#there used to be a sand mine for concrete or something

[milks-thoughts]

Futuer Leo with apprentice reader?

like reader was made his apprentice alongside Casey Jr and people keep comparing the two, how Casey was more mature, how he was stronger physically and emotionally

thankss

I warned y’all, i warned ya it was coming

(shout out to @yanteetle who makes me chuckle every time they react with my angst posts)

summary: Reader just wants to make him proud

TW: death, in detail character death, meaning the POV is dying, murder, reader runs away, reader has a breakdown, the dove is dead. why? cause I killed it, reader just wants to make him proud :(

It Was Not Your Fault But Mine

When Leonardo became the leader of the resistance he expected many things, war? mhm, death? absolutely. it came with the territory. being placed in charge of two preteens, to train them to be able to live in this brutal world? no, he was never expecting you to become his apprentice. He trained you both, but…he couldn’t help but see himself in you. the self he hated. his past, a cocky teenager that thought his older brother would carry everything for him.

You couldn’t help but resent Casey. Why did he get special treatment? You two were on the same patrol where you watched half the patrol get wiped out…and yet, you listened to your mentor, Leonardo, comfort Casey… why didn’t he also comfort you? His gruff voice broke through your thoughts “ You're okay, You're alright. I'll never, ever leave your side- “ you gripped your elbows as your buried your head in your knees “ -I will stay and I will fight. “ his humming filled the space he and Casey were sharing, you weren’t even supposed to be here “ With you, you're okay, you're alright. I'll stay here through the darkest night. All the way, I will fight….with you “ when you heard Leonardo start to leave the space, you quickly left the surrounding area. collapsing onto the floor and sighing, nothing but harsh memories being your company.

When you and Casey were allowed out on serious patrols, you were exploring a apartment building. You entered one door and recoiled at the dead person in the room, you backed up and knocked over a pot which caught the attention of a kraang dog nearby…which alterted its friends… which had them chasing after you and Casey. You both narrowly avoided them by closing yourselves in a apartment, you sheepishly grinned at Casey and he looked down at you with a unimpressed face. You two had waited two hours before Leonardo and a patrol could rescue you two, when he found out what happened…he sighed and walked off. You and Casey followed him back, being able to tell he was going to yell at you two when you got back. You dreaded it, you always ended up crying when Leonardo shouted at you, or, whenever anyone shouted at you.

You sniffled in your room, you didn’t miss how Leonardo’s frame was exhausted looking. He walked past your area and into Casey’s room. You suddenly shot up. “ I’ll make him proud of me. I’ll- I’ll do something impactful. I’ll bring back so much material that he can’t help but notice me! “ pushing out your room, grabbing a bottle of water and a nutrition bar, you left the resistance camp behind. Your eyes hard as you held your weapon tightly. You were going to force him to see you.

It was a horrible mistake. You were doing so good! Being stealthy! but a building crashed over top you, leaving a metal beam through your leg. You collar bones were broken as your weak arms tried to push off the large slab of concrete. realizing you couldn’t…tears started rolling down your face. you didn’t want to die alone…you didn’t want to die here. In the darkness your only companion was your emergency button, it’s blue color that it glowed was illuminating your face. You felt like a old dog, a dog that stopped being useful to your farmer. You whimpered and cried, whispering a small lullaby to yourself “ You're okay, You're alright. I'll never, ever leave your side- “ you gripped the concrete slab as you buried your head in the sand like floor behind you “ -I will stay and I will fight…. “ your humming filled the space, you weren’t even supposed to be here… “ With you, you're okay, you're alright. I'll stay here through the darkest night.- “ your sob echoed through the rubble “ -All the way, I will fight….with you… “ your body started hyperventilating to the best of its ability, the concrete slab feeling so..so heavy. You didn’t want to die alone with your thigh pinned down by a metal bar, by concrete holding down your chest…you wanted your mentor…you wanted…you…

Leonardo’s patrol finally got through the rubble, his hands scrapped and bleeding as he found you, a wail escaping him as he rushed forwards. Pushing the concrete slab you so clearly tried to push off, your scrapped and bleeding hands being a painful reminder how you both struggled with the rubble. He leaned his head down and sobbed when your chest never thudded with a heart beat. He pushed the hair out of your face so carefully and took in your tear streaked cheeks, still damp. Some may say that your death was your own fault. That you should’ve never left because you were jealous. But it was not your fault but his instead. He neglected you and he’ll defend your death and your name, and everything you stood for with his life, because he failed you, like he failed his brothers, like he failed New York…like he failed the world. He’s Icarus and he flew way too close to the sun.

[house-in-the-cerulean-sea]

17 headcannons for march 17. that are so widely spread in this fandom that I'm not even completely sure what is cannon anymore

1. Neither Linus nor Arthur are coffee drinkers, usually Arthur prefers cocoa and Linus tea but you won't catch these two drinking coffee, even tho it might seem like they'd need it!

2. Arthur Parnassus, a Swifty or lover of 80s tunes? Actually both can be true.

3. Zoe's hair flowers bloom affected by her emotions. When with Helen, they are usually pink. Literally, no idea whether or not that's canon.

4. Helen's a redhead.

5. Linus becomes a true fashionista on the island. It's starts with the egg adventure outfit and once he gets comfortable in his skin, he and Zoe go on elaborate shopping trips and his wardrobe becomes even more colourful than mine.

6. Arthur had an extravagant sock collection with the most colourful and patterned socks possible. Of course this is supported by textual evidence, but if we are honest to ourselves, there's only three pairs of socks mentioned red, purple and the one with the clouds. It's completely possible that he just has colourful but one-coloured socks and just this one pair with a pattern. No, i know that's unrealistic.

7. Mr. Graves. Y'all are gonna tell me that that's Not the canon name of the orphanage Arthur went to? Like i thought this was a fact and I haven't even finished @davidbowielovesyou s amazing fanwork "stay" which you can find on ao3 and should be smarter about then me and read it

8. This might be a personal one but Helen is a skater. It's her and her rollerblades against the sand on the concrete.

9. Everyone is autistic. I was gonna say: "only Linus is confirmed autistic" but that's not actually true is it? Tho i think we can use our critical reading skills here and come to the obvious conclusion that he is. But so are phee and Chauncey and Lucy and...

10. Except for Arthur who has ADHD.

11. The term island dads. I'm not actually sure if the TJ knows that name, it certainly originated on Tumblr. But if he knows it👀 Hiii! Love yr work, obviously. Just think about it, the name could have been Anus and i do not like that

12. Linus and Arthur are constantly dancing. Especially in the kitchen!

13. Young Arthur was a punk and an activist and he probably wore multicoloured doc martens

14. Also Linus is obsessed with Princess Diana. I know I personally made that up but i still forgot whether or not it was true

15. There's an underground rebellion going on, that we don't know anything about but these definitely actions and protests for magical rights going on under the radar

16. Doreen aka Ms. bubblegum is either part of said rebellion or secretly also an unregistered magical being. I think she's very neat and it would fit her character to do something this pretty right one dicomys nose.

17. While Arthur of course is cold resistent due to his phoenix abilities, Linus is not which means that when they put David to bed at night Linus insists to wear winter clothes every time so he can say good night, no matter how often Arthur and David tell him that's really not necessary @islanddads is the mind behind this one

@dontuwishuwerehere

[patrickdiomedes]

RWBY/X-Men crossover thoughts

So, I've been thinking recently about a "What if Magneto was Pyrrha's dad?" fic, what with the magnetism. And then I started wondering about just bringing all the X-characters into RWBY. (possibly in the wake of whatever shitshow the end of the Krakoa Era turns into.)

Now, on the one hand, it'd make sense to have all the Mutants be faunus, but I don't wanna go that route. So instead, various mutants have been appearing for all of Remnant's history. Some of them remember their past in the 616 universe, most don't, only having vague feelings of deja vu sometimes when meeting another mutant. Not that they're technically "mutants" here, as the X-Gene is replaced by semblances. So on the one hand, mutants are no longer hated and feared. On the other hand, they're living on a death world with an immortal being who controls an army of monsters. (It's honestly kinda nostalgic for the Arakki mutants).

So far, the only concrete idea I have for any of the mutants is Magneto being Pyrrha's dad, and Wanda, Pietro, and Lorna being her siblings (Fuck you marvel, Wanda and Pietro are his kids and they're mutants) I'm thinking that Charles actually was part of Oz's inner circle several lifetimes ago, and they tried using his telepathy (along with some kind of power amplifier) to tell a whole kingdom (or a chunk of one) about Salem. It went...poorly, and was a contributing factor in Oz's secrecy in the present day.

Other ideas:

Sebastian Shaw is one of Jacques Schnee's chief business rivals. Doesn't remember his previous life, other than the odd bit of deja vu, and having an instinctive knowledge of how his semblance worked as soon as it activated. Worked in either a dust mine, or a dust refinery, and his semblance activated during a workplace accident. Ghira Belladonna's chief competition in the "Remnant's Most Glorious Chest Hair" contest.

En Sabah Nur would be a relic of the early humans, before the gods wiped them out. He still sleeps beneath the sands of Vacuo (possibly along with his kids and wife). Could do something with the Crown from the two Team CFVY novels wanting to awaken him, rather than just restoring the Vacuan Monarchy.

