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octuscle · 6 months

Text

Changed circumstances

Jonathan Douglas was annoyed. His father and his older brother, the crown prince, had both been in a bad mood for days. His mother could not be reached, she had probably gone off to the Cote d'Azur with some lover. And Jonathan was bored in his penthouse in New York. The weather was terrible, his mood miserable. But then he had to change something. The family's permanent suite at Las Brisas in Acapulco had just been renovated and the weather forecast for Mexico was excellent. What was keeping him in Manhattan in the sleet?

He called his father's assistant and asked for a jet to be waiting at the airport. And he needed a helicopter, he didn't fancy the after-work traffic right now. And it would also be nice if she could inform Miguel from Las Brisas that he had an hour of personal training every morning at 09:00 for the next two weeks. The answer should have been a warning to him that something was wrong. There was no jet or helicopter available, but a driver would be waiting for him in fifteen minutes. And she had booked a flight for him with Netjets. He would have to contact the hotel directly about the personal training, but she didn't have time for that now. Jonathan was outraged! That was impertinent! But don't get upset, he would just have to get on with it. Even if he hated Netjet. The idea that anyone could have sat in his seat disgusted him.

His anger was somewhat dissipated when, after an exhausting journey, he was finally sitting in the hotel's beach club and looking out to sea. Friends always flew this route on scheduled flights. Unimaginable. He would need a week to recover from the stress.

The next few days were great. Miguel got Jonathan back in shape, the weather was glorious and the parties were great fun. Only his family was annoying. After days of no one being available or having time for him before he left for Mexico, he was now constantly getting calls and emails from his father and brother. But Jonathan was now on vacation. He didn't have time to deal with any boring issues. And he didn't feel like being reproached for not being involved in the family holding company. That was a mistake.

The debacle was already looming when he got up in the morning. 23 new e-mails from his father, his brother and various managers at the holding company. But not a single missed call. Funny, the phone was dead too. Only wifi connection. He had to take care of that after his manicure.

Rosalita got his fingernails back into perfect shape. In between, she whispered with a colleague. When the treatment was finished, she asked Jonathan to pay straight away. For technical reasons, he couldn't write the bill on the room. Damn it, why didn't any of his credit cards work? Exasperated, he put USD 100 on the counter for Rosalita and said that would be fine. Rosalita gave him back USD 20.00 and said that he might still need it. Confused, Jonathan pocketed the bill.

The day got better and better. His door card no longer worked. So Jonathan got into his jeep and drove to reception to have the card recoded. The receptionist asked him to follow her to the hotel manager's office. And then a nightmare began to unfold. The hotel manager informed Jonathan that, in view of the adverse circumstances, he would unfortunately have to demand that the current arrears be settled immediately. Jonathan looked at him questioningly. The hotel manager said that there were currently two months' worth of outstanding bills amounting to USD 60,000.00. And even if he regretted the development and even if Jonathan was a very valued guest, he would have to insist that he receive this money immediately. And if Jonathan wanted to stay in his suite, he would always have to pay the bill a week in advance.

Jonathan asked what the hell was going on. And the hotel manager handed him the New York Times. The spectacular collapse of the family empire was the subject of the front page. Jonathan turned pale.

An hour later, Jonathan was sitting in front of the staff entrance gate, surrounded by his suitcases and a few boxes of things from his suite. On his wrist was the Tudor that he would only wear on the beach at best. But he had left his platinum Rolex Daytona at the hotel to pay off his debt. He still had a little cash, a few watches, some jewelry… But apart from that, he was obviously broke. His cell phone was locked, so he could no longer listen to his voicemail. But there was still enough signal here at the gate to read his e-mails. He should probably have done that earlier. His family and the managers of the family companies on whose board he sat had been desperately trying to reach him for days. In a catastrophic chain reaction, the stock market value of the company had virtually vanished into thin air and the resulting over-indebtedness had led to its collapse. And apparently the family's entire private assets had been frozen as a result.

He had no idea how long he had been sitting here at the gate. He was hungry, thirsty and sweaty. But damn it, his fingernails were freshly manicured. Certainly didn't happen to many homeless people. "Hermano, I heard what happened to you. Can I help you?" Miguel stood in front of him. Not in his gym uniform. In jeans and an undershirt, with a red scarf wrapped around his head. He looked a bit like a little gangster. Jonathan was completely stripped of his sovereignty. He couldn't help it. He started to cry. Miguel took him in his arms and told him to wait here. He would be right back. And he came back with an old rusty pickup truck. Together they loaded up the rest of Jonathan's belongings and drove to Miguel's apartment. Jonathan could stay here for a few days.

The few days turned into weeks. Little by little, Jonathan, who had taken the precaution of calling himself John, sold most of his valuables. To pay Miguel his share of the rent. But also for tobacco and tequila. And for a few clothes that would make him less conspicuous when he hung out with his new pals in cheap bars during the day. By now, only a few items of clothing from his old life remained. Most of the rest had been sold.

