’s brain feels like it stops working.

He reads the note another two, three times, and then bends over, resting his forearms on the edge of the table, staring blankly ahead as the blood rushes from his head to his groin. The chatter around him fades. Unconsciously, he brings his fist to his lips as flashes of lewd images flood his mind - how you look when you strip for him; you on your hands and knees with your ass in the air, your pussy shining with slick; you on your back, thighs spread wide around his torso, eyes closed and mouth open as you moan and clench his length inside of you.

Fuck it.

His eyes flit around the room, and he realizes he just does not care about any of this right now. Javi reaches for the stumpy cigarette, taking a single drag, then drops it unceremoniously back into the ashtray, grabbing his things and leaving the table without a word.

“Peña!” Steve calls after him. “What the fuck?” But Javi doesn’t hear him, because he’s already out the door, on his way to where the throbbing between his thighs is taking him – straight to you.

You’d (correctly) assumed that Javi would be stuck in that god-awful meeting for at least another hour and a half, so you’d allowed yourself a leisurely unwinding from the day. After grabbing the steaks and champagne stashed at your apartment, you let yourself into Javi’s place, overnight bag in tow. You’d lit some candles in the living room, pre-seasoned the steaks, and then popped the cork on one of the champagne bottles. Pouring yourself a glass, you took a long soak in his tub, luxuriating in waters dosed with bath oils your mother sent you as a Christmas present. Now, soft skin toweled dry and heavenly scented, you lay bare in Javi’s bed, just as you said you would. 

Your vibrating wand hums as you tease your folds with your thighs spread, your other hand caressing the curves of your breasts. A soft moan leaves your mouth, lips parted. You smile and giggle to yourself at the thought of how worked up you likely got Javi from your little note. You knew the steaks and champagne weren’t a guarantee that he’d leave the office and come home, but you knew that the second you mentioned being naked in bed for him, he’d leap up and take off running like the Road Runner in Looney Toons. 

The door slams open and closed, and your smile turns into a predatory smirk. Showtime.

You press the wand firmer to your clit, eliciting more moans, and Javi is drawn to the bedroom like a sailor to a siren’s song. You hear his shoes being toed off, then the swish of his jacket being thrown onto the couch. His briefcase and keys hit the countertop, and then his purposeful strides get louder as he stalks down the hall to you. His broad frame appears in the doorway, shoulders taut against his dove grey button-up, his striped tie loosened and his hands occupied with rolling up his sleeves. Despite the dark color of his slacks, you can see his cock already straining at the crotch. His eyes flash onyx in the dim lighting.

“Starting without me, muñequita?” he rumbles, folding his arms and leaning against the doorframe. You spread yourself wider and toss the wand to the side, letting him see your shining center, slick and ready for him.

“No, baby,” you hum, propping yourself onto your elbows and pushing your bare tits out. “Just keeping myself soaked for you, just like you like me. A good girl.” 

Javi groans audibly at your display and words, an animal barely keeping it together. “What you are is a menace,” he growls, raking a hand through his hair. “Floating on by like a damn dream, waltzing out of the office without so much as a hint at the dirty fucking note you left me in that folder. I didn’t open it for two hours. And when I did, I got so hard I had to leave.”

“Then let me take care of my hard-working, handsome, brave DEA agent,” you purr. “The steaks are ready to cook, but knowing you, you want your dessert first.”

“Actually,” Javi smirks, “I’d really like some festive bubbles.” You go to reach for the second glass, yours having been refilled shortly before Javi came home, but he stops you.

“No, bebita. Lay back. I don’t need a glass for this.”

Javier grabs the champagne bottle, then slots himself over your body. You widen your legs to accommodate him, pressing your hips to meet his. 

Bracketing your head with his forearms, he commands gently, “Open.”

You open your lips obediently. He takes a swig from the bottle, then spits the bubbly wine right into your mouth. Moaning, you swallow, wetness pooling between your thighs. His gaze never leaves yours.

“Dirty girl, you liked that,” Javi teases, his eyes glittering with mischief. 

“Tastes better like that,” you husk, then pull him in for a deep kiss. His plush lips move against yours, tongues dancing, feeding off each other. His kisses intoxicate your mind.

Breaking the kiss, Javi continues to run his lips down your body, stopping briefly to suck each of your nipples into his mouth, making you shudder and gasp. He trails his tongue across your belly, gently biting your mound. Once there, he sits back on his haunches, then smiles wickedly.

“I know how to make it taste even better,” he teases. Slowly, he trickles the fizzy alcohol in a thin stream over your exposed center. A gasp is forced out of your throat, quickly turning into a moan when Javi laps it off your folds. 

Another pour, more licking from him. Your moans turn into whines, the pleasure coursing through your veins.

“Fuck, Javi, that’s so hot,” you whimper. At your admission, he surges back to your face to kiss you passionately, your own tart sweetness and the headiness of the champagne swirling on your tongue from his. All too soon, he’s parting from your lips. You grumble, until he’s ducked back down between your thighs, your swollen clit gently secured between his lips before he starts to suck. His palm presses on your belly, right above your pubic bone.

“Oh god,” you whine, your release rising in your bones like the bubbles in the long-forgotten glass flute beside the bed. Javi moans into your pussy, slipping two of his fingers into your core.

“You sound so pretty, nenita,” he murmurs. “Are you gonna come on my face for me?”

“Yes, papí, fuck,” you moan, hips grinding against his talented mouth.

He curls his fingers upwards, stroking that spongy spot on your walls. “Dámelo,” your boyfriend commands, then sucks your clit hard.

You shatter for him with a stuttered scream, your release spurting on his chin and mouth. He holds down your hips as you ride out the waves of ecstasy.

“That’s my good fucking girl,” he growls. When you relax, Javi slips his fingers from you, sucking your juices off of them. Blissed out, you watch as he begins to strip off his clothes, his golden skin and taut muscles coming into view. Now completely bare, he climbs back over you, his face still glistening from the evidence of your orgasm. He spreads your thighs apart, grabbing his dick in his hand and slapping your drenched pussy with his mushroom tip. The sounds of your wetness are obscene. 

Javi smirks like the devil himself. “Been dreaming about this sloppy little cunt all day,” he rumbles, rubbing your swollen clit teasingly with his cockhead. “Thinking about all the ways I wanted to ruin you. Not being able to touch you all day was torture.”

You snort a laugh breathily. “If only the cartels knew all it took to break you was to deny you of pussy for a few hours. You’d be singing government secrets.” 

Javi’s eyes darken for a moment, and then he slaps your slick folds, making you cry out pain and then pleasure. 

“Watch your fucking mouth, princesa,” he warns, “or I’ll fill it up so you can’t say shit to me.”

Your arousal flares. Javi knows just how rough you can take it from him.

“I’m sorry, papi,” you moan. “I promise I’ll be good for you.”

He smirks. “I know you will.” Without warning, he slides home, sheathing himself inside you with a single, devastating stroke. You both cry out brokenly at the intense sensations, his cock always a stretch for you. All you can see, feel, think about, is him.

Javi stays buried inside you, laying still while you adjust. Your velvet heat wraps around him wholly and overwhelms his senses. He has to take deep breaths to keep him from falling off the edge of his ecstasy. 

“God, you take me so well,” he grits out. “Pussy feels like heaven.” You can only breathe a whine in response, soft lips popped open as you struggle to relax your walls around him. Usually he works you open slowly, but it seems like your bratty comment triggered the feral side in him.

“Oh, pobrecita,” Javi mocks, tutting as you squirm underneath him. “Did my cock already render you speechless?” When you let out another whimper, he smirks darkly. He grips your chin between his fingers firmly, bringing your focus to his devastatingly handsome face. “C‘mon, pretty baby. Use your words.”

Your lips close and throat bobs, attempting to obey. “You feel so big in me, papí,” you rasp out, voice fucked. 

Javi chuckles. “Tight little pussy is grippin’ me so well, honey,” he teases, sending a pulse scuttling through your core. “Wanna stay buried inside you all the time.”

Soon, the sting of his cock melts into pleasure thrumming along your nerves. Your pussy weeps more slick. “Please, Javi,” you beg, feeling the arousal spread like fire through your veins. You desperately need him to move.

“When you beg so pretty, I guess I have to,” Javi smirks. He slowly pulls out, lighting up every nerve ending in your channel, then thrusts back into you quick and deep. A loud moan shakes loose from your lungs, and Javi grinds his molars when he feels you tighten around him in response. He continues this way, every devastating minute melting you further into the mattress. You scrabble your hands around his shoulders for purchase, arching your back into him when he hits that perfect spot deep inside you. Legs wrap around his waist, your cunt sucking him in as deeply as it can. Javi’s eyes scan your body, cataloguing every whimper, twitch, and breath to bring you to climax as fast as possible. 

“Is this what you needed, bebita?” Javi asks. You clench around him and nod rapidly, breath coming in pants. “‘Cause it sure as hell is what I needed.”

He bares his teeth as he picks up his pace, stroking your messy pussy harder and deeper. “You’re so fucking wet for me. I wanna feel your little pussy pulse around me when you come,” he groans, and you let out a reedy whine in response. He grabs your hips and tilts them, changing the angle he’s fucking into you, and your entire body lights up. 

“That’s it, baby, c’mon,” Javi begs, “Come for me. Show me how hard I can make you come.”

