#this is my solution to i literally cannot talk about this because

[fizzseed]

bmc bracelets i’ve made recently!!!!!

[thethingything]

I need to get ready for bed but I remembered the dentist appointment that's coming up in less than 2 weeks and ended up dissociating for over 2 hours (I'm honestly not sure how long it's been) and I do not feel good in the slightest after that

[cyrsed]

wait also holy shit i forget i can just post about whatever on here BUT @dystriplica bought me a lil synthesizer (?!!! :D) as a Very Early birthday present TTwTT my headphones need an adapter to fit in the jack so we’re getting that tomorrow but oh boy i’m so so excited I love Sounds

[mrsbarnesblog]

personal pillow

masterlist ko-fi ao3

Avenger! Bucky Barnes x Avenger! Reader

Summary: You confront avengers when they start teasing Bucky about being too soft.

Word count: 1.6k

Warnings: established relationship, avengers tease bucky, he's a grumpy old man, fluff

Author’s note: soft bucky is my everything, and I literally cannot imagine him acting another way.

Bucky Barnes wasn't the most affectionate and nice person on earth. Always grumpy and with an attitude, didn’t like physical touch, and hated being vulnerable and soft. However, when you were alone in your room, he was a completely different man. 

The only thing that he loved more than you, food, and old music was sleep. He hated it right after the Winter Soldier program was removed because of the violent and dark nightmares, but you were the solution to all of his problems. 

He loved sleeping with you. On you, to be exact. 

He accidentally discovered it once when he just threw himself onto your bed and somehow laid with his head on your stomach. 

You didn't know why your boyfriend liked it so much, but since that day he always ended up on your stomach, your boobs, or between your thighs with hands wrapped around your body, and it was almost impossible to drag him away. You always ran your fingers through his fluffy hair in soothing motions to ease the tension in his body, and it worked every single time. Bucky slept like a baby in your arms. 

Today he left early in the morning for training with Sam, but then he had a lot of paper work and something that needed to be done in the city, so you didn’t really talk to or see him. He only left a kiss on your forehead while you were still in bed and sent you a few messages throughout the day. 

It was your day off, and you didn’t feel like doing anything special or being productive. So you brought a fluffy comforter from your bed, a cup of hot chocolate, and sat in the common room to watch a movie on a big ass screen that Tony bought to show off.

When the film almost ended and you were already kind of sleepy, you heard firm footsteps from the hall. The tall and big body was standing in the doorframe, but you didn’t see your boyfriend’s face yet; it was pretty dark in the room.

“Hey, baby, how was your day?” You paused your movie and squinted to see Bucky. 

“Fucking amazing. A bunch of assholes and tons of reports that they sent me last minute.” He grumbled, coming closer to you. “Let’s go, I need my personal pillow or I won’t fall asleep.” 

You tried to hold back a laugh when you finally saw his face. Tired and frowned with pouty lips like a child. Bucky was painfully cute when he was a little bit mad and annoyed, and you didn’t want to do anything more than pinch his cheeks and kiss all of his face.

“You look so cute, gosh.” You smiled, biting your lip. “But I have only... fifteen minutes of my movie left, and I really want to finish it today. Do you want to lay on me here for now?” You opened the covers and pointed at your belly. 

Bucky stood there silently for a few seconds, still with a frown on his face.

“I don’t want these douchebags to see us here.”

“They won’t; Steve is on the mission, Natasha is already in her room, and Sam went on a date. C’mon, I’ll massage your head.” That was everything you needed to convince your boyfriend to give up. He took off his shoes and laid on top of you with his head on your stomach and hands around your waist. 

You covered your bodies with a duvet and stroked his hair, brushing it over and over again with your fingers. You felt that Bucky pulled up your shirt a little bit, and as soon as his cheek met with your warm skin, he heavily sighted, finally feeling safe and calm.

“That's okay, baby.” You cooed, massaging his scalp. “Do you want to talk about your day? What made you upset?” 

“No, just want to feel you, doll. Missed you so much.” He mumbled against your stomach and closed his eyes as your soft touches made his body almost melt into yours. 

“I missed you too. I’ll just finish my film and we’ll go to sleep, ‘kay?” Bucky just slightly nodded, already feeling too sleepy to actually say something. 

It didn’t take him too much time to fall asleep completely. Your gentle scratches and the way you rolled his hair around your finger, along with the muffled sound of the TV and soft cover on top of him, did their work, and Bucky was peacefully snoring on you in a span of a few seconds. 

You weren’t much better than him; your eyes started closing as soon as the credit scene began, and you didn’t have enough power in you to resist it, especially when a giant, hot human pillow was sleeping on top of you. 

So you just gave up. 

The first thing that you heard when you woke up was mumbled talk and laughter. Your eyes snapped open because your brain completely forgot that you, in fact, weren’t in your room or bed.

The common room was filled with almost everyone. For fuck’s sake, when was the last time you saw that many Avengers together in one room? And now all of them were sitting on the other couches and armchairs, looking at you and laughing. Well, they weren’t looking at you; they were looking at Bucky, who was still glued to your body. 

You quickly sat straight, now completely awake. The movements disturbed Bucky’s peaceful sleep, making him grumble and try to get you back under him.

“I didn’t know that Cyborgs could be so clingy.” The most annoying voice Bucky could’ve possibly heard in the morning filled his ears, and he lost every last piece of sleep in his body, sitting up on the couch. 

“What the fuck are you doing here, Willson? All of you, in fact.” Bucky looked around the room, seeing Sam, Nat, Wanda, Tony, and Clint with shit-eating smirks on their faces; Thor, who looked just happy to be involved; and Steve and Bruce, who actually felt uncomfortable to be there.

“Sorry, Buck, they just...” Steve wanted to apologize but was disturbed by Tony.

“Sam just told all of us to come here a few minutes ago because he had something hilarious. And look! The strong and scary Winter Soldier is being a softie for his girlfriend.” Tony laughed, almost dropping his cup of coffee. You didn’t even expect that, but you felt a sudden wave of anger going through your body because you were already sick of everyone pushing Bucky’s buttons. 

“Or maybe all of you should just mind your own business? You both would actually know something about Bucky if you tried anything besides making fun of him or trying to get him angry. You don’t even understand how fucking hard it is for him to communicate after everything that happened, and all of you are getting on my nerves. Just a bunch of children, I swear.” You growled, standing up and grabbing Bucky’s hand to drag him away. 

Everyone was surprised by your words, and even Bucky looked at you with a weird expression on his face but still stood up, holding your hand. 

“Sweets, it’s just a joke—” Natasha started.

“No, it’s not. I love you, Nat, I really do, but it’s not funny.” You looked around the room. “Y’all probably don’t understand the effect that your words  have, but I see in private what none of you can. And when I tell you that your mockery and jokes make everything worse, I really mean it.” Bucky awkwardly shifted near you under all of the eyes that were glued to him. He felt exposed by the way everyone saw how he showed his affection to you and that he, in fact, was a really touchy and sensitive person. “C’mon, Buck, everything’s okay.” You looked back at him with your usual soft eyes, and his whole attention was now focused completely on you. 

Everyone saw how Bucky’s body language changed when you talked to him, and even if someone like Tony or Sam couldn’t admit it out loud, the thought of being too harsh on Bucky appeared in their heads. 

Without any further words, you lead your boyfriend out of the common room, leaving the Avengers in an awkward silence. 

The comfort of your and Bucky’s shared room made you deeply inhale as soon as the door was closed behind you two. Before you could even say something, two strong hands wrapped around you from the back, and Bucky buried his face into your neck.

“Thank you, doll.” Your hand reached behind you to gently stroke Bucky's hair. “You didn’t have to do it, really. I got used to their words.” He squeezed you tighter, pressing his chest into your back.

“That’s not okay, baby. I’m sick of that. You may not say it to me or even admit it to yourself, but I see that it hurts you.” You turned around in his hands, placing your own on both sides of his face. “But that’s okay that you want to cuddle, to sleep on me, to be held. Really. There is nothing wrong with it. I’m really honored to be the person who is allowed to see your soft side.”

“I love you. Fuck, I love you so much, doll, you can’t even fucking imagine,” Bucky whispered before leaning forward to kiss you.

“I love you, James.”

“Can we stay here today? I don’t really want to talk with anyone besides my sweet and protective girl.” You couldn’t hold back your laughter at his teasing tone. 

“Of course we can, Buck.” That was your last word before Bucky lifted you off the ground, put you on the soft blankets of your bed, and climbed on top of you, happily wrapping around your body and falling asleep. 