When Miguel came home from work, he exploded. John sat in front of the TV again with a beer and watched some soap opera. "¡Pedazo de mierda autocompasiva!" he yelled at John. "Get your ass off the sofa and get to work." John burped and said he was depressed. "You're not depressed, you're just incredibly lazy and spoiled," Miguel replied. "I've got a job for you tomorrow. A rich American tourist is looking for someone to show him around the real Acapulco. I need someone who knows their way around here and speaks Spanish." "But I don't speak any Spanish," John whined. "Estúpido pedazo de mierda. ¿En qué idioma hemos estado hablando durante semanas?" Damn it, Miguel was right.

The kick in the ass was probably just what John needed. He was actually the perfect city guide for the rich and beautiful from Las Brisas. He knew their wishes and problems from his past. And he knew how to satisfy sensationalism in the slums. He knew who to avoid and where to recover stolen watches and wallets. He knew where to get an authentic lunch. And where to find almost every drug on the planet. And since he started showering and brushing his teeth regularly again, he was also occasionally given money to suck a rich tourist's cock and fuck his ass.

It had been a few years since Jonathan had to move out of his suite. Jonathan no longer existed. Jonathan had been flushed into the sewers of New York with the remnants of a corporate empire. Instead, there was Juan. And Juan was a celebrity among the guests at Las Brisas. He knew everyone in Acapulco, could organize everything and get everything. Anyone who wanted to break out of the hotel's artificial world of luxury would discreetly ask for Juan's contact details. Yes, his services were not cheap. But worth every dollar.

Inspired by @randomnobodyandfriends. Pics found @boytoyinrolex, @stargazerguy and @yeahthatsmypapi

#male tf #reality change #male transformation #inked man #white to blue collar tf

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months

Text

The (open) web is good, actually

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library tonight (Monday, November 13) at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

The great irony of the platformization of the internet is that platforms are intermediaries, and the original promise of the internet that got so many of us excited about it was disintermediation – getting rid of the middlemen that act as gatekeepers between community members, creators and audiences, buyers and sellers, etc.

The platformized internet is ripe for rent seeking: where the platform captures an ever-larger share of the value generated by its users, making the service worst for both, while lock-in stops people from looking elsewhere. Every sector of the modern economy is less competitive, thanks to monopolistic tactics like mergers and acquisitions and predatory pricing. But with tech, the options for making things worse are infinitely divisible, thanks to the flexibility of digital systems, which means that product managers can keep subdividing the Jenga blocks they pulling out of the services we rely on. Combine platforms with monopolies with digital flexibility and you get enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

An enshittified, platformized internet is bad for lots of reasons – it concentrates decisions about who may speak and what may be said into just a few hands; it creates a rich-get-richer dynamic that creates a new oligarchy, with all the corruption and instability that comes with elite capture; it makes life materially worse for workers, users, and communities.

But there are many other ways in which the enshitternet is worse than the old good internet. Today, I want to talk about how the enshitternet affects openness and all that entails. An open internet is one whose workings are transparent (think of "open source"), but it's also an internet founded on access – the ability to know what has gone before, to recall what has been said, and to revisit the context in which it was said.

At last week's Museum Computer Network conference, Aaron Straup Cope gave a talk on museums and technology called "Wishful Thinking – A critical discussion of 'extended reality' technologies in the cultural heritage sector" that beautifully addressed these questions of recall and revisiting:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2023/11/11/therapy/#wishful

Cope is a museums technologist who's worked on lots of critical digital projects over the years, and in this talk, he addresses himself to the difference between the excitement of the galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) sector over the possibilities of the web, and why he doesn't feel the same excitement over the metaverse, and its various guises – XR, VR, MR and AR.

The biggest reason to be excited about the web was – and is – the openness of disintermediation. The internet was inspired by the end-to-end principle, the idea that the network's first duty was to transmit data from willing senders to willing receivers, as efficiently and reliably as possible. That principle made it possible for whole swathes of people to connect with one another. As Cope writes, openness "was not, and has never been, a guarantee of a receptive audience or even any audience at all." But because it was "easy and cheap enough to put something on the web," you could "leave it there long enough for others to find it."

That dynamic nurtured an environment where people could have "time to warm up to ideas." This is in sharp contrast to the social media world, where "[anything] not immediately successful or viral … was a waste of time and effort… not worth doing." The social media bias towards a river of content that can't be easily reversed is one in which the only ideas that get to spread are those the algorithm boosts.