When he asks so nicely like that, your body simply can’t refuse.

The waves of pleasure gather behind your belly button and explode outwards as you scream his name, your legs shaking and cunt fluttering around him. Javi moans at your release, biting into your shoulder to keep from coming. When you begin to relax, he pulls out of you, a protesting groan dribbling out from your lips until he flips you back on all fours.

Javi lifts your hips in the air, your chest pressed to the mattress, and lines himself up at your entrance. “I’m not done with you yet,” he informs you, smoke edging his voice, and he sinks into you again. You let out a surprised but thrilled moan, as this is your favorite way to take him.

“My pretty slut wants to be railed from behind, hmm?” Javi teases, his movements fluid and confident. Sliding his hand down your arm, he sucks two of your fingers into his mouth before placing your hand between your thighs, right where he’s splitting you open. 

“Rub that pretty little clit for me, sweetheart,” he orders, and all you can do is moan and comply. Javi grabs your hips, his blunt nails leaving tiny crescent moon indentations in your supple skin, reminders of how insatiable he is for your body. Small droplets of his sweat scatter across your back. Your drenched folds squelch lewdly as he plays your body like the finest orchestral instrument, knowing exactly how to elicit those gorgeous sounds from your lips. Your fingers swirl around your swollen pearl, spiraling you higher and higher towards your orgasm. You love feeling him like this, as if he’s in your throat, filling every single empty space within your body.

Your thighs begin to twitch and shake, and Javi knows you’re close. He braces against your shoulder for leverage with one hand, and lands a hard slap across your backside with his other while he bounces your body against his cock. Your moans have turned to wails, a desperate whining edge to them. 

“Fuck, papi,” you keen, “fuck me, fuck me, fuck meeeee.” Javi ratchets his movements up another level, pounding into you earnestly, his own release coiling in the pit of his stomach. “Fuck this cunt, it’s yours,” you beg, and your filthy mouth in the throes of passion may send him to an early grave, albeit with his dick wet.

“You gonna come again for papi?” he asks rhetorically. Your head bobs vigorously, your fingers a blur between your thighs. He’s barely holding on, seconds from exploding.

A stream of pornographic whimpers leaves your lips. As they get higher in pitch, your cunt squeezes his shaft tighter, and now he’s moaning unabashedly. 

“Oh, fuck, Javi, I’m coming” you manage to moan before you scream into the bedding, shattering, pussy clamping down on his cock. He whimpers loudly, burying himself, and unloads rope after rope of thick cum inside of you. Shaking with each twitch of his cock, he leans forward to blanket you with his body. Javi gently rolls the both of you to your sides, remaining inside of you. The air settles with only your and Javi’s heavy breathing echoing in the room.

Once you catch your breath, a smile breaks out across your face. You press kisses to Javi’s forearms. “This is the best New Year’s Eve celebration I’ve had yet,” you muse, leaning your head back against Javi’s strong chest.

He huffs a laugh, then pulls out of you gently with a quiet groan, the warm trickle of his cum from your wrecked pussy following shortly. He turns you to face him, his hands framing your jawline, and he softly sponges his lips to your forehead, running his nose down the bridge of yours before kissing it. “Night’s not over yet, nena. I believe you mentioned some steaks?” 

Giggling, you nod affirmatively. “Great,” he continues, kissing along your neck, “because once we’re done enjoying those, I’m gonna enjoy you all over again. It is my full intention to have you literally coming straight through the new year.” 

The answering grin on your lips is so bright, it could rival the Times Square New Year’s Ball drop. “Well, happy new year to us, then, Agent Peña.”

Tagging those who I thought might like some Javi P smut:

@mountainsandmayhem @alltheirdamn @sin-djarin @joelmillerisapunk @arcanefox207

@mermaidgirl30 @itwasntimethatdidit40 @my-secret-shame-but-fanfiction @campingwiththecharmings @qveerthe0ry

@yxtkiwiyxt @almostfoxglove @almostempty @swankyorange @alltheglitterandtheroar

@yorksgirl @pedropeach @pedrospatch @jolapeno @max--phillips

@baronessvonglitter @puddles221b @evolnoomym @slimybeth69 @perotovar

@penvisions @indiegirlunited @eupheme @heareball @reggiesfilthylittlesecret

[4mrplumi]

USED A SUA IMG IN ONE OF YOUR BATFAM POST imagine a luka reader. the family desperate to reach you and due to lack of memories of what You were like since they all neglected you, started just making shit up about you. yes, of course youre angelic, kind and so darling to them! youd never hurt a fly and your soul is such a forgiving one... until they look you up online properly and see you gay baiting someone to get them shot

- prologue

PAUSE anon you cooked, omg. (for those who don't know who luka is i've put a very small summary of his character right at the end.)

honestly i've just been using sua as a poster girl, but a reader with luka's characteristics is so interesting... after being relocated from your "father's" underground business dealings to gotham to live with your real family, it'd be natural to stay reclusive because of the change in atmosphere.

i imagine a luka-ish reader would try to socialise more with the family than the current insert, but their attempts would be unmeaningly unsettling. an innate feeling would rise in the batfam that didn't make them dislike you, per say, just unintentionally avoid you.

you can't be much bothered with it, since even in your previous living conditions, there'd be people who liked you, and people who didn't. you knew how to work around it

so you redirect your focus. you'd been treated like an adult as you were being raised, so you had your goals and motivations figured out at this age already. for a handful of years in the manor, you'd work to keep up the fame you'd built up with your old "father", fame that slightly dissolved after your sudden disappearance from the screens; your escape from the industry.

eventually, when you decide to move out to perhaps further your prospects and influence, there's a buzz in the media at the sudden reappearance of the angle-voiced child star who was taken off the big screens after their "father" got involved with court dealings.

this is probably what eventually alerts the family to your absence in the manor, and in the shame that they couldn't notice it without the help of a third party, they scrounge around in their memory for good exchanges with you. just to have some semblance of the kid who wandered around aimlessly in the house. the kid they shooed away without ever actually shooing them away.

when they find nothing; they try to make stuff up. "angle-voiced child star", so you must've been soft-spoken, sympathetic, angelic person too, right? yeah, yeah you must've been a darling... how could they be so ignorant of you?

their shame somewhat morphs their unease at your old attempts to talk to them, into a shy child's timid want to talk to a new family in a new area, without any help whatsoever.

oh you poor, poor little kid.

i imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for them to find content of you, since your net-presence sky-rocketed after returning to the music industry. but ohh just imagine their surprise when they get access to an underground website streaming some sick stage-show human trafficking project, and see you there?? whatever are you there for? doesn't your fame generate a fortune? what in the world would you need to be on this... show for?

idk how the "getting them shot" thing could play into any other place other than a dark-web game show tbh. maybe they don't initially recognise that the videos up there are for such a thing, only after seeing you walk away from an applauding audience, get surprised by the sound of a shot and the image of your opponent lying dead on the stage ground, do they bother to investigate the ordeal. but this time, as vigilantes, and not failed family.

they'll just... save you along the way, yeah? 'save' you.

luka is a character from a series called alien stage, and you can find the episodes uploaded on youtube by vivinos. luka's established as a well known, famous character within the alien stage 'tournament', who's participated in the whole thing before, and has a significant amount of aliens/audience rooting for him.

his character on it's own looks beautiful, and is dubbed "prince" by his fans, but on his first appearance in round 5, he is portrayed as somewhat unfeeling and manipulative.

better characterisation is provided on alien stage's official accounts, with comics and patreon uploads. the "father" i refer to in the above imagine is referring to luka's alien owner.

[fairestwriting]

Hiii!!! Just found your account and I love your works ☺️

May I request headcanons of Leona & Azul with a reader who’s afraid to commit to him since they have a hard time trusting NRC students because they fear he’ll only be with them if they can benefit him/he has an ulterior motive for them?

Thank you!!

𐙚 Leona Kingscholar

It’s not something that goes unnoticed, but also not something he thinks about too much, at the start. Leona’s view of commitment is much more based on how you behave around him than your words, and he doesn’t expect to really feel it when you’re still just getting used to each other’s presence, in this new context of considering a relationship… Besides, you asked to take it slow, he’s not about to disrespect that.

Then that period of time passes, he starts to relax, and the gap between the two of you slowly becomes more visible — He’s not the most overtly affectionate guy out there, sure, but he makes it quite clear when he’s gotten comfortable around somebody. He assumes your distance is just shyness at first, but it quickly starts to bug him. He knows how to recognize the different types of unease in others, and shyness isn’t exactly the feeling he’s getting for you.

The last straw happens when as you’re spending time together and he ends up getting tired, he tells you you can stick around while he sleeps, and you quickly get up, ready to leave — The memory will feel embarrassing to him in the future, at how emotional he got over something seemingly so small, but in the moment, it just feels like you’re avoiding him.

What the hell is up with you, really, he questions when you’re on your way out. In Leona’s perception, he’s being so obvious, basically outright telling you that he wants you to be around, that he trusts you to be there while doesn’t have his guard up. And this same interaction has happened so many times already. Aren’t you two supposed to be… dating? If he could even call it that?

It’s not fair if he’s the only one who’s vulnerable, he thinks and doesn’t say, but the message gets across. ”If you’re so excited to leave, then just go.”, with that bitter look in his eyes. You try to say that’s not how you felt, while still not revealing too much, but he’s set on questioning you now. And it shows how it’d been bothering him, the way you just seemed to never breach that distance.

