#I've put so much of myself into some of these characters and yet people keep requesting them so I must be doing something right

[cerise-on-top]

Hugging, Kissing and Cuddling HCs for König

I'm trying to see him in another light again after everything I've seen about him, so I decided I'd write something fluffy and nice for him. And then came the realization I never wrote some HCs like these for him in my original posts, so I decided I'd change that! He's Austrian, so naturally I have to love him!

When it comes to hugging someone, König is a bit hesitant. Considering he’s not the most physically affectionate person out there, it’s almost an honor to be receiving an unprompted hug from him. Whether his hugs are long or short depends on the occasion: If he’s proud of you for accomplishing something, then the hug will be rather short lived. Though, he might pick you up and spin you around until you’re dizzy. If you’re sad and need some comfort then his hugs could last a while. He’s not the best with words, he prefers to listen to other people, but if he knows a hug is what usually helps you then he’s willing to do so. Despite being a big and strong lad his hugs are surprisingly gentle, he’s worried about crushing you. He could put his all into them, but then you’d likely end up with a few broken ribs and he doesn’t want that to happen. König is also surprisingly warm, so receiving a hug from him is a rare, but nice experience. Although he does go rigid at the beginning, not knowing what to do, but relaxes into the hug eventually.

Again, he’s not a very physically affectionate person, but isn’t opposed to the occasional peck on the cheek or on your lips either. There is some anxiety whether you’d actually want a kiss from him or not, so he doesn’t kiss you very often, even if you do reassure him that it’s quite alright. He’s a bit tense at first when he presses a kiss to your lips, but calms down eventually. It’s especially bad during the beginning of your relationship, but he’s since gotten better at being calm about it. Since there’s a good chance he’s taller than you he loves giving you a kiss on the forehead. It’s a small but sweet gesture. He doesn’t need to bend down entirely to reach you but he still gets to be affectionate with you. However, if you’re on the taller side, or just as tall as he is, then he’d love to receive kisses to his temple from you. It makes him smile every time you do it. If he’s in the mood for receiving a kiss then he’ll lay his head on your shoulder and nudge you a bit. Or try to get his head in your closer vicinity. Kind of like that one bunny video where the bunny stretches to receive some kisses.

Cuddles with him are a bit more common than hugs actually. However, he refuses to lay down on top of you. If you’re shorter and weaker than him then there’s no chance he’ll put his weight on you, he’s just that afraid of hurting you. If you’re taller or just more muscular, then he might, but he’s still a rather heavy lad. Most he’ll do is put his head on your shoulder while you’re cuddling in bed and are both lying down. Although it’d be a lie to say he doesn’t want to be held. König is alright with being the one to hold you, but sometimes he would prefer to be the little spoon as well. That urge gets especially bad if you’re roughly the same size as him. Sometimes just nuzzling into your chest does the trick for him as well, though. Loves it when you run your fingers through his hair as he does so. Another thing he adores is you sleeping on his chest as he holds you. He gets to hold you close, he gets to protect you and he gets to doze off a bit himself, it’s bliss to him. Sometimes he leans down to press a kiss to your head and accidentally wakes you up like that. He feels bad about it and apologizes profusely, but does chuckle a bit when he sees your disheveled hair and your tired expression that shows you just woke up.

#cod #cod x reader #konig #könig #konig x reader #könig x reader #he actually kind of scares me these days even if I don't want that to happen in the slightest so I'm trying to desensitize myself again #I know people always joke about fanon könig vs canon könig but I think I will write him a bit softer with his s/o again #just to combat all those awful things I've seen about him that I don't want to be true and that I also want to forget about #könig is a big lad so I knew from the beginning I wanted him to be good at hugging because this is self indulgent #I feel like if it weren't for his anxiety he'd be much much cuddlier #because that's the case with me even if I have other things going on as well #and what is a funny character you write about if not another piece of yourself? #I've put so much of myself into some of these characters and yet people keep requesting them so I must be doing something right #it's more fun that way as well when you put your characters through something you've gone through. more relatable too #but I think that's something pretty much every writer does. that's why some requests are so difficult to write #I got one about marrying Laswell and Nikolai and that was a difficult request for me because the last wedding I went to #was my parents' and that was almost 18 years ago. man time flies I was 4 years old back then #so naturally I don't remember much either. But I tried and that's what's important! #either way please enjoy this piece of fluff I wrote today!

[cinnamon-phrog]

Sorry for clogging all of your dashboards I've been in a good mood bc!!! I got awesome news today!

REUNITED!!!!!!

#HE'S BACK! re-ordered a yellow and completely forgot! #also uh. yesterday i talked about taking a year to myself what if i did that NOW #there are a lot of things i want to do and solve for myself #i've had no time to actually take care of myself. i've been TREATING myself but that's done nothing but make me crave more #but actually sorting my stuff out. internal external what have you. THAT has helped me a lot #college has been a bad experience overall and i put it down to me just not being ready for it. too much change in only a few months. #it made me jaded and i'd like some whimsy thank you very much. only if i try though #🎨🌻 #🦆📋 #🍝👄 #🚦🏠 #i've seen people become jaded bc of their traumas and it's saddening. and i need to learn that maybe not everyone needs fixing no matter- #my intentions and sometimes i DO go overboard and come off brash. when in reality i'd hate that to happen and only wish people the best #i learn things everyday and i'm still so young. not even 17 yet. i still have time for improvement in myself #i will ALWAYS apologise. ALWAYS extend kindness. ALWAYS admit fault bc that's just all i can do. #so anyway OUPPETS!!!!! I wanna keep them safe i'm thinking of making a box dedicated to little trinkets of Them. #i've been sheltered and Her lessons are still ingrained on me and i'm slowly [but surely!] unlearning them and not using Her as an excuse- #for laziness or my ability to talk to people and guessing everybody wishes me the worst when really they have other things on their mind. #college smollege i am not a character stuck in a narrative! i am nbot the narrative! i am me! and i say my lessons lie outside of there.

[hollowtones]

first yiik impressions?

Hi. Thanks for your message. I've been thinking about this for days. I wrote paragraphs. Here you go!

Everyone talks up how the game is bad, but I've never looked into it much myself, so I went in with an expectation along the lines of "people whose opinions I often agree with think it was an awful mess, I'll likely think something similar". Expectations were low. Even then I wasn't really ready.

"YIIK" is a game of tedium. I don't think it's a game about tedium, that's something different (though it could be, if it was a different video game altogether; "what if the world was made of pudding" etc). To some degree I think the tedium is by design but I'm not really sure what it's in service of.

I don't think tedium in a video game is a bad thing. "Morrowind" and "Breath of the Wild" are two video games I like very much, and some of my favourite memories of those games are of slowly wandering through empty expanses, or having to suddenly deal with equipment degrading or supplies dwindling because I forgot to prepare. Moments like that feel thoughtful! They're interesting moments of reprieve or of tension that feel thoughtfully and intentionally designed! "YIIK" feels like trudging through chest-deep molasses so it can shout "hey did you know you're stuck in my molasses right now? that's weird, why are you stuck in my molasses right now? did you notice?" directly into your ear.

You'll notice this is a pattern.

Combat is turn-based and involves completing little minigames, timing button prompts or hitting targets or some such. It's a cute idea that wears out its welcome when you start realizing how long every single one takes to resolve, especially when you have multiple party members, and sometimes multiple enemies (I'm told this part specifically gets more egregious as the game goes on). I don't think it's awful or unsalvageable but I'm not super into it as of the point we're at.

This is a pattern.

Leveling up is a manual process that you have to unlock, and it involves going to a save point (any save point? we didn't check), to enter the Mind Dungeon, to enter the actual Mind Dungeon, to walk down a set of stairs and enter individual doors one-by-one, so that you can choose how you want to allocate stat increases, so that you can walk down a different set of stairs to commit your choices and spend your banked experience to level up. I think "you can only power up at specific points / times / locations" and the granularity of stat growth are interesting ideas, and the environment they made for it are a charming idea, and I don't think it needed to be a "Hotel Mario" level that you had to slowly walk through. It could have been a menu. They could have used the resources for a nice background or backdrop for a menu that accomplishes the same thing.

This is a pattern.