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for not having time to read my mutual's writing?

Met a mutual on here, bonded through fanfic, have been tight with them for a few years with pretty much no bumps in the relationship, just overall had a really good time hanging around them when I could. We both write a lot and share our writing, and occasionally we talk about that writing/workshop it in passing.

In the past few years I've gone through a ton of life changes. Most notably I went from a multi-person household to a single-person one, and I've been living alone in a prohibitively costly city for a while now working 40 hour weeks and barely scraping by. As soon as the transition started I spent the last of my free income on a shitty little laptop so I could still write, putting down words on my bus/train commutes in the morning and quite literally writing on my breaks at work because I feel insane when I can't create. I bring this up to really stress that I don't have the time for the hobby, I force myself to make the time and even then it never feels like enough.

The only thing I can really stand to do with my 3 hours of free time at night is hang out with my moots online. I'm an extrovert so being around people recharges me. If I don't have designated social time I get super depressed and can pretty much feel my soul withering away. I also feel like I should probably mention that I kinda have a slew of mental issues, personality disorders and PTSD and AuDHD and the works. Point being, shit is rough my dude, but I am a person who likes to work hard and face challenges head on and even though we strugglin, we doing it with a positive outlook.

But! I am an incredibly solution-oriented person and I have found what I personally believe to be a good balance. No one should have to live like this, but I do, and I have found a way to be happy. My writing and my social time is all load-bearing. It is not something I just choose to do on a whim, it's all planned and scheduled and I adhere to those routines very strictly because, I cannot stress this enough, I will go fucking bonkers if I don't.

I'm mutuals with a lot of writers obv, and I sadly don't have time to read their work anymore, unless I get some extra time on my days off or something gets cancelled or like, I end up taking a vacation. I carry a great amount of guilt for this, though, even though I logically know it's reasonable. I try to support them where I can, cheer them on when I see them writing and tell them how cool their ideas sound, hype them up even when I can't actually read & review.

One of the things I do is sometimes I leave a kudos on fic I haven't read. I'm not trying to be ingenuine, and if they asked me I'd tell them like 'Oh I didn't read it yet, just wanted to show support!' but to me it's kinda like ripping a paper tab off a poster so that other's feel inclined to do the same. Plus my pals get a little email and a hit of serotonin.

Except one of my acquaintances, the one I mentioned at the start here, saw that I left kudos on a couple pieces another mutual of mine wrote this year. They more or less blew up my DMs with a ton of accusatory (like, literally presented like a 'GOTCHA!') stuff about how I was selective in who's fic I read, more or less implying that I secretly held some sort of grudge or negative feeling toward them and was making the conscious decision not to read or interact with their writing because of. Something, I don't actually know what they were trying to say. They also told me they vented to their friends about this MULTIPLE times, but they never once approached me to let me know they were feeling paranoid or neglected, they literally just took the most bad faith reading of it possible and then presented that to me like it was something I intentionally did, while the whole time I was unaware.

I tried to explain to them the kudos thing, that I didn't do it to every story, just ones I caught/noticed in my busy schedule. And I laid all this out and asked, multiple times, what free time am I supposed to read with? They didn't answer, and doubled down, kept trying to show me 'proof' that I was shorting them and no one else. Once they started to realize how wrong they were they backed down, but they didn't really apologize, or admit they were wrong, and they tried to end our relationship and left every single server we were in together. Because of some other unrelated stuff going on in my life, I didn't really consider them to be a close friend, but they were someone I really held dear and would've walked through hell for if they'd asked.

I still feel like there is something I'm missing here, and that's why I wanted to ask if I'm TA. I'm a pretty good communicator but one of the things I told myself when talking down my disordered thoughts (guilt about this prior) was "no one in their right mind would use reading fanfic as a metric for friendship." Now that I've had that exact thing happen, I'm starting to think maybe those thoughts weren't so disordered. Maybe this IS a big deal, and I should think about it more, but I don't even know what the solution to that would be. I just. Don't have time to read something lovingly crafted and appreciate it for what it is. All the hours in my week are used up, I'd have to lose sleep for this and with my mental health the way it is that is not an option.

Feel free to be a brutal, my skin is thick. Thanks!

What are these acronyms?

[cookinguptales]

Can I ask you to do a post about Disney & disability please? You mentioned it and I’d love to know more!

Well, my notifications can't get any messier, so why not?

This post got very, very long because I ended up talking about a lot of the accessibility solutions in detail (and... ranting about how accessibility at Universal was so bad that I got physically injured there) so I'm putting it under a cut for you.

To preface this, I have mobility issues (as well as a lot of food intolerances/allergies) and general chronic illness, my sister is Deaf, and I have friends who regularly attend the park with autistic family members with high support needs. These are the disabilities I have experience with, so while I've heard a bit about others (such as portable descriptive devices for visitors with visual impairments) I can't speak as much about those accommodations.

I have also traveled quite a bit, mostly as a disabled adult. I can work from anywhere and my family enjoys traveling, so I've been very lucky in this regard. I also used to live in central Florida, not too far from Disney, and benefited from their FL resident rates.

So I'm coming at this from a person who has a lot of experience traveling while disabled and a fair amount of experience going to WDW, though I haven't been nearly as often since I moved out of Florida.

(Good fucking riddance.)

So know that I am speaking from experience when I say I have never, without exception, been to a single place half as accessible as Walt Disney World. It is literally the reason my family would go there; it was one of the only places we could all safely go together. One of the only places I've been on earth that even approached their level of thoughtful accommodations is Barcelona, which apparently did significant renovations throughout the city in order to prepare for the 1992 Paralympics.

(Hey, if anyone is reading this from Barcelona: I teared up the first time I used one of your curb cuts in my wheelchair, just so you know.)

Going through those parks in a wheelchair is a breeze, though you will probably have to fight a lot of clueless parents with strollers who are hellbent on using resources intended for wheelchair-users and then glaring at you when you try to use them yourself. Level ground, spacious sidewalks, accessible transportation, well-kept gradual ramps, roomy buildings, lots of accessible restrooms, alternate entrances at many rides for wheelchair users, special wheelchair rows in movie theaters that we're loaded into first, accessible queues in most rides designed or renovated in the last fifteen years, special viewing areas for shows/parades/fireworks so you don't end up staring at able-bodied butts for a half hour...

Like, structurally-speaking, the parks are very easy to get around in if you're a wheelchair user. That was built in and you can see a lot of very mindful design choices. As far as the rides go, most of their rides actually have special cars that you can load into while still in a wheelchair. They're pretty neat. I can transfer, but that means often leaving my wheelchair and/or cane with a cast member during the ride. They are always, without fail, waiting for me on the other side of the ride, no matter how far the exit is from the entrance. I have never once had a problem with this. A cast member will be there to put my assistive devices in my hand before I even have to think about getting up. Guaranteed.

Wheelchair users always used to be able to skip the line, but there was unfortunately a problem with able-bodied people pretending to be disabled to skip lines (because god forbid they not have access to a single thing we have to make our lives livable) so now there's a system where if you cannot wait in a line, they'll basically give you a special time to come back that's equivalent to the length of the line. Which feels fair to me as someone who often cannot be in even an accessible line for extended periods. (I have problems with sunlight, heat, and often need emergency food or restroom.)

More important than all this, though, is the fact that cast members are impeccably well-trained in all of this. Any disabled person can tell you that the most accessible design on earth isn't worth shit if the people working there aren't well-trained. (More on this later, when I take a giant shit on Universal Studios.) But Disney trains their employees, many of whom are disabled themselves, incredibly well.

Every employee will know where the accessible entrances are. Every employee will know the procedure for getting a return time. Every employee will know about first-aid centers, and every employee will know where the quiet areas are for people with sensory issues. Every time you make a reservation for a meal, hotel room, transportation, etc. they will ask for all accessibility needs and they'll be ready for you.

Every waiter you have will be incredibly careful and knowledgeable when it comes to special dietary needs, and chefs will often come out to discuss them with you. They often have specific menus for different dietary needs, and they are scrupulous when it comes to allergens. I have a few intolerances that suck and allergies that could kill me and I have always felt very safe in their hands. This ranges from fancy sit-down restaurants to quick service burger places.

And -- honestly, I have just always been treated with respect. I know that sounds like a low bar, but most people do fail to clear it. Disney has their employees very well-trained on how to interact with disabled guests. People speak directly to me, never to the able-bodied people over my head. They never treat me like I'm a child. They never ask invasive questions or make uncomfortable jokes. They never, ever get impatient with my accessibility needs.