This is an important way to understand the role of algorithms in the context of the spread of ideas – that without recall or revisiting, we just don't see stuff, including stuff that might challenge our thinking and change our minds. This is a much more materialistic and grounded way to talk about algorithms and ideas than the idea that Big Data and AI make algorithms so persuasive that they can control our minds:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

As bad as this is in the social media context, it's even worse in the context of apps, which can't be linked into, bookmarked, or archived. All of this made apps an ominous sign right from the beginning:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

Apps interact with law in precisely the way that web-pages don't. "An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to defend yourself against corporate predation":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

Apps are "closed" in every sense. You can't see what's on an app without installing the app and "agreeing" to its terms of service. You can't reverse-engineer an app (to add a privacy blocker, or to change how it presents information) without risking criminal and civil liability. You can't bookmark anything the app won't let you bookmark, and you can't preserve anything the app won't let you preserve.

Despite being built on the same underlying open frameworks – HTTP, HTML, etc – as the web, apps have the opposite technological viewpoint to the web. Apps' technopolitics are at war with the web's technopolitics. The web is built around recall – the ability to see things, go back to things, save things. The web has the technopolitics of a museum:

https://www.aaronland.info/weblog/2014/09/11/brand/#dconstruct

By comparison, apps have the politics of a product, and most often, that product is a rent-seeking, lock-in-hunting product that wants to take you hostage by holding something you love hostage – your data, perhaps, or your friends:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

When Anil Dash described "The Web We Lost" in 2012, he was describing a web with the technopolitics of a museum:

where tagging was combined with permissive licenses to make it easy for people to find and reuse each others' stuff;

where it was easy to find out who linked to you in realtime even though most of us were posting to our own sites, which they controlled;

where a link from one site to another meant one person found another person's contribution worthy;

where privacy-invasive bids to capture the web were greeted with outright hostility;

where every service that helped you post things that mattered to you was expected to make it easy for you take that data back if you changed services;

where inlining or referencing material from someone else's site meant following a technical standard, not inking a business-development deal;

https://www.anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/

Ten years later, Dash's "broken tech/content culture cycle" described the web we live on now:

https://www.anildash.com/2022/02/09/the-stupid-tech-content-culture-cycle/

found your platform by promising to facilitate your users' growth;

order your technologists and designers to prioritize growth above all other factors and fire anyone who doesn't deliver;

grow without regard to the norms of your platform's users;

plaster over the growth-driven influx of abusive and vile material by assigning it to your "most marginalized, least resourced team";

deliver a half-assed moderation scheme that drives good users off the service and leaves no one behind but griefers, edgelords and trolls;

steadfastly refuse to contemplate why the marginalized users who made your platform attractive before being chased away have all left;

flail about in a panic over illegal content, do deals with large media brands, seize control over your most popular users' output;

"surface great content" by algorithmically promoting things that look like whatever's successful, guaranteeing that nothing new will take hold;

overpay your top performers for exclusivity deals, utterly neglect any pipeline for nurturing new performers;

abuse your creators the same ways that big media companies have for decades, but insist that it's different because you're a tech company;

ignore workers who warn that your product is a danger to society, dismiss them as "millennials" (defined as "anyone born after 1970 or who has a student loan")

when your platform is (inevitably) implicated in a murder, have a "town hall" overseen by a crisis communications firm;

pay the creator who inspired the murder to go exclusive on your platform;

dismiss the murder and fascist rhetoric as "growing pains";

when truly ghastly stuff happens on your platform, give your Trust and Safety team a 5% budget increase;

chase growth based on "emotionally engaging content" without specifying whether the emotions should be positive;

respond to ex-employees' call-outs with transient feelings of guilt followed by dismissals of "cancel culture":

fund your platforms' most toxic users and call it "free speech";

whenever anyone disagrees with any of your decisions, dismiss them as being "anti-free speech";

start increasing how much your platform takes out of your creators' paychecks;

force out internal dissenters, dismiss external critics as being in conspiracy with your corporate rivals;

once regulation becomes inevitable, form a cartel with the other large firms in your sector and insist that the problem is a "bad algorithm";

"claim full victim status," and quit your job, complaining about the toll that running a big platform took on your mental wellbeing.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/18/broken-records/#dashes

The web wasn't inevitable – indeed, it was wildly improbable. Tim Berners Lee's decision to make a new platform that was patent-free, open and transparent was a complete opposite approach to the strategy of the media companies of the day. They were building walled gardens and silos – the dialup equivalent to apps – organized as "branded communities." The way I experienced it, the web succeeded because it was so antithetical to the dominant vision for the future of the internet that the big companies couldn't even be bothered to try to kill it until it was too late.

Companies have been trying to correct that mistake ever since. After three or four attempts to replace the web with various garbage systems all called "MSN," Microsoft moved on to trying to lock the internet inside a proprietary browser. Years later, Facebook had far more success in an attempt to kill HTML with React. And of course, apps have gobbled up so much of the old, good internet.