I haven't really mentioned anything about the story or writing yet. The protagonist's name is Alex and he's a very self-important nerdy misanthropic dickhead white man (a very specific kind of guy that I've definitely met at least once or twice) who is obsessed with a paranormal message board populated by people like him and desperate to find out more about the disappearance of a woman he witnessed. (The woman & her disappearance are based on the real life death of Elisa Lam & aren't handled with a whole lot of tact, IMO, but other people have put this into better words than I can right now. It sucks. It keeps coming up and it makes me bristle every time.) Alex is a bad person. I know he is. You know he is. The game knows he is. I've seen some reviews say a negative point of the game is "the main characters aren't likeable", which I don't really get, because that's the point of the characters, as far as I can tell. The issue, then, is how much time the game takes to exposit at you how bad the characters are. It's exhausting. Every time Alex has a monologue, it feels like it sums up to 10 minutes of "I am a bad person. I am a bad person. Alex is a bad person. This character is a bad person. Do you get it? He's a bad person. Alex is a bad person. Do you understand yet, player? Alex is a bad person. You should know that he's a bad person. Do you get it?"

This is a pattern.

(I don't know how interested I am in bringing up the game's lead writer right now, if at all, but there's a well-known anecdote where he talks about wanting to write a story about a bad person who is forced to grapple with himself and do better, and how the reason why his game wasn't well-received was because people who play video games didn't get it & weren't ready for a story like that. I dunno. I can understand being upset about negative reception to something you poured time and sweat into, and saying something hasty because of it. "Final Fantasy 4" is a beloved RPG classic, though, and "Disco Elysium" came out the same year to overwhelming praise. I haven't played either of these yet, though, so I'll admit maybe I'm off the mark here.)

The characters we've met so far (i.e. the ones that aren't unnamed NPCs) are… well. There's a smarmy younger kid who idolizes(?) Alex & also made the aforementioned paranormal website. So far it seems like he mostly exists to go "hey fuck you Alex, you dickhead" and immediately say something even more insensitive. There's the insensitive based-on-a-real=ass-dead-woman elevator woman, who immediately disappeared from the narrative while still being an essential part of the narrative. There was a dead(?) robot in a bedroom, who had a choir of ominous hooded people monologue about how weird and sad and strange and uncanny the scene is. What the!? There's a woman who works at the arcade and has Powers. Her design's cute. (I feel like, generally, the game's visuals are Fine. The audio, too. That all ranges from Just Fine to Surprisingly Neat. I don't really have much issue with those aspects of the game, but I don't have much to say about them either.) Alex and Kid Whose Name I Didn't Care To Remember are constantly very uncomfortable to her, because she's a woman and because she isn't white, in the 15 or so minutes we've seen her on-screen, and she gets to tell them off, but then immediately kind of goes "well whatever I can smile and put up with this and hang out with you". It feels misogynistic. I know to some degree Alex is misogynistic on purpose, because the game is bludgeoning your skull in and yelling "ALEX IS SHITTY TO WOMEN! AND PEOPLE OF COLOUR! DO YOU GET IT? HE'S SELF ABSORBED IN A SHITTY WAY! DO YOU GET IT, PLAYER? YOU UNDERSTAND THAT ALEX SUCKS ASS YET? MAYBE 10 MORE MINUTES OF THIS WILL MAKE IT CLICK?" But for a woman of colour (the only one we've seen so far who isn't Probably Just Dead) to finally tell him off for being a shithead, only to turn around and go "well it's ok, you're cool now, let's hang out now because it's narratively convenient and you're the protagonist" is pretty damn egregious!

This is a pattern.

Writing in general feels stilted and long-winded. Most of the main characters feel like they don't talk like people do. Alex gets to feel like a person but that's mostly because he gets to talk to himself so damn much. Most of his monologues feel like overly flowery prose, like someone padded it out with identical adjectives to meet a school essay word count. There's an interesting idea or premise or setpiece every now and then. There's a spark. A glint of something compelling. Every single time this has happened so far I find it immediately snuffed out by an over-blown "oh my god!!!!!!! how weird!!!!!!', or a very long plot dump, or a Joss Whedon-ass quip. There can be no small moment of joy. No story element or visual element can stand on its own legs. There can be no room for ideas to breathe. No space for the player to wonder, to dream, to play in the space. The narrative is compelled to suffocate iself on itself, to take up all space, to swallow itself whole in its making. One very minor (so far?) side character has some interesting dialogue in this one dream world, and I think "oh that's neat", and then I learn they're lines taken wholesale from a book (and I think that's fine, reference is fine, but I have a bit of a chuckle over the fact that this character is the reason why the game has a giant REFERENCES option in the main menu). The literal first minute of the game is a bird telling you "oh my god, the title of this game, right? why'd they spell it like that? so fucking dumb, am I right!" It feels insecure. It reads like the writing has no confidence in itself. It has to make a comment about how silly and video-gamey it is, roll its eyes at itself, mock itself for the thing it's doing while continuing to do it without addressing it or discussing it or doing anything with it.

This is a pattern.

There's a specific part of "YIIK", at this early point in the game (we're only around the start[?] of chapter 2), that feels emblematic of the thing as a whole up to this point. Alex is getting phone calls from a stranger. They're confusing and weird and sound a little like something you might hear in a dream. They make references to some shared past, some childhood, some understanding of Alex, or maybe of you, the player. They've come up a few times. Every single time, I'm left thinking about what it could mean, how it fits in with everything we've seen so far & what the game seems to be talking about, with regards to connecting to other people and to yourself. It's a neat little thing. It's a neat idea. I'm charmed by it. As much as my thoughts on this game are largely negative, I still try to look at it fairly, to understand it, to talk about it, to let myself be surprised by it. As soon as I find myself thinking about this, my thoughts are immediately drowned out by Alex telling me how weird the phone call is, how random and uncanny and dumb this is, and how he's rolling his proverbial eyes about it, in spite of all the other paranormal happenings around him, for another period of Just Too Long. And I am sapped of all strength and I crumble to dust.

I'm genuinely transfixed. I'm transfixed! Maybe the fact that I wrote Paragraphs about the 4-or-5 hours I've seen of the game can tell you as much, even if you skip everything I wrote in them.

I can't wait to see more.

This, too, is a pattern.

[u3pxx]

WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S 2024?!?!

next, you're gonna tell me it's gonna be some made-up year like "2025" next. tch, imagine that.

anyways, whoo! 2023! compared to both 2022 and 2021, i gotta say, my art style took a hard swerve in some direction this year. i mean, look at that klavier from january and that butch kim from just this december! (granted, i heavily referenced the portrait of butch kim but still, i didn't use to paint! mama mia!)

---

the way i drew faces has definitely changed, that's what i get for getting into something that's live-action and into smth that has realistically proportioned art lol

OH! OH! HOW COULD I FORGET!!! IT WAS (and still will be) THE YEAR OF THE OLD MAN!! i really learned how to draw aged faces this year! ach fraulein, i have not stopped drawing people in their 40's-50's! i would say "send help" but i'm actually having a lot of fun ASKSKS

---

i think a funny thing about these art summaries i've done is that they're mostly ace attorney but then there's just a month where i become a different type of ill LMAO this year it was four months for the price of two new interests!

cheers! here's to 2024!!! hope y'all have a fun art year!!!!

---

i'm gonna ramble more below about like, other art things i did this year but i'm gonna put it under 'keep reading' bc this baby is getting way too wordy now WHEEZES

1. FAVORITE THINGS I'VE DRAWN THIS YEAR (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER)

⚖️ mea culpa comic [x]

drawing this one was so time-consuming and ambitious but boy, do i love the end result! i had fun doing the inks for this one but was it a lot! i usually color in lineart and render everything but i had to stop myself from doing it for this one bc man, i'll die asksks

this also has some of my favorite apollos i've drawn, definitely

also! the part about the lineart not being colored and no rendering ended up being a deliberate stylistic choice for this one bc i had like more freedom to do just shadows with inks without it looking too out of place.

💐 my lawfully wedded zine spread [x]

now this one isn't out yet but take my word for when i say that this is one of the most craxy things i've ever drawn for this year, on account of drawing a comic AND group shot all in one!

also literally one of the prettiest things i've rendered this year, lookit that klav...

🎉 aa4 redraw - 2022 anniversary [x]

kind of like my wedding zine piece, group photos are insane, and rendering like uhhh [looks at drawing] 11 CHARACTERS IS ALSO INSANE if i try and draw a group photo again you have to stop me DFGHDJ

🎨 my art fight stuff [x] [x]

was possessed in the month of july or smth bc i pumped out like how many drawings so quickly (before i got burnt out that is pftt)

pace yourselves and don't be like me pls ajshgdghhjk

💥 people park day [x]

my friend told me that it was very obvious i watched across the spiderverse when they saw this FDFGHJD

but yea! this is when i started getting really into like, thought bubbles or just like, panels or drawings within a drawing when coming up with layouts

i still love the colors on this one...