The few times I have misjudged things and have injured myself or gotten extremely ill, they were professional and caring as they provided much-needed first-aid. It's kind of embarrassing to be doted on by a costumed character while you wait for a doctor to come help you sit up again, but also kind of endearing, I'll admit.

They also, in addition to captioning all videos in the park, have some of the best sign language interpreters in the world, bar none. They're very personal and professional, they're easy to reserve, they will always be in a visible place during shows, and they're incredible performers as well as being very technically proficient. In addition to the professional interpreters, many cast members, performers, and characters can sign as well.

In addition to that, and this brings me to my next point, you'll meet a lot of disabled employees throughout the park. In front-facing positions. Deaf employees, employees using mobility aids, etc. They're well-known to hire disabled people and treat them well. This is. Fuck, this is incredibly rare, I say as someone who was never able to find a job in Florida with my health conditions. It's the moral thing to do to hire disabled people, but also -- selfishly, there's something so heartening and normalizing about seeing people who look like you working at the park. I'm happy every single time.

I have a little less personal experience when it comes to accessibility for neurodivergence, despite being neurodivergent myself, but I've been told that Disney is very, very accommodating for people on the spectrum. A lot is done to lessen crowding, waiting, sensory overload, etc. for autistic guests. Cast members are usually super good at this; finding designated quiet areas, helping autistic guests avoid more crowded areas, keeping them out of long lines, making sure they have access to any particular experiences that are special to them, etc.

For folks who need help from their group, whether that's an autistic child who needs to be with a parent or a disabled adult who needs someone to push their wheelchair or anything else, Disney has a rider switch-off model. In other words, if you're there with both of your able-bodied parents, for example, and you need one of them to be with you at all times and you don't want to be on the ride yourself, Disney will allow one person to go on the ride while the other waits for them to finish, then will allow the second person to go on without any additional wait. This makes sure that everyone in the family gets equal access without leaving disabled people alone. (Which... can be a very shitty feeling, I assure you.)

I know that Disney has also pioneered a lot of assistive technology. The accessible rides, obviously, which can be ridiculously cool (like Toy Story Midway Mania has an accessible car with alternative "guns" for people with dexterity limitations so they can play the carnival games as well) but also handheld assistive devices for visually impaired guests, etc. Like they are literally inventing new forms of accessibility technology, which is so cool.

And honestly, I'm always learning about new ways they assist disabled guests. I've stayed in Disney's accessible hotel rooms before (they're very nice!) but I don't like to swim so I've never been in the pools. But even just this week, someone told me that Disney has pool lifts for disabled guests, which I had never even considered. That's so cool.

The best part about accessibility at Disney is that in some ways it's very casual. A lot of their design decisions are so intuitive that you never even notice how accessible the parks are until you go somewhere where that's... not the case.

Like -- just so you don't assume that any of these things are industry standard, let me tell you about the two times I went to Universal, a park very close to Disney. I went there once for an event and once with my family.

The first time I went was for an event at the opening of the Harry Potter park. (This was before JKR made her most appalling views public, to be clear.) It... was frustrating. Guests asked if there would be food and drink available for people with special dietary restrictions (such as sugar-free butterbeer) and were pretty much told that no, that was not something they were interested in pursuing. It became very obvious very quickly that the park itself was so narrow that it only barely fulfilled ADA standards -- when empty. We were told that JKR had actually specifically insisted that it feel "cramped". Which is a nice way to say that I couldn't actually get around in any of the stores while people were in them.

It was overall a frustrating experience, but it was like. One night. I figured it was probably a fluke and they were still ironing out all the details. So I ended up going back with my parents later.

Y'all, it was a shit show.

Broken elevators that prevented disabled guests from accessing rides. Performers being up on raised platforms/sidewalks so disabled guests couldn't get to them. Sidewalks being made inaccessible by putting movable signs directly in the middle of them. Stores (even outside of the HP part) that were so damn narrow that I actually ended up getting hurt trying to navigate one of them. And no -- it was not easy to get first aid.

And my god, was the training bad. We went to one of the new HP rides, asked if there was a specific entrance for disabled guests. We were told no. We waited for a very long time in a line that honestly I shouldn't have been waiting in, but I wanted to be a good sport. I was pretty sick by the time we got through it, and the line itself had some very dangerous inclines/turns for wheelchair users. We get to the front of the line -- and the employee asks why we didn't just use the accessible entrance. 🙃

(Side note: several of their rides are also just unrideable if you don't fit within a pretty narrow body type of thin and able-bodied, so... there's that.)

We'd asked repeatedly and gotten incorrect answers, and I'd been put in physical danger as a result. Wild. I started to notice that if you asked different employees, you'd get different answers about almost anything, really. Just exceptionally poor training. Even stuff that should've been a no-brainer, like loading wheelchair users into a stationary movie theater, ended up creating chaos when they did it incorrectly and we had a giant wheelchair pileup.

Like -- let me stress to you that many of the things that happened could have caused actual injury to people. Some of these situations were dangerous. And some of them were just alienating, like when I'd have to wait outside a store while my family could go in.

I never went back after that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ We just kept going to Disney.

One thing that'll probably show how good Disney is at accessibility is the whole Make-A-Wish thing. A lot of people know that it's a popular Make-A-Wish request, and you're likely to see at least a couple kids with Make-A-Wish buttons during your visit if you keep an eye out. One reason for this, is that, y'know, Disney World is fun. Kids want to go there. But more important, I think, is that Disney can accommodate people with at-times severe medical needs. Those kids can safely go anywhere and do anything in those parks that able-bodied kids can, and that's important.

All in all, the parks are just so accessible and you will never, ever be made to feel like you're lesser for needing those accommodations. You will be treated so well and you will not have to worry about accessibility because the cast members are always doing it for you. They'll usher you into the correct entrance as soon as they see a mobility device, and they'll do it with a very warm welcome. It's one of the very few places on earth where I have never felt like a burden.

Again, y'know, I know that Disney does not have a perfect track record on a lot of issues. I would never defend them from rightfully earned criticism. I strongly support labor action against them, and I do think they should be criticized whenever they fuck up. I have been uncomfortable with the sheer amount of power they have both in Florida and in the entertainment world just because no one should have that much power. But I am far more uncomfortable with that power being stripped away for blatantly discriminatory political reasons.

I do have some loyalty to Disney just because there is no other place on earth where I've been able to safely have fun with my friends with so little agony. That's... I mean, it's important, really. To be able to just exist in public without getting grief for it. And I have some loyalty to them because they were a safe space for me as a young, queer kid who was not safe being out in other areas of my life.

(Like, I am talking about actual literal safety. I kept seeing notes on my post saying that Disney didn't care about creating a "safe space for queer people" but as someone who lived in Florida for the entirety of my teenage years? It was the safest goddamn place there.)

I do not have enough loyalty to defend them when they do immoral bullshit, but I do have enough to make sure that people know the good that they do as well.

I want other businesses to follow Disney's model for disability. I will praise them forever for what they've done in that regard because if I don't, there's no reason for other companies to follow suit. I want to praise them for the good things they've done so they have incentive to keep doing it, and other companies have an incentive to do it as well.

Like bro, I just wanna be able to move around and be treated with some dignity, y'know? My bar is so low. lmao

But yeah. That's why you always see so many disabled guests at Disney. It's literally the only place some of us can go to have fun.

[nyuuronfly]

On Rain World lore and it's implementation within the game.

This is kindof a random ramble I went on in a Discord chat and just feel like sharing elsewhere. (also note this is all primarily in reference to the original game, Survivor's story.)

I honestly think too many miss the forest for the trees a bit with RW, in terms of how important the lore is, if that makes sense. I talked with somebody about first-time experiences with the game and they said they'd watched a number of lore explanation videos on YT before starting, because of some reason along the lines of "I didn't trust the game to deliver its own story properly." To me this is almost saddening to hear because I really feel that misses the point of why the game has it's lore to begin with.