Just realized that the Aura Transfer tech Ironwood was developing could've been developed by someone who studied Apocalypse's mind transfer stuff. Even though if this is krakoa era Apoc, he no longer needs to do that.

the O5 x-men would be contemporaries of team STRQ, along with the team from Giant Size #1. That's Cyclops, Jean, Beast, Bobby, Warren, Nightcrawler, Storm, Wolverine, Banshee, Colossus, Thunderbird, and Sunfire, which does make for 3 teams of 4, if we're assuming that all of them were students of the huntsman academies. Maybe they were all from the other 3 academies, with STRQ at Beacon? Though Rogue, Havok and Polaris throw those numbers off. Though Rachel and Betsy bring it up to 16, so i guess it still works out.

I personally would have Hank as part of Ironwood's inner circle after the fall of beacon, with both of them exacerbating each others negative tendencies. I like Hank's villain turn, and feel like it's a natural progression of his character since at least the 90s (Justice for Threnody, motherfucker)

I'd put the New Mutants as a bit older than team RWBY, probably around the same age range as Winter, Cinder and the Ace Ops.

That's Cannonball, Mirage, Karma, Cypher, Magik, Wolfsbane, Magma, Sunspot, and Warlock. Not counting Warlock (who I have no idea how to work him in) that makes 8. Kitty would probably fall into this group too

This leaves Generation X and Academy X as contemporaries of team RWBY.

this is the group I know the least about. But that would be Chamber, Jubilee, Monet, Skin, Synch, Bling!, Eye Boy, and Quentin Quire for Generation X. Maybe have them be upperclassmen to RWBY's freshmen

then Academy X is Elixir, Icarus, Prodigy, Surge, Wallflower, Wind Dancer, Dust, Hellion, Mercury, Rockslide, Laura Kinney and Wither. Anyone else from the X-Men training squads would fall in this age group too.

Deadly Genesis was obviously not a thing in this universe, and the only one of those X-Men I care about is Darwin.

Selene is...around. Honestly I think it'd be hilarious if she just hung out in the Land of Darkness, eating grimm and really annoying Salem, after they figured out that Selene couldn't kill her. She still busts down Salem's door to drain some of her life force occasionally, but honestly it's the closest thing to friendship either of them has.

Mystique predates the Great War, and does Huntress work occasionally, but these days she mostly stays home with Irene (At least that's the official story). No one knows if she's human or faunus. Her relationship with her biological son Kurt (we're going with Claremont's original plan here, Mystique was the 'father' and Irene was the mother) and her adopted daughter Anna Marie is...strained.

Fuck it, replace Glynda with Emma Frost, it's not like Glynda is that important in the grand scheme of things. (y'all know I'm right)

Characters I'm not sure what to do with:

Forge (combine him with pietro pollendina/have them be colleagues?)

the Stepford Cuckoos

Cable

Bishop

Sage

Toad

Dazzler

Boom-Boom

Stryfe

honestly, it might streamline things to have all the time traveler characters come from the same dystopian future

Rictor

Akihiro

[pixiemage]

MCYT Fic Worldbuilding Concept: BLOCKS, GRAVITY & CRAFTING

This is now the second time I've decided to ramble on about the way I picture the Minecraft universe functioning in the fic world. The first time I chattered on about armor and inventory space, and this time it's how Minecraft blocks behave in a world where the characters...uh...aren't so blocky. (This is gonna get long, so strap in!)

Blocks are such an intrinsic part of the Minecraft in-game universe that it felt wrong to exclude them from fics, even though the characters we portray are decidedly less cuboid and sharp-edged on paper. So when I write within the MCYT world, I tend to write under the assumption that both crafted items and hand-made items exist at the same time.

Now, this all comes down to the idea that any MC universe is based in code, that every single item and person and mob and - anything, is made of ones and zeroes. Crafting is the same, and it works as a shortcut of sorts to bring new items into being using specified supplies. Two sticks and a few iron ingots? Boom, you've got a pickaxe. However it's also possible to build one by hand, if you have the skills required to do so. (TFC is one such player who I tend to imagine built his mining equipment with his own hands rather than a crafting table because the craftmanship would have been higher quality and it was a more personal and enjoyable way to gain his tools.) Crafting tables often result in cookie-cutter, standard-built tools that work well enough for what the average player needs...but if you're looking for something higher grade, you'll want to go to a professional. For example, a crafted bed would be comfortable enough, but getting a bed hand-made would potentially be softer, larger, and/or more intricate than what would come from a crafting table.

(This also means that personalized items can't be stacked in your inventory. So if - say - Impulse was to hand-make the clock he gifted Bdubs in Double Life, then it would always occupy its own inventory space, even if Bdubs dumped half a stack of crafted clocks into his inventory with it.) (EDIT: It JUST occurred to me that this ACTUALLY ALREADY MAKES SENSE with in-game mechanics! If you name an item, that item is now different from other items of the same type and it cannot stack with items that don't also have that name. So this tracks!)

BUT coming back around to blocks - the same concepts stands. A single block of wool is a whole block, a standard item recognized by the coding of the MC universe as a craftable item. So is a standard chest, a block of obsidian - even Pixlriff's precious deepslate emerald ore. Blocks like those, when placed, are assigned that location by the coding of the server, and have the ability to defy gravity if no blocks are placed beneath it. (Excepting, of course, gravel or sand or concrete powder or - you get the picture.) Once a standard crafted block is altered, it no longer can defy gravity the way its unaltered brethren can.

For example: the burning of the ranch in Double Life. If I were to write this scene (which I definitely need to do in the future), then any blocks that were burned would lose their structure and have the capacity to fall and crumble. A ceiling could cave in or a wall could collapse or a door could fall off its hinges. Any unscathed blocks would remain in mid-air...but damaged ones wouldn't be so lucky.

On a related note, a player could alter blocks purposefully if they so choose, either to carve detailing into wooden walls or break pieces off of a block of ice or...so on. A block of wool could be torn apart into fluffier pieces or spun into yarn, and a block of wood planks could be separated into individual planks if a builder wanted to so something a little more hands-on than simple block placement. Copper could be hammered into jewelry, glowstone could be chiseled apart to make small ornaments, and slime blocks could be...uh...separated into...smaller slime? (I'm not sure what the practical application would be for that one, but hey, it's possible.)

The crafting-vs-hand-made concept also works for food, in that a crafting table (or furnace, sometimes) can give you good food, but the choices are more limited and you can't personalize it the way you can if you cook/bake something yourself. Though I suppose, it also would mean the flavor of what you've crafted would be consistent and reliable every single time, meaning that - for anyone who has sensory issues - there would never be a risk of a favorite food being different and unpalatable if that favorite food is a crafting table recipe.

I'd love to see how this concept could be expanded upon as well! I imagine that it would be fun to write into other worlds, or fold this idea into the mold of certain characters and their known tropes and characteristics. Grian, as a known skilled builder, may be more likely to alter his building blocks once he has a crafted-block base built for the sake of detailing, while Mumbo - who has only begun to expand his building skills in more recent seasons - may rely more heavily on crafted materials. Tango, being knowledgeable in intricate redstone, may have a custom set of tools he uses specifically for manipulating his circuits, while Bdubs' fascination with the intricate inner workings of clocks has led him to acquire a very different set of tools of his own. Maybe Gem is skilled in hands-on gardening the way TFC is skilled in the world of true mining, and maybe Welsknight creates his own armor by hand since his more medieval apparel isn't something that can be made on a simple crafting table.

Just...some food for thought. 😉

[dirtbag-linecook-kyloren]

There’s a scene that I’m just calling the orange juice scene and I can’t stop thinking about it so here’s a piece while I move scenes around in scrivener instead of writing. Gotta keep the chronology right first y’know

-

Without another word, Dameron lets the back door slam behind him, and in his weakness, Hux flinches at the noise. His father would be so disappointed, and so as if to further spite him, Hux’s hand reaches with trembling fingers for the small cigarette case at the bottom of his apron. It takes him three tries to light it, but the first pull forces him to think about breathing. Between that and the nicotine, Hux can feel his head start to right itself. “Terrible fucking habit,” Solo mutters, likely to himself. As usual, Solo is incapable of reading the room. Unfortunately for him, Hux is still in a state of panic, but he’s come down just enough for fight to be his response, instead of flight. “Because property damage is so much better,” Hux cuts back. “Next time I’m teetering on the edge of a break down, I’ll be sure to just start throwing pint glasses at the wall and shouting. I’m sure I won’t get fired. That’s a thing we’re all allowed to do, right?” Solo’s eyes narrow, his hands clenching into fists. “Of course, Mr. Always in Control. How can I forget, the great and powerful Hux has never had an emotion in his life, and as such, finds all us beings will feelings to be lower lifeforms.” Standing, Hux let’s a bitter, broken laugh escape before taking another drag from his cigarette, blowing the smoke into the sky and watching in float away in the flood lights. “Indeed. Before you stands the paragon of control, about to throw his dinner up onto the concrete.” Dameron should have come back with his water by now, Hux thinks. He’s not upset; if anything, he’s worried. Is the restaurant falling apart while he breaks down by the dumpster? “Are you sick?” Solo asks. “You shouldn’t have come in for your shift if there was a chance you had a food-borne illness.” “Panic attacks aren’t contagious,” Hux snaps, dropping his cigarette into the bucket of sand and kicking it to cover it. “So our guests are safe from my malady, and your precious health codes haven’t been violated.” “The health and safety of our guests is incredibly important,” Solo says, and then, “panic attack?” For a moment, Hux can feel his hands start to shake again, can feel his heart beating a little faster than it had been just moments before. As he falls apart, surely the restaurant has been lit aflame, he thinks. Finn and Dameron are spreading the story of his infirmity all throughout the servers, and he’ll be a laughing stock in some group chat he’s not in by morning. Any respect his coworkers have for him will have vanished into the ether, and in shame, so will he. “I haven’t had one in a couple of years,” he says instead, keeping his internal thoughts to himself. “I used to handle them much better, but I suppose I must be out of practice.” Looking up, he can see on Solo’s face the desire to ask, different from Dameron’s need for gossip. There’s genuine concern there, but Hux doesn’t need the manger’s kid knowing all the ways he has trouble doing his job, the various walls and coping mechanisms he’s constructed out of duct tape and nicotine. “It’s nothing important. I’m sorry to have bothered your tantrum, but I can’t ask my coworkers to cover my slack any longer, so I really must return to my tables.” Hux watches a flash of rage die, as if he’s finally beginning to see through Hux’s bullshit, and isn’t that a terrifying thought. Ben Solo, being fully aware that Hux’s personality, his cutting remarks and his dry wit, are a lie. If he is unlikeable, he never worries about how people perceive him. He’s simply the bastard. “You should drink some orange juice,” Solo says. “It always used to make me feel better, after mine. Something about the sugar, I think?” Not trusting himself to speak, Hux nods, opening the door and heading back inside the restaurant. For the rest of the night, he’s sure to avoid Solo, eager to avoid any further conversation about his incident. Finn and Dameron, though they eye him with concern, appear to have kept the details of why Hux was pulled off the floor to himself. Phasma won’t stop looking at him, no doubt having noticed that he’s camping in the server alley, hiding from an entire half of the restaurant, lest table 23 spend a second too long looking around and connect his face to his name. Hux chooses not to meet her eye, sipping his orange juice instead and staring into the middle distance.