🪩 fem disco portraits

ok so i haven't uploaded these yet but you have to trust me when i say that something was in the water DFGHDJ

who knew that all it took for me to learn how to paint was butches

2. ALSO DID YOU KNOW THAT I SOLD STICKERS THIS YEAR IN OUR UNI'S ART MART?

THE ONLY GOOD THING ABOUT THAT SCHOOL I SWEAR PFTTT this experience has also awaken the merch beast in me and i need to make more physical things for my brain to be happy, that's just how it be pfttt

hopefully next year i can actually start like a shopee shop or whatever lmao

3. ART FIGHT

i'm actually quite happy i got to participate in art fight this year! very delighted for all the art i've gotten and very fun to have drawn for others too!!

4. ZINES

i got invited and joined so many zines from 2022 continuing to 2023 that i kind of got burnt out from participating for now ngl ASKSKSKS not gonna be joining much this year oopsiessss! (unless i lose self-control [very likely])

5. SCHOOL

i don't actually like a lot of the stuff i draw for art school bc i tend to cram and not have fun pftt <- adhd moment, tragic! but here are some that i actually kind of like lol

6. THAT'S IT!

i think that's it! thanks for reading all the way down here!! o(*￣▽￣*)ブ

#art summary #art summary 2023 #sunnysidedraws #sunnysiderambles

[phantomonabudget]

We need to talk, Pham. Stop shaming Christine Daaé.

I have seen this behavior consistently for the 30+ years I have been a Phan. What's worse is that I see A LOT of it from grown women. I see posts calling her foolish for leaving Erik. Slut shaming her or calling her a gold digger. Calling her stupid, weak, or unworthy because a "real woman" (presumably the women posting these absurd notions 🙄) would have loved him better and been worthy of his awesome talent and capacity for love. 😳🤮

It's disturbing, disheartening, and disgusting. And it needs to stop.

First off, none of these characters are real, so perhaps let's take things a little less seriously in general. It's a fictional story. I get it: we all love it, and probably love the Phantom's character. That's fine....I've made a 20+ year career dressing as the dude, for crying out loud. 🤣 Maybe we all identify with Erik/The Phantom to some degree. Regardless of the version of the story, if the actors or authors do their job well, we *should* feel pity and compassion for him. But feeling compassion and completely ignoring the character's dangerous and abusive behavior are two very different things. It has the potential for some severe consequences in the real world.

By shaming Christine for leaving Erik at the end, you are potentially telling young people that staying in abusive relationships is the right thing. You make them think that if their significant other is talented, misunderstood, been abused themselves etc, then they should stay and love them into a healthy relationship. That if they just love their abusive SO harder, sacrifice themselves a little more or for a little longer, or keep putting that person's needs above their own, that the relationship will suddenly become this wonderful, euphoric experience. It won't. As a survivor of longtime abusive myself, I can tell you from experience: it doesn't happen that way.

Celebrate healthy relationships and enforcing healthy boundaries. Stop shaming Christine for fighting for and winning her life and saving the man she loves.

And please stop calling this a romance. It's the antithesis of romance.

I am sick of members of this Phandom completely ignoring Erik/The Phantom's behavior to justify their blind adoration. Erik is an abusive and dangerous character, and extremely toxic. He lies to and manipulates Christine using her trauma from her deceased father. He kidnaps her, multiple times. Threatens her and her colleagues. He extorts hundreds of thousands from the business managers. He endangers dozens of people with the chandelier crash, and effectively holds hundreds hostage for months or years at a time with his reign of terror at the Opera.

Then there are the murders. Several of them. Probably been at that for awhile so we can assume it's far more than the two we see in the show. We don't know his actual body count, but we do know he's adept and comfortable taking human life.

And yet, I see some mature phans out here completely ignoring all those things and still shaming Christine for leaving him. Why? Because he's "sexy" (author's note: PLEASE go re-read Leroux. Please). And he's talented. And has so much love to give. And is misunderstood. And society was terrible to him...so it's all fine. 😳🤮 She should have just stayed and loved him like he deserves to be loved. 🙄

Recently I saw a post shaming Christine and the justification was that Raoul was so much worse. He isn't. Is he a perfect character? No, not at all. Does he make mistakes and try to use Christine? In some versions, yes. Does he run around extorting, manipulating, threatening, and killing others? Also no.

Pleasw don't ever use LND!Raoul's character assassination as some kind of justification, because he's still the most sane, normal human being in that show, and Erik is still 1,000 times worse than Raoul in LND. Also, using LND as justification for anything makes for a very weak and uninformed argument.

"Hurt people hurt people." Ever heard that phrase? Abused people sometimes abuse others, especially if they haven't done the work to heal themselves. Their previous abuse does NOT entitle them to abuse others. That is always a deliberate choice and those choices have consequences. The dangerous, disgusting rhetoric I see in the Phantom community basically excuses toxic behavior because Erik was previously abused and nothing is his fault. That is simply not true. Those that abused me were previously abused. Didn't make my abuse hurt any less. And I made the choice to do the work so that the abuse stopped with me. Previous trauma is a reason for the behavior, but it is NEVER, ever an excuse.

And don't let the fact the dude can sing or that he's a snappy dresser blind you to his toxicity.

We can all enjoy the Phantom character's complexity and love him, while still acknowledging his flaws and holding him accountable for his deeply inappropriate choices.

We talk a lot more these days about trauma, toxicity, and self care. And yet, as a community, we still shame the character of Christine Daaé for doing the healthy, correct thing. The ONLY thing. And in doing so, we set a disturbing precedent for our young or vulnerable Phans who now might think that staying in toxic relationships in the real world is okay.

Please do better, Phandom.

#phantom of the opera #poto #christine daae #raoul de chagny #the phantom #erik #gaston leroux #andrew lloyd webber #the phantom of the opera #toxicity #phandom #phantom phans #fandom

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo Devlog #9 | 02.29.24

What is this?! Two devlogs in one month?! More likely than you think! This February has been very productive for me and the team, so let's dive right into it!

Ooooh boy, Raquel keeps knocking it out of the park! She managed to get done every expression for every LI, and I coded them all! Now we have our wonderful characters ready for their debut. We have been using the wonderful Image Tools for Ren'py made by the talented and hard-working Feniks, whose tutorials and resources save a lot of dev's lives every day! This tool has made everything a bit easier for newbies like me, hehe.

Here's a taste of our edgelord's expressions! 💜 They're kind of a cutie when they put some effort into it!

We also had our second valentine's day celebration art piece thanks to Kayden! Sadly with the reworked version of the demo, you won't meet Vycar yet, so we thought we could ask for his forgiveness by giving him a beautiful bouquet and reminding him how much of a sweetheart he is! 💜

Also, Raeya got a hair update!

So, we weren't completely satisfied with the way we portrayed Raeya's hair, so this has been a rework we were sure we wanted to make. At first we were just going to render it again, but we ended up working on it from scratch to better represent what we envisioned for her. We hope you like it as much as we do! ; v ;💜

As always, we are open to any critique or advice; we are white people who have the luck to be able to ask POC friends for their advice as we work, but the more the merrier! Don't hesitate to send us your opinion to our ask box or even our email, [email protected]!

When it comes to the background department, we have been making great progress thanks to Airyn, who is honestly leaving us with our mouths hanging open every time! Thanks to her, another background has been finished and another one is in the making, leaving only two backgrounds to be revised and approved!

I personally can't stop looking at this WIP! She understood perfectly what we wanted to portray just by looking at an old WIP we had, and this is what we have so far—and it's already amazing!

Allie has been OBLITERATING the script. As of today, I think we have almost gone through everything that needed to be corrected and discussing, and lord if the script doesn't look a 100% better after we put it in Allie's hands. The way she writes, the way she understands everything I want to say even when sometimes I don't even know myself—what a talented, inspiring and amazing writer they are. I know I may sound annoying at this point singing her praises endlessly, but if the script is in the state where it is now, it's thanks to her!

My programming adventure of the month has been a success, if I say so myself! I've coded the characters with aaaaall their layers, their expressions, the blinking animations, made some videos, and started coding the script. Step by step as they say; I've coded 18 pages, and there's, uh...142 more to go. Haha! *sobs*

BUT WE ARE GETTING THERE! We can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I can finally click 'new game' and read the script and see the stuff going on! YAY!