To me, while playing, any tidbits i learned about history or other information contributed to a feeling like the world I was navigating had a very real history that saturated it, yet one that I would be unable to grasp fully. It is an illusory feeling of realness, given how it is experienced. The game is mechanically not designed to incentivize collecting many information pearls, especially when in the original game you can literally just drop them off a cliff and lose them forever. You get the feeling often like you are bound to never be able to get everything, nor would you even probably want to put in the effort, so the illusion actually stays stronger because of that. Your mind wanders speculating about every little detail, whether intention truly existed behind it or not, because it feels like it did. You learned that it might have. Maintaining that illusion while playing I think is the primary reason they were included, not actually the experience of "knowing" the history. Rain World in general seems to have a thematic fixation on the simple idea that individuals have limited perspectives. Joar Jakobsson has said that one of the core ideas behind Rain World was to recreate the life of a "rat in Manhattan." That is to say, a creature that understands how to find food, hide, and live in a complex man-made structure, that cannot understand it's structuring purpose or why it was built. The very core issue of the iterators, is that the solution to the "great problem" intrinsically has to lie with knowledge that could only be obtained from "the other side." They are corporeal beings trying to know something that pertains to something outside corporeal reality. Yet pursuit of knowledge is very important to creatures like ourselves. Collecting any individual pearl is mostly an exercise in doing a lot just for little bits of knowledge. There is a lot of understanding of just how significant wanting to know more is, even something unimportant, when you are left in the dark the way you are in the game. Most information pearls you deliver are literally completely useless to know about, but they feel personally important, especially in how finding them relates to your connection to the iterators. My primary motivation to find pearls in my first play was to spend more time with Moon. On a very real emotional level, Moon felt like my only friend in the world while I played. On a mechanical level, she does literally nothing. But Rain World manages to operate on a very emotional, even instinctual level with how it's designed. I wanted to be in her company and have something to give her. Because I am alone, and lost. So something along those lines is why I felt saddened to hear the sentiment like Rain World somehow "fails" to deliver it's "story." The purpose of the game is not to find pearls and hear about some grand narrative. At it's core, Rain World is a game that's design was inspired by nature, and it's use of history within the world relates to us as a player the way history relates to us as people. It is relayed through people reading from records created by parties with their own perspectives, and connects us abstractly to a sensation that there is more out there than our own lives. That is a feeling you have as a player, and ultimately the true story that Rain World tells is the memories you have playing it. What you did, saw, and felt. The same as how our story is that of our own lives. That is the purpose of the game.

[balioc]

Oh, boy! It's Education Theory o'Clock again!

...I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. At some point, when I'm less busy and tired, I should probably try to write them up. Natively, I'm one of the school-is-a-nightmare-prison people, like so many others in this little discourse-sphere -- but I'm married to a middle school teacher, so I regularly encounter both the good arguments from the other side and the facts on the ground, and those things have altered my perspective somewhat.

But I am, in fact, busy and tired. So for now I'll just content myself with saying:

School is an institution that serves many, many, many purposes at the same time. A lot of those purposes are load-bearingly important. (A couple of years ago, I wrote this about college, and...it's double-plus true for primary and secondary schools.) If you don't try to account for all of that stuff in your theory of What School Is and How School Works, you will generate incoherent garbage thoughts. If you have a New Concept for school entailing top-down design that is optimized for a single function (like "increasing test scores" or "causing kids to love learning" or whatever), you'd better have a plan for how you're going to do all the other important things that schools do. And even if you think that some of those things aren't actually important or necessary, you'd better have a plan for dealing with all the people who disagree. Because...

-----

...school, as it exists today, is an inherently political institution. Both in the "soft" sense that everyone has strong opinions about what it's supposed to do and how it's supposed to work, and in the "hard" sense that it is actually controlled by democratically-accountable governments. (This is double-plus true in the US, where it is controlled by local governments, and therefore doesn't even have the protective insulation of a massive bureaucracy.) Everything about the way schools work is a compromise brokered amongst ideologues and self-dealers. Everything about the way schools work involves a lot of decision-makers trying not to get yelled at by the yelliest people around. If you're looking for elegant purpose-driven top-down design, you won't find it. You could probably make a case that any elegant purpose-driven top-down design would be better than the thing we actually have, but getting there would require finding a way to remove the political element.

-----

Most importantly: public schools are (1) compulsory, (2) universal, and (3) for children. [People who are legally children, anyway, whether or not they are actual children in whatever sense matters to you.]

This means that they cannot let students leave, and they have to keep control of all the students that they aren't allowing to leave.

In the most literal not-a-judgment-but-a-fact sense, they are indeed prisons. They are coercively keeping people inside. They have to do that thing, as per their most fundamental mandate within the current system. The alternatives involve letting kids run around unsupervised, and/or failing to give some kids even the most cursory kind of education, and those things are absolute non-starters under present conditions.

All the normal institutions-for-adults operate on the principle of -- If you really don't want to be here, you can leave, and deal with whatever consequences there may be for leaving. This is not an option for schools, and that fact accounts for...everything.

Classroom structure is built around the necessity of keeping the most-hostile, least-engaged student in the class present and supervised, and then trying to prevent him from disrupting things for everyone else. Because the obvious solution that any other institution would use -- "just cut him loose, he doesn't want to be here and we don't want him here" -- isn't available.

(I once talked to my wife about the rationed bathroom access thing, which is one of the most flagrant nightmare-prison aspects of the school experience. Her response was, "If you let kids use the bathroom whenever they want, as much as they want, then you don't have mandatory universal education anymore. Some of them will never return to the classroom, because they don't want to be there." Which is...obviously true.)

So you have something that replicates many of the features of prison, because it has to accomplish the same basic tasks that prison accomplishes. Yay, Foucault.

[sirfrogsworth]

Frogman's Camera Buying Guide

A few weeks ago someone asked if I could recommend an interchangeable lens camera (ILC) to supplement their smartphone photos and hopefully get better pictures of important things like vacations and pets.

I decided to go very extra with my response and due to that... I'm still not finished with it.

I'm worried I am letting this person down because they did not ask for a giant post explaining every detail about cameras in the history of forever.

So I am going to do a camera recommendation post without as much explanation and hopefully I can finish the giant post at some point in the near future.

If you want to take better pictures you are probably going to need a camera with a decent sized sensor, a fast lens, a tripod, and a flash.

The bigger sensor gives you more dynamic range so you can capture brighter and darker things in the photo.

A fast lens has a giant hole in the front that lets in a ton of light. That hole is called the aperture and the bigger it is, the better your photos in dark environments will be. So you will want something that does f/1.8 or f/1.4 (lower f-stop number = bigger hole = more light). This can also help you get a lot of cool background blur.

A tripod will help get you longer exposures without any blur from camera shake. Especially good for landscape photos.

And a flash is for taking photos of pets and other moving subjects when you are indoors and don't have a lot of light. A flash is an absolute game changer for indoor photos.

HOWEVER, never point it directly at your subject.

Point it at a large white ceiling or wall. The flash happens so fast that it freezes motion. It is how I got all of my indoor photos of Otis.

Here he was playing and being rambunctious and he is not blurry.

I used no special settings. I just stuck on a flash and pointed it at the ceiling and suddenly sheep are sticking to things.

Oh, and one other huge benefit of using a flash... you can take much better photos of pets with dark fur. So if you have a cute little void in your home, a flash can help you capture detail in their fur.

Just lift the shadow slider in your image editor and that beautiful fur will reveal itself.

If you get an ETTL or TTL flash, it will output the correct amount of light automatically. You can literally just put your camera in automatic mode, aim the flash at the ceiling, and press the shutter button.

Before I talk about recommendations I want to make one thing very clear.

GETTING A GIANT CAMERA WILL NOT AUTOMATICALLY GIVE YOU BETTER PHOTOS.

Aside from my flash aimed at the ceiling trick, a big boy camera is not a magic solution for better photos. In some cases, you might actually get *worse* photos than your smartphone. You need to learn the basic fundamentals of photography and you also need to learn some basic photo editing skills.

Smartphones employ powerful algorithms and computational processes to make every photo you take look as good as possible.

ILCs say, "Here is your RAW data, you figure out the rest."

You don't have to become an expert, but if you watch this free 6 hour photography course, that will ensure you have the knowledge needed to improve your photos.

Okay, let's get into the nitty gritty of buying a nice new old ILC.

If you are on a tight budget and cannot afford a fancy mirrorless camera, I would highly suggest a used DSLR. You can get them for very reasonable prices. And unlike just about every other modern technological gadget, cameras and lenses are built to last for decades. So I have no qualms about recommending used photography gear.

However, I do highly recommend using either KEH or MPB, as they have a long trial period and decent customer service. If something goes awry with your used gear, KEH has a 180 day warranty and MPB has a 6 month warranty. So there is much less of a risk than eBay or Facebook Marketplace. You pay a bit of overhead, but the piece of mind is worth it.

Before I start my recommendations I want to quickly explain the difference between APS-C and Full Frame camera bodies. (For brevity's sake I am going to omit Micro Four Thirds bodies as they are not typically geared toward beginner photography.)