[troutwithfur]

We buried a special rock of mine today.

It was a rock that was in my fish tank that once sat outside my childhood bedroom. I was always afraid of the dark, so I always had 2 lights on at night: my closet and my fish tank. My oldest memory of that fish tank was with a small spotted catfish i had named Whiskers. He was probably my first real pet. I would watch him for hours while playing in my room. He lived a few years before finally dying after being sick for a few days. I remember crying the rest of the night. I think it was the first time I ever experienced loss in my life. I never named another fish after Whiskers. I didn’t wanna get attached again.

The fish tank became a novelty for a few years after that. I don’t know when the special rock found its way in there, but it did. It was some kinda metamorphic rock, roughly square shaped, had a few sparkly parts. When we stopped getting fish and threw out the tank, we threw the rock in the little stone area in front of my house. I always saw it somewhere in there. If you looked, you could see it. It was never buried.

Until now.

Me and my dad were fixing a large indentation in the concrete slab walkway in front of our house. It was always cracked and indented from my earliest memories, but we were gunna fix it. Me and my dad jacked up the slab, but needed something to hold it while we shoveled sand under it. My dad picked up the special rock and used it. We buried it under that slab, where it will remain until my parents dig the slabs up for the wood porch they wanna build next year, or longer.

I think it’s kinda funny. A decorative fish tank rock holding up a concrete slab, buried under a few inches of sand. Yet, something is so sad about it. I feel like I’m about to cry thinking about it. I don’t hate my sadness, though. Something about it is a life lesson. I needed to lose this one random rock to learn…something. I don’t know yet. Maybe it’s giving up childhood and moving on, I could not tell you.

I have a few special rocks. They’re everywhere, but they remind me of things. They’re important. I’m typing this post out because I know I’ll forget that rock in a day or so, along with all the memories. It’s some kinda key that unlocks a certain memory locker. I’d rather not forget my childhood. I was naive and happy all the time. Learning was fun and my mistakes meant nothing. It’s foolish to want to go back, and I don’t want to. I never wish to be a dumb little kid again, but I do want the memories.

They contain a happiness I know I will not feel again. Don’t get me wrong, I still feel happy. A lot in fact! I just know I’ll have feel the happiness of a kid learning about the very basics of the world.

I should stop typing. I’m on the verge of tears over a rock.

A very special rock.

[promiseiwillwrite]

The First of April

Today I went to Neptune Park to talk to the wrong god.

When I got there, I sat down on the concrete steps beside a giant statue of the Sea God, with his trident, resting one hand on the back of a giant turtle, and I took off my shoes.

I placed them, Sand Free, in my pack, and the moment I stepped off the steps, I scraped all the skin off my little toe on my left foot, and began to Bleed immediately.

I was like, "Well, Blood offering it is then."

The wind Howled, throwing sheets of loose sand that stung the backs of my legs.

The water was like Ice.

But you got used to it.

I spoke with Jormungandr.

Because This is where I first met them. I was a few hundred miles north, (I'd been in South Carolina that day) But The right Coast of the right ocean, for sure.

I had the strange experience of being One with the Sea. The salty wet of Me, usually carefully contained by the thin protective barrier of my skin, compromised, and the moments before my platelets built started to build a scab to cover the injury, the wet of me... The amoebic sea of me, was a part of the third largest thing in the biosphere.

Jormungandr is very responsive to a gift of blood. Of a Gift of Time and Gasoline. A gift of memory and sentiment.

Almost as soon as I stepped into the water, a pretty shell, with a white, purple and orange lip washed between my feet.

He offered me peace. Which I offered right back, because I hadn't come for peace. I'd come to do work on a relationship that didn't involve "peacefully walking away". He and I had a falling out in early 2021, regarding some spell work we had done. I realize now that while it had not seemed like he had kept his word regarding the work, and it seemed like he had vastly misrepresented what he wanted from our relationship, he had in fact done most of what I had asked, and given the circumstances, he came clean very quickly regarding his intentions.

It was wrong of me to see him the way I had, and the deception was partly mine. When you work with a world destroying demon of destruction, and treat them as though this might not be all there is to them, you are in bounds. When you work with a world destroying demon of destruction and you treat them as though this is not what they are, you have Fucked Up. No matter how 'nice' they are capable of being.

That being the case, it was not fair of me to turn my back when he started being more of what he really is, in the moment he had done as I had asked.

But he WAS possessive in a way that rather alarmed me. And I needed to be more confident about the boundaries of the arrangement if I was to work with him.

We spoke at great length about Control, and Safety, and Regret. He asked me what Boundaries I wanted for our relationship going forward. He asked me what amount of control and safety I was willing to give up to keep myself from regret.

Loki popped in to remind me to be careful of what I agree to.

The words turned my mind.

It turns out that there is no exit ramp off the human experience.

There are no "right ways" of thinking about control or safety, no boundaries that can be set that can keep you from regretting decisions in life.

Because Regret is a part of life.

Sure. There is a way to be smart, and create a good life with your decisions. And you should totally do that if you can. But you still don't get out of regret.

The critical key bit here, though, is that "getting out of regret" isn't the Point.

If you live all of life being very careful, controlling your whims and your desires, always doing the things that you need to do, with wise hierarchies for your priorities and making the best decisions you can in every moment, You will create a life.

But it will be missing something.

Some of the vital parts of life are had in risk and serendipity.

Some are had off the beaten path, with caution thrown to the winds.

You will miss things because any misstep will be a mistake, but not necessarily one you can learn something useful from. Just more of what not to do ever again.

If All you learn is what Not to do ever again, eventually you paint yourself into a corner.

And in that corner, you are bound to meet the very regret you've been avoiding. Sure, that corner may be Very, Very safe... But you've got to stay there with your regret. There is a reason we put Naughty children in the corner.

And that goes for Control and Safety too.

These things should not be the goal of an adult life. It is not wrong to want those things, and indeed, some measure of both should literally just be human rights. It is Okay to want and create these things for yourself... But...

These are the goals of an abused child.

And I am not that anymore.

I told Jormungandr that there was No Right Answer to his question, and that it would have to be nuanced, and situational. It would have to be something we would need to grow together into if that was both our intents. Working with him, I think, will always be this kind of give and take Dance with Danger.

And maybe that is as it should be. Maybe that's just Real.

I am not sure if there will be doors for April.

I think I went to Jormungandr, and this month will be his, at least in part.

I stayed after the god when silent.

I walked up and down the strand behind Neptune's sculpted back, and I found some neat rocks, and a cormorant feather.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

like blood from a stone | chapter twenty

(ao3 title: under the boardwalk)

I watched Alex and Chuck make their way towards me. The two of them looked so adorable together, almost a little too adorable in my opinion. Perhaps it was the way in which they resembled one another with their blue eyes and the smoothness and paleness of their oval-shaped faces, or perhaps it came from their fine, lush dark hair down over their shoulders.

A couple of very gorgeous boys in comparison to my homely ass.

There was a part of me that wanted the two of them to be together, to see Alex with this Chuck rather than the Chuck I felt a tie with. Besides, I felt a better tie with the Chuck he was arranged with than Alex did with him.

It got a little bit confusing, but that was the whole point of the whole entire thing in my eyes.

I felt a connection with Chuck while Alex felt a connection with Chuck as well. That was how the cookie crumbled.

But I had no idea as to how I could break that over to Alex, though. As far as I knew, he had no idea that I had snuck out of the wedding rehearsal all because of him, and all because Lars had left the rehearsal as well. The whole occasion had been put into limbo all because of me and him, but I had no idea if he could know the truth yet. He hadn’t broken the truth to me yet, and thus it made sense to keep it under lock and key on my part for a little while longer: at least until one of us felt the need to break the ice.