Some extras of the month—we are preparing a Casting Call to choose the voice acting talent that will hopefully give voice to our characters. The demo won't be fully voiced (it's impossible with the funds we have, which are...zero), but if we are lucky we'll use some of our personal savings to pay for at least a few lines for each character so you can get an idea of how they'll sound if we get funded! Raquel is preparing an art piece for the announcement, and I'm getting the document ready and asking fellow VA friends for advice :3.

Also, we have a new member here at Ravenstar Games! Some weeks ago Astro and I formally adopted our first kitty, 8 month old Riki, fulfilling one of our dreams. We got him from a feline association that works with volunteers and fosters cats who have been abandoned, cats they find on the street, and so on. Riki has been living with me since January, and he's a happy, long big boy who loves playing, cuddles, and sitting on my desk while I try to work!

Say hi to the Ravenstar family, Riki! 💜

A productive month full of accomplished milestones, excitement and new challenges! The team has worked so hard, and I've done my part too! We still don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but we have done a lot of stuff we were sure we wouldn't finish yet, and look at that! We are doing so well!

As you can probably tell, my batteries are starting to run low, so I'm going to leave this devlog here. Thank you all like always for cheering us on, for being here in this journey with us, and for all the love you send our way. Let's hope March is as amazing as February has been, for us and for all of you! 💜

#lost in limbo #visual novel #otome #indiedev #devlog

[galedekarios]

Hey! You're my go-to blog when it comes to Gale. I love your meta about him, your insight and your knowledge of his character. This being said, I'd like to know your opinion of this line in his romance:

“To know you love me for the man I am, and not the magic I command... None have loved me so purely before.”

Do you think he's talking about romantic love here? Because his mother and Tara clearly love him for the person he is, too. Or are his insecurities and the idea of himself so strong that he can't see this? Thank you in advance, have a great evening!

thank you so much! 🖤

personally, i do think that he does mean this in a romantic context.

HOWEVER, having said that, i do think there are different insecurities woven into his perception of relationships that venture outside of his worth due to magic, and into his worth as a person who is in need of help and support - yet considering the core of why that is, they are also connected.

what i mean by that is that there are moments in particular that make me believe he feels a burden to people, because he is in need of help and - from his perception - makes others 'work' to help him, he asks a "sacrifice" of people (needing magical artefact so he consume the weave inside to stabilise the netherese orb) that is so great in his eyes that he feels the need to convince them that said sacrifice is worth the "investment".

i realise this is sort of going in two directions, but i don't think i can answer this differently so i hope you'll bear with me for a bit:

i'll try to look at the relationships you mentioned in your ask separately to illustrate what exactly i mean.

1. from what little we do know about morena, nearly every time she is mentioned it's made clear that she truly and unequivocally loves gale, and i do believe gale is aware that she loves him, too - and really, truly just for him.

we have these two convos with tara that highlight how that love (both are from gale's origin playthrough):

Tara the Tressym: Well, if it isn't my favourite fellow himself. Gale: How are things back in Waterdeep? Tara the Tressym: More or less the same - though news of some mad faction calling themselves 'Absolutists' is starting to trickle in. Tara the Tressym: I told your mother not to worry. That if they were anything to worry about, Baldur's Gate would handle things quick-sharp. Keep them from spreading their tendrils north. She still wants to know when she'll see you again, sir. I avoid giving any answers. But she misses you. Gale: I miss her too. Tara the Tressym: I'll tell her. With my Cat Flap of Displacement, I can afford the occasional visit. I'd bring you along, if I could. Perhaps some day. - Gale: I can't risk putting her in danger. Tara the Tressym: I know that, but she doesn't. She'd keel over if she knew just how you'd tried to manipulate the Weave. Or maybe she'd just say something like, 'My Gale always was one to make the impossible possible.' Oh, but she adores you.

and this one from act ii:

Gale: Will you love me when I'm a mind flayer? Tara the Tressym: Depends. Are mind flayers warm-blooded? If so, my prize napping spot on your lap won't be compromised. In which case, I suppose we could find an accord. And, of course, your mother would still think you a prince, no matter how many tentacles you had. And with a nautiloid, you may even manage to visit her more often.

from the one tiny snippet (that is still bugged) in which gale mentions his mother to the player character, he seems quite assured in that love his mother has for him as well:

Player: So your last name is Dekarios? Gale: It is. Courtesy of my mother, the inimitable, dare I say it sometimes unavoidable, Morena Dekarios. It's been so long since I've used it. 'Gale Dekarios' cut a poor figure next to the wizard prowess of 'Gale of Waterdeep'. [...] - Player: Doesn't your matter mind? Gale: Oh, she's happy if I'm happy. Morena couldn't care one jot what I call myself. Tara's the real stickler for using it. Has done since I summoned her. I'd prefer you not follow her exmaple, if that's all the same to you. 'Gale' is more than sufficient.

she's happy if he's happy.

i think the only thing that detrimental to the relationship with his mother is the orb, the shame he feels over what has happened and fearing he may put her in danger. which, sadly, is a valid concern to have. these fears aren't only echoed in the conversations with tara. we have this bit from the same conversation as well:

Player: You’re right. Just 'Gale’ is better. Gale: I agree. And on the plus side, if I get myself into any truly cataclysmic straits during the remainder of our journey, my family name will go untarnished.

his family name will go untarnished and with that, his mother's name.

this is more speculative, but in another meta i mentioned that i do believe that gale's father left the family at some point, abandoning morena and gale. his father also is not mentioned in the letter from elminster in god!gale's ending:

this could of course be meaningless and his father simply may not have been there at this point in time, but i think this overall goes with the theme of an absent father and it may have brought gale and morena even closer.

2. tara herself doesn't let gale doubt her love him when the game allows her to be there.

she is extremely quick to try and beat any and all self-deprecating remarks gale may make. she is aghast at mystra's demands to the point of saying that she is considering picking up a crossbow to "put the gods" out of "our business." she's always been there for him, and she always will be. she's his longest friend and companion, as well as colleague.

i've picked a another example here to illustrate what i mean:

this very sadly appears to be cut content (tara was supposed to be there for a companion gale as well), but:

Gale: You seem to have fared well enough without me, Tara. You look positively prosperous. Gale: Or should I say, positively proser-puss! Ha! Tara the Tressym: No, you should not say that ever again. Gale: Apologies! Couldn't help myself. Tara the Tressym: True enough. That's why I came looking - to help, if I could. Gale: I have not failed to notice. I truly do not deserve such loyal companionship. Tara the Tressym: Yes, you do.

unfortunately, like i said, tara as gale's familiar and companion was cut from the final version of the game, so while we do know that gale is aware of all that tara has done for him (considering the conversation from the tiefling party, helping him through his isolation, finding out what his condition needs to be treated, getting magical artefacts for him, etc.), we have act iii companion gale saying this:

Gale: Tara remains as wilfull as ever, but I'm glad you've finally made her acquaintance. Given the length of my time away, I feared she might have given up on me. I should have known better - she'd never do such a thing.

while this is not gale thinking tara doesn't love him for who he is, it is very much gale thinking that tara may have given up on him because of their time apart.

there are definitely insecurities lurking there in the vein of "i cost her so much effort and so much work, so maybe now that i've been away for so long, she's finally had enough."

it's very sad to see.

3. when gale talks about previous lovers he has this to say:

Player: Gale, am I the first... mortal being you've been with? Gale: What a question... Gale: No, you are not the first. Though you are the first since my relationship with Mystra came to its ignominous end. Gale: When the true danger posed by my condition became apparent, I had no choice but to sequester myself away from civilised society. A reclusive wizard - who'd have thought? Gale: After so long with Mystra, I have to say the pleasures of mortal love are much sweeter than I remember. Though perhaps that's simply because it's with you.

this tells us that he must have had at least one lover before. yet, and that is where the quote in your ask is from, he also says this:

Player: What does our relationship mean to you? Gale: You must know, our relationship is the brightest spot in our otherwise bleak endeavour. Gale: To know you love me for the man I am, and not the magic I command... None have loved me so purely before. Gale: You are everything to me, and yet our relationship is only a nascent fraction of what it will become. You give me hope, and I've not had that in some time.

i think we can extrapolate from that that not only his relationship with mystra made him feel these insecurities, but that the relationships he had previous may have also fed into this perception of his worth as a romantic partner is tied to his magical abilities.

it's not hard to imagine: waterdeep is very much a city of intrigue. gale was not only a graduate of blackstaff academy, but a powerful archwizard and a chosen of mystra.