Eventually you get the words out. It’s not about him, you were just anxious because of previous experiences you had in NRC — Even if you just tell bits and pieces of the full story, it’s enough for him to get a grasp on the situation. His expression softens. It does all make sense to him, he doesn’t feel comfortable around most people either, as much as he hates to admit. ”I wouldn’t tell you to stick around if I wanted to take advantage of you. Would be a stupid move. He says, after a while, then nothing else. He would never pressure you in general, but especially not about this. He just hopes you do decide to stay.

𐙚 Azul Ashengrotto

All sorts of preventive measures happen in the background before you two even agree that there’s any sort of mutual attraction taking place. He’s built his business so carefully, he doesn’t want to take any chances, even if the temptation to just throw logic out of the window is there. When you two decide to date, Azul has already thought about a thousand possible futures, part of his willingness to get into this relationship comes from ruling out the worst outcomes.

The hesitant phase lasts considerably longer with him than it does with Leona. He wants you to be the first one to let your guard down — A wish he knows would make him sound horrible even if he tried to explain, with the image he has — as the last bit of confirmation to him that you’re safe, and he can stop being so overly cautious around you. But he waits, and he keeps waiting, and none of the signs he’s looking for ever come.

How long has it been, at this point? Months? Azul actually isn’t very sure of what to do from here. Was this all because of his reputation? Did he do something wrong? Or was this just your regular personality, and he actually severely miscalculated every part of his “plan”?

He doesn’t want to show how much it bothers him, at first. He tries to think of ways to get you to open up, at least a little bit, like showing interest in your background and such… But he knows there’s a limit to how much he can do until he puts you off completely, if you’re really this cautious. And at this point, he’s too attached to want to risk losing you.

Some questions still slip through though, that exact attachment he feels making it difficult for him to keep up with your level of detachment. His curiosity really is genuine too, he wants to know more about you, to understand you better. Maybe even especially due to the detachment, he can relate to that distrustfulness too much. So much it makes him actually feel closer to you, though he does recognize that might be kind of weird. He does get a stray thought that he could be just projecting, that you could actually turn out to not be safe, but he decides to trust you.

There won’t be arguments or anything on the topic, even if you don’t reciprocate as Azul, without even thinking, ends up slowly lowering his guard first, and your reactions sometimes feel a bit cold to him — The sting of it fades quickly, because he just understands. When he asks questions, or ends up inviting you on more serious dates, there’s always an added, “but only if you’re comfortable with doing so, of course”, followed with a smile you never really see him show to anybody else. His observant nature will help him put the puzzle together, eventually, already starting to suspect you’ve had bad experiences with being harmed by people you trusted in the past. Regardless of how long it takes for you to be straightforward with him about those things, he’ll always thank you for trusting him with that same smile.

if you like my work you can support me by commissioning me or tipping me on ko-fi ── ᵎᵎ ✦

[fourormore]

[Image description: A polyam flag with the words “four or more bingo” on it. End description.]

AO3 COLLECTION | SQUIDGEWORLD COLLECTION

AND WE'RE BACK!

I have a vision: a world where we can read about polycules and complicated relationships with four or more people until our eyes hurt and our hearts can't take it anymore.

Let me introduce to you: the 2025 Four or More Bingo! Thanks to a couple of suggestions I received last year, I decided to launch this event earlier in the year for more opportunities to write about those messy polycules.

This is a low-stakes, personal challenge. There's no penalty for not finishing or running late.

Cards will be given from now to December 31st. Fills can be posted starting June 1st to AO3, SQWA or tumblr forever.

GUIDELINES

Any medium! Any rating! As long as your work focuses on a relationship with 4 or more people, it's allowed!

All works must be your own and not previously posted. AI generated works will be deleted from the collections.

You may combine these with other events, as long as the other event allows it (examples are @polyamships' polyartober, lyricaltitles challenges, etc)

Small fandoms welcome!

Don't forget to comply with the community guidelines.

MEDIUM SPECIFIC GUIDELINES

Minimum wordcount for fics is 100 words. There is no maximum

Minimum for art is a sketch on unlined paper (figure sticks allowed!). There is no limit to the quality or effort you want to put in your fills.

Minimum for moodboards is a 3x3 grid (9 images individually or edited in one image). Maximum is given by the place where you decide to post. On tumblr, the maximum is 20 images, but on AO3, you're free!

Minimum for podfic is a 100-word fic. There is no restriction on maximum length or sound effects.

Minimum for fanvids is 30 seconds. There is no maximum.

Other mediums don't have a minimum. Do you want to make an in-universe magazine for your ship? A cross stich pattern? A sculpture? Go ahead and do it! I look forward to all the things you can create.

Prompts, FAQ and more below the cut

PROMPTS

The following are the prompts that the bingo card will be generated from. Send us an ask if you want a card, and if you want any prompts specifically excluded from it (you can exclude up to 5 prompts). Feel free to request a new card at any time through December 2025, even if you've already received one.

This year you can ask for a completely SFW card or a mix of SFW and NSFW prompts (this was a popular suggestion last year). Whatever card you choose, you will be allowed to blacklist 5 prompts from the list if you so desire.

Prompts are to be interpreted as freely as you want.

SFW prompts are not limited to SFW fills. If your story gets spicy along the way, there's nothing wrong with it.

Some of these prompts might seem familiar. That's intentional. We love big and complicated polycules at fourormore.

SFW PROMPTS

Home

Food

Kisses

Money

Competition

Jealousy

Limits

Complicated relationships

Labels

Awkward conversations

1930s AU

1960s AU

1990s AU

"That's not going to fit"

"You must think I'm stupid"

"I swear it was like this when I got here"

"We leave you alone one day and this happens"

Holy

Devilish

Loyal

Feral

Cozy

Old-fashioned

Dancing

Singing

Running

Grief

Joy

Space

Forest

Lies

Drama

Film

Memories

Late nights

Holidays

Fear

Pain

Cold

Flowers

A fandom you've never written before

A fandom that's 10+ years old

A polycule with 5+ people

A polycule with 10+ people

A polycule spread around the world

--

Opt-in NSFW prompts

Recreational substance use

Free use

Tied up

Delayed orgasm

Awkward positions

Just hands

No hands

Casual sex

Something made them do it (sex pollen, fuck water, in heat, etc)

Blood kink

Knife play

Undernegotiated kink

Teaming up

Public place

Monsterfucking

FAQ

Q: So how do I get a card?

A: Send us an ask, preferrably off anon, but if you prefer to remain anon, leave an emoji to identify you by.

Q: How many fics do I need to write?

A: For a bingo, 5 prompts in a line (horizontal, vertical, or diagonal). You can even go for a blackout (all 25 prompts).

Q: Why isn’t X allowed?

A: Just because.

Q: I don’t have a Dreamwidth account. Can I join?

A: Of course! You don’t even need an AO3 account if you wish to post only on tumblr.

Q: My work contains [INSERT WARNING HERE]. Can I still participate?

A: Yes. This is a CNTW (Choose Not To Warn) space.

Q: I don’t want to see [X] content, can you please remove it?

A: No. The only content that will be removed will be that that does not comply with the rules.

UPDATE: We now have a General FAQ that applies to all events.

COMPLETION POSTS

So, you have a bingo (or a blackout!), what now?

Well, to acknowledge the fact that you spent time and effort on at least 5 fics, we’ll be receiving bragging posts (also known as completion posts) where you can link all of your fills at once. Please follow this format. You may post on your own blog and @ us, tag #fourormore or submit it to the blog.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to send a message.

Have fun and bon appetit!

[amelee23]

Waiting for the rain to fall | Lmh

 Synopsys: Minho takes a vacation to the rural area to escape his nightmares. Instead, he finds drought and desolation in the fields and begins to question why he feels so condemned; what exactly his soul searches for.

Genre: Reunited past life lovers, Romance, Angst, Fluff, Supernatural

Pairing: Lee Minho x female reader

Word count: 3.6k

Warnings: Minho-centric in the beginning but the romance appears I swear, reader is perhaps not a human, mentioned character death (in past lives), there's comfort to the angst, discourse on divinity and Gods, happy ending (?), reader has female pronouns, one natural disaster

A/N: Written completely based off the picture above. Before the video even came out.

Please reblog and comment! 

“Wake up.

It’s raining.”

A soft female voice spoke these words to Minho, in a dream, somewhere far away in the hidden parts of his mind, and yet so close to his first waking moments; it was almost as if feather-like lips briefly grazed his ears as he stirred awake.

As the morning light greeted his tired eyes, he realized that he was spared from nightmares the past night. This familiar, kind voice was somewhat comforting, although he couldn’t tell who it belonged to - a figure of his imagination, a distant memory, repeated words of romance movies? Still, the fact that he wasn’t troubled by disturbing images in his sleep brought him a sense of peace, and so he was able to have a calm start to his day. Vintage style, he boiled water in a kettle and mixed it with coffee and sugar, stirring it generously to create delicious foam. As he ate his toast and drank his coffee, he stared into the looming nothingness of the fields.

He had returned to the farmhouse, a place he doesn’t frequently visit and yet it always calls to him. The house belonged to the elders of the family, but after deciding it was better for their health to move them to the city and closer to the rest of the family, they sold the house to the neighbours. Having grown up with said neighbours, Minho is allowed to visit whenever he likes, to use the spare room and relax in nature. 