APS-C has a "crop" sensor. It is a bit smaller than full frame and does not perform as well in low light (more noise). However these bodies are cheaper and can still produce great photos. You can see above the sensor is still significantly larger than a smartphone. APS-C adds a 1.5x zoom to all lenses. This can be annoying in small spaces but advantageous for outdoor photography like wildlife and sports. You can use full frame lenses on a crop sensor body (within the same brand). APS-C lenses are usually cheaper but of lower quality.

Full frame has a larger sensor that will give you less noise in low light. It is also much easier to get background blur. Full frame also allows you to work in more cramped spaces. You *cannot* use APS-C lenses on a full frame body. However, the lenses meant for full frame cameras tend to be better quality in general.

If you can save up a little more and get a full frame body, I would recommend it. These bodies used to be geared more toward professional use, but since mirrorless cameras became popular, used full frame DSLRs have become much more accessible to those on a budget. Full frame cameras make it easier to get better results in challenging circumstances. And challenging conditions are really the main area where ILCs still kick a smartphone's ass.

For tight budgets I would recommend the following...

Canon or Nikon APS-C DSLR camera body

50mm f/1.8 lens (Nifty Fifty)

18-55mm APS-C lens (good for landscapes and portraits)

Yongnuo ETTL Flash

There are lenses called "superzooms" which can go from (as an example) 18-200mm or 70-300mm and other crazy focal lengths. That sounds fantastic and very versatile... but these are usually utter shite. You may be tempted to get one of these lenses hoping it can do everything you need, but there are no free lunches in lens land. Unless you are spending many thousands of dollars, the wider the focal range, the worse the lens will be.

When you stick to the 18-55mm range, you can be assured the images will be decent. And if you find yourself really needing a telephoto lens, you can save up and add it to your collection later on. The 18-55 will give you wide angle for landscapes all the way to slightly telephoto for portraits and moderately close wildlife. This lens cannot be used indoors or at night without a flash. Which is why I recommend the Nifty Fifty for that purpose. $100 for a moderately sharp low light lens is a no brainer.

Also, stick to Canon, Nikon, Sigma, or Tamron lenses. You can try exotic 3rd party lens brands when you know more what you are doing. And always make sure the lens has autofocus before buying.

It's hard to give you exact recommendations as used items are not reliably in stock. So I'm going to show you an example of the above, but I am not necessarily saying you should buy this *exact* combination. You might be able to get something similar with Nikon as well.

Canon 60D APS-C DSLR

50mm f/1.8 lens

Canon 18-55mm APS-C lens (EF-S mount)

Yongnuo TTL Flash

(I wouldn't recommend getting a used flash, as the Yongnuo is already a great price and you can't know if someone used the flash 100,000 times or 20 times.)

Altogether that is about $500. You can start with the 60D and the 50mm Nifty Fifty for $330 and add on the other two items later on.

My recommended full frame setup...

Full frame Canon or Nikon DSLR body

50mm f/1.8 lens (same as before)

24-70mm full frame zoom lens (full frame equivalent to 18-55mm)

ETTL Yongnuo flash (same as before)

And an example from KEH might be...

Canon 6D Full Frame DSLR

Canon 50mm f/1.8 Lens

Sigma 24-70mm Full Frame Zoom lens (EF mount)

Yonguo ETTL Flash

And that would be about $800 total.

Again, you can start with just the camera and 50mm lens and add the other items later. So invest $500 initially and go from there.

And just to give a Nikon example as well...

Nikon D600 Full Frame DSLR

Nikon 50mm f/1.8 Lens

Tamron 24-70mm

Yonguo ETTL Flash (Nikon version)

I highly recommend researching any camera body and lens before purchase. I can vouch for the items above, but you should definitely check out some YouTube videos before buying.

All of the stuff on KEH and MBP is marked down in price for aesthetic reasons. They do test everything to make sure it is functional. If you care if the camera or lens looks pristine, it will cost a little extra. But if you don't mind if it is beat to hell, you can save some money. Ugly or not, you will get the same photos out of the gear. As I said, photography stuff is built to last for a long time. Almost all repairs are due to user damage and not defects. And usually defects manifest when the product is brand new.

Oh, I forgot about the tripod!

Amazon's $35 tripod is surprisingly decent. It even got a good review on a very picky tripod review site. I recommend starting with this and then upgrading when you know more what you need out of a tripod.

Amazon 60 inch Tripod

I worry I'm leaving out a lot of important information, but hopefully I can expand in the other post I am working on.

That said, if anyone is thinking of buying a camera and you are not sure about the items you selected, please feel free to message me and I will help you assess your choices. Please make sure you include a budget range when asking for buying advice.

I hope that helps. I will try to finish the more in depth post soon. And it will include tips for how to get better photos from your smartphone if you cannot afford an ILC at the moment.

Further resources...

Recipe for Landscape Photos Froggie's Encyclopedia of Lens Terms

[anthurak]

I’ve talked before about my theories about the full potential of Ruby’s semblance. That being, Ruby’s ability to deconstruct and reconstruct herself at a molecular level has some pretty wild applications.

Among others, the ones I think are the most interesting are Ruby effectively being able to shapeshift, ie; she can reconstruct her body, her clothing and Crescent Rose into entirely new shapes and forms. And on top of that, Ruby’s ability to reconstruct herself would potential allow to recover from just about any injury. Whether it be losing a limb, being impaled, cut to pieces or even EXPLODED, one activation of her semblance later and Ruby is back to normal. Effectively giving a ‘healing factor’ on par with Salem’s immortality.

And the thing is, I think abilities like these are thematically perfect for Ruby.

You know how there’s been a lot of discussion on how it seems like every character’s semblance seems to represent the major flaw/problem that character has spent the show grappling with in some way or another? Often in some dramatically ironic way? Like how Weiss is a girl who has been working so hard to separate herself from the baggage and burden of her family’s responsibility and legacy, yet has what seems to be the ONLY fully-hereditary semblance in existence? And in Ruby’s case, of course the girl who has spent the entire show, and likely much of her life running away from her pain and trauma has a speed semblance.

But the funny thing is, for Ruby it’s pretty clear that the show has already started building to a big subversion of this idea. In Volume 7 we see that while Ruby has always thought she had a speed semblance, Harriet voices that it’s probably something else.

And in Volume 8, Penny outright confirms that Ruby’s semblance ISN’T ‘speed’, but rather the ability to deconstruct and reconstruct herself at a molecular level.

It turns out that Ruby was wrong about what her semblance actually did. And through that, it turns out that this idea of Ruby’s semblance representing her attempts to run away from her pain are likewise flawed.

And now that we are in a Volume set to explore themes of transformation and our characters discovering who they might truly be, I think this is going to be the perfect time for Ruby, and the narrative, to reevaluate just what it is her semblance represents.

Because whereas Ruby’s Petal Burst simply being speed represented Ruby’s fixation on running away from her pain, Petal Burst being molecular deconstruction/reconstruction can instead represent Ruby’s unshakable idealism fully realized.

Now there is no obstacle that can stop her, because there is nothing she cannot move around or through. There is no challenge she cannot find a solution for, because she is infinitely adaptable. And there is NOTHING that can truly break her for good, because she can ALWAYS build herself back up from her literal molecules.

In other words, Ruby’s body may be weak and breakable, but her spirit is INDOMITABLE.

[hey-i-am-trying]

ME RANTING ABOUT MISINFORMATION ABOUT BAGI AND WHAT NOT

A missing piece people don't realize about the workers' murder arc is that Bagi was not all that bothered by the workers' death at first, she was more worried about how Cucurucho would retaliate and also by the cannibalism, because yeah, cannibalism doesn't exactly scream mental health.

It was seeing the grief of the living workers that changed her profoundly, it filled her with guilt. And I cannot help but think of young Bagi who didn't have a body to bury, didn't have closure, and refused to even acknowledge the possibility that her brother was dead, being so moved by such an open sight of mourning.

Bagi ran herself stressed not knowing a way to help Cellbit AND stop the murders, she refused any solution that would harm him, she went after talking with people who were close with Cellbit and whom she also trusted to not turn information to the Feds. I am sick and tired to people saying "Bagi told random people about the murders". List of islanders Bagi actually told: Roier, Bad, Pac, and Mike. All who were in one way or another connected to enigmas themselves. People who she knew had more information about Cellbit past or that she thought deserved to know for their own safety.