4. lastly, i want to talk a bit more about what i said in the beginning and when i talked about tara and companion!gale: that gale feels he is a burden / an investment.

it's already reflected a bit in the way that he believes his relationship with tara has deteriorated in act iii simply because of the distance between them now that he has been away from waterdeep for a prolonged amount of time.

the first time you can get a sense for this aspect of gale is when you agree right away to help him with his condition. there's a prolonged amount of silence and it's clear on his face that he didn't expect you to agree so quickly and without needing to be persuaded.

Gale: Thank you. I see my trust in you was not misplaced! Gale: I'm sure we won't have to look very far to find what I need: Faerûn overflows with magic-infused treasure. Gale: As do our packs, as a matter of fact. We've such an item already in our possession, primed for the moment the need arises. Gale: I know the allure magic artefacts hold. I understand their value and their power. All this to say: I understand the sacrifice I ask of you.

Player: No. If you aren't willing to tell me the truth, I'm not helping you. Gale: I understand that I'm asking for a lot, but I can't tell you everything.

he makes sure to thank the player deeply every time they do give him an artefact, bowing to them, citing their "boundless kindness" and it's also why he is also quick to reassure them that there will be an upside for them, making this "sacrifice" for his sake.

gale's power and knowledge and skills as a wizard.

he is useful and he can make himself useful.

your "investment" in him now will be "worth" the return later.

in conclusion, i hope now it's clearer why i felt like i had to bring these two things together. i believe they are clearly interwoven with each other.

also sorry for rambling! this got away from me a bit. 🖤

#gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #ch: gale dekarios #vg: baldur's gate 3 #series: baldur's gate #meta: mybg3 #text: asks #long post for ts

[magidoggie]

A LOOK INTO SHI/HIR PRONOUNS AND THEIR ORIGINS

So I’ve seen people claim that shi/hir pronouns are intersex exclusive (mostly intersex people), and others say they aren’t (mostly non-intersex people)

As an intersex person, I've been confused about this for a while, so I decided to look into it

THIS POST WILL CONTAIN NSFW TOPICS, FURRIES, TALKS OF FETISHIZATION OF INTERSEX BODIES, AND INTERSEX SLURS!

Most of the users of these pronouns seem to be non-intersex people, but there are also intersex people who use them.

I've seen a decent amount of intersex people say that shi/hir pronouns are only ours to use, as they were used against us (like a shortened version of he-she). This would make them basically slurs that only we can reclaim.

I've even seen some claims that Geoffrey Chaucer himself coined these words?? (The chaucer thing, I haven't been able to find a source for. Even so, it is most likely just an old spelling of "she/her")

I’ve seen people say it originated on 4chan. It'd be hard to verify, as 4chan is known for not keeping threads up for long. There are 4chan archives, but I've tried my hardest to look for any combinations of things like "shi" and different terms that could work with it like "intersex" "freak" or "hermaphrodite" . I don't doubt it's been used on 4chan, but I can't find much, and archival sites don't go back far enough.

Regardless, the pronouns seem quite old. One thing I did find under the search of ""4chan" shi hir" on Google, was a.. descriptive post on a furry porn website called e621.net

Okay, 13 years ago, that's a start. It certainly contains the word "herm" (short for hermaphrodite), and the word intersex used with this pronoun.

Godspeed TheShadowfox42 I hope you found the image.

Using Google's "Before:(date)" feature, I searched "shi herm before:2010", and unsurprisingly, I found a lot of furry porn.

Stories on sofurry.com, a furry website that looks to be from at least 2007, if not older. I'll spare you the details, but indeed, there, they use shi/hir pronouns for their "herm" characters. Did these pronouns originate from.. furries?? I put that though aside for now, to look further into other uses.

As it turns out, the journey does not end at 2007. Urban dictionary has an entry from 2003

No slurs here, it looks like a neutral usage. Again, going back to Google. Now, search terms "hir "gender neutral" before:2004"

Many results show up now, now articles rather than furries. American.edu (seems to be a university), Swarthmore.edu (this is a college), both from 2001. jstor.org with a journal article from 1999. Unfortunately I can't read that one, as I have to pay a whole $63 to purchase it. I even found a PDF file from 1994 by core.ac.uk

But, what I've realized now is this is not usage of shi/hir pronouns. All of these use Ze/hir pronouns. I don't know if there is any link, but the last pronoun looking the same must've obscured the results.

From the american.edu article on these pronouns. You can see the usage of "hir" alongside "ze", and below it, the usage of ze/zir pronouns, which seem to be used more today.

Shit.. Doing the search all over again with the pronoun "shi" yields.. very few results apart from people talking about Chinese words.

Wait what about those furries from earlier? The tvtropes.org article does include this:

Chakona space? Chakats? Pronouns he came up with? Admittedly I kept seeing these centaur feline hybrid characters come up quite consistently during this dive, but I had to look into it further.

Oh buddy what did I get myself into. This is from 2001 best I can tell, so we're getting quite old here. I scroll down on the page.

And lower down.

Now this is all very interesting speculative biology, but what I'm focusing on is again, the usage of "hermaphrodite" together with the pronouns "shi/hir". Did a furry artist named Bernard Doove come up with these pronouns.

It gets yet older.. New search, "chakats "shi" before:2001"

Again, Bernard Doove's art from 2000, 1999, 1998,

I find a website called yerf.metafur.org It has furry art, dating all the way back to the mid 1990's, but here, on December 23 1998, is the first appearance of these pronouns on that site.

This Bernard Doove person has been at this project, with these pronouns for a while.

From what I can tell, many of his art pieces, they seem to be quite sexual beings. Quite fetishistic of hermaphroditism at times. (or intersexuality, take your pick)

The other thing I found with my search was a website, furry.org.au/bosshoss/

My search says it's from September 14 1998.

That's certainly some information, but it might come in handy. So Chakat Goldfur provided this website? Who is that? Looking into it, that seems to be a character created by Bernard Doove, that acts as an alter ego. Further down, the person running this website lists some other websites they enjoy. One being "Proxima Centauri", which seems to be another furry artist.

"I met this one at ConFURence 8. Very interesting. (Did I mention shi is a hermaphrodite uni-centaur?)"

(For context, ConFURence is a furry convention held in 1997)

Again, the usage of hermaphrodite, and the pronoun shi. At this point, the website being linked to is long gone, but the wayback machine provides help. The website, http://www.spots.ab.ca/~unicorn/main.htm has been captured all the way back to October 8th 1997.

At this time, the website was under construction. No images are willing to load and haven't been archived, but the description is intact.

So this person uses shi/hir pronouns for their hermaphroditic character all the way back in 1997. There are links to other places where this person used to host their works, but they are all down and haven't been archived. The thread is running thin..

Back to Bernard Doove, the Chakat creator. There must be something more to this. Turns out, there was. On the "yerf" website, I actually found several art pieces that were not picked up by Google.

Febuary 22 1997. Getting yet older. In some art pieces, Bernard references "Forest Tale" and "forest tales", so I went looking for whatever that was.

1995?? you've got to be kidding. It's an adult story involving these "chakat" beings, and sure enough, down the page

Shi/hir pronouns used over and over again.

With the use of hermaphrodite.

But.. This is kind of where it ends. I couldn't seem to find anything older, and I'm not going to contact Bernard Doove over this. Even something as old as 29 years is impressive to me. Bernard Doove states his characters were inspired by other furry artists' creatures of the time, but since it's 1995, there isn't much left for me to find here. Anything before that time is probably lost.

With all the information I have been able to gather, it looks to shi/hir pronouns were created by Bernard Doove who is a furry author and artist. Shi/hir were made to be a midway between "she" and "him" in some way, to be a gender neutral word for hermaphroditic genetically modified beings called "chakats" in his stories. As an intersex person myself, I don't enjoy the use of "hermaphrodite" in such a way, as it's a slur for us. But these types of characters also seem to be very old, and we, and our struggles, were completely unknown to the vast majority of people, even moreso than nowadays.

If you use those pronouns for an intersex person who doesn't use them, it is indeed intersexist, as you are implying we are hermaphrodites.

But as for whether only intersex people can use them? I'm not sure. The original intent doesn't seem be directly linked to intersex people. You could argue that these hermaphroditic characters are fetishized versions of how many people see us, and have seen us for a long time. Afterall, hermaphrodite was, and still is, a common slur for us.

I don't doubt some people have used these pronouns as slurs against us as well, but I also haven't found anything specifically that supports that. It always seemed to be for specific fictional characters that COULD be based off specific intersex attributes

I'm not going to argue one way or the other. This was just me trying to find what I could about these pronouns and their history. Just be mindful of how you use these pronouns, and the connections they have to fetishes revolving around the common misinterpretation of intersex bodies (as in, "having both parts")

Thank you for reading.