Which brings us to Cope's views on museums and the metaverse. There's nothing intrinsically proprietary about virtual worlds and all their permutations. VRML is a quarter of a century old – just five years younger than Snow Crash:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML

But the current enthusiasm for virtual worlds isn't merely a function of the interesting, cool and fun experiences you can have in them. Rather, it's a bid to kill off whatever is left of the old, good web and put everything inside a walled garden. Facebook's metaverse "is more of the same but with a technical footprint so expensive and so demanding that it all but ensures it will only be within the means of a very few companies to operate."

Facebook's VR headsets have forward-facing cameras, turning every users into a walking surveillance camera. Facebook put those cameras there for "pass through" – so they can paint the screens inside the headset with the scene around you – but "who here believes that Facebook doesn't have other motives for enabling an always-on camera capturing the world around you?"

Apple's VisionPro VR headset is "a near-perfect surveillance device," and "the only thing to save this device is the trust that Apple has marketed its brand on over the last few years." Cope notes that "a brand promise is about as fleeting a guarantee as you can get." I'll go further: Apple is already a surveillance company:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The technopolitics of the metaverse are the opposite of the technopolitics of the museum – even moreso than apps. Museums that shift their scarce technology budgets to virtual worlds stand a good chance of making something no one wants to use, and that's the best case scenario. The worst case is that museums make a successful project inside a walled garden, one where recall is subject to corporate whim, and help lure their patrons away from the recall-friendly internet to the captured, intermediated metaverse.

It's true that the early web benefited from a lot of hype, just as the metaverse is enjoying today. But the similarity ends there: the metaverse is designed for enclosure, the web for openness. Recall is a historical force for "the right to assembly… access to basic literacy… a public library." The web was "an unexpected gift with the ability to change the order of things; a gift that merits being protected, preserved and promoted both internally and externally." Museums were right to jump on the web bandwagon, because of its technopolitics. The metaverse, with its very different technopolitics, is hostile to the very idea of museums.

In joining forces with metaverse companies, museums strike a Faustian bargain, "because we believe that these places are where our audiences have gone."

The GLAM sector is devoted to access, to recall, and to revisiting. Unlike the self-style free speech warriors whom Dash calls out for self-serving neglect of their communities, the GLAM sector is about preservation and access, the true heart of free expression. When a handful of giant companies organize all our discourse, the ability to be heard is contingent on pleasing the ever-shifting tastes of the algorithm. This is the problem with the idea that "freedom of speech isn't freedom of reach" – if a platform won't let people who want to hear from you see what you have to say, they are indeed compromising freedom of speech:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

Likewise, "censorship" is not limited to "things that governments do." As Ada Palmer so wonderfully describes it in her brilliant "Why We Censor: from the Inquisition to the Internet" speech, censorship is like arsenic, with trace elements of it all around us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMMJb3AxA0s

A community's decision to ban certain offensive conduct or words on pain of expulsion or sanction is censorship – but not to the same degree that, say, a government ban on expressing certain points of view is. However, there are many kinds of private censorship that rise to the same level as state censorship in their impact on public discourse (think of Moms For Liberty and their book-bannings).

It's not a coincidence that Palmer – a historian – would have views on censorship and free speech that intersect with Cope, a museum worker. One of the most brilliant moments in Palmer's speech is where she describes how censorship under the Inquistion was not state censorship – the Inquisition was a multinational, nongovernmental body that was often in conflict with state power.

Not all intermediaries are bad for speech or access. The "disintermediation" that excited early web boosters was about escaping from otherwise inescapable middlemen – the people who figured out how to control and charge for the things we did with one another.

When I was a kid, I loved the writing of Crad Kilodney, a short story writer who sold his own self-published books on Toronto street-corners while wearing a sign that said "VERY FAMOUS CANADIAN AUTHOR, BUY MY BOOKS" (he also had a sign that read, simply, "MARGARET ATWOOD"). Kilodney was a force of nature, who wrote, edited, typeset, printed, bound, and sold his own books:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books/article-late-street-poet-and-publishing-scourge-crad-kilodney-left-behind-a/

But there are plenty of writers out there that I want to hear from who lack the skill or the will to do all of that. Editors, publishers, distributors, booksellers – all the intermediaries who sit between a writer and their readers – are not bad. They're good, actually. The problem isn't intermediation – it's capture.

For generations, hucksters have conned would-be writers by telling them that publishing won't buy their books because "the gatekeepers" lack the discernment to publish "quality" work. Friends of mine in publishing laughed at the idea that they would deliberately sideline a book they could figure out how to sell – that's just not how it worked.