I would have to put on a brave face for it at some point and let it loose for him if he never did it for me. Now, however, I would have to keep my mouth shut as these two boys strode up next to me, smelling of French fries and with their tummies full of that delicious food courtesy of the vendor down the boards themselves.

A part of me expected to find either the other Chuck, the one whom I shared the soul bond with and Alex’s fiancé, or Lars or Cliff back down that way. Indeed, I craned my neck a little bit for a look around Alex’s head, that minute shock of silver at the right side there like the biggest vein of silver in the deepest silver mine. He followed my gaze to the rest of the boardwalk behind him with a frown on his face.

“What’s the matter?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “Nothing,” I assured him. He squinted his eyes at me: those deep eyes that made me think of swimming. We were a mere walk down to the sand anyway.

Those eyes locked onto me for a moment, and then Chuck passed me on the right side. I followed him, complete with Alex at my side. I held onto my skirt, and I kept the bottom hem over my ankles as we sauntered along the concrete pathway to the sand down below. Long, low brick walls separated us from the rest of the white and beige sands, but I caught a whiff of the brackish smell from the tide pools down underneath the Boardwalk itself. I glanced over at Alex, right as he tucked a lock of his jet-black hair behind his ear, and he flashed me a raise of an eyebrow. His lips were warm and lush, all from the flavor of the pastrami and the fries against his smooth skin.

Though the two of them shared a similar look, there was something far more haunting about Alex, haunting and alluring, and a lot of it had to do with those deep-set, almond-shaped eyes as well as the gray streak on his head. He almost struck me as an alien of sorts, a boy who originally hailed from outer space, only to have crawled out of the sea after he had crash-landed his spaceship somewhere by the Hawaiian Islands. He tucked his hands into his jean pockets, albeit momentarily: at one point, he stifled a burp in his throat, and he pressed a hand to his stomach.

“Too much for you, Alex?” Chuck asked him with a smirk on his handsome face.

“Nah,” he assured him. “Just utterly delicious is all.”

A part of me wished I had had something to eat myself before we made our way down to the sand below: my knees quivered with the feeling of burgeoning hunger. It didn’t help matters that I had barely eaten anything all day that day. Each step down the walkway and I could feel my heart pounding inside of my chest like that of a jackhammer.

I hadn’t eaten much all day long, and it began to rear its ugly head at me in the form of my weak heart. I fetched up a little sigh, but I made it so neither of them paid any attention to me. I adjusted my grip on my skirt as we reached the bottom, and at that point, I smelled the salt from the ocean waters. At least the proximity to the waters and the accompanying ocean breeze kept me cool, lest I would be in a heap of trouble from the sensation inside of my chest. At least I could readily take off this dress and hoist it over my shoulder like the way a chef would with a towel if I felt too warm: although I didn’t think that would prove to be much of a problem, however.

Nevertheless, it would be some time before the high tide made its way in for the night, but the smell of the salt never seemed even more prominent to me than when the three of us reached the stretch of sand: I turned my head for a glimpse at the bar off to the left, only to find that most of it had disappeared underneath the stretch that was the Boardwalk. Chuck hung off to the side to take off his shoes, and Alex stooped down all the way, all so I could full view of his ass.

Given he had just eaten right before then, his waist pressed the waist of his jeans, which in turn tightened his jeans a bit. Tight jeans meant a nice fitting of his ass: he had such a nice, round ass, complete with those shapely hips and those sinewy thighs. Indeed, I lingered off to the right side of the path’s entrance, so I could have a better look at the seat of his pants. A part of me wanted to walk on up to him and give him a little pat on the right side, just to feel the round shape back there. A nice little pat of his ass followed up by a playful little punch in the belly for being such a naughty boy for ditching Lars and Kirk’s wedding.

I shook my head at the thought of Alex in that way, especially since I had my heart dead-set on his fiancé. Besides, he wasn’t the only one who had bailed on the wedding: I would have to have a punch right in the gut myself. Lars would need one himself as well.

Alex then stood upright, and he nudged his shoes off to the side of the sand all so he could remember them. Chuck did as well, and I had to hustle to get mine off.

Chuck whispered something in Alex’s ear right then, and he clasped a hand to his mouth to stifle a giggle. The two of them giggled and snickered like a couple of schoolgirls gossiping about the boy they liked.

“You fellas talking about me?” I jeered at them.

“We’re just comparing notes at how you look in a dress and all things girlish compared to someone like, say, Lars,” Alex retorted. “You do look pretty good in that dress, Joey. It fits your body rather nicely.”

“Some boys can rock it,” I pointed out to him; I sat there on the sand with my legs outstretched before me. I wiggled my exposed toes as a light breeze from the ocean crossed over me. “Some can’t. I don’t really know how Lars would look in one, to be perfectly frank, though.”

“I think Lars would rock it, to be honest,” Chuck said with a playful little smirk and a twinkle in his eyes. “Now...” He turned his attention to Alex. “You in a dress.”

“Me?” he demanded, taken aback, and I couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“Yes, you,” Chuck continued, and the smirk on his face only grew at the suggestion.

“What kind of dress are we talking about?” I asked him.

“Mmm... one of those cocktail dresses,” Chuck replied. “You know, like a little black dress with a low neckline and stretchy fabric. I see it fitting his body so nicely and accentuating every curve.”

“Pff, every curve,” Alex scoffed at him. “You say that as if I have curves to my body.”

“You do have curves, Alex,” I added. I lifted my skirt a bit, so I could climb up to my feet. I nearly lost my balance as I stood upright before the two of them. “You have a nice ass.”

“Doesn’t he?” Chuck replied with a little nudge of his lush, mousy brown hair behind his ear. “A nice ass with thick, shapely thighs.”

“Maybe if I gained a little bit of weight, I could probably have some curves,” Alex taunted us with a hearty pat of his chest, which he then followed with a caress of his stomach. “I’m too skinny, otherwise.”

“Oh, c’mon, you’ve got curves,” I assured him as I lifted my skirt more over my ankles: I bunched it up around my crotch like a makeshift pillow.

“Just the right amount of flesh, if you ask me,” Chuck declared; he put his arm around the small of Alex’s back and he set a hand on his hip. Those fingers drifted down along the slightly full shape of his hip, and then back up to his side. That slender, slim little body with an ever-so-slight roundness to his hips and his thighs.

Indeed, Alex bowed his head, and he tucked his hands into his jean pockets. He pushed his jeans down his hips a bit more, all to reveal a little sliver of his skin to us. The golden and orange light from the sunset washed over him, over his skin and those dark, decadent curls sprawled over his shoulders and onto his back. Beautiful boy with such a beautiful body.

He almost seemed alien, and yet he was so humanly sensual, perhaps more so once he tucked another lock of hair behind his right ear. It was right then I caught a glimpse of his hipbones from the inside of his jeans. Slender, shapely, and beautiful enough to warrant a kiss out of one of the two of us.

I started to change my mind right then: his body was shapely, but I wanted to bear witness to more flesh. I flashed them both a smirk and I padded in the other direction.

“Hey, wait for us!” Chuck called after me. I slowed up a bit and the two of them walked on either side of me. Though the sun was setting, and the cool breeze surrounded us like a blanket, the sand still felt rather warm from the kiss of the sun over the course of the day. A part of me wanted to take off my dress, but then again, I would have to sling it over my shoulder. Given the depth and unevenness of the sand, there was no way I could toss my dress over my shoulder like a dish towel.

But the sun washed over us, and the smell of the salt brushed against my nose, and the sound of the low tides swept over us in a thick wall of white noise. For a few long moments, I forgot that we were on the back of a wedding between Kirk and Lars up on the land above us.

“What an evening,” Chuck declared over the roar of the tides beside us.

“Welcome to California, gentlemen,” Alex added with a beaming grin on his round little face. Though my hands still shook from the lack of nourishment inside of me, I was glad to be walking on the beach with the two of them. The sand caressed over my toes and the soles of my feet: it felt so good against my skin, especially since I almost never had the chance to do such a thing back home in upstate New York. The closest I came to it were the shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie as well: though the summers back home were hot and humid, it wasn’t like I could always find the opportunity to take walks along those dark muddy shorelines. Add to this, the sand lacked the same abrasiveness as well.

At one point, I took too deep of a step on a little pocket of sand, and I nearly lost my balance. When I caught myself, I dropped my skirt and I nearly fell ass over teakettle. I clambered for my skirt again and I stood still for a few seconds, and then I caught up with the two of them again.

“Take off your dress, Joey,” Chuck coaxed me; for a split second, I believed that he had added “for us” in there somewhere.

“Yeah, you look kind of uncomfortable,” Alex added. “I also worry about you tripping and falling for real, too. The sand isn’t really the best place to be walking around with a long gown like that.”

I sighed through my nose. It was something I had considered but never believed that I would go through with it, even by their own goading.

I lifted the hem of the skirt from the ground, and I took off the dress right there.

I shook my hair about, and I looked on at the two of them and the dumbfounded looks upon their handsome faces. Rather than flip the dress over my shoulder, I put it over my forearm as if I had come right out of the hotel shower. Alex cracked me a smile and he tucked his hands into his pockets yet again, and once again to show off some skin to me. Chuck, meanwhile, ran his fingers through his mousy hair: when he smiled, deep little dimples appeared in his cheeks and accentuated the point of his chin.

I walked forth, right between the two of them, along the sand to the penultimate entrance up to the Boardwalk, when the sand itself receded back with a small river which partially attached itself to a tidepool.

“Good thing I did,” I confessed to them over the roar of the waves.