That morning everyone else was already out in the field - he decided against joining them on the first day of his vacation. Truth be told, he was exhausted. The lack of sleep and stress ran him dry, and as much as he knows working the fields will bring his soul some healing, he wants to take it slow in the beginning. So, he grabbed one of the books he packed, stepped outside into the hot sun and sat on the porch. It was just him, Jules Verne, and the dry cracked earth around the house.

The sea monster, the submarine and underwater adventures described by Jules Verne trapped Minho in a bubble, a bubble of air floating in and out of the water, in and out of existence. Before he knew it, despite the cup of coffee he had just drunk, he became drowsy and fell asleep.

“I don’t blame you for leaving me behind.” The voice said, gently, like a whisper, a song of the sirens harmonizing with the chaotic percussion of the waves hitting against each other. The water was flowing, and it was bubbling, and it was restless. Without any mercy, he was being strung along the waves, without any rock to hold on to, without any trace of another human in sight. It was raining, and it was cold, and it was violent. But more than anything, the water threatened to swallow him whole, drown him in a river of guilt.

He was guilty, is what he thought upon waking up. His hands were shaking and he was drenched in sweat, and a dull ache clawed at his heart, making him regret something unknown, making him long for something he cannot describe, making him search for answers to a question he didn’t know how to phrase. 

Since being alone didn’t do him any good, Minho decided to join his old neighbours on the fields. Driving down the beaten path stirred up clouds of dust in his wake, and Minho wondered how come the situation had become so dreadful. Exactly as imagined, he found his peers having a heated debate over the poor crop condition.  

“The irrigation system simply cannot keep up. Fertilizer doesn’t help, and even changing the seeds was useless. It’s been months since this drought… “

It was quite silly, he thought. Searching for an alternative solution to the obvious one was foolish and useless. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, chasing after something that does not exist. The only thing that could possibly solve the drought is the rain. 

Minho was very disappointed in his vacation. There was little to no fieldwork to be done, and to add to that, his nightmares didn’t seem to ease up. When he felt the call to visit the farmhouse, he thought it was his intuition telling him he needed a break from the city, from work, from the bustling social life. He had thought that the cozy rural life, the fresh food and the return to simple things would heal him, but it wasn’t so. The next night Minho woke up with his throat burning, his nose aching, hands springing to hold his neck. He was suffocating, his whole being was clogged up, filled up with something very foreign and very confusing. 

In his anxious, frantic movement, there was a sudden jolt of the elbow which resulted in him tipping over his glass of water which was on the nightstand. He went to get out of bed to clean, but as his feet left the bed, they landed in the puddle of water. He cringed at the feeling. It was cold.  

Usually, harvest season was a very fulfilling time for Minho. Even though the crops weren’t his and he’d earn no money from helping, he always would. Something about the hard work, the physical labour, was very rewarding to him. Seeing the baskets of goodies before him and the look of joy in people’s eyes when they bought fresh ingredients from the market, it was all he needed. The air was fresher, the people were kinder, and although lady nature sometimes had something to say in the matter, it felt as if people were really getting fair rewards for all the hard work they did.

However, fair is not a word Minho would use while looking at the fields this year. They have been looking inside shallow holes for potatoes for hours now, and the results were disappointing to say the least. The potatoes were either really small or shrivelled up beyond belief, with not a lot left to salvage. The tomato harvest was also subpar, and the barrels were mostly devoid of grapes. 

Seeing the barrels lined up in front of the house with nothing inside them gave Minho an uneasy feeling. The fields were empty, the barrels were empty, there was this looming sense of absence, of loss, filling the air.  

The nightmares wouldn’t stop, either. He kept being carried by the currents, rolling down a river with no beginning and no end, with no control over his destiny. All of these water related dreams made him conflicted about the coming of rain; it was the one thing this town needed to be revived, and yet, after spending so many nights drowning, Minho was afraid the rain might be the end of him, the end of everything. 

Exhaustion began to make itself known on his body; he had deep circles under his eyes, his hands were shaking while holding his coffee; he became clumsy and grumpy. Yet, he refused to lay down and rest, he pleaded to be taken back into the fields, because the bed and his mind terrified him. He was starting to realise he was truly, terribly, unwell.

Despite his pleas, his neighbours refused to allow him to come along and told him to relax at the farmhouse for the day. It was exactly what Minho didn’t wish to happen, for the loneliness made reality be a little too real. When people were around he could pretend he was alright, he could pretend to belong, but in the deafening silence he could hear the water splash inside his skull. 

He had always been alone, even in the city. The escape from the urban to the rural was mostly an excuse, the search for silence was a ruse. He was running away from loneliness in a place where he wouldn’t feel guilty for being alone. And yet, as he looked out the window at the blazing sun and listened to the house settle and creak, he realized he didn’t wish to be alone. He wished for something other than dread to fill his heart, to complete him and take away from the burden of dealing with himself every day. A selfish request, maybe, but he desperately wished that someone would know him, that someone would let him know what exactly he’s lacking. 

Perhaps he shouldn’t be alone, perhaps he should stop running away from his issues. Those are the thoughts he had as he began to pack his luggage and fill in the trunk of his car. It was time he returned to the city to seek the help of a professional who would know how to deal with these dreadful nightmares. 

The owners of the farmhouse didn’t consider letting him drive alone was a good idea, but they couldn’t stop him. Minho had an almost scary look in his eyes, like a man on a mission. He was barreling on through another attempt at escapism.

He kept telling himself that things will work out. He will seek medical help, read some self development books and finally figure himself out. Nature couldn’t have helped him when his issues were so much more deep than he thought. 

Without any sort of prior warning, his car stopped moving. Exasperated, after checking the fuel gauge, Minho exited his car to inspect the wheels. He couldn’t see any flat tire with the naked eye, which most likely meant it was a very sudden engine issue. While he did open the hood of the car and looked inside, he wasn’t skilled enough to know what was wrong, if anything was wrong at all. Plopping himself back into the driver’s seat, he decided to call the farmhouse neighbour, since he had some mechanical knowledge. Thankfully, there was service, and Minho was informed it would take a while before he could be aided. 

With a long, deep sigh, he lowered his head onto the steering wheel and closed his eyes.Things weren’t meant to work in his favour, maybe. Perhaps he was being punished for something he did in a past life, something he was unaware of. Whatever god he might have pissed off, he was ready to beg and to repent, to plead sweet mercy for his soul. 

“Please.” He whispered softly to himself, to no one in particular. Life was being really, really tough and unfair to him, and he could feel himself tethering on the edge. 

A certain booming sound attracted Minho’s attention, and he lifted his head up in a hurry. Looking through the windshield, he observed something which left his mouth agape.

The sky was dark. 

Grey, almost black.

He rushed out of the car and slammed the door behind him, taking a few brave steps in front of the car. Through the branches of the trees he could see that darkness loom over; that darkness brought to Minho a new sense of hope. As he stood, mouth half open and eyes glued to the sky above, the first splat or rain landed on his face. Then another, then another.

He was done running. Minho opened his arms to welcome the rain, to let her drown him if that’s what she wished. The cold droplets trickling down his neck send rejuvenating shocks throughout his body. He took one long breath and realized he could finally breathe.  

Every pit and every pat of rain hitting his leather jacket was like a whisper, a little secret he was being told, of divinity, of the beyond…

He could barely keep his eyes open with the intensity of the rain. He was completely drenched but he didn’t mind, the cold was completely bearable, the water was familiar and comforting. Extending one arm forward, to catch some drops in his palm, to hold the hand of rain, he noticed a faint glowing silhouette form in front of him. It was an outline almost of mist, a living creature, pale and shining like the water surface of the Arctic. 

The silhouette began to shape into a woman with human traits, her ghostly appearance being contrasted by the kind and warm smile she wore. Carefully arranged into her hair was a slim, silver crown which draped one single blue crystal on her forehead. The ethereal crystal told Minho she was the rain, the Goddess herself.

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen; in fact, she was the only beautiful woman in the world. 

She reached for Minho’s outstretched hand, and when they touched he shivered - that shiver shook his heart to such a degree that he felt like he finally awoke. He felt he finally understood something.

“My love…” He said to her, and the glistening droplets on her face were not rain drops, they were tears. “My wife.” He stepped close to her, grasping her other hand. All the love he had been storing in his body suddenly burst out, and although he couldn’t fully understand how he knew she was his lover, he was certain of it.

“My darling heart…” She spoke to him, softly, sweetly, with that voice that has been watching over him for so many months.

“Please, help me understand. I’ve been searching for you my whole life, I’ve been missing you until I fell to pieces… Please.” He pleaded, urgency in his voice. As if he was fragile, he dropped his hands and held his head, slowly dragging his forehead towards her. The moment he made contact with the crystal droplet, Minho’s memories came back.

He was born the son of a farmer of the village. He loved his parents, he was a good kid. When he grew older, he fell in love with the daughter of the shepherd. They were two simple people, they loved the smell of rain, the cold air of the morning, they danced and played in the rain, in between the apple trees and herd dogs. They got married, he took over his father’s land and she began to spin wool just like her mother. 

Disaster struck them at the end of summer; neverending rain would destroy their roofs, give people the shivers, drown and kill the crops. While they were trying to stay warm inside the house, speaking warmly to each other of better futures, of beautiful future children, the river overflowed and the entire village was swept in merciless waves. 