But today, monopolized film studios are literally annihilating beloved, high-priced, commercially viable works because they are worth slightly more as tax writeoffs than they are as movies:

https://deadline.com/2023/11/coyote-vs-acme-shelved-warner-bros-discovery-writeoff-david-zaslav-1235598676/

There's four giant studios and five giant publishers. Maybe "five" is the magic number and publishing isn't concentrated enough to drop whole novels down the memory hole for a tax deduction, but even so, publishing is trying like hell to shrink to four:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/07/random-penguins/#if-you-wanted-to-get-there-i-wouldnt-start-from-here

Even as the entertainment sector is working to both literally and figuratively destroy our libraries, the cultural heritage sector is grappling with preserving these libraries, with shrinking budgets and increased legal threats:

https://blog.archive.org/2023/03/25/the-fight-continues/

I keep meeting artists of all description who have been conditioned to be suspicious of anything with the word "open" in its name. One colleague has repeatedly told me that fighting for the "open internet" is a self-defeating rhetorical move that will scare off artists who hear "open" and think "Big Tech ripoff."

But "openness" is a necessary precondition for preservation and access, which are the necessary preconditions for recall and revisiting. Here on the last, melting fragment of the open internet, as tech- and entertainment-barons are seizing control over our attention and charging rent on our ability to talk and think together, openness is our best hope of a new, good internet. T

he cultural heritage sector wants to save our creative works. The entertainment and tech industry want to delete them and take a tax writeoff.

As a working artist, I know which side I'm on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/13/this-is-for-everyone/#revisiting

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museo_Mimara,_Zagreb,_Croacia,_2014-04-20,_DD_01.JPG

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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sister-lucifer · 2 months

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i hate my alters, I keep pleading with them just to go away.

oh my sweet darling.

come here to me, please, let me talk to you.

i have never been in your position, but i do know how it feels to want desperately to be rid of something you cannot change. and it hurts, does it not? i know. it makes you feel helpless, alone, scared, because you can’t fix it, not immediately anyways.

it’s alright to feel that way. whatever you’re feeling; the frustration, the anger, the sadness, the fear; please, don’t feel bad for feeling it just because others have had a different experience.

the unfortunate thing is that there is no immediate solution. i know that hurts. i’m sorry it has to. but there are ways to cope. whether you decide you want your future to be final fusion or functional plurality (is that the word?), one day you will find a way to do what seems impossible now, even if you don’t think so at the moment.

the hard part?

you’ve got to do the scary thing. you’ve got to acknowledge and communicate with them, and i know that is so scary, but you are capable of being so brave my sweetheart. i know you are. and i love you. i don’t know you, but i love you, because i love all that i can. i am of the belief that, on some level, all live has value, and all sentience is worth something simply on the merit of existing. that includes you, whoever you may be.

at the end of the day, the formation of alters is a survival technique. that tells me you’ve been through something hard, or maybe you still are, and you’ve still stuck around this long. do you have any idea how impressive that is? that you can speak to me about this? it’s impressive to me, anyways. i cant say the same for many.

whats even more unfortunate is that i cannot put myself in your shoes. i haven’t experienced this. but you know who might have?

my system followers, friends, and mutuals, if you see this, do me a favor and leave a note for our friend, yes? perhaps you can help more than i.

that being said, my dear anon, i’m not closing myself off to you. i’m here to speak if you wish, i’m only directing you to people who have more knowledge on this subject.

i love you, friend. and you don’t have to say it back, i’m only letting you know.

#i’ve got mail!#persona: 🌹

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unioncolours · 4 months

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Jinchuuriki Temari pls pls PLSSSS 💜

And congrats on 60 subscribers wohooo!! 💕✨

Thank you, Mon, for your suggestion and ask ❤✨

This is part of my 60 subs challenge, feel free to check it out.

This is only PART ONE of Jinchuuriki Temari, and part two will come in connection to another ask 🥰 Part two is linked below.

Please keep reading if you fancy 🖤

BLOOD AND GOLD

part one | part two

Word count: 764 words

Tags: Jinchuuriki Temari. Blood and gore, I guess. Meet-cute, I guess?? VERY Canon Divergent. Canonverse.

It was supposed to be a cave just for shelter, but it turned out to be so much more. When Shikamaru together with Ino and Choji walked inside to hide from the harsh desert sun, they had immediately known something was off with the cave. It tingled of chakra and reeked of blood.

“We should turn back,” Ino said. “This chakra is – it’s not normal.”

The rattle of chains coming from the darkness startled them.

“Shit,” Choji whispered. “Something is in there.”

“Or someone,” Shikamaru finished. They pondered for a second whether to go back and not meddle in whatever scary business this cave had in store for them, but later decided that investigating would be worth it.

“This something is a someone,” Ino said when they walked deeper into the mouth of the dark.

They had never expected to find someone chained by rusty chuffs to the mountain wall of the other side. The wall was worked with metal, gold and sand, and the cuffs vibrated with chakra none of them had sensed before. It was a prison. A deserted prison.

The ’someone’ in question was a girl with sand blonde hair, arms cut and bruised, and a malicious snarl on her lips. She had to be a bit older than them, as her jaw was strong any and all resemblance of childhood had vanished from her face.