On my left, Alex squatted down to examine the water of the inlet. He frowned at something, and then he reached down and picked it up out of the clear waters.

“What’d you find, Alex?” Chuck called out to him from behind us.

“When’s the last time you found a full-fledged sand dollar down here?” Alex asked him with a beaming smile on his face. “For me, not since I was a little kid.”

“I don’t think I ever have, to be honest,” Chuck replied. “And I’ve been out here a couple of times before, too.” Alex held up the little white circle with the five-pointed star on one side in the sunlight for the two of us to better see for ourselves.

“Beautiful,” I remarked. “Save it and get that thing sealed.”

“Oh, you know I will,” Alex assured me as he tucked it into that little coin pocket of his jeans. “When we walked on over here to the water, it caught my eye. I thought it was just a reflection from the sunlight, but I looked closer, and I was like, ‘no, that’s a sand dollar!’” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “Be on the lookout for beach glass, too.”

“Beach glass?” I echoed him.

“Yeah, these colored little spots in the sand,” he elaborated. “It’s exactly what you think it is, too. It's pieces of things like bottles tumbled by the sea. Sometimes it washes ashore, and it’s all smoothed and polished. People all up the coast, down around Santa Barbara and Morro Bay, and up north, scout it out all the time. Hell, there’s even a place up by Fort Bragg called Glass Beach!”

“Let’s go,” Chuck declared with his arms wide open.

“When I become crown prince, I'll find a way up there,” Alex vowed, complete with a wink.

I returned to the inlet of water as well as the tidepool and the sand on the other side. A part of me wanted to wade through that inlet but as far as I knew, the tides were ready to roll in right then. And the two of them seemed adamant on heading back the other way given the sight of the inlet there.

I still held onto my dress like I would a towel as I scurried after them. Though I was barefoot, and nothing stopped me from running, I still lost my balance, all because I had barely eaten all day long and my body jittered a bit. I lost my balance and I accidentally tackled Chuck.

He fell onto the sand, face down, and he let out a low groan.

Alex clambered on top of me for a threesome of sorts, even though as far as I knew, Chuck wasn’t aroused. I turned my head for a look back at that boy and those long, inky black curls as they dangled down from the sides of his head.

“Come here,” he begged right into my face.

“Only if you come here for me,” I retorted back to him. “I need your warmth.”

“You need my warmth?” he demanded, taken aback. “I need to feel your skin. Your blood. Your bones. All of it against my own.”

Chuck groaned out again and somehow, he rolled over onto his back underneath me. Alex and I lingered over him as if we were about to do push-ups together, but my arms quivered at the mere suspension of my body over him. My heart hammered inside of my chest even more, such that I could hardly breathe or keep my eyes open.

“I can’t,” I pleaded to them with a shake of my head. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”

“Why not?” Chuck demanded. Alex then gasped.

“Oh, shit!”

“What?”

“He’s got a weak heart! Come on, Chuck, help me get him back up to the Boardwalk—”

“I just need sump’n to eat is all, Alex,” I insisted, and I coughed to slow down my heart.

“We still have to help you, though, Joey,” Chuck groaned out; he writhed underneath me. “Do you mind at least getting off of me?”

[waodezithaulainana]

PART OF SPEECH

My name is Wa Ode Zithaul Ainan, I am a student from Halu Oleo University, Department of English Education, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education. Here I will explain about Part Of Speech.

Part of speech is part of English grammar in the form of a classification of words which are divided into several categories based on their role and function in the structure of a sentence. By knowing the part of speech one can know the function of the word in a sentence. In addition, part of speech is the first step that you need to learn when learning English, its use is to understand sentence forms in English.

There are 8 kinds of Part Of Speech, namely noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection. Here is the explanation!

1. NOUN

Nouns are used to name people, things, animals, places, and ideas or concepts. Nouns themselves can be further divided into various types, such as countable, uncountable / mass, common, proper, concrete, abstract, and collective nouns.

Types of nouns and examples:

Countable (can be counted) = Book, Elephant, Train

Uncountable / Mass (uncountable) = Love, Sand, Happiness

Common = Country, City, Month

Proper (Something specific) = Switzerland, Jakarta, January

Concrete (Something tangible) = Bag, Cake, Building

Abstract (Stating ideas, concepts, circumstances, and other abstract things) = Friendship, Time, Imagination

Collective (Refers to a group of people, animals, or things) = Deer, Family, Government.

2. PRONOUN

A pronoun is a word that is used to replace a noun. There are 8 types of pronouns, namely personal, demonstrative, interrogative, indefinite, possessive, reciprocal, relative, reflexive, and intensive pronouns.

Types of pronouns and examples:

Personal = I, We, He, She

Demonstrative = This, That, These, Those

Interrogative = Who, Which, What, Whom, Whose

Indefinite = Nothing, Someone, Anywhere, Everybody

Possessive = Mine, Yours, Hers, His

Reciprocal = Each other, One another

Relative = = Who, Which, Whom, Whose

Reflexive = Myself, Yourself, Ourselves, Themselves

Intensive = Himself, Herself, Ourselves, Themselves

3. VERB

Verb is a verb that is used to indicate an action or state. Verbs can be divided into several types, such as action verbs and linking verbs.

Types of verbs and examples:

Action Verb (Transitive) - Indicates an action or possession, and is followed by a direct object. Example: Have, Give, Ride

Action Verb (Intransitive) - Indicates an action, not followed by a direct object. Example: Arrive, Rise, Wait

Linking Verb - Linking the subject and its description. Example: Be, Taste, Remain

4. ADJECTIVE

Adjectives are adjectives that are used to describe a noun or pronoun.

Example: Pretty, Sad, Faithful

5. ADVERB

As an adverb, the function of an adverb is to provide additional information on the verb, adjective, or adverb itself. Adverbs can also be grouped into several types, such as manner, degree, frequency, place, and time.

Types of adverbs and examples:

Adverb of Manner = Well, Softly, Quickly

Adverb of Degree = Just, Almost, So

Adverb of Frequency = Usually, Always, Rarely

Adverb of Place = In, Above, Below

Adverb of Time = Annually, Daily, Yesterday

6. PREPOSITION

The function of prepositions is to show the relationship between nouns and other words in a sentence.

Example: In, On, At, Through, With, By, Of

7. CONJUNCTION

Conjunction is used to connect two words, phrases, clauses to sentences. There are 3 types of conjunctions, namely coordinating, subordinating, and correlative conjunctions.

Types of conjunctions and examples:

Coordinating Conjuction - Connects 2 grammatical forms that are the same, for example word by word. Example: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So

Subordinating Conjuction - Connects the main clause and subordinate clause. Example: After, Since, Although

Correlative Conjuction - A pair of conjunctions. Example: Not only….but also, Either…or

8. INTERJECTION

This type of word is usually used to express emotions.

Example: Oops, Whoa, Oh no!

Those are the various parts of speech in English. Are you now able to distinguish one type of part of speech from another?

May be beneficial to us all!

[elstevo]

The Getaway

I wrote this piece for an art swap at a local community gallery. People seemed to enjoy it.

The motel is two floors of pastel-yellow stucco just inshore from the dunes where sea turtles nest. Our upstairs room backs onto a little balcony with a seaview. The sliding glass door sticks inconsistently; the queen bed with her decent mattress affords us a fine panorama of the water.

In late summer, the weather out here feels chaotic and routine by turns. It’s been a lot today—heavy, oppressive heat cut by strong breezes bearing stormclouds in over the ocean, the same leaden clouds that will later swaddle the horizon and cut the daylight short.

Now, though, we spend the dregs of the morning on the beach, washing sand from our skin with seawater, scrubbing salt away with sand, digging down with our toes into the cool underlayer to somehow soothe the burn across our shoulders. We wear sunglasses and don’t notice how red we’ve gotten until we remember to reapply lotion.

The lunchtime restaurant is quiet. Sitting in our wet swimming clothes, we wonder if the locals know something we don’t. Our meal is finger foods–tiger prawns, onion rings, nachos–seasoned with the sea and sweat and sunscreen on our fingers, grainy from sand underneath our nails. Too hot to talk, skin too dry-taut to smile or squint, sun-sapped and tired, we eat in silence.

Afternoon sees the clouds finally arrive. The world seems sharply defined under heavy skies as we walk barefoot along painfully concrete footpaths swept with sand. People on the beach look up, then at each other, then slowly pack away their seaside encampments.

The motel showerhead stings like a sandblaster. The pressure scourges as the temperature balms. The conditioned air of the room kisses sweetly our ill-toweled skin. The beach heat lingers like a fever.

We lie on the bed and keep watch for the lightning, the distant thunder, the pat pat pat of big-bore raindrops on the sliding glass. Will we doze before they come to wake us?

Your foot brushes against mine, smooth and soft and cool.

[the-firebird69]

November 25, 2023

My brother would call this dog a golden retriever

Your brothers okay you pay it's hilarious what kind of dog would do that and they would say oh well trained one

It was an idiots we don't have time for the stupid crap when it's funny but it is funny in this less stress it should be less once this Idiat episode is over for Christ's sake this is terrible. And we mean letting the max go in this wild rampage all over the place I don't know what the hell we're thinking that's disgusting right now the foreigners are moving into place and they are getting information more and they're looking and they see them in the asteroids and they're mining out the iron and the stuff is gone down to the mega caverns just like our son and daughter said and they are looking for the thorium but that would be on the outside and they're checking that and we see them checking and they're looking for places where they go in all over and there's only about 50 of these that they're in and they're checking all of them and tons of foreigners and warlock and Max people are going after a few of them too and they're smaller in the backs are there and it's only about 10 of those so they have to work too this is working and they're working together a little and they're scared and they should be we're moving out and we are going down there foreigners are too and it's a war.