There was screaming, there was crying, and there was water. Water destroyed their houses, water killed their livestock, water drowned everyone below. 

There was a boat, one singular one built in a haste by the carpenters. It was supposed to carry them all to safety, but she refused to leave. On what appeared to be crumbling remains of a house, a child and an infant were crying for their mother, who wasn’t there with them anymore. Minho’s wife rushed for the children, and Minho fought with the current to help them cross over towards the boat. By the time she had reached the children and cradled them to her body, Minho was knocked unconscious by a wine barrel flowing down the stream. She screamed for him, screamed for the rest of the villagers, but no one listened to her anguished voice.

The villagers managed to fish Minho’s unconscious body out of the water, and he awoke hours later, screaming and crying after his lost wife. He punched the village chief in the face and almost got thrown out of the boat; next town over they were rescued and given clothes and food, but he remained on the dock, staring into the horizon, waiting. He waited for years, and yet she never came back to him. At old age, he died, alone.

Minho woke up from his memories, the rain engulfing him in a warm hug. As drops turned into a warm summer downfall, he began to understand the deepest secrets of his life.

“Did you die?” He asked, and she shook her head with a smile.

“The Gods saved me. They turned me into the Rain Goddess, to protect the lands from disaster.”

“And I got reincarnated because I left you, right? I should have been there to save you…” Minho held her pale face in his hands, his guilt and torment finally finding themselves a reason. She once more shook her head.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He apologized sincerely, his wet eyes looking directly into hers. Those eyes were just as mesmerizing as he remembered them. Her body was no longer human, no longer warm, there was no heart beating in her chest. And yet, she was breathtaking, his one and only choice in every lifetime.

“Don’t apologize, my love.” She said playfully, letting a drop fall from her fingertip to his nose. He scrunched up his nose at the gesture, and for the first time in a lifetime, Minho smiled. 

“Shall we?” He asked, wrapping his arm against her fluid, watery waist and guiding her hand in a dancing position. She beamed at him, and they began to spin, in a dance that spun ripples around their feet, a dance that made raindrops bounce off their bodies. A giggle tumbling off her lips was enough to heal Minho through all of his ailments, to bring him all the answers he was looking for. 

Nothing was confusing anymore. All the answers had set into his mind, and he knew there was only one possible path for him to take.

He reached forward to kiss her lips, and was met with the most crystal clear taste of water he’s ever felt; the most pure and refreshing heart he’s ever held in his hands, the most nourishing love in the world. She was the water keeping him alive.

“I should go now, it has rained enough.” Although it was clearly visible she didn’t want to separate from her long lost lover, she had duties he could never understand as a human. The relationship between man and his deity has always been a little complicated.

“Don’t go.” 

“I have to.” She said with an awkward smile.

“Take me with you.” At such a response, she laughed and shook her head. 

“I’ll see you next time it rains, my dear.” 

Just a few seconds of thinking it over made Minho understand that could never be enough for him. Minutes of rain could never soothe his drought. He needed more than a kiss, more than a dance, he needed to breathe, he needed to love.

“No.” He replied bluntly. “I’m not afraid of the beyond anymore. I’ve been there before. There is nothing for me here. There isn’t, there won’t, just like there wasn’t ever anything important to me besides you-”

“My darling heart, please-”

“I’m not afraid to drown. Please, take me with you. Take me home.”

“I love you, my darling heart. We’ll meet again soon.” With that, she disappeared and nothing remained but raindrops. Soon, those too went away and the sky cleared up, not even leaving behind a trail of mist. There was nothing for him to grasp onto anymore, no hand to hold,

Minho fell to his knees and began to sob. His soul has been waiting, yearning, longing for her for decades, if not hundreds of years. There was no point to existence if their hearts don’t interweave again.

The rumbling of another car in the distance brought to his attention that his neighbor had found him. He wiped off his tears and pretended to be fine, dazed out of his mind, his heart a glass shattering over and over again. 

He didn’t go back to the farmhouse. Instead, he drove forward on the highway as if there was nothing behind him to ever find again. He didn’t have a reason for heading home, but he did so anyway. The sky was clear and so his mind was clouded. 

By the time he arrived in his hometown, it was night; the streetlights were the only things standing tall on the street besides Minho. Before he could even realize, a raindrop fell onto his shoulder, feeling almost as if he was tapped. He turned around in a haste and was greeted by his Goddess, smiling at him through the raindrops. The sky was clouded, so his mind was clear.

“I’ll never truly be away from you again, my darling heart.” She giggled, stealing a quick kiss from his smiling lips. “Shall we?” She mocked, grabbing him and spinning him into a dance in the middle of the street. “I’ve found a way for us to be together.”

The Gods had agreed to gift her a lake of her own, in which she could live and materialize herself whenever her powers weren't needed. This was fantastic news for Minho, who wasted no time in buying himself the cabin attached to that lake. In the intimacy of the forest, of the lake, of the mosquitos and the woodpeckers, Minho would sit by the water and stargaze with his lover every night. 

They would fantasize about future lives together, about being stars in the same constellation, about the kind of house they’d love to own together. Their kisses were watery, their dreams were impossible, but their bond was unbreakable. If one looked at them from a distance, where their silhouettes would blend in with the horizon, one wouldn’t be able to tell one was temporal and one was atemporal. 

It was almost a normal love story, but the relationship between man and his deity has always been a little complicated.

©amelee23 do not copy, translate or repost

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[glitchedember]

Hiya!

So we all know that AI generators like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL.E, Sora.AI, etc. have stolen the work from artists online to train their AI and since AI is starting to get quite scary, I've decided I'm going to start protecting my work via Nightshade, but I want to also talk about it with you and link to the official sites to Glaze and Nightshade, so you can get either of these programs to try.

First off, we'll start with Glaze AI.

What Glaze aims to do is to act on the defensive against AI. Glaze will scramble their generators by placing a “protective glaze” over your work, and what this will do, is when your work is fed into the AI, it'll trick the AI into thinking your work is something entirely different from what it is, simply by making small changes that only the AI will pick up on

To quote the official site “Glaze is a system designed to protect human artists by disrupting style mimicry. At a high level, Glaze works by understanding the AI models that are training on human art, and using machine learning algorithms, computing a set of minimal changes to artworks, such that it appears unchanged to human eyes, but appears to AI models like a dramatically different art style.”

I've tried using Glaze, but it's a very big program and my computer can't handle that, but I do highly recommend trying it out if you have the space for it.

If you wanna try it out, the link to the site can be found here.

Second is Nightshade.

Nightshade is aimed to “attack” the AI your work is being fed into. Like Glaze, Nightshade puts a protective “glaze” over your work, but it poisons your work and tricks the AI into messing up the user's prompt.

To quote the official site “Nightshade works similarly as Glaze, but instead of a defense against style mimicry, it is designed as an offense tool to distort feature representations inside generative AI image models. Like Glaze, Nightshade is computed as a multi-objective optimization that minimizes visible changes to the original image. While human eyes see a shaded image that is largely unchanged from the original, the AI model sees a dramatically different composition in the image.”

This program is also pretty big, but it's what my laptop is able to handle, so from here on out I'll be protecting my work with this. I'll also go back and protect my older works even if it's not as appealing as my newer works.

If you wanna try it out, the link to the site can be found here.

Keep in mind, these are only temporary solutions while we wait for more permanent ones.

But even if it's temporary, it's better than having no protection against the AI bros.

[cripplerage]

I'd like to talk about this:

{Image ID: A cropped screenshot of an online form with a purple background. The question is "What is your gender identity (click all that apply)." The options are "Woman," "Man (disqualify)," "Feminine-Identifying," "Non-Binary," "Transgender," "Unsure," "Prefer not to say," and "Other." The other option has a text box, and they all have unchecked check boxes. End ID.}

This is an application form for an advisory/advocacy group for the intersectionality of woman/female experiences for disabled people. If you somehow figure out WHICH group this is, please do not contact them in any way. I would like to have the opportunity to calmly and politely give my feedback to them, and an accidental harassment campaign would not help. And of course, they're not really doing anything wrong, they're trying their best, etc. my intention with this screenshot is to use it as a learning example.

Here's the thing... They are clearly trying to be inclusive and acknowledging the gender spectrum, but they're acting as if it's a bar that they can just take one half and leave the other. But as a non-binary person who is also sort of a trans-man, who appears fully as a woman and is perceived as a woman by the general public and the healthcare system, this just doesn't seem to work.

For the form I only ticked non-binary, and I listed my pronouns as they/them, when I usually use he/they. And I don't think of this as lying because my gender is a bit fluid, but also I sort of think that it would be my right to lie in this situation because I deserve to participate in this discussion?

I think we as a society seem to forget that most trans men were raised as women, and do have women-aligning experiences. And most of us don't have male privilege, and the few that do have it immediately negated in situations like healthcare. Being transmasc never prevented me from experiencing ableism or medical mysoginy. And I don't know for certain but I imagine some intersex men, even if they're cis, deserve to be part of this conversation, too.