Bagi never called Cellbit a monster or even insinuated he would hurt the eggs, I really don't know where this misinformation came from. In the separate scenes of Bagi and Bad confronting Cellbit they were they quite literally saying he was more than a murderer, and that he was being consumed by his history of violence

(Also, I get it that watching your blorbo drown in blood is fun and all. But like, did you watch Cellbit's story and believe he turned back into a murderer and being brought back to the violent cycle he was forced into is a good thing? Did watch him seeing his childhood room for the first time and asking himself what he did to deserve to be taken away from his family and made to kill people to be able to survive? Did you see that and then when he told Bagi he didn't care if he died again because he died enough time and did not get that Cellbit murdering people is also him losing grasp on the importance of life itself? Did you not get that this was not a developing arc for him? This was him at his fucking worst after having the best things in his life taken again, again and again. Murder was not enrichment for him, it was a poison that killed parts of him too)

Anyway. That is for now. I think. Just a lot of shit I needed to get out of my chest.

[bro-atz]

if only it was simple [bro's 500 — hongjoong]

[enemies to lovers, smut, royal!au, hongjoong/afab!reader]

requested by: 🍀

in which: kim hongjoong is the bane of your existence, but you cannot seem to live without him.

word count: 2k

content: smut, bathroom sex, blowjob, facial, doggy, window sex, UNPROTECTED SEX (PLS WRAP UP IRL), consensual!

rated: R | nsfw — minors do not interact

author's note: @pocketjoong @nebulousbrainsoup pls don't kill me i have more things to finish writing hehe

Every time your parents hosted a royal ball for all the neighboring kingdoms, you resented them because you hated the balls they threw. You honestly hated being royalty because that was just not something you vibe with. No, you liked peace, quiet, and when a sense of calm washes over the castle while you read all the books in the royal library. So, a mass gathering of people was definitely not your cup of tea. Gosh, how you would prefer a cup of tea over the stupid blood red wine in your glass.

It wasn't just the noise, either. It was the people who brought the noise. You didn't know how on Earth other princesses could gossip for minutes, hours, days, freaking eons, but they did, and you hated it. And the princes were just as bad, but rather than gossips, they just spread vulgarities. You wanted to wash your mouth with soap just listening to what they would talk about.

Prince Hongjoong of the Kim Kingdom was the worst of them all. He gossiped with the princesses, he engaged in the vulgar talk with the princes, and he treated you like scum. How you loathed him. You loathed the way he talked, walked, acted— the entirety of his being made you feel like he was put on this world to torture you. And, of course, that torturous being just had to approach you the second you fell within his line of vision.

"Hello, princess," he greeted you with a very obviously sardonic, sickly sweet voice.

"Prince Hongjoong," you bit back as you maintained eye contact with him.

"Ooh, yeah, I did not like the way you said my name just now, princess. Why don't you try a nicer tone? It would suit you."

"Go jump up your own ass and die."

"So mean," Hongjoong sniffled and wiped away his crocodile tears. "You should really treat your guests better."

You didn't even bother responding to him. You quickly turned your head away and walked away from Hongjoong, knowing that the man would not follow. He knew better than that.

While you desperately wanted a distraction, there was quite literally no one you wanted to distract yourself with. Again, you seriously hated these stupid balls. Rather than talk to another royal, you called over one of the butlers and tried to give him the glass.

"No, princess, you mustn't waste," the butler scolded you.

"Please, I didn't even want this in the first place," you sighed heavily. "Can't you just give it to someone else?"

"I'm sorry, princess, but I cannot do that either. You will just have to finish it."

Swell. With a wave of your hand, you dismissed the butler and cradled the glass in your hands, your fingernails clinking against it as you tapped your fingers. Yes, you knew not to waste food or water, but wine was not water, and it wasn't like you could give it to some starving child because children were not supposed to drink wine. So, you needed to dispose of it in another way.

It was when you accidentally made eye contact with Hongjoong again and saw the smirk spread across his face did you find a solution to your little problem. To top that, he was flirting with another princess from another kingdom, flaring up your irritation even more. You glided towards him and very purposefully spilled the dark liquid all over his jacket, effectively ruining it.

"Oops," you said rather flatly.

"Really?" Hongjoong responded with a sigh of exasperation followed by a half-assed chuckle.

"You should get that cleaned up! Here, I'll do it for you," the princess Hongjoong was talking to inserted herself between the two of you, ending your slight glaring contest.

"No, princess. It wasn't your fault. It was Princess Y/N's, so I believe she should take accountability for her actions," Hongjoong shook his head. Then, turning to meet your glare with a cheek smile, he added, "Don't you agree, Y/N?"

Before long, you were in your personal bathroom. You found the supplies you needed to get the wine stain out of Hongjoong's jacket, and rather than take the jacket off, he kept it on. He sat on the edge of the basin and waited for you to begin correcting your mistake.

"Be honest with me, princess," Hongjoong whispered as you got to work. "Do you have a problem with a wine or with me?"

"Both," you immediately responded. "But the lesser of the two evils is definitely the wine."

"That stings."

"Tough."

Hongjoong let out a scoff. He leaned back and observed you working on his jacket, the warmth from the alcohol he drank that night started to consume his body— it was either the alcohol or lust actually. To figure out which it was, he tucked the hairs framing your face behind your ear before placing his fingers under your chin, making you look up at him. He didn't mean to look down as he wanted to observe your facial features, but considering you were bent over, he got an eyeful of your cleavage. It was definitely not alcohol, but lust. His fingers then moved from your chin to your hair, his fingers raking through before grabbing a fistful. He ran his tongue over his lower lip before biting his lower lip, his eyes darkening with every passing second.

"Down on your knees, princess," Hongjoong said in a very low voice.

"Absolutely not," you flat out refused.

"You better listen to me when I'm asking nicely."

"Asking nicely would include the words "please" or "may", and I've never heard either of those words leave your tongue," you nearly spat out. "Besides, you said we would never do this again—"

"I know what I said, and I don't care anymore. Knees."

With a slightly wistful sigh, you lowered yourself to your knees, Hongjoong's lap before your face. Your muscle memory activated, and you got to work on undoing Hongjoong's pants, your fingers pulling at the waistbands.

"I thought you didn't want to do this," Hongjoong snickered. "But you seem so eager right now."

"Shut up, Hongjoong," you breathed out before revealing his hard red cock, your mouth watering.

You completely took Hongjoong by surprise when you immediately took him into your mouth, your head going all the way down, the tip of his cock brushing the back of your throat. Hongjoong flung his head back and bit his lower lip to hold back his moans. His hold on your hair got tighter, and he guided your head back up, his hand moving you at the calm, steady pace that he wanted.

“Yes, just like that,” he hissed through grit teeth. “Keep going, princess.”

When Hongjoong shoved your head down all the way every so often to get you to gag, it made you resent him a little more, but you would be lying to yourself if you said you didn’t like the rough way he was treating you while you sucked his cock. You also kind of liked it when he praised you and massaged your head when he adjusted his grip of your hair, and when you heard his breathing hitch and his moans get higher in pitch, it filled you with excitement.

“Oh— I’m cumming!” Hongjoong groaned, his cock quivering uncontrollably in your mouth.

He pulled your head back and rubbed himself a couple times before decorating your face with white stripes. You licked your lips, the saltiness of his cum lingering on your tongue as you tasted him. While it was fun momentarily, you frowned at him and let out an exasperated sigh.

“Goddammit, Hongjoong, now I need to clean my face,” you grumbled as you stood up, your fingers already beginning to clear his cum from your face.

“Would you rather I have you swallow?” he asked cheekily.

“Honestly, yeah. It’s neater that way.”

You heard him let out a slight chuckle as you turned your back to him. You poured some water into the sink and bent over to begin washing your face, letting your guard down completely. You were so fixated on clearing the opaque off your skin that you didn’t even realize Hongjoong had approached you from behind and started undressing you from the skirt down.

“Hongjoong! What are you doing?!” you yelled at him as you tried to turn around and get him to stop.

“Princess, you can’t tell me that you don’t want this right now,” Hongjoong sighed as he forced you over the sink, his bare waist pressing against yours. “You’re so wet. It’s as if your cunt is begging for me.”

You couldn’t argue with that. Hongjoong’s moans earlier turned you on to an incredible extreme, and you were itching for relief. You pressed your lips together before admitting defeat and saying, “Then you better do a good job, or I will—”

“Don’t worry, princess,” Hongjoong interrupted. “I always do a good job. You know that.”

Spreading your ass cheeks, Hongjoong got a stellar view of your glistening cunt. He ran his tongue over his lower lip as his thumbs neared your folds and spread them, your gaping hole eagerly waiting for him to fill you up. He wasted no time in lining up his cock with your cunt and shoving into you, your entire body lurching forward with the impact. Your hands gripped the sides of the sink, your hold getting tighter as he began to move at a steady rhythm, the sounds of his waist slapping against yours echoing in the silence of the bathroom.