I hope you learned something. I know I did, and I now have a headache.

#shi/hir #pronouns #history #internet #intersex #fetishization #furry #queer history #doggie barks

[pastafossa]

Happy Birthday and a merry 6 years to TRT! 🎂 🎁 🎈 🎉 🍰

🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯 🕯

Some FUN TRIVIA FACTS:

TRT's sun sign is VIRGO and its moon sign is LEO!

After 6 years, its current wordcount is 932k words. If you put that in size 12 arial font, single-spaced, this would come to about 2000 pages, and even more if the pages were the usual mass market paperback size!

TRT is now 40 in cat years!

The Man in the White Coat is my tribute to the Mad Scientist trope common in scifi, which is one of my favorite genres!

It is old enough developmentally to tie its shoes! Keep going, TRT!

Ciro is partially inspired by John Marcone from The Dresden Files!

TRT shares a birthday with literary great Agatha Christie! Maybe I'll introduce poison-based murder into the fic in her honor...

The idea of seeing threads came to me after seeing a meme about red threads tying soul mates together. Everything that came after - the other threads, the thread world, how it works, is unique to TRT!

TRT is now longer than War and Peace, and Crime and Punishment combined! So if you've read all of TRT so far, then you have the perfect middle finger to anyone who tries to say you can't focus on longer stories!

The inciting penguin documentary that Foggy drunkenly watched (which led to him declaring Matt and Jane 'penguins') was about Adelie penguins specifically!

Jane has a leather jacket because I love leather jackets and think all badass characters should have a leather jacket! And so you should you! EVERYONE DESERVES A COOL LEATHER JACKET.

The long hiatus between Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 was because I had life things pop up. During that hiatus, I realized the plotline/ending needed some work, so I spent those two years outlining, and I also wound up doing a bunch of additional novel writing classes just because I wanted to learn. A lot of this wound up influencing TRT!

The grey threads are one of the only threads that no one has solved yet!

There are absolutely some bad people working for Cyrus James. There is also a guy named Kyle. He is there not for Evil Purposes (tm) but instead because this was the only place he could work that would allow him to pay off his student loans.

When I started TRT, I thought maybe 5 people total would read it. I was told five people total would read it by some shitty people. So I wrote it expecting five total people would read it, and told myself at least I'd enjoy it, and I could use it to learn. In other words: I had ZERO idea TRT would take off like this. None. Nada. Zip. AND LOOK AT US NOW, BABY. FUCK THE HATERS, 6 YEARS AND GOIN' STRONG.

Based on my outline, we're a bit over halfway to the end!

I hope you enjoyed these TRT funfacts. And I hope you know: this fic isn't just me. It's you, too. This fic has become so much larger than just me. It's the TRT playlist you've sent songs in for that keeps me inspired when writing. It's the fanart I look at to give me a boost. It's your sweet comments and likes and kudos and messages that encourage me when I'm sick or depressed. It's the people who've made friends over this fic, or who've been inspired to write fic themselves, adding beautiful works to the community that we all use to keep going. It's all of this love for both TRT and Matt, and I'm so happy that I've been able to contribute in at least a small way in keeping Charlie!Daredevil love alive even after the show's been gone for years now. I love you all so, so goddamn much. I love this fandom. I love TRT with all my heart. Thank you so much for being a part of these past six years through cancelations, through your high school and college years and beyond, through my ups and downs of moving and sickness and fiberglass and pandemic craziness, through late night chapter drops and wild twists and turns.

And I hope the next few years as we enter the second half of this story are just as amazing!

#the red thread

[kirain]

your gale takes actually got me to look deeper into forgotten realms lore (esp where it pertains to the afterlife) and long story short i’m at least a little bit fixated on it now and also will go to bat for that wizard basically at any point. also wild magic. i’ve been reading so much about wild magic, it’s so so interesting. esp wild magic sourced from the far realm and the implications that could have for a wild magic mage in esp the bg3 setting

Thank you, I'm so glad to hear that! I'm still learning about the lore myself (there's so much), and we should all be thanking Larian for introducing so many new people to D&D!

Wild magic is insane, and I had a great time using it with my sorcerer. The magic system in general is truly fascinating, as is its history in context of the game. It's just too bad it's linked to a god. I think I've said this before, but an irksome detail about Mystra is that she technically isn't a "bad" god, but she should definitely keep her fingers to herself. Every iteration has done objectively horrible things to mortals, but because she's written by a man who clearly favours her (in my humble opinion) nothing she does is presented as wrong. 😒

These asks actually reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine. He basically said, "Elminster is on Mystra's side and he cares about Gale, so obviously Mystra is right." But here's the thing:

Not only is Eliminster a really annoying self-insert made by Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms (and I mean that literally, he's admitted he's a self-insert), but Eliminster has also had ... "relations" with his surrogate daughter. He's betrayed his friends for Mystra. He's killed arguably innocent people. So you'll have to forgive me if I don't look to him for moral guidance. He also slept with the previous iterations of Mystra and blindly follows her commands, so he might just be a teensy bit biased. In fact, if you look at various forums, you'll see a lot of players complaining about the character's irritating Gary Stu status, and that Dungeon Masters hate putting him in their campaigns.

Elminster will never question Mystra, because in his mind she's a perfect being who deserves everything, including people's lives; ignoring the fact that pretty much every god in D&D is canonically flawed. He's the type of person who would tell a grieving parent that God took their recently deceased child for "reasons we cannot comprehend".

He says he took no pleasure in burdening Gale with her ultimatum, but let's be real—he wasn't that hurt by it. In fact, the Elminster we meet in game isn't even real. It's a snow clone. He couldn't be bothered to visit Gale, who he apparently respects and cares about, in person. The only time he shows any genuine emotion towards Gale is in the ascended epilogue, when he writes him a disappointed letter. And I wouldn't be surprised if that disappointment is more about him challenging Mystra than actually achieving godhood.

Though it should be said that Elminster is also a victim of Mystra. The iteration before Midnight (current Mystra) groomed and abused him for a millenia, yet for some reason we, the audience, are supposed to pretend there's nothing wrong with that. If anything, we're supposed to view it as "sexy". As if Gale and Elminster are "lucky" to have caught her attention.

Reading up on the lore surrounding these two is truly horrifying. Elminster is old enough now that his actions are informed and unforgivable. He helps Mystra groom boys to exploit and never questions her. He's not merely complacent, he's active in her ploys. Despite his numerous heroic feats, I personally can't overlook it, especially when he could have been Gale's biggest defender.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #larian studios #gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #dnd #d&d #dungeons and dragons #bg3 mystra #elminster #lore

[chaysreality222]

Introduction to my Hogwarts Dr Self!

hey guys, it's c! in this post i'll be introducing you to myself in my hogwarts dr :) i feel it will give you guys a more in depth of my hogwarts dr. to put it out there to not confuse anyone, i have not yet shifted to this dr. i merely want to share about it so that when i do shift, you guys have some backstory <3

my time ratio is 1 hr = 1 week. i'll be shifting to 4th year- a little before 4th year technically. my first day will be the day of the quidditch world cup which is also the day of my birthday! i'll wake up on an early morning at my house by my s/o (i scripted in my irl boyfriend!!). i made my bf a potter meaning he'd be harry's older brother (also because when he wears glasses i and other people say he looks like harry potter).

ps: i am shifting for the plot but i've changed it a little bit and have included myself in the story instead of fully making myself the main character. meaning i don't want to take harry's place but always somehow be connected to the things that happen.

introduction + backstory

name: c(real name) authorne-lestrange hogwarts house: hufflepuff year: 4th blood status: pureblood patronus: a dragon wand type: 13 in. Ebony wood intertwined with silver, glistening unicorn hair

backstory: so in my dr, i am the daughter of leta lestrange. due to the lestrange reputation, she wants me to go by the last name authorne which was supposedly my father's name who has passed long before i was born. also so that it would make it hard for voldemort and the other death eaters to find me, due to my mother making an unbreakable vow that she and i would be by voldemorts side when the time was right. trying to imply that it's the destiny for all lestrange to serve voldemort. leta has constantly thought of any and all loop holes out of the vow. she doesn't want that life for me and so she got dumbledore to take me in at hogwarts thinking i'll be safer there.

disclaimer: i understand that the timeline between fantastic beasts and when harry exists is like a 70 year long stretch but i'm shifting to a reality to where she is alive to be my mum.