Thor Freya

So you see the boy we almost got clocked there that would even horrible and just seeing it it's the only stuff you can use and saying it and we appreciate it and those two guys are just sitting there I guess they they get married and snowed under and he's back so are you running around and thank God this is terrible I did the job and it was tough and I got really hurt and then the ones doing it and they treat everybody like a slave and your clan carried the metal up there for them they say. You sent the messages we sent them damn it and I got them back and we're talking about it and thorium too because the fleet of the empire is up there and has latitude there's just too many ships we don't have any to supplement them and he says small ships and you make swarms and trillions of them and we're going to do that now and you have to stop the empire for making stuff and then make sure they're not and that's how you can check and we're moving right now so you see what you're saying but the Bradley GT1 that's a good idea and someone may make it

Trump this has been very frustrating but I see your idea and you use castings and we have some and we're going to go ahead and do it and really stealing stuff is not going to work we need to make too many

We started making them already and he did too and we have to we have about 500 million and we need a lot more than that and a lot more production and we need ideas we have molds and it takes a while and it won't change you have to you have to let it cure a little bit and cool slowly and it has to be temperature controlled and the mold sits in a cradle and you might be right though they could be a way to put the mold in sand and we do two halves the still fills it up and you have to take it apart but you can do it in the ground and just cover the thing with that cheap building material but it's good dirt in it this is hard to build a factory for a heavy steel really we need to think about this if you do it in a dirt and it's really kind of saying it wouldn't be that much sand and it would melt but it's going to make it impure there's a concrete has to be real thick so we can take the mold and put part of it into the concrete floor and you cast it and you pull the top off and you pull it out and the reason is that it's temperature controls is going to be cooling with the sand and it might be a lot easier and the sand is going to be a certain temperature all the time and it cools off I have to look at that that's a weird idea

Tommy Allen concrete but it has to be something and I just figured out something I can put whatever material I want and it's easier in the floor and safer and we can put down so many molds and just make this huge floor and just keep building the top this massive massive metal building and you're drain it through the floor or two pipes up in the ceiling from rain it doesn't rain much and just keep building the damn thing that's our way of doing stuff is laughing is that I know you'd be floored I'm going to move on right now

Olympus so kind of stuff we need and we need it very bad they're just kind of looking at them now we have covered in you guys said you need these ships and that's teamwork they said it before but they didn't like reiterate it but now they did so here we go

[miajolensdevotion]

Build Your Life On The Right Foundation

WELCOME

New Year's Reflection. 

*What are my faith goals this year? 

answer: For me my faith goals this year is to be more closer & have intimate time with God

WORD 

Matthew 7:24-29 New International Version (NIV)

The Wise and Foolish Builders

24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

Have you ever had a moment of crisis & you either folded in fright or rose to the occasion? What is inside of us will show in moments of natural disaster, death of a loved one, robbery of your personal belongings, fire burning down your house or the love of your life falling for somebody else. This is why we need to make sure that we have inside of us a sure & strong foundation & just how do we do that? Everyone of us is building our life on something. It could be fame, money, career, business or ministry. But are these things the right foundation? If the foundation is wrong, then everything that comes after would not be right. Building a foundation that is correct & strong should firstly be centered on Jesus.

Come To Jesus

Jesus is the right foundation, He invites us all to come to Him & build our lives in Him.

Matthew 16:18 New International Version (NIV) says 

18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

In the original Greek text of the Bible, the word translated as "rock" in this verse, is 'petra' which means a mass of rock. "Peter" on the other hand is 'petros' in Greek which means pebble or a small, detached stone. Jesus is saying here that He will build His church on 'petra' & not on 'petros'. Jesus Himself is the rock.What then is stopping us from building on Him, the stable, concrete, mass of rock? Only Jesus can cause a positive change in us, 

2 Corinthians 5:17 New International Version (NIV) says, 

17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:The old has gone, the new is here!

Only Jesus can give us what we need, 

John 10:10 New International Version (NIV) says

10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Only Jesus can give us rest & relief 

Matthew 11:28 New International Version (NIV) says

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Only Jesus can give us lasting happiness 

John 15:11 New International Version (NIV) says

11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

If we want to see real change in us, we need to build our life on the right foundation. This is done by hearing Jesus. We need to open our ears & hearts.

Hear Jesus 

We have spiritual disciplines that we use to dig deep in Jesus. We need to anchor ourselves in Him. These disciplines are Praying, being in His word, worship, PHYSICAL FELLOWSHIP 

Hebrews 10:25 New International Version (NIV) says 

25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

& fasting. Jesus is the anchor of our soul. He is a solid anchor. Anchors & links hold ships steady in times of storm. We must also practice building strong links through reading the God's word & spending intimate time with the Lord.

But hearing alone is not good enough. We need to do something about it.. 

Act On them 

James 1:22 New International Version (NIV) says 

22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.

There might be times that you are just going through the motions, superficially doing things. But you know that you are not really digging deep in obeying God. If we want to build our life, we need to act. If we do not obey & would continue to play games with God then we will reap the consequences of our actions. C.S. Lewis said, "There are two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done' & to those to whom God says, 'Thy will be done.' 

Which one are ? you Will you allow God to work or will He leave you & allow you to suffer the severe consequences of your choices? Pain happens, it is a part of the process of perfection & when pain comes, trust God. By trusting God, you solidify the foundation you have in Him. Build your life on the right foundation by coming to Jesus, hearing His words & acting on them.

Discussion Question:

Self-Check 1.) What is the foundation you have? Is it built in the right foundation?

ans: for me the foundation that I have is from Jesus Christ alone; it is built in the right foundation

Setting It Right 2.) What do you need to do to be on the right foundation? What do you need to change so that your foundation is right? 

ans: for me I need to read my bible using the reading plan in my other church (BFGFC & CCF); I need to attend PHYSICAL DGROUP just as the GOD'S WORD TOLD ME in HEBREWS 10:25. I need to change my attitude & character especially the way I think about other people. 

Living-Out 3.) What will you do this week to build on your right foundation? Give specific action points.

ans: for me I will do this week to build my right foundation is to read my bible following the reading plan from BFGC CHURCH & CCF CHURCH,

[raikkame]

You, my friend, are a lot like white noise. At least, not before. You were a voice once, that I could recognize from a mere whisper or from a distance. You had a laugh that I knew all too well. Your laughter could bring out mine. Your sound became a part of me, but I have always been prone to forgetting some parts of myself. Your sound faded just as much as we did.

You, my friend, are a lot like white noise. At least, not before. Now, you sound like a stranger. You feel like a stranger. The complications of my mind applied my "out of sight, out of mind" principle to you. Forgive me, I now sometimes forget that we had a friendship we built out of sand. Now, it is slipping right through our hands, and there is no sea to rescue it. What we had was built on concrete, yet we never had the guts to strengthen the foundation of it.

You, my friend, are a lot like white noise. At least, not before. Now, your existence surprises me. I have tried to detach myself, but it turned out too much, when I realized that I am now surprised to hear your name. How do you sound like again? Do I remember your laughter? Will I? Did I say something wrong the last time we talked? How are you? Are you doing well?

Your sound now is a lot like white noise. I rarely hear it. I am used to chaos and I never have the privilege of silence, so not hearing from you is foreboding.

You, my friend— I'm sorry. What was your name again?

[xtruss]

The walls of the 19th-century Grand Mosque of BoboDioulasso are more than six feet thick, protecting worshippers from the heat. Such thick mud brick slowly absorbs the heat of the day and then releases it as the night cools.

The Extraordinary Benefits of a House Made of Mud

Mud, a traditional construction material in Africa, more easily keeps buildings cool compared with concrete. Architects are finding ways to keep mud’s beauty and function alive in a warming world.

— By Peter Schwartzstein | Photographs By Moises Saman | January 19, 2023

On a Mid-May Morning in the Village of Koumi, Burkina Faso, Sanon Mousa has nearly finished annual maintenance on his three-room house.

He replaced termite-ridden roof supports with freshly cut beams and reinforced the heat-defying mud walls, some of which are a yard thick and more than a hundred years old. After replenishing the roof thatch and sacrificing a goat to the memory of his ancestors, all that remains is applying layers of rainproofing to the exterior.

“The mud will keep us cool. The motor oil, clay, and cow dung will keep us dry,” Mousa says as we tour his living space, which is a good 25 degrees cooler than outside. “We’ve perfected this.”

Mousa, a 50-something retired school librarian with a somber demeanor, is proud of his house. That doesn’t mean living in it is his first choice, though. In recent years he’s watched his wealthier neighbors in this verdant strip of the country’s southwest rebuild their homes in concrete. He has smarted at what he sees as a symbol of his relative poverty. Despite his considerable debt and consecutive failed harvests of the crops he relies on to pad his pension, status and safety are tempting him to borrow money and abandon his mud home. When we met, two brothers in the village had recently been killed in their sleep when a mud wall collapsed on them.

Top: The mud-brick walls of the Grand Mosque of Bobo-Dioulasso are waterproofed every year with shea butter. But mud often can’t hold up to the intense rains climate change brings. Bottom: At a quarry in Pissy, on the western edge of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, men, women, and children mine granite to be made into concrete and gravel. Because of high demand for concrete, this quarry is still open despite competition from nearby mechanized ones.