I think what I'm saying applies to more intersectionalities than just disability, but I don't think it's really my place to talk on that. And don't get me wrong, I do think that discussions about feminine intersectionality are important. Here's what it comes down to - I think we need to just let individuals decide for themselves if they are eligible for certain discussions. I don't know for certain what the best way to do this, but I suggest something like the following:

"This group is centred around the experience of intersectionality between femininity and disability. You may be eligible for this group if you are a cis woman, transgender, or intersex."

I'm open to suggestions or feedback on that.

Tl;dr: gender identity and gender experience are different. Someone's gender identity does not necessarily mean that they should be excluded from discussions regarding lived experience of another gender.

[starlazergazer]

You Promised

Pairing: Anakin x Reader

Request(s): Hello love! Could I request something with Anakin x reader where he’s out on a mission and gets hurt maybe knocked unconscious for a bit and when he wakes up he’s like “she’s gonna kill me for getting hurt” and when he gets back gets an earful but also lots of cuddles <3

Was recently watching Hunger Games Catching Fire idk if you’ve seen it but there’s this one scene where Peeta gets hurt then Katniss like freaks out and Finnick saves him and realizes shes in love with him and I was imaging that scenario with Anakin so maybe you could write something like Anakin getting hurt on a mission and oc freaking out thinking he’s gonna die and Obi-Wan or Rex can just tell 😭

Warning: Angst! A lot of descriptions of chest compressions. It has a super cute ending though I promise!

Word Count: 4k

A/N: I went ahead and combined two that were super similar so I hope that’s okay. I actually really like how this one turned out so please enjoy! As always let me know what you think love you guys!!

Obi-wan was on his knees.

That was the only thought that echoed in your head.

Obi-wan Kenobi, the general, the Jedi master, the great negotiator, member of the jedi council, was on his knees. Why was he on his knees?

Everything seemed to move in slow motion around you, every noise fading into the background as you tried to move forward, the very air seeming to fight against you as you did so.

Gloved hands clasped around your arms, holding you in place, a modulated voice you recognized registering in the back of your head but you didn’t pay attention to any of the words said.

Why was Obi-wan on his knees?

You tried still to push forward but those hands held you back, halted your every movement, white and blue armor entering your field of vision, trying to block your view.

“whats-“ you couldn’t even get your whole question out, weren’t really sure how to finish it.

You clawed at the armor before you, tried to use it to pull yourself forward, to Obi-wan, you had to get to Obi-wan.

“Kid you don’t want to go over there” Finally the voice broke through the haze, because that was Rex’s voice, his nickname for you. But why was Rex here?

“No I need to-“ you weren’t really sure what, you needed to get to Obi-wan, that was all you knew, that everything in your screamed that you had to get to Obi-wan.

“Let the general work” Rex’s voice was smooth, clam.

But Rex was supposed to be with Anakin, Rex was always with Anakin, Rex had Anakin’s back, Rex kept Anakin safe. So why was he here without him?

That was the first time you really processed the scene before you, the fact that there was a person over there with Obi-wan, a person Obi-wan was kneeling over, a person beneath Obi-wans interlaced hands, a person wearing all too familiar boots with their toes pointed to the sky.

Your gaze cut to Rex, as if you could get confirmation from the man’s helmet, as if he could tell you anything but what you already knew, as if he could fix everything.

“The general has him Y/N”

And somehow hearing him say your name made it worse. Because to him you weren’t Y/N you were general, jedi, kid, anything but the gravity that came with your name.

You like to think you’d decided then that you’d feel guilty about it later, but truly the action came without any forethought. Your hand came up with a mind of its own, your energy focusing just enough to give Rex a push through the force, not enough to hurt him but enough to get him out of your way, because right now you needed to get to Obi-wan.

You ran without checking on Rex, ran calling out Obi-wan’s name not missing how the general never halted his movements, and slid down across from him onto your knees not noticing the way loose gravel and glass cut into them as you did so.

Obi-wan was saying something to you, you acknowledged that, but your focus was planted on nothing but Anakin’s unconscious body beneath his hands.

He looked peaceful, too peaceful for the way his body moved beneath Obi-wan’s rough compressions.

“no no no no” it took you too long to realize it was you repeating those words, that your body was rocking back and forth softly, your hands balled up painfully in your hair, trying to do anything to ground yourself, to make yourself wake up, to give your brain anything it could latch to that would make sense.

Because it couldn’t be Anakin lying there without a heartbeat, it just couldn’t.

“Y/N” a shout of your name snapped you out of your stupor, your gaze snapping up to the Jedi master before you.

His eyes never once strayed from his hands on Anakin’s chest.

For the first time you took in the state of Obi-wan, noted the worry he tried to force down that was slipping through his eyes, the way his lips were parted with heavy breaths, the sweat that clung to his brow.

You’ve known Obi-wan for years, the man had been through more than most people experience in their lifetimes. He was a general in the republic’s army, a man regularly sent to the front lines to lead, the person you called to the table when you wanted to negotiate. Obi-wan Kenobi did not sweat.

“Obi” his name left your lips in a whisper, as a prayer, pleadingly.

The Jedi’s eyes cut up to meet yours briefly, his compressions never once halting “I know”

The man’s voice wasn’t scared, wasn’t broken, but it wasn’t calm either, it was just empty, hollow, the voice of a man who had cut himself off from everything, focusing on nothing but the task at hand.

It almost scared you more than anything else.

“No no he can’t he-“ you begged, who you were begging to you weren’t sure at this point “he promised he would be okay, he promised he would be careful, Obi-wan he can’t”

The words fell from your lips your mind barely attaching meaning to them as they passed.

“Rex” Obi-wan called without a second thought, paying you no mind as his attention shifted to the newly arrived reinforcements, a horde of clone troopers descending on the two of them completely blocking your view as Rex carefully pulled you back.

And you knew they were there to help, knew that Anakin should go with them, that if anyone could bring him back it was them.

But in this moment all you knew was you were being separated from him and you weren’t sure if you were ever going to see him again.

Desperately you screamed Anakin’s name over the crowd, watching as his body was hoisted by a few troopers and carried towards the nearest starship, ardently fighting against Rex’s hold as he kept you in place.

“No no Rex please I need to go with him” you begged the clone captain “please I can’t leave him alone he can’t be alone”

The captain did his best to calm you, softly shushing you, holding you in place until your movements started slow, your legs giving out from beneath you as the ramp to the starship that took Anakin ascended, effectively sealing him from you.

Rex followed you down to the ground, arms that had caged you into him softening to offer comfort instead as you watched the ship takeoff “Rex he can’t die he’s my-“ and you couldn’t bring yourself to finish the sentence, chocking on the word friend. Cause that wasn’t quite right, that word wasn’t enough, and it seemed that only when faced with Anakin’s flatlined heart that you could admit that to yourself.

Fate was a cruel thing.

Rex’s hand made its way to your shoulder, giving it an affectionate squeeze as he rocked you back and forth softly “I know Y/N, I know”

-

The first feeling Anakin noted after waking was not pain but rather stiffness.

The bright lights assaulting his unacclimated eyes he could get over easily, but the way his own body fought against him from the moment he opened his eyes, the way it seemed to protest just his breathing, that got to him.

“Well hello there”

Three simple words and Anakin was calm, the tension in his body melting into the mattress beneath him as he took the time to take a deep breath and try and relax.

Obi-wan was here, and if Obi-wan was here then everything was okay, because no matter what shit he had gotten himself into, and over the years there had certainly been a good amount of it, as long as Obi-wan was by his side he knew he could get out of it.

“Where am I?”

His voice sounded weak to his own ears, his very vocal chords grating as he tried to speak, only then realizing how thirsty he was.

“medical unit” Obi-wan answered, coming to his bedside to help Anakin sit up, passing him a cup of water once he was sure he could handle it “I must say we’ve had a lot of close calls in our days my friend, let’s never get that close again”

Anakin just hummed in response, greedily gulping down water.

“What do you remember?”

Finishing the glass Anakin handed the empty vessel back to his master, taking a moment to rack his mind, trying to sort through a jumbled mess of memory. “we were on Corellia” he answered hesitantly “the separatists were attacking we were there with Y/N I think, she went off with her clone army and…” the words died on his tongue, the emptiness of the room hitting him for the first time. His wide panicked gaze met his masters and Obi-wan read his expression easily.

“she’s fine, she had to brief the council”

Anakin sagged back in relief, his breath taking a second to right itself once again “okay-okay good. She’s okay. She separated off and told me to be safe then I-“

“did the exact opposite” Obi-wan supplied with a half smirk, relishing the way that same panicked look grew once again on Anakin’s face in response.

“shit” Anakin swore under his breath, bringing the heels of his palms up to rub at his eyes.

“she’s been by your side since she got to Coruscant” Obi-wan replied, crossing his arms over his chest “had to threaten expelling her from the order just to get her to go give her debrief”

Anakin could only groan in response, his posture slumping further as he did so “scale of 1 to 10 how likely is she to kill me?”

Obi-wan chuckled in response “oh my dear padawan we surpassed double digits long ago”

“it was that bad huh?”

Obi-wan was silent for a moment, hand coming up to rake through his beard in response, a tired sigh escaping him before he spoke again “the first time she saw you since the moment you separated off was when I was giving you chest compressions-“

“Well I’m here now that’s got to be worth something right?” he tried, earning only a single brow raise in response.