my house

located: cambridge, england exact address: unknown

here are some pics of the house! go to my pinterest board to see more details or rooms of the house to get a better look. of course, the middle photo is my bedroom where i'll be first waking up in my dr! i'm really excited to wake up there and take a look around. i'm also excited to be here on break or holidays!

you may have some questions on why the address is unknown. i scripted it to be like that because i felt that's something leta would do to keep me safe. also adding to the fact, i scripted she placed a protective barrier around the whole property that leads anyone who's looking in from the outside to hear nothing and see nothing but a thick forest.

my pets

their names are soren and sage! soren is my male barn owl and sage is my female cat. i'm allergic in my cr so i scripted that out so i can experience having a cat lol. i just had an idea that maybe i should script that sage fly's around on sorens back?? imagine how cute that would be.

my dorm at hogwarts

so i scripted that i have a personal dorm there at hogwarts and honestly, i'm kinda in love with the room and bathroom <3 as you guys can see here, i have a pics of my dorm! the first image, that door is the entrance into my room and then the second door in my third image is the door to my bathroom. for the last image, i added one pic of how my bathroom looks like.

i think that's pretty much it! i'm so excited to shift to my hogwarts desired reality and finally experience life as a wizard. i'm working on my shifting routine as of right now to help me get in the mood and get ready to shift! get ready for shifting storytimes <3 as always, Happy Shifting!

xoxo, c.

#reality shifting #shifting #prttygirlshifterclub #desired reality #shiftblr #shifters #shifting motivation #shiftingblr #reality shifter #shifting realities #introductiontomydrself

[shiny-jr]

hiiii!! I recently got into quotev to read your most recent release, "how to steal a heart," and was curious if u have any recs for other yandere quotev fics? :o or just any quotev fics in general!! ^_^

feel free to disregard this question tho if u don't have any recs or simply don't want to answer!

Thank you, anon! I'm glad people seem to be liking that story so far. I'm hoping that I can find the time to write for it soon. Hopefully. Anyways, as for recommendations. That's a difficult request for me to answer for two reasons. One: I rarely have the time to read, and when I do read these days its physical books. And two: I'm terribly picky so if I don't like something about a fic its automatically out.

But, I managed to fish out a couple of things from my library that I finished reading ages ago. However, keep in mind, I meant what I said when I say that it has been a long time since I read these fics. So they may not be as good as I remember, or I may get some things wrong. Keep that in mind. Also, these are all yandere x reader stories.

Infectious Intent by Darkened Warrior. I remember when I first discovered this story, I stayed up reading it. I stayed up late, and legit got kinda scared because imagining certain scenes in this story and reading the details gave me the chills and was just not a good idea to read it while it was pitch black and the dead of night. Even the ending got me.

the martyrdom of a final girl by MAI. This is one of the more recent stories I've put in my library, and by recent I mean it's probably been there for almost a year now. I haven't caught up with the updates, but I remember the story really gave kinda protagonist and friend group in the 80's-90's sort of horror vibe to it. Although I don't remember if it got to the yandere yet. It really hooks you in with action that starts fairly quickly which I very much value when starting a new story.

Humorously Inconvenient Tragedies by riz. In all stories, I very much value action. If there's not action in the first few chapters, I usually toss the story out. However, this story managed to be the sole exception to that. I think it's the written tension that managed to keep me hooked. Like the questions of why and how, along with the tension between characters that keep me intrigued.

Bonus: Shameless plug for How To Steal A Heart because damn it if people won't write Latino yanderes then I gotta do it myself. Also because its a vital part in the whole oc lore I have which has been obscure up until very recently.

#shiny speaks #quotev stuff #recommendations

[reggiejworkshop]

"Crowd Control"

When it comes to large shows, you need to have a large enough of a bouncer crew to deal with it.

If its not the abrasive loudness of the headlining act, its the frenzy they whip the crowd into.  The swirling pit of rowdy toons, the occasional surfers who breach just over said pit, the occasional fights, the ones in front who need a splash of water to stay hydrated, the dancers who manage to jump on and off stage, sometimes with some extra assistance. And yet, in spite of all of that, everyone manages have a good time and  leave the venue with a musical experience that will stick with them until the end time.

So, this is a project I had been meaning to do for the longest time. Part of the reason I put it off for so long is due the fact that planning out the composition took awhile to figure out, even before I put this setting in a poll on what you all would have liked to see for this picture! Seriously, crowd scenes are not easy to put together!

I initially drew this on two separate sketchbook sheets before splicing them together!

Then there was coloring this in. I decided to keep the shadows soft since I didn't want them competing with the linework. Wanted to have this chaotic and raw!

What spawned the extra inspiration for the pandemonium here is a recent show I actually went to earlier this past September. I saw Death Grips, an experimental hardcore hip hop group, in my hometown. They are always known for putting on an energetic show, and this one was no different. Even though I was up in the nosebleed balcony sections, I still enjoyed myself and consider it one of the best shows Ive ever been to!

This is also a celebration for the eight years I've been on Deviantart! One Thousand Watchers and Counting!

Even though I have my occasional issues with that site, and might have more to come in the future, I will always apricate that this place was the first time I ever decided to share my art outside of just friends and family. Ive met so many people there and here, fellow artists, friends, writers, and simple art enthusiasts.

As always guys, thank you so much for your support over the years! Because without you, I might not have done the work I did.

P.S See how many cartoon characters I managed to sneak in here!  Some you might know, others you probably haven't seen in years! You might be able to spot at least thirty here, although I tried to get far more in here with varying success. Some are bit off model and wonky, but they are here!

#crossover fanart #cartoon #pen and ink #deviantart #mixed media #animaniacs #fanart #crowd shot #concert #disney fanart #warner bros #nickelodeon #looney tunes #gravity falls #spongebon squarepants #the simpsons #futurama #ppg #wander over yonder

[httpskuzuu]

Cello

Yandere!Fyodor x Reader

I am spanish and I have no idea of english, I translated this by google so I am sorry if there are mistakes, idk

it's the first time I write for him so it's probably that fyodor is quite out of character, sorry for that too.

tw: kidnapping, yandere, manipulation¿, mentions of god, I think, stockholm syndrome, fyodor is a general tw.

I have been a whole month kidnapped by Fyodor.

The first three weeks there I was in a dark and empty basement, typical of a horror movie. I don't remember much from when I was in the basement, my brain decided that the best thing for me would be to forget everything I experienced there, I only remember very specific things. I remember that he didn't talk to me until the first week, and that I stopped crying on the fifth day. Since I stopped crying the emotions disappeared, there was fear, of course, but at a lower intensity than at the beginning.

After my stay in the basement he decided to take me upstairs, he gave me a room to myself and from then on all our interactions were cold and distant, almost null most of the time.

Today I decided to go back to writing, a hobby I had before I was kidnapped. It was relaxing and made me feel a little better, it made that emotional block that I had been carrying with me since the fifth day here disappear for a few seconds.

Everything was going well until I heard his cello being played, that made me not be able to continue writing. I don't know why I couldn't continue, maybe the simple fact of knowing that Fyodor was just a door away from me made me disconcerted. Now, for some reason, I am about to open that door that separated us.

I opened the door cautiously. The room is moderately large, with Fyodor in the middle, seated and holding the cello between his legs. His slender hands play the chords of a song, unknown to me, with such elegance, he has an amazing composure as his fingers lightly press the strings of the cello. His face is expressionless and cold, but suddenly he looks at me out of the corner of his eye.

The silence is suddenly deafening, with the atmosphere too tense to be true. Fyodor stops playing his cello and looks directly at me.

"I'm sorry, did I break your concentration?" I break the silence in when it becomes too much for me. It's been a while since he's spoken, not in full sentences, at least.

His gaze is different, I can't describe it accurately. I've never been able to describe Fyodor accurately.

"No, I was simply thinking about the meaning of your actions." Was it curiosity I'm noticing in his tone? I really don't know, I'm not that good at reading people.

Fyodor put his cello aside and approaches me calmly. He's much taller than me, much to my disgrace. I can smell his cologne on him, it's heady and expensive, I wouldn't mind smelling it any longer.

He smiled slightly, a fake smile, his eyes didn't move from his cold expression.

"There's not much to think about it." Even I didn't know why I walked in. "I guess I wanted to hear you play your cello closer, it sounds beautiful."

I noticed a small change in his expression, now he was really smiling, not only his mouth but also his eyes formed a smile. He keeps his hands folded behind his back as he looks at me intently. I feel nervous about his whole body language, and more so about the fact that he hides his hands, he can perfectly kill me with them in just seconds and I wouldn't see it coming.