“Oh, princess,” the prince groaned blissfully. “You’re always so tight— you were made for me, weren’t you?”

You answered with a little yelp when he changed his angle and thrust upwards, his cock rubbing against your walls all the right ways. It felt so right, but truth be told, it wasn’t enough for you. Neither you nor him, apparently, as he grabbed your waist and pulled you upright. His cock left you for a split moment so he could turn you around to face him. He then led you to the sole window in your bathroom.

Bottles clattered to the ground as Hongjoong swept everything off the windowsill and hoisted you there. You wrapped your legs around his waist as he prepared to enter you, this tip of his cock teasing your clit. A whine emerged from the back of your throat as you gripped Hongjoong shoulder’s, the fabric from his jacket getting bunched up in your grasp.

“Don’t tease me,” you whimpered as you pulled him towards you.

Hongjoong let out a snort of amusement. Locking eyes with you, he did as you quite literally begged and stopped teasing you, his cock swiftly entering you and filling you up once more. You groaned in slightly relief before biting on your lower lip to keep all of your lewd noises to a minimum. However, Hongjoong didn’t like that. With his thumb, he pulled down on your lower lip, forcing you to let go.

“You know I like to hear you, princess,” Hongjoong murmured as his lips neared yours, his breath brushing past your lips.

“We can’t be too loud, though,” you replied through erratic breathing as Hongjoong’s thrusts sped up. “The ball is still going on.”

“What a shame,” he sighed.

So, to help you keep quiet, Hongjoong’s lips met yours, his tongue immediately slipping into your mouth and tangling with yours. You moaned into his mouth as he kissed you feverishly, his waist gyrating into yours with incredible speed and vigor. Your hands moved from his shoulders to the back of his neck, your fingers running through the hair on the back of his head.

“O-Oh, Joong!” you cried.

“Are you close, princess?” he asked, his breathing hitching as he felt himself nearing his climax.

“Mmhmm… Oh, God!”

You flung your head back as you felt pleasure wash over you, white filling your vision. You were blinking stars out of your eyes when Hongjoong guided your face back down, his lips meeting your again as he seemed to not be able to get enough of you.

“May I cum inside, princess?” he asked you breathlessly in between kisses.

“Please.”

Hongjoong moved away from you slightly so he could get a better hold of you as he thrust rapidly into you several times before releasing his load inside you. His groan of ecstasy echoed in your ears as he dropped his head to the nook of your neck, his hot breath hitting your collarbone.

“Was that good enough for you, princess?”

bro's 500 event | bro's 500 event masterlist

bro's 500 taglist: @eyeryis @sinnarols @nakiiko @hyukssunflower @aaa-sia

@k-hotchoisan @hwallazia

networks: @atzhouse @cromernet @cultofdionysusnet

@ksmutsociety @newworldnet @wonderlandnet

[sacredmads]

my own success, failure, and everything in between with the law of assumption.

i get so many asks every day wondering why i even began practicing the law of assumption in the first place, and every single time i read one, i can't help but think of how far i've come. i want to tell you guys from the very beginning why i even felt the need to want to start manifesting things into my life, because i really do feel it could help some people. even if this doesn't help you in an LOA sense, i do hope it helps you to know that things will always get better, no matter what things look like right now. you deserve nothing but love and light and happiness, and you will get that, no matter what.

(very small TW!)

i have been through a lot in my life. a LOT. i'll spare you guys the nitty gritty details of it all, don't worry. but to put it lightly, when i found the law of assumption, i was desperate for things in my life to start changing for the better. at the time, which was a year ago now, i was surrounded by bad people, in bad situationships, and had also just gotten diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder due to two extremely ab*sive relationships i was in. i hated my job, i hated how i looked, how i acted, how i talked, the things i was doing, the path i was going down. i longed for so much change.

i saw the law of assumption as my way out. however, my views on the law then are much different than my views on it now. i looked at manifestation as something i had to WORK for. i looked at LOA as a chore. this meant that trying to get my desires became a much more negative than a positive thing for me. i started to hate my life, and myself, even more, because i didn't know what i was doing wrong. every time i'd read a success story, i would feel nothing but envy and jealousy. i wanted to manifest my life being different SO bad that i began to feel as though it was something that i would never accomplish. these thoughts and assumptions buried me even deeper into the pit than i already was, and started a viscous cycle of me hating my life, myself, and starting to form a type of resentment against the law of assumption.

then, towards the end of 2021, the void state blew up on tumblr. i saw the void as my way out - my solution to all of this. (spoiler alert, it wasn't). i tried for MONTHS on end to get into the void. i would spend hours laying in my bed, affirming over and over and over, and getting nothing but angry at myself because yet again, the method wasn't working. more void success stories started coming to tumblr, and every time i'd read one, i'd genuinely feel sick to my stomach. i didn't understand what i wasn't doing right.

towards the beginning of this year i decided to just cut my losses and stop trying to get into the void, and focus on the things i already had, because i thought that was all i had going for me.

i can't remember where it started, but i can say that now, in this very moment, i am the happiest i have ever been.

i have manifested so many things i didn't even dream would be possible for me.

for ONCE in my life, i am so comfortable with my finances. i have financial freedom, and, not to gloat, but MORE than enough money in my bank account.

i have the most AMAZING group of friends... literally shit that feels like it's from a movie. i cannot fathom having any other group around me.

literally manifested an SP that doesn't feel real. fairy tale typa love.

i manifested a job that i love more than words, and not only that, but i manifested getting promoted to manager, and i start training next month.

i've manifested appearance changes as well, and i feel so beautiful in my skin, with AND without makeup, which again.. i didn't think would be possible.

my assumptions about myself, my life, finances, friends, people, relationships, ANYTHING you can think of have all changed for the better. i genuinely feel as though i am limitless and can manifest absolutely anything i desire, and not only that, i feel as though i deserve all of my desires. because i do! a year ago today i was a completely different person than i am now - and i'm so proud to say that i am living a comfortable, happy, and free life.

i know so many people on tumblr and on all platforms that hold an LOA community struggle with so many of the same things i struggled with, and i can promise you that if you truly just focus on what you already know and APPLY, nothing is impossible and nothing will stop you. i have been where you are - i have believed the law of assumption was bullshit at points. but now, i cannot imagine where i'd be if i hadn't started practicing the law. are there things i still want to manifest? absolutely! do i still have small struggles, or bad days? absolutely! the thing is though, i know now that none of that matters. what matters is the things i want - and that's it! there is nothing in this entire world that will stop my desires from coming to me.

when i finally realized that the only person who can stop my desires is ME, is when things finally started changing for the better. i am the only one who will ruin my success and also the only one who can give myself success. i'm choosing to give myself success.

you will get your success, too. you deserve to feel good, and love your life. you deserve to not have stresses or worries. you deserve nothing but all that life has to offer, and i believe you can give that to yourself.

please stop sabotaging your own desires, and stay focused on what you want. you WILL get it. you already have it! do you feel it? do you feel the life you're living right now, with all of your desires? that feeling is what's real. that feeling is what you're experiencing, right now.

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

Kinda sick of the racism from nonblacks (i say nonblacks because it ain't just the whites tho it's mainly them!) in the spiderverse fandom because why does black ppl centering themselves in fiction (you know cuz we never can have ANYTHING) bother them so much??

"Hobie would choose a white girl over you" "why does miles have to be with someone black" "why does he always have to have a black reader" like Ummmm DO Y'ALL NOT HEAR HOW DUMB AND IGNORANT YOU SOUND?

We gotta gatekeep the black characters in this fandom until ppl know how to act right and stop getting besides themselves

PREACH!!!!!! CAUSE LIKE -- People out here are really disturbed that they *checks notes* were reminded black people exist? black people being found specifically attractive in a way whiteness is CONSTANTLY.

Anti-Blackness, Hobie, & The Black!Reader -

[A SHORT rant about people who have an issue with Black!Readers]

I ALWAYS find it where when people beef with Black people who want to date other Black people.

Because it's 100% racism.

If you think that a Black person dating only Black people is wrong - Anti-blackness is probably the root.

Just kidding it is the root its literally the only solution and explanation hehehe

Because as a trans person - when someone says they're T4T, everyone is fine with that.

Cis people can understand that they will never understand the trans experience, and that trans people may be attracted and want relationships with people who can understand on a personal level.

But when a Black Person say they're 'Black4Black' suddenly that's wrong?? We can't do that??

It's like non-whites cannot grasp that anti-black racism is a very VERY specific experience that we deal with all our lives and we may want partners that can not only support us but relate too. Partners we don't have to explain race shit too.