Another heavy silence fell over the pair before Obi-wan broke it “After seeing her reaction to finding you like that I feel it is my duty as your master to warn you against forming attachments” Anakin nearly rolled his eyes at the same tired old speech, Obi-wan cutting in to continue speaking before he got the chance to do so “however, as a friend I will say you ever put that girl through something like that again and breaking the Jedi code will be the least of your worries”

Anakin nearly laughed in response, the smile dying on his lips once he brought his gaze up to meet Obi-wans and seeing the seriousness that those eyes held. All words clogging in his throat as he was only able to force up a measly “yes master” that at least seemed to placate him for the moment.

Obi-wan’s posture straightened suddenly, eyes cast towards the closed door as he sensed a presence Anakin had felt coming minutes ago. “I believe that is my que to leave”

Giving Anakin a small bow Obi-wan made his way towards the door, pausing when Anakin suddenly called out “Master…thank you”

Obi-wan smiled warmly in response “It’s good to see you breathing again Anakin. Do your best to keep it that way”

Opening the door Obi-wan paused just in the doorframe, conversing briefly with someone he knew to be you before disappearing.

The entryway to Anakin’s surprise remained empty, empty for long enough to make him worry.

Despite everything though your form crept through the doorway, seeming almost scared to see him.

And though Obi-wan had told him you were okay Anakin couldn’t relax fully until he finally was able to lay eyes on you.

You, however, stayed as tense as ever just inside the door, eyes wide and panicked, gaze pinning him to the spot.

Anakin was almost afraid to move beneath your gaze, afraid any wrong move would break the spell and have you yelling at him.

Cause maker he knew he deserved it but he just woke up, he was alive, and he thought seeing a frown on your face after everything would kill him all over again.

The stare down lasted a tense few seconds as you scanned each other, Anakin noting the bandages wrapped around your palms, the badly bandaged cut on your brow. Maker how many times has he told you to see a medical droid after an assignment instead of trying to do it yourself, some bacta and it would be gone in minutes and he wouldn’t have to stare at the physical reminder of his own failure to protect you, of your own vulnerability.

The two of you seemed to snap out of it at the same moment, finishing your physical examination of one another at the same moment, because as Anakin took a deep breath and started to push himself up you were bound across the room in a near sprint.

Your arms were around his neck within the next second, your body planted in his lap, your chest pushed flush against his. And every part of him hurt with it but he didn’t care for a second because you were in his arms and the only thought running through his mind was that he needed you closer, that no matter how hard he pulled you into him it wasn’t enough because he was alive and you were here and nothing else beyond that mattered.

Much to his displeasure you were pulling back much too quickly and he tried to fight it, tried to keep you against him, tried to seek comfort in your arms as long as possible. But then your palms were cupping his cheeks and all thoughts in his head ceased, your wide eyes were looking directly into his and Anakin could do nothing but freeze, your nose brushed against his and Anakin forgot how to breathe. Then your lips were against his and Anakin suddenly wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t actually died back there.

But Anakin had thought about this too many times to hesitate now, he kissed you back just as fiercely, just as hungrily, one hand coming to the back of your head, fingers threading themselves into your hair at the base of your neck as he pulled you into him, his other hand finding your waist and pulling, seeking out any sort of physical reminder that you were here, really here.

But there you went pulling back again, ending the kiss much too quickly for his liking. He tried to follow you back, tried to pull your lips back to his but you were too stubborn, why did you always have to be this stubborn?

Before his mind could even process what had happened, before he could even mourn to loss of your body against his, your hand was raised and Anakin felt a sharp sting on his cheek, a pain he was only 60% sure was new at this point.

He forced his eyes open only to be met with the anger in your eyes he had been expecting since you had walked into the room.

You were pulling back again, getting up from the bed to your feet, fingertips trailing down the sheets that separated his body from yours absentmindedly but leaving a trail of sparks in their wake for Anakin. He tried to reach for them but you were too quick pulling them back, coming up to stand alongside his bed.

He could acknowledge you were talking now, or rather ranting fit it better, but he was too busy trying to reach you, trying to pull you back down on top of him, too busy cursing his every ache and pain that kept him from standing up and following you.

“cannot believe you thought it was a good idea to go off on your own what were you thinking? No scratch that I knew what you were thinking and it was nothing-“

Your words vaguely registered in the back of his mind as you paced back and forth, scolding him. “you’re right, I’m sorry, come here” the words rushed out of his mouth as he tried to reach out to you again.

But you never even acknowledged that he had spoke, continuing your rant without a hiccup “you cannot keep doing this to me, to Obi-wan, to Rex, throwing yourself into every dangerous situation without any regard for your life-“

And all Anakin could focus on were your lips as you spoke. Was it just him or did they seem slightly pinker than before? Slightly swollen. A soft sheen on them from saliva, his saliva, maker how he wanted to add to it. He hummed non-committally to whatever you had just said.

You hadn’t even looked at him as you ranted, your eyes planted on your feet as you paced rapidly before his bed “you promised me you’d be careful and this is how you thought you would go about upholding that promise? Because I have news for you if you really thought that was a good plan-“

He hadn’t even gotten the chance to really enjoy himself, enjoy the feeling of your lips against his, the taste of you on his tongue. With every second that passed with you still all the way across the room he became less and less convinced that the kiss had really happened. At this point he didn’t really care if he had imagined the whole thing he was just desperate to recreate it.

His bed shook slightly as your hands came to rest on the foot of it and your eyes for the first time this entire rant connected with his and Anakin’s focus finally zeroed in, yours seeming to do the same, the both of you acknowledging in that moment you hadn’t listened to a single word the other had said in the past five minutes.

Another tense silence passed, each being unsure of what to say to the other, before a tear falling down your cheek broke it. “Ani I found you while Obi-wan was doing chest compressions, I only found you after you had died”

And for the first time the weight of his own stupid actions seemed to hit him. Because he could tell himself that he was doing it for you, or for Obi-wan, but truly Anakin hadn’t ever thought about what would happen after he made the decision to do something stupid. And here he was dealing with those consequences.

You were scared, you were scared and sad and Anakin had done that to you and he wasn’t sure he could forgive himself for that.

“Y/N please” he begged softly, one arm extended out to you.

And finally you listened to him, too slowly making your way back to his bedside, and Anakin wasted no time in wrapping his arm around your shoulders and pulling your head into his chest.

You went willingly, your arms wrapping around his torso, burying yourself into him with a relieved sigh as Anakin buried his nose in your hair, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head.

“I’m so sorry Y/N” he whispered into your hair and for a second you didn’t respond, simply stayed in his arms, listened to the sound of his heart beat, reminded yourself he was really here, before replying, your voice muffled slightly by his shirt.

“You better be Skywalker”

And despite everything Anakin couldn’t help but chuckle at your threat, arms tightening slightly around you as he fondly kissed the top of your head once more.

“If I promised to be more careful would you kiss me again?”

It came out in a teasing tone but you froze at the question, your entire body tensing beneath his touch before slowly pulling back to better look at him, your eyes wide in panic “maker I kissed you”

“you did” he agreed eagerly, hand coming up to cup your cheek.

You brushed aside his hand without a thought, your panicked state leaving Anakin much too amused “I didn’t even ask you or warn you or tell you how I feel I just kissed you, maker Ani”

“And I’m asking you to do it again” he chuckled, hand wrapping around your wrist and giving it a small tug trying to pull you back into him.

“I could’ve ruined everything” you continued to rant, eyes unfocused as you spoke “We’ve known each other since we were nine and I just kissed you like that wasn’t going to change everything what was I thinking”

“I’m thinking if you don’t kiss me now my heart may stop…again”

Your response was immediate, one fist shooting out and connecting solidly to his shoulder causing the jedi to groan softly “Ani that’s not funny”

Nonetheless Anakin took advantage of the way you leaned forward slightly to hook one hand around the back of your neck and crash your lips sloppily into his, a happy groan escaping him once you had finally connected.

Yet again you were pulling back but Anakin learned from his mistakes, never letting you get far. “I want it on record this does not mean I condone you injuring yourself”

“You got it sweetheart” Anakin mumbled back without much thought, pulling you back into him to let your lips connect once again, relishing the few seconds you eagerly kissed him back before you pulled back once again.

“And you can’t just say whatever you think I want to hear just so I’ll kiss you”

“mhm sure whatever you want baby” he responded with a hum before pulling you in again, an exasperated groan escaping him when you once again pulled back too soon.

“I mean it you have to promise me Ani”

Anakin’s other hand came up to cup your check, gaze desperately seeking out yours as he held your head mere inches from his own “I promise you I will not put myself unnecessarily into danger going forward” and without giving you a chance to respond he was kissing you again, committing every second to memory as he threaded his fingers through your hair.

Your hands planted on his chest as you pulled back again, barely getting out your “and one more-“ before Anakin was responding with a simple “no” pulling you back into him, the Jedi’s desperation making you giggle against his lips as you happily kissed him back.

[grunckle]

Qualia and Ascension in Rain World

(To clarify I'm mostly talking about base-game lore and not including Downpour, but honestly most of these things can transfer over)

Qualia

One thing that’s relatively hidden in Rain World’s text and subtext is the concept of qualia. Qualia is described as being, “sensory experiences that have distinctive subjective qualities but lack any meaning or external reference to the objects or events that cause them.” It’s a personal sensory experience that cannot be comprehended by another person other than the individual themself, and are often hard to convey via language.