Top Left: Workers at the quarry endure extreme heat and noxious fumes from burning tires as they carry heavy loads on their heads up the steep slopes. Some say they work there because they want to be able to afford concrete houses. Top Right: Rock from the Pissy quarry is used to form the foundations of new houses, exemplifying a move away from traditional mud structures. Bottom: On the outskirts of Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second largest city, workers have manually carved a half-mile-long sand quarry out of the soft, red earth. Many dozens of truckloads of sand a day feed the country’s booming cement plants.

Architects like Kéré are motivated in part by a desire to preserve heritage and identity. For all mud’s recent association with poverty and backwardness, bricks made from the material can produce spectacular, globally significant architecture, such as Timbuktu’s city center in Mali and Burkina Faso’s Grand Mosque of Bobo-Dioulasso.

Countries with impressive but largely lost traditions of mud construction, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, also are trying to replicate the aesthetics and cooling features of traditional architecture, incorporating wind tunnels, building orientation, and use of shade. They appear less interested in the construction materials that were once used. “Our forefathers built things with whatever they had, and maybe if they had had a certain type of modern composite panel 500 years ago, they’d have used it,” says Chris Wan, head of design management in Masdar, a pioneering sustainability-oriented city in Abu Dhabi. “It’s about adapting traditional materials, traditional designs. We also build whatever’s best within our means.”

But mud-brick revivalists have a grander ambition as well, particularly in Africa. On a continent that accounts for just 4 percent of global emissions yet is suffering much of the worst climate-related fallout, they’re trying to assume ownership of some of the solutions, even as world powers struggle to take meaningful action. In beating the heat, these architects suggest, homegrown, nature-based traditions could be every bit as important as foreign technology and expertise.

“We have chosen artifice. We have chosen to detach ourselves from our origins,” says Salima Naji, an award-winning architect. Naji champions mud construction in Morocco, which has aggressively turned its back on the material in recent decades, even though the country boasts one of the richest collections of earth architecture in the world. “We have done this because we have forgotten the extraordinary benefits of these buildings in the heat. But we must remember, because we need it now more than ever,” Naji says.

Top: Workers cool off during their break at a residential building site on the outskirts of Marrakech. The Moroccan city has embraced concrete in its construction boom. Bottom: The Yemeni city of Shibam was designed with the scorching desert heat in mind. Nicknamed Manhattan of the Desert, its towering earthen buildings of various heights provide shadow. The white walls reflect direct sunlight and prevent heat from accumulating.

A Refuge For The Sweaty

Crisscrossing Burkina Faso by car provides an illustration of mud’s many perks. It’s at least 113 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade by the time I arrive in the northern town of Kaya but well under 86 degrees inside architect Clara Sawadogo’s latest design. The vaulted earth ceiling and stone-mud walls of the half-finished clinic cocoon the cool. Angled toward the prevailing north winds and surrounded by lush, shady greenery, the site is already enticing enough for dozing stray dogs.

Sawadogo is young, environmentally savvy, and part of a global movement to repopularize mud. She’s got plenty of talking points. The material is essentially free, or at least locally available for a fraction of the cost of concrete, which requires several ingredients that, in Burkina Faso’s case, are mostly imported. At the adobe pits that dot the outskirts of many of the larger villages, teams of laborers lever mud from the ground; compress it into rectangular, cookie cutter-like fittings; then sell each air-dried brick for 40 West African francs, about 10 U.S. cents.

“People tell me: It’s the 21st century. Stop using mud,” Sawadogo says, gesturing at the clinic. “But look at this. What’s not modern about this?”

Mud construction contributes little to global warming. And concrete tends to be a gateway, once people can afford it, to another fossil-fuel-guzzling invention: air-conditioning. Worldwide, both the electricity and the coolants required by air-conditioning are growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Left: Shibam, which has about 7,000 inhabitants, is known for its mud-brick high-rises. Right: The walls of Shibam date from the 16th century; the city is considered a shining example of urban planning using tall buildings.

The greatest selling point of mud in Burkina Faso, where temperatures seldom dip much below 90 degrees, is that it makes the heat tolerable, even without air-conditioning. Most of Africa is on track for more than two degrees Celsius (3.6°F) of warming by late this century, a figure that masks even more dramatic temperature increases in parts of the continent.

In Boromo, roughly a three-hour drive southwest of the capital, Ouagadougou, Ilboudou Abdallah has recently rebuilt his part-concrete, sheet-metal-roofed house entirely in mud. “I can’t tell you what a joy it is being able to spend time inside the house now without suffering,” he says. The Nubian Vault Association, an international NGO, helped construct the home, one of more than 600 private houses it built in Burkina Faso in 2020.

The organization’s vaulted model requires neither metal roofs, which magnify heat in both concrete and mud houses, nor wood. That’s vital in a country losing up to 600,000 acres of woodland a year to deforestation, according to forestry officials, some of it for roof supports.

In the Royal Court of Tiébélé, a commune along the Ghanaian border where most residents have long since turned to concrete, some appear to regret ever having abandoned their mud homes.

“They see the comfort that they said no to before,” says Bayeridiena Abdou, a farmer who lives inside the local chief’s mud-only compound and has witnessed clandestine nocturnal returns to the exiles’ crumbling old houses. “They’re sneaking back.”

Doctors in four medical facilities I visited report a roughly fivefold increase in heat-related admissions and deaths over the past decade. Some of them suspect that a disproportionate number of these patients rebuilt in concrete but lacked the means to artificially cool their new houses.

Top: At the Morija clinic in Kaya, to the north of Ouagadougou, workers craft a curved “Nubian vault” structure, designed to keep interiors cool. The earthen building will be Burkina Faso’s largest of its kind. Bottom: Workers at a quarry in Houndé, Burkina Faso, hammer laterite stone bricks from the solid ground. Mud bricks must be shaped before drying, but laterite can be extracted in rectangles. Both traditional building materials create cooler structures than concrete, are cheaper, and require less energy to produce.

“We’ve Learned That It’s Not Just About The Materials. It’s Not About Concrete Being Bad. It’s What You Do With Them.” — Francis Kéré, Architect

On a sizzling hot day in midsummer, the town of Léo is still—except for the local clinic. Rambunctious children chase one another among its shaded courtyards. Their parents rest beneath the surrounding trees. Even newly arrived patients, among them a man who’s just been pried from a car wreck, marvel at the naturally cool wards. Francis Kéré, designer of these buildings, is pleased but unsurprised at the effect.

“We’ve learned that it’s not just about the materials. It’s not about concrete necessarily being bad,” he says. “It’s what you do with them. This is what it can look like when you spend the time to make a proper clay structure.”

Big names near and far seem convinced by his reasoning. In recent years Kéré has designed a new national assembly building in Benin that’s nearly complete. A “symbol for the nation,” he says, modeled on a palaver tree. Another one he created for Burkina Faso has yet to get off the ground. In March 2022 he became the first African architect to win the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious award in architecture.

Dangerous To Live In?

Mud-brick buildings, for all their seemingly magical cooling powers, have at least one major drawback.

Until the late 1990s, the historic ksar, or fortified village, of Bounou in southern Morocco trilled with the sound of more than a hundred families. But its rammed-earth walls began to collapse, and a falling gatehouse badly injured a teenage boy, shaking residents’ faith in the ksar’s structural integrity. Tales of even worse disasters elsewhere—some fatal—reinforced that fear. Gradually, Legnaoui Bil Eid and his family found themselves almost alone. Now, without the critical mass of residents needed to maintain the historical crenellated defenses, the ksar is crumbling at record pace, becoming an even riskier habitat.

Left: At the Burkina Institute of Technology in Koudougou, designed by celebrated Burkinabe architect Francis Kéré and completed in 2020, poured clay forms the massive walls. A facade of eucalyptus wood creates shade. Above each classroom, a vent allows hot air to escape. Right: Maxim Kiemdrebeojo, 17, lives at this Kéré-designed orphanage in Koudougou built from laterite brick. Some children here have been displaced by armed conflict with Islamists in the north and east of Burkina Faso. Supervisors think that the coolness of the building helps reduce conflict among residents.

“People are scared, and you can understand why,” says Bil Eid, an agricultural laborer who earns extra income roping together palm-frond fences to keep encroaching desert sands at bay. “Sometimes the walls just fall down. You could die.”

In one of climate change’s many bitter ironies, the same warming that has bolstered mud’s importance against heat is also triggering more extreme weather events, which imperil mud structures. Despite frequently resurfacing his home’s exterior walls, Bil Eid says, the downpours these days are far too strong to keep the interior dry, no matter how much protective layering he adds. He too is thinking of relocating.

“People Are Ccared, And You Can Understand Why. Sometimes The Walls Just Fall Down. You Could Die.” — Lengaoui Bil Eid, Farm Laborer

In Telouet, in the Atlas Mountains between Bounou, in the Sahara, and Marrakech, those fiercer rains have combined with the impact of centuries of deforestation to fuel devastating flash floods through the denuded valleys. Most years, at least a few locals die. Those who remain have noted that it’s concrete houses, not those made of the traditional mixed mud and stone, that appear to weather the torrents.

Some of the abandonment of traditional materials may simply be a function of changing tastes. In his lush, beautifully maintained garden in Marrakech’s leafy northern periphery, Mohamed Amine Kabbaj, one of the country’s leading architects, regrets some of the aesthetic changes that have come with the exodus. But he says it’s only natural that people would favor concrete. Most traditional mud structures permit only small windows that let in minimal light, and most of them require regular maintenance of the kind that time-pressed or leisure-seeking families prefer to avoid. “These kinds of designs might be exotic if you come from London or Paris for one or two days,” he says. “But if you’re given a choice, you’ll prefer to live somewhere else.”