“Hello?” Ino whispered when they got closer. “What have they done to you?”

“Release me,” the girl demanded and stood up, not being able to keep a straight face out of pain when her joints in the shoulders straightened out from the uncomfortable position her arms were forced into. The chakra cuffs rattled and seemed to cut into her flesh even more. The trio winced at the sight of it. If not hunger and thirst kills her, an infection will.

“Why have someone chained you here?” Shikamaru asked.

“My father wants to kill me,” the girl spat and tossed her head back, revealing shining green eyes behind her dirty fringe. “Let me free for fucks’ sake.”

“Don’t move,” Shikamaru said when Ino took a step forward. “It can be a trap.” He grabbed a kunai and the girl laughed a raw and sarcastic laugh at the sight of it.

“I’d not do that if I were you,” she laughed.

“She is not an illusion at least, she is real,” Ino said. “But there’s something off with her chakra.”

“Best to stay away,” Choji mumbled.

“You are three against one, what could possibly happen?” the chained girl snorted as she leaned against the wall. The gold in it was off, Shikamaru thought. Why would there be gold melted into a wall meant to keep a prisoner? “Give me water at least. Postpone my death by a day, if you please.”

“What is your name?” Shikamaru asked. “You’re someone of value, aren’t you?”

“Ah, so my flesh has a price,” the girl laughed. “How comforting to hear. Go on, take an arm and sell it for good money.”

“Ha, ha,” Shikamaru said.

“It’s best not to agitate her,” Choji whispered.

“Agitate me, agitate me?” the girl snarled. “It takes a lot to agitate me.”

“What is your name?” Shikamaru asked again, now definitely more demanding. “Tell us, prisoner.” He walked closer to her, closer than he anticipated and closer than he would want to, but there was something about this prisoner which drew him in, unwillingly and cruelly.

“My name is…” The girl whipped her fringe out of her face once more. “My name is Temari of the Sand.”

Shikamaru was not standing right in front of her, kunai hard in his grip in case she did something suspicious. He could kill her right now if he wanted – that that he did, but the idea crossed his mind. In case she was dangerous, for she was not a civilian, nor a common shinobi. She was valued and kept prisoned away from the closest settlement. She was someone.

“Tell me, Temari of the Sand, why your father wants to kill you,” he asked.

Temari smiled, exposing razor sharp canine teeth.

“Shikamaru, step back,” Ino gasped and Choji swooped Shikamaru away from Temari with an expanded fist. Shikamaru grunted at first, annoyed, but all gasps got stuck in his throat when the earlier green eyes were no more.

What stared back at them were black eyes shining with gold in the middle of them.

“What is she?” Ino asked, rhetorically.

“What am I, what am I?” Temari smiled. “I am me. The jinchuuriki of the Sand, doomed to die.”

tbc one beautiful day ~

#majsasaurus #sigh is this gonna be a long fic???#you tell me #canon divergent is the best #This is like a new Trial of the Heart #thank you Mon 💚

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nerdygaymormon · 10 months

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Being Imperfect

This week I was assigned to speak in a ward as a visiting stake speaker, and I took inspiration from Elder Stanfill’s General Conference talk titled The Imperfect Harvest, I chose a few principles to highlight and use examples from my life to illustrate them

As I was putting together my remarks, I felt that I should include my eating disorder. However, I felt a bit uncomfortable with the idea of sharing something so personal and present in my life, then I thought of my homework from therapy.

My psychologist encouraged me to share with others that I have an eating disorder. Having it not be a secret but to expose it to sunshine helps dissipate the feelings of shame. She suggested I share with a zoom group I facilitate each month for Lift+Love. People don’t connect with others who present themselves like they’re perfect, we are drawn to the imperfect because we feel like, “I can relate to this guy.”

It clicked, this talk is about being imperfect, and my therapist is saying that if I share about my eating disorder it shows I’m imperfect, so I kept it in.

Immediately after I finished speaking and sat down, I received texts from people in the congregation saying this is something they’re currently dealing with and they feel less alone for sharing this is something happening in my life. After the meeting, people lined up to speak with me, and I was touched that a number of them shared about their eating disorder journey.

I’m putting my talk here as a way to remember. I don’t expect others to read, it’s a long post, but you’re welcome to.

————————————————————

Years ago when I was a student at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, I worked at the Missionary Training Center. I would get a new class of missionaries and spend 2 months teaching them Korean, and then send them off to serve.

When I worked there, the new missionaries arrived on a Wednesday. They’d be greeted, given their room assignment and unpack, go to dinner, and then show up for their first class, and I would be there to greet them.

I would start right in.

안영하십니까. 저는 Doyle 형제 입니다. Florida주 Tampa시에서 왔읍니다. 만나서 반갑습니다.