No- blackness is an experience that HAS to be available to them. Black people's experiences, minds and bodies HAVE to be available for there consumption or we're in the wrong.

We are either there to be consumed (like Hobie is) or ignored (like the Black!Reader is).

All my life I've seen the default OC and default reader be a white person. Readers that don't speak AAVE, that show no attempt at culture outside the 'normal' heteronormative American family.

And suddenly we try to change that for ourselves and that's not cool.

Also - people who say that about Hobie are just outright uneducated.

Hobie is from 1978.

Racial Discrimination in the UK was outlawed in 1965. Regardless of whether you think he's 16 or 19 - Hobie Brown grew up under racial segregation from ages 3-6.

He grew up seeing it - experiencing racism. Living with and being raised by and surrounded by a community of older black people who lived under segregation.

And even after the bill - Racist attitudes would still be surrounding him realistically speaking.

HE'S NOT FROM NOW.

Acting like Hobie has no opinions on that, or experiences, or coping mechanisms or TRAUMA from that - is fucked up.

That's black trauma LOOK AT IT.

So YEAH, A guy who grew up under segregation and a police state would have trauma from it.

But they (racists) wanna sidestep that.

They'll talk all day about Hobie's police related trauma - but not the race thing......okay. Okay, no it's fine. I'm fine.

The idea that Hobie might have unsavory experiences with race makes them uncomfortable. The idea that Hobie would seek out Black Spaces to GET AWAY from white people - makes them foam at the mouth.

Not all white people are racist - but a white person can never understand anti-black racism from a personal view the way Hobie or I or you do.

That's just a fact.

But the idea that there's a special outlet we alone understand about Hobie, and connect with him through, they dislike that.

Anti-Blackness. It's everywhere.

YOINK!! I'M TAKING HOBIE BACK TO THE ANCESTORS. LETS GO.

[juneisafantasyaddict]

The writers of the SaB show seem to be pulling the exact same shit that lb did in the books. because there’s no way they think ignoring everything the grisha have been forced to endure, pretending that the darkling is the beginning and end of their issues and ravka’s, making sure alina never understands what she’s actually fighting for, etc is going to do anything except make me root for the darkling even more.

The entire second season gives me flashbacks to that insane trilogy because somehow they managed to be even worse than the books. they have alina telling the darkling that he doesn’t understand sacrifice?? really??? a man who has spent centuries of his life fighting for the betterment of his people doesn’t understand sacrifice?? the person who literally made protecting grisha his life goal doesn’t understand sacrifice??? does alina realize that the only reason she wasn’t killed the moment she was discovered was because of him?? because of the work he has done??

They had time for baghra to tell stories about her crazy family and how she killed her sister, but there was no time for her to say “this is what life was like before my son decided he was going to make it better for our kind?” if anything, they just pissed me off more because how the fuck is it possible that they are pretending the biggest issue they have is the darkling?? not the monarchy that has exploited grisha and ravka, not the fjerdans who hunt and kill grisha, not shu han who experiments on them??

Sigh, I can’t even write out my thoughts coherently because I’m so irritated by pretty much everything that happened this season. I’m irritated that instead of telling a complex story, we got this dumbed down garbage that tells us nothing, accomplishes nothing beyond “guy in black is bad.” the narrative condemns him for using merzost because he was so desperate to save his people, he tried forbidden magic, but 20 seconds later the hero is using that same forbidden power to bring her boyfriend back to life??? With zero repercussions?? I want to scream!!

If the narrative is so sure they are right, if they are so sure the darkling is wrong about everything, then why are they so afraid to expose the hero to the suffering of her people?? Let her see what they have to deal with, let her truly understand then. She has been a grisha for less than a year, and somehow she knows what’s best for them?? She doesn’t even know them. The show writers literally spent this season making her chase Mal around. Look what happened when they were going after the seawhip, two people died because she didn’t want to kill it, but they moment it went after Mal, suddenly killing it was ok. Her side of the war got attacked and instead of checking to make sure everyone was ok, including her friend’s brother who was literally about to lose his arm, she was screaming about Mal. You want to tell me about sacrifice?? She only cared about one person, and he was perfectly fine at the end. What does she know about sacrifice?? Why oh why is this fucking story just so determined to make her make all the worst possible decisions??

Incase you haven’t noticed, I haven’t talked about the crows at all, because I hate their presence in this story. They are a distraction!!! The grisha are fighting for their right to exist, Ravka is in the middle of a civil war, I do not have the time to follow the shenanigans of a group of criminals from a different country. I still don’t understand their purpose in this story, except comic relief?? 🤦🏽‍♀️

I love Alina, I really do, but jfc you cannot girl boss your way out of real solutions. They have her basically serving the monarchy and the whole time I kept thinking, if I were grisha, I wouldn’t follow her. She’s the leader of the second army but she’s wearing a first army uniform, she’s more interested in protecting the Lanstov throne than she is in protecting her people. She’s so blinded by everyone saying “the darkling is bad, the fold needs to go” she’s not stopping to say “what happens when the fold is gone?” “What happens after the war?” Because surely, she isn’t naive enough to think the people who started killing grisha as soon as they thought the darkling was gone are going to live peacefully with them now?? It took 2 seconds after the darkling died for Fjerda to send an assassin on jurda parem into ravka. Now that there’s no fold to stop them, what will stop Fjerda or Shu Han from sending an army?? Ignoring everything else the crows did, Kaz was right when he said “when they stop looking at her with gratitude, they’ll start to wonder if she hasn’t overstayed her welcome.” Which is basically what Aleksander kept saying btw, they are not going to love you for long, they are going to hate you eventually because they are afraid of what they don’t understand.

I don’t even know what the point of this was, but yeah, I guess it was a rant about how Fucking ridiculous season 2 of shadow and bone was.

[sexhaver]

i wanna prod at ur catholic confession post actually. like yes, murder and child rape is obviously bad and there is an inherent problem with how the catholic church shields abusers. but i think removing some of the restrictions of what a priest can or cannot say about a confession could cause some problems. like, for example, how a lot of priests considerer LGBT people to be child abusers/predatory! hypothetically if the cath church made it so preists could openly condemn confessions guilty of child abuse, and if the church considers identifying as LGBT as child abuse, then that could cause problems if someone confessed to IDing as gay/trans. or alternatively, what if someone confesses to killing a rapist/sexual abuser. a priest could use that confession to testify against them and get them imprisoned. is it ok to imprison people for murdering their abusers? idk, but i dont like the idea of the catholic church having that power having a blanket statement that priests cant mention ANY confessions makes it *slightly* more immune to corruption IMO. obviously i dont think this solution is perfect, but my alternative would be to dissolve the catholic church entirely, and i dont think thats happening anytime soon.

well as you point out there isn't really a good solution to this, and that is because the idea of confession is inherently dumb as fuck. everything the catholic church considers a sin falls into one of three categories:

failing to be pious enough (forgetting to pray, missing church, taking the Lord's name in vain). keeping these secret is fine because they aren't, like, actual crimes, and in small + devout enough communities there are definitely priests who would gossip about to their neighbors if not for the confessional seal.

really cool and good activities that are only an issue if you were raised to believe that they would send you to eternal neverending torture after death (jacking off, being gay, having premarital sex, getting/considering an abortion). these should obviously be kept secret because they're embarrassing and potentially dangerous. however, this is kind of a moot point, because any decent person (priest or otherwise) would understand this without needing a confessional seal making it official. so these need the seal to stop the average priest from tattling to a kid's parents when they confide in them.

actual literal crimes with prison sentences and everything (rape, murder, manslaughter, assault). you should not be telling anyone about these if you can help it. what the fuck guys. this isn't even an ethics thing, this is a "don't be fucking stupid" thing. if you murdered your abuser and got away with it, good for you! now shut the fuck up about it because murder is still illegal. is the guilt eating you alive so badly that you need absolution from God about it (cringe)? do what Protestants figured out centuries ago and cut the middleman out of the equation by talking to the J.C. directly via personal prayer! yes i am aware this is heretical. if you care about heresy more than getting caught you are stupid.

so looking at the three points above, the best argument in favor of confessional seal that i can formulate is "sure, it allows murderers and abusers to literally have their actions condoned by God with the explicit guarantee of never being held legally accountable or even changing their behavior (just say a few Hail Maries), but think about the consequences of removing it! priests would be even MORE bigoted than they already are! some of them might even GOSSIP!" like hm, okay, i hear you, you make some excellent points, i think we should nuke the Vatican