Top: Salima Naji, a Moroccan Architect and Anthropologist, works with traditional construction materials and methods to preserve villages and communal centers in the country. She restored the Id Issa Granary in Amtoudi (seen here), which protected wheat and other forms of wealth. Bottom: The United Arab Emirates has an impressive but largely lost tradition of mud construction. For the Louvre Abu Dhabi, architect Jean Nouvel’s design was inspired by moucharaby latticework screens, which protect interiors from direct sunlight and provide natural ventilation. This massive moucharaby creates what’s been called a rain of light over the museum.

As much of Morocco has shifted from communal to more individualistic lifestyles, and as incomes have increased enough for people to afford AC, mud houses—and their reliance on the collective to maintain and often build them—do appear increasingly out of step with modernity. Deeper environmental and economic forces, though, frequently leave little choice. In the countryside, drought and desertification are hobbling agriculture, the dominant rural profession. That loss of viable livelihoods is driving people into the cities. Some villages have lost up to half their inhabitants to urban areas in recent years. It’s all contributing to a situation where many fearful and displaced villagers have also ended up unhappily living in concrete.

“You need to understand how much I miss the cool of my old house. Few of us wanted this,” says Driss Mataoui, who migrated from a mountain village to an impoverished Marrakech neighborhood 30 years ago. “But life demanded that I move to the city, and city life is not good for mud.”

Urbanization presents a particular challenge for proponents of traditional materials and building techniques. Although mud has historically been deployed in dense urban settings, as with Yemen’s centuries-old skyscrapers, architects fear for its place in cities of the sort that are swelling across Africa. The helter-skelter, unplanned nature of those booming metropolises doesn’t always allow for the effective use of wind direction, airflow, and other natural cooling devices. For their part, insurance companies and municipalities remain unconvinced of mud’s safety, so they frequently legislate against its use. Even obtaining traditional materials in urban settings can be surprisingly tricky.

“Where are you going to get mud to build at scale close to here?” asks Kabbaj. “You have to go kilometers away.”

Staying cool is vital in the Anti Atlas mountains of southern Morocco, where it’s so hot that even the crops require shade.

Assailed by some of the same debilitating heat as their Sahelian neighbors to the south, and with air-conditioning still beyond many people’s means, the likes of Salima Naji aren’t admitting defeat yet. She has noticed more interest in mud architecture among villagers across Morocco, many of whom grasp its tourism potential.

Naji and her peers highlight the strong environmental imperative to rein in, or at least reform, concrete production in Morocco, where developers have robbed entire beaches of sand for use in construction. Elsewhere, in countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh, developers source much of their sand from riverbeds, which fuels soil subsidence and more intense erosion and flooding.

But reviving a tradition when it’s already lost its grip on the public imagination is a formidable task. People have grown accustomed to building houses as and when their finances allow, something that mud construction, fragile until completion, doesn’t permit. In some places, concrete access has expanded so dramatically and knowledge of mud has dropped so precipitously that the more modern material may be cheaper. Most important, climate and other struggles continue to eviscerate the social and natural environment in which this kind of construction was embedded. And that could be key. Can traditional architecture thrive when so much that buttressed it can’t?

“This is all connected to society. You cannot disconnect it from everything that is going on around us,” Naji acknowledges. “But still we push ahead. If you have just one, two, three of these [buildings], it’s not enough. We’re trying to create a snowball effect to normalize it again. We need people to see this.”

An Uncertain Future

Francis Kéré is in a reflective mood when I call. Each of the past few rainy seasons has been more destructive than the last, obliterating hundreds of mud-brick buildings across Burkina Faso, including a school, which collapsed on a classroom of children, and part of the celebrated Grand Mosque of Bobo-Dioulasso. The subsequent bad press has only reinforced the clamor for concrete, no matter the cost.

But Kéré’s phone is ringing off the hook with requests for work, and he’s bullish about mud’s prospects. “It’s a matter of time, it’s a matter of belief, it’s a matter of political will. It’s a fight, and we’re not looking left and right. I just push on,” he says. “There’s a lot of accumulated knowledge now. In 10 years, you’re going to be surprised by our success.”

Kéré and other mud advocates have been hard at work trying to rehabilitate the material’s image. They’re finding ways to protect mud buildings from downpours—by adding broader, metal canopy roofs that project more than three feet from the walls, for example, or mixing small portions of cement into the mud bricks to fortify them.

Just making mud bricks more available can help. In an industrial park outside the Burkinabe capital, Mahamoudou Zi’s workers cut, condense, and sell thousands of standard-size compressed-earth bricks—providing the reliable supply and ease of construction that contribute to the success of concrete. “I remember how cool my grandfather’s house was,” Zi says. “I wanted to make it simpler for others to replicate this experience.”

Through a rigorous emphasis on not cutting corners with a material that is unforgiving of shoddy construction, the mud architects hope to limit the building collapses that are damning them all by association. At her construction site in Kaya, Clara Sawadogo says she has had to be so exacting in erecting the vaulted roof that 15 of her original 25 masons quit, citing the difficulty of the work.

More than anything, though, Kéré wonders if, after being fed a steady diet of half-truths about mud’s dangers and concrete’s promise, wary citizens simply need more everyday examples of what well-built mud architecture can offer. Around Koudougou, 60 miles west of Ouagadougou, he has tried to create something of a showcase at a secondary school, Lycée Schorge, and at the Burkina Institute of Technology, a technical college. Teachers at the schools say that the hundreds of students can concentrate better—under the multilayered and overhanging roofs, between compressed-earth-brick walls, and surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows.

To one 18-year-old computer science student, who gave his name as Nataniel and who’s never lived in a home with electricity, let alone cooling, it’s almost as if these places are air-conditioned.

“We were told mud was bad,” he says. “We were told we needed to work to escape this. But I would be happy to live in something like this.”

— Journalist Peter Schwartzstein is based in Athens, Greece, and Focuses on Food, Water, and Climate. Moises Saman’s Photography Centers on the Middle East and North Africa.

[thecheetohoard]

I hadn’t really delved into the layout/main gameplay of Vermin’s new game so I’mma do that now! 

The game is called Violent Tendencies and is a RPG dating sim game similar to Harvest Moon

The world is a fantasy setting with a modern spin. Magic and sorcery are common place along with fantastical creatures like dragons, centaurs, cyclopes and fairies but the general architecture and look is very modern; paved roads, sky scrapers, cars and other present day types of vehicles, sewer systems and use of electricity etc etc.  

The player is a new comer to the main city and central location, Emerald City, and can choose from a variety of jobs to earn money to pay their rent, get a bigger home, buy furniture or items and weapons.

There’s several jobs that are either simple like working at a convenience store or cafe. Manual labor like helping construct new buildings in town or mining for resources in the nearby mines and then there’s the more risky jobs like finding and selling illegal substances like ingredients for black market potion brews or to help with curse magic. 

Along with the general working part of the game the player also can romance any of the characters in game who all work their own jobs.  There’s too many characters to list but most of them work in the sex industry, usually strippers but others have multiple jobs as well. For instance Azalea the dragon centaur not only works as a stripper but also part time at the cafe. 

The player can choose any character to woo and then get into a relationship with but they can also have multiple partners if so desired. Characters interact with each other as well so some may be more compatible/ok with other partners while some will be more likely to be confrontational. 

The game has several major cities as well so the player can choose to relocate if they want or have multiple homes in multiple locations. Each region provides a different set of datable characters and different jobs. 

There’s Emerald City the main city and center of the map, it’s a large concrete jungle with a dark seedy underbelly full of nefarious individuals who take part in dark magic and curse work. The town is run by Big Daddy, he’s well known for being the most wicked of the five bosses who run the sex industry. 

Diamond city is a smaller town, heavily influenced by Asian culture it’s more rural but still a well sized town. It’s water canals channeled through the town allow for tons of vegetation to grow there and it’s the best location for farming and hunting for herbs and potion ingredients. Run by King, who is the most gentlemanly of the bosses, the town heavily reflects its leader’s personality in how serene and peaceful it tends to be. 

Sapphire Sands is an oasis in the harsh desert. It’s a very rugged town full of crooks and criminals, the negativity being directly caused by the dying village’s leader Emperor. A massive naga who hoards the wealth and food of his land. The sands of the desert hide many ancient magical relics that can be sold for a high profit but best be wary as the majority of these tend to be heavily cursed.

Quartz Cave is a small village governed by the Hive, a royal family of bee like fairies who use the magic from the various crystals in their home to amplify their magical abilities. Her Highness rules these vast tunnels and the diligent and hard work of her people reflects her iron will and no nonsense attitude. The location is home to the Mine and is the best place for finding gemstones and other magical rocks. 

I still haven’t settled on the last and final location yet though. I know it’d like it run by Mimosa a tall cyclops feline beast woman with a gentle sweet nature but who can just as quickly plunge a dagger into your back when you least expect it. I’m thinking maybe something with Obsidian? hmm I’ll get it eventually! 

and that’s the game! 

there’s probably a lot that will be reworked or altered in the story but for now this is what I have :> 

[magnetictapedatastorage]

i wonder why bricks are so damn expensive. theres clay in the ground... maybe it’s the wrong kind.