Qualia is a reoccurring motif in Rain World, but what’s more important is the way in which it’s conveyed to the player. The picture that’s painted is that of a world or civilization that placed a great importance on the individuals’ experience, and it’s shown through pearls or environmental details.

Here are some examples of qualia appearing in the text through pearls.

“It's qualia, or a moment - a very short one. Someone is holding a black stone, and twisting it slightly as they drag their finger across the rough surface. The entire sequence is shorter than a heartbeat, but the resolution is extraordinary.”

“A memory... but not really visual, or even concrete, in its character. It reminds of the feeling of a warm wind, but not the physical feeling but the... inner feeling. I don't think it has much utility unless you are doing some very fringe Regeneraist research.”

“This one... is authored by Five Pebbles, when he was young. There has been an attempt to scramble the data, but it's sloppily done, and most is still somewhat legible. It's written in internal language, or thoughts, so it is hard for me to translate so you would understand.”

But the most prominent examples of qualia and it’s importance in this world are the Memory Crypts and possibly ancient naming conventions. The deep purple pearl (shortened) found in Shaded Citadel states,

“In this vessel is the living memories of Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel, of the House of Braids (…) Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel nobly decided to ascend in the beginning of 1514.008, after graciously donating all (ALL!) earthly possessions to the local Iterator project (Unparalleled Innocence), and left these memories to be cherished by the carnal plane. The assorted memories and qualia include:”

Ancients likely mutated their own neural tissue into the cabinet beasts we see in Shaded, which were used to store their memories and qualia before ascension. Even james said once "how 5 pebs got the rot is a good hint here" in response to someone asking how cabinet beasts work, and how they're made.

Adding on to this, ancient (and iterator) naming conventions seem to be built off of the concept of qualia, with them focusing on individual images or experiences.

Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections

Droplets upon Five Large Droplets

Two Sprouts, Twelve Brackets

Looks to the Moon

Generally, this all points to a world focused on the expression and preservation of the individual experience. You could even consider some of the echo dialogue as more evidence for this running motif, but I already have too many quotes lol.

Ascension

So now time to talk about my interpretation of ascension. In short, you turn into a worm, but I should probably explain more than that.

So its been surfacing on rw-tumblr that the light in the end of the game is called the egg in files. Although file names shouldn't be taken as fact or canon, it is pretty obvious given the birth imagery.

But something a little lesser known is what happens to the worm that takes us down to the void-sea depths. Void worms normally have a bright glowing effect, on their body, which is present for ours as well. But after it unhooks us, it swims down, and when it passes us on it's way back that glowing effect is gone.

To be honest, I don't really think this can be interpreted in many ways, but the most obvious one and the one I personally subscribe to is that the worm laid the egg. Biology and spirituality really aren't that different in Rain World, it's implied that karma is stored in the brain through Five Pebbles's slideshow. Adding on to that, we see voidspawn after eating an iterator neuron. One's spiritual state is innately tied to their mental state, and that dictates what and what they can't perceive.

And for that reason I decide to take a more biology leaning approach to what happens in the ending. At face value, we are fertilizing the egg of a void worm to be reborn into a voidspawn.

Not only do void spawn and void worms have multiple characteristics in common, (worm like bodies, tendrils/tentacles, glowing heads, void spawn look microbial and void worms are likely some of the oldest "life" in game)

but voidspawn are seen inside egg-like coverings and share the same egg light seen in the end of the game, confirmed to be the same thing by Videocult in a livestream they did.

I believe that all this points to ascension being re-birth into a voidspawn, which eventually undergoes metamorphose into a worm. Higher-dimensional beings, who manifest and give birth to a new world.

So how does this tie in with qualia? Another thing you might know is that the area in which void spawn are most plentiful is Shaded Citadel and areas in Shoreline near Shaded. And shaded is absolutely packed with Cabinet Beasts, even outside Memory Crypts. I believe these qualia-storing creatures are what manifest voidspawn.

From what we see in ascension, it still looks physical and largely based around the real world. Hunter still has his scars and see's an iterator, survivor sees the slug tree in a more mystical and formless state, and monk sees survivor frankly just looking like a normal slugcat. I think that ascension is a product of qualia. We transcend our earthly knowledge via the egg, and our own qualia is used to give birth to a new world. This is why voidspawn appear most in Shaded Citadel.

Now I won't be getting into Void-Worm theories too much here, I'm mostly focused on ascension but I can't ignore the Gnosticism parallels. For those who don't know, Void Worms heavily resemble the Yaldaboath from Gnosticism, along with sharing some similar celestial motifs.

and running with that some people theorize that, like the Yaldabaoth, void worms are responsible for manifesting the material world. Ascension seems to be a mix of the concepts of Gnosis and Nirvana, but I believe it might lean more on Gnosis.

From my limited knowledge, Gnosis is a few things, some of which being a state achieved from experiences or intuitions, and an essential part to salvation is personal knowledge. While researching a bit, I came across this text by Peter Wilberg called "From NEW AGE to NEW GNOSIS" which brings up some comparisons between Gnosticism and qualia as well.

"Gnosis is subjective knowledge of an inner universe made up not of matter, energy, space or time but of countless qualitative spheres or ‘planes’ of awareness – a knowledge obtained directly through inter- subjective resonance. It is the subjective science of this inner universe."

One thing though that has been brought up when discussing this is how this can be consolidated with the tone of the ending. It is pretty un-ambiguously happy, but if we're going with the Void worm Yaldaboath theory then that would put a bit of a sour twist on it right?

I agreed with these for some time, but now I actually think it ties in perfectly with Rain World's core themes as stated by the devs, "overcoming differences and finding empathy." I don't think the void worms are "evil" or malevolent, but I think they (and subsequently us after ascending) play a key role in demonstrating this theme.

By manifesting the physical world, we allow these souls to experience life and develop their own qualia so one day they can ascend themselves. We are shown compassion, and pass it forward.

[meowingcookie]

Installing Scriptorium for Legacy Users

So you're a Sims 2 Legacy player who wanted to install some modular stairs? Maybe a lighting mod? You installed Scriptorium and you enter your game and suddenly your foundation is missing or crashes your game whenever you try to place it. Or maybe your pools and rooves have fences in them?

(images sourced from Lazy Duchess Discord server)

WTF did I do?

You've broken your script files!

Currently they look like this:

When they should look like this:

What do the script files do?

They give the game instructions and settings for certain build items that are generated by the game engine such as walls, foundations, pools, modular stairs, fireplaces, rooves, awnings and more. Lighting also uses scripts for some things. Some of these items require the scripts to display in catalog or at all.

How did this happen??

So i've seen two different ways, firstly, the auto installer installs in the wrong location. So what does the player do? They moves the files into the correct location.

The issue with this is the script files that Scriptorium creates when it can't find your game files are missing ALL of the original script lines. Then when you replace your existing script files with these, you basically are replacing your script files with a blank one (minus the Scriptorium lines).

Second way, when manually installing, the player deletes the contents of the original script files and replaces it with the Scriptorium lines.

This results in the same outcome shown in the example script.

Why does this affect only Legacy players?

Legacy uses different file paths. Scriptorium was last updated after M&G came out. The auto installer was made to work with the discs in both their original and compilation file paths. For example, Double Deluxe\Base or Sims 2, or Fun with Pets\SP9 etc. All other versions up until this point have used these paths so they never experienced this issue. EA decided to do something different this time and go by EP/SP numbers. So the installer gets confused and places them in the wrong place.

How do I fix this??

A few options, reinstall or repair your game, or replace the broken script files with the ones below. Place them in your C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Legacy\Base\TSData\Res\Catalog\Scripts folder. You may need to delete the files first that you are replacing and cut and paste the new ones in.

Download Original Scripts

But I still want to use Scriptorium?

Once you have replaced your broken scripts, follow these manual instructions that I have modified from the original Scriptorium post for Legacy users.

Go to C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Legacy\Base\TSData\Res\Catalog\Scripts

And open the fireplaces.txt and copy and paste the line below at the bottom of this file without deleting the existing text.

wildInclude "Scriptorium_Fireplaces*.*"

Then save.

If you have issues with saving due to permissions, cut and paste the files to desktop while you are editing them and move them back after

Next open modularstairs.txt and add the text below

wildInclude "Scriptorium_ModularStairs*.*"

Then open walls.txt and add the text below

wildInclude "Scriptorium_Walls-Fences-Arches*.*"

While remaining in your Scripts folder, Create 3 new folders and call them

Scriptorium_Fireplaces Scriptorium_ModularStairs Scriptorium_Walls-Fences-Arches

Select these 3 folders and right click and choose copy.

Now go to Documents\EA Games\Sims 2 Legacy\Downloads (if you do not have a Downloads folder, create one)

Then right click and press paste shortcut

If you want to use custom lights as well, follow these steps

If your lighting.txt is also empty, this is a copy of the original version

Download Lighting Script

Go to C:\Program Files\EA Games\The Sims 2 Legacy\Base\TSData\Res\Lights

Open lighting.txt and add

wildInclude "Scriptorium_CustomLights*.nlo"

While still in the Lights folder Create a folder called Scriptorium_CustomLights If you already have a folder called CEP3_CustomLights, rename it to Scriptorium_CustomLights

Right click on this folder and copy it

Then go to Documents\EA Games\Sims 2 Legacy\Downloads and paste shortcut

And you are all done :D

If you have any issues, feel free to leave a comment or send a message!