Which means, “How are you? I am Brother Doyle. I'm from Tampa, Florida. nice to meet you.” I would teach them how to introduce themselves in the same way, only I didn’t speak any English to them. It took awhile and there was a lot of gesticulating, but eventually they’d each learn how to introduce themselves. Once they had that down, I’d switch over to English and their relief was palpable.

It was a challenge, but together they were able to figure out what I was saying and learn how to say it themselves. I wanted them to see they are able to learn and do things which maybe they were unsure about.

When I switched to English, I’d take time to give them a little advice for their time at the Training Center. Remember that their value comes from being a child of God. How quickly they learn to speak Korean doesn’t increase or decrease their worth. As the teacher, language mistakes give me feedback of where to spend more time. Don’t be afraid to speak up, even if you’re not sure your answer is correct. Learning a language requires tens of thousands of mistakes. Practice and corrective feedback speeds the process. If you’ve mastered a new grammar form, help your neighbor. The goal is for everyone in this room to be ready to serve in Korea.

Being in a small classroom day after day, they quickly began sizing up each other, figuring out where they ranked in comparison to the others. Some who felt they were slow at learning Korean would get frustrated and speak to me. I’d quickly quiz them on some of the vocabulary and a verb conjugation we learned last week, and then point out that they got it. Today it doesn’t matter who learned it a little bit faster last week because they all know it.

Being in our church congregation is a bit like being in the classroom at the Missionary Training Center. We look at those around us and think they’re so much further ahead, they have their life together and we’re barely treading water in comparison. First of all, everyone has their challenges. Don’t believe their Instagram feed is representative of their entire life. People don’t usually share their failures and setbacks. I see lots of pictures of lovely meals and none of a burned pan next to a pizza delivery.

Being in close proximity, it’s normal to compare ourselves with each other, but if we were to zoom out a bit, are we really that different? From God’s perspective, we’re all flawed, we’re all making mistakes, we’re all learning.

One of our purposes in life is to gain wisdom. The bumps in the roads, the mistakes, the setbacks, they are all learning opportunities.

The race of life isn’t really against the person sitting on the pew in front of us, it’s with ourselves. You’re doing okay, in fact you’re probably doing better than you realize. Many of us tend to look at ourselves with an overly-critical lens. It’s not a matter of are we doing better than them, it’s are we doing better than we were last week, last month, last year. We learn and move forward.

I recently was diagnosed with an eating disorder and I am getting help. At my very first session with the psychologist, she said healing isn’t a straight line. There will be setbacks and that’s okay. We acknowledge them and move forward. We don’t say I’m a failure because I messed up. If I do well for a few days and then have a day where something happened that triggered me and I turned to food, then that’s what happened. It doesn’t undo the days where I didn’t binge, I still get credit for those.

It reminds me of something President Monson taught us which is that in the gospel we get credit for trying, even if we don’t always succeed. The Lord blesses those who want to improve, who try and try again, who are striving to the best of their abilities. Are your abilities the same as everyone else’s? Of course not. And what if you stumble? We all stumble, and the Savior is there to help us keep going.

I was excited to see Elder Stanfill speak at this past April’s General Conference as he’d just come to our stake conference prior to that. Elder Stanfill began his Conference address by talking about growing up on a farm in Montana. His family raised wheat. His family’s livelihood depended on the harvest. They used machinery to harvest the grain. They would begin by harvesting a small swath of grain, then check behind the combine to make sure as much grain as possible landed in the holding tank and wasn’t thrown out with the chaff.

They would adjust the machine and repeat the exercise and adjust again, repeating that exercise until his dad was satisfied that it was the best that this machine can do. As a young boy, Elder Stanfill wasn’t satisfied with this, not all the kernels of grain made it into the holding tank, there was always some that got missed. It was always an imperfect harvest.

When the weather turned cold, he watched thousands of migrating swans, geese, and ducks descend onto the fields to nourish themselves on their long journey south. These birds ate the leftover grain from his family’s imperfect harvest. God had perfected it. Not a kernel was lost.

Elder Stanfill goes on to say that in our world and in the culture of our church, we obsess about perfection. We set unrealistic expectations and self-criticize and thereby feel inadequate, that we aren’t good enough and never will be. We misinterpret the invitation of the Savior to “be ye therefore perfect.” Being perfect is an impossible standard for us to live up to and can cause us to feel guilt and anxiety.

Moroni says we are to “come unto Christ, and be perfected in him.” That Jesus’ grace is “sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ” (Moroni 10:32). We do our best and the grace of the Savior makes up the difference in ways we cannot imagine.

With the Savior, our potential is limitless. This is how Jesus would want you to see yourself, which is the way He sees you, and that is very different from how the world sees you or even how we may critically view ourselves. When I taught Korean to missionaries, I saw their potential and worked to help them towards that. Mistakes were part of that work to move them towards their potential.