"You were looking at me, weren't you? And yet you didn't join me. It's strange that you want to look at me."

The mere thought of approaching him and hearing him play gave me chills. I just shrugged, hoping that would be answer enough for him.

"Will you keep playing?"

"Of course, would you like to join me this time?" Fyodor's smile softened as he said those words, and I, surprisingly, returned the same smile.

"Sure."

I followed him to the center of the room, he sat in his chair and I sat on the floor beneath him. He feeling of inferiority didn't take long to come from being in this position, and more so with his gaze fixed on me, making me feel like I was prey.

I listen attentively to Fyodor's melody, while playing with my hair from time to time to try to calm the nerves of being under Fyodor. My gaze is riveted on him, I feel like a believer watching his God. From the perspective below, Fyodor's features stood out much more, making everything even more enigmatic.

Fyodor stopped playing and looked at me with those violet eyes, pale and piercing, calculating yet peaceful. "What is it, маленькая мышь?" he looked like he could almost read my mind. "What's in that pretty head of yours?" He almost seemed to want to annoy me by the way I looked at him, and more so when he kept a playful smile on his lips.

"Nothing important…" I felt too helpless against Fyodor, against the closest thing to a god in this world. I'm on the ground in front of the Russian, completely vulnerable and helpless, I'm easy prey for him.

"Lying to your God?" his hand came to rest on my hair and began to slowly stroke it. The first affectionate touch I had had in this whole month, it was inevitable to enjoy it and it was inevitable to close my eyes so I could feel it better.

"I'm sorry…" I know very well that Fyodor could kill me simply by activating his ability right now, but for some reason I simply couldn't feel fear about it. I simply stopped bothering and let myself go.

"You belong to me, моя любовь." His hand went down to my cheek and I just leaned against it. "I will never let you go, мой дорогой." He seemed to be talking more to himself than to me, but I nodded anyway.

"I know, I won't try to leave." And I'm not lying, I don't have it in my plans to try, I know well what Fyodor is capable of.

"You have no choice." I opened my eyes slowly to see his figure looming over me, he had a sadistic smile on his face, and leaned closer. His eyes moved to my lips. "If you try to leave, you will be punished."

I don't like that word, punish, it makes me feel like a helpless child. That was a bitter thought, to think of Fyodor as a father angry at his son for disobeying, to think of Fyodor as a God angry at his worshipper for not having faith.

I nodded again as I snuggled even more against his hand. Comfortable enough to forget those thoughts, comfortable enough to forget the situation I was in.

#fyodor x reader #yandere fyodor #bsd fyodor #fyodor #fyodor dostoyevsky bsd #bsd x reader #fyodor x you #fyodor x y/n #bsd x you #yandere bsd

[darlingillustrations]

I feel like I should be panicking more. My rent is due in one week, my landlord isn't friendly, and I have no one to ask for help. And yet? I have an eerie sense of calm about it.

I know the calm that happens when you are not actually calm but panicking and your body is helping you survive. This isn't that kind of fake calm. I am sleeping at night. I'm not snaping at my kids. I am *at peace.*

(Read more for musings about the economy, my spiritual mindset in the midst of it all, and some Mary Oliver poetry.)

Five years ago? I would be panicking and staying up late working long hours and burning myself out. But now? These days I'm working full days, then stepping back and cooking meals or working on projects for my kids. It feels more stable this time. I feel like I've matured.

I got a report in my email yesterday which showed that retail sales in January plunged 0.8% from December, far worse than the consensus forecast for a decline of just 0.2%, and the largest monthly loss since March 2023. On the one hand, it made me feel better that it's not just me. On the other hand, it sucks that lots of other people are struggling, as well.

Still, I make the time to meditate every morning. Still, I pull out my poetry books and take my life advice from Mary Oliver. In the poem One or Two Things she wrote:

One or two things are all you need to travel over the blue pond, over the deep roughage of trees and through the stiff flowers of lightning--some deep memory of pleasure, some cutting knowledge of pain.

You don't need to have all the answers. You just need to put one step in front of the other.

Last year when I launched my wholesale business, I drummed up over 1000 leads. I'd pick a city and use google maps or yelp to search for gift shops, stationary stores, coffee shops... anywhere that I thought might want my work... and I took the time to write a personal note to each and every one of these businesses. This month I decided to check back in with them again, and so many of the businesses are now closed or their email addresses no longer work.

Having exhausted these leads, I sat at my computer yesterday with the knowledge that I needed to wait on people to get back to me, that the wholesale leads were out of my hands. And that I still did not have money to pay my landlord. Not once did I fear I would join the list of closed businesses. I did not despair.

Instead, I turned to my first joy. I went back to the sales history on my website and found my very first customers from back in 2016 when I launched my web shop. I emailed them, each of those first customers, sending personal emails. I did not ask them to buy anything. That wasn't what I needed. I asked how they were, what they have been up to, where their lives have taken them.

I was searching for that deep memory of pleasure, that cutting knowledge of pain. One or two things is all we need, after all.

And I got one email back.

This woman was the first person to ever buy an art print in my online shop--a honeybee boy painting--and it is still hanging in her stepson's room, nearly 8 years later. She shared pictures of her new baby, and I shared the pictures with my kids. This woman had sent me many emails over the years, asking for life advice or encouraging me on a hard day. She shared that she didn't realize her emails had made such an impact on me.

Funny how none of us truly sees how impactful we are to those around us. Funny how life keeps going on, whether we worry about it or not.

In One or Two Things, Mary Oliver also wrote:

For years and years I struggled just to love my life. And then the butterfly rose, weightless, in the wind. "Don't love your life too much," it said, and vanished into the world.

I want my character to be defined not by what I do when things are easy but by how I carry myself when things are hard. And I do believe things happen for a reason. Maybe the line between delusion and faith is very thin, but the universe has shown me time and again that it's had my back. I've been in worse scrapes and still came out ok.

If you've read this far and you want to help me get through the next week, you can buy something from my shop or support me on Patreon.

And if you've read this far but you are in a similar boat, don't fret. We will find our way through the fires. one. step. at. a. time.

#mary oliver #capitalism #queer artist #support queer artists #patreon artist #darling illustrations #erin speaks

[bi-bi-bi-buckley]

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

THEY DID IT

ABC DID IT

The entire episode I thought Buck was jealous of Tommy and wanting more time with Eddie but NO!? NO NO AHHH

Ok so I'm really excited and have so much pent up excited energy which I'm going to try to channel into this post to get it out of my system. ABC did in 4 episodes what Fox couldn't in 6 seasons.

I- y'all I am not ok. Buck is such an important character to me. I see him in myself. And for him to be LGBT? For him to be BI?! (or at least like woman and men, a label hasn't been said in the show yet) Like me!? It's comforting. It's amazing.

I am literally shaking and I'm sure my boyfriend is regretting everything cause I've been screaming about it to him. I apologize for no clear thoughts or beautifully crafted post I'm just still jittery and just excited, confused, and happy all at once.

I also liked how it wasn't a sex scene. Because as I'm sure some or all of y'all know, sometimes media fetisizes LGBT+ people and relationships so for this scene to have the tension but for them to not fall into bed? 1. Shows Buck's growth and 2. Makes them a normal couple. The way they both looked at eacother was the sweetest thing. Now, I still like Buck and Eddie of course, but if that writers don't want to change Eddie's sexuality then I won't be too upset. I'm in awe. Truly. It was such a sweet moment.

Now if y'all let me put on my delulu glasses-

The tension in this scene (towards the end when Tommy and Buck were right in front of each other) was very reminiscent of the famous kitchen "go for the title" scene. And I'm just saying, like that's gotta mean something? Maybe? For it to be in the same kitchen. The same session. Just a different partner? Also I'm really hoping Tommy treats Buck well. Buck...has had some pretty bad luck romantically and he deserves someone to love him just as wholly as he loves them. Buck loves with all that he has and he deserves that love tenfold.

I hope that if the reason for this relationship is for Buck to realize his sexuality, then I hope that Tommy is 1. Cool and not an asshole when it's revealed 2. That Buck and Tommy get to keep their friendship. Because the feelings Buck has for him are real- he thinks he's cool! (Also the word cool was used a lot in this episode. Not like evidence or anything just something I noticed)

#911 abc #911 fandom #911 #911 fox #911 show #evan buckley #buck buckley #evan buck buckley #911 spoilers #911 buck #911 on abc #911 on fox #911 s7 #911 season 7 #bi buck