In my effort to recover, I’m learning about why people develop eating disorders, I’m retraining my brain. I learned anybody can develop an eating disorder, but there are some things that put a person at higher risk. It’s not because they’re bad or weak, it’s a response to other things in their life.

An eating disorder is a way my brain and body coped, but my circumstances have changed and I need to learn new ways of thinking and behavior. I’m making progress. I understand and can do more today than I could last month. Does God love me more today because of this? No. God always loved me. My worth hasn’t changed. I’m a child of Heavenly Parents and have great potential.

I like that some of the temple recommend questions have changed to ask “do you strive..,?”

Do you strive to keep the Sabbath day holy?

Do you strive to be honest in all you do?

Perfection isn’t required. Our best efforts and desires count. We get credit for trying. My capacity is different from yours, I’ve got my own weaknesses and challenges and you have yours.

As I get to know more people and see them and the goodness of them and the hurt and pain they carry, I see them more and more as the Savior does and the love He has for them and that He wants to bless and heal them. The atonement is what the Savior uses to do this.

I will now read Alma 7:11-12.

11 And he [meaning Jesus] shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.

12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

These verses teach us that Jesus had a physical body and experienced pain, temptations and illness. In the Garden, He took on our weaknesses, mistakes and sins. He experienced all these things. This causes Him to feel mercy towards us and He understands how to nourish and strengthen us.

Jesus understands what it’s like to have an eating disorder. Jesus knows what it’s like to have social anxiety. Jesus knows what it’s like to have pulmonary embolism, and so on. The many physical and mental health challenges I’ve dealt with in the past few years, I could turn to the Savior and cry to Him, complain to Him, and ask Him for courage and comfort. He understands and helps me in my pursuits to heal.

We all have some hard things in our lives and can turn to the Savior. Christ sees us for who we are and our potential as children of God. We can turn our imperfect lives over to the Savior to be perfected, although the Savior’s idea of perfection is different from ours, just as the imperfect harvest was made perfect as the kernels of grain fed the migrating birds. We do our best and bring what we can, and in faith give our imperfect offering to Christ.

#tumblrstake

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lavenderbexlatte · 2 years

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day 12 - breathplay

stray kids 1.3k words gender neutral reader insert Reader x Hwang Hyunjin NSFW

🖤 warnings: kink experimentation, mild d/s dynamics, handjobs, there are right and wrong ways to choke in the bedroom and i am very strict about this we will be learnin’ tonight 🖤

kinktober masterlist

connect with me! / masterlist

"I guess I've never really thought about it before."

You look away from Hyunjin, silently judgmental, and you immediately pull up an image search on your phone to really drive in how dense he's being. It only takes a second to find the gif you're looking for.

Hyunjin himself, made-up and coifed and glittery for a music video, with a hand (Chan's, you'll have to write him a thank-you note or something) tight around his throat. You turn the phone toward him silently, and he glances at it briefly before scoffing at you.

"That doesn't count," Hyunjin insists.

"Bullshit, it doesn't count. He's choking you."

"For a video. He's acting."

"Chris can't act."

"That's not my fault."

"You can't say you've never thought about it," you say. "It was a whole thing! Right here!"

"Fine, then I thought about it for the fifteen minutes it took to film this, and then never again," says Hyunjin.

You put your phone down again. "If you're just saying that because you don't like it and you want me to let it go, that's fine, you know."

"I never said that, either."

He hasn't really said anything of value at all, but that's Hyunjin for you. Contrary for the fun of it, affectionately pushing your buttons and shutting you down whenever he can. You'd known he was like that with his friends (hi, Changbin), but you didn't know he's be the same with you until you'd gotten closer to him.

"You ever wanna try it?" you ask, slyly.

"Try it?"

You nod. "Choking, or whatever."

"Or whatever," he mimics. "I guess, maybe."

"You don't have to say yes. I'm really asking."

"I'll try anything once, you know that," he says, rakish.

But he's still avoiding the question, so you let it go for now. Not worth making a fuss, not when you're supposed to be having a nice night in.

-----

You think Hyunjin has completely forgotten that little discussion, until the next time you're spending the night together.

It's going about how these things usually go, for you two: Hyunjin pressed to the mattress, you up on your knees looking down at him while he squirms and whines and mostly just looks pretty. You don't have any kind of set roles or routines, but he likes being spoiled and you like spoiling him, so things just fall into place.

You haven't even done anything to him yet. He got naked all by himself, and now he's just there. Being pretty.

"I think..." Hyunjin starts, and then stops.

You look at him expectantly. Whatever it is, you can do it. For him? Anything.

"I think I want to try."

You blink. "Try what, baby?"

"I mean - if you want, we could try-"

He's babbling at this point, and you put a hand on his shoulder. It stops his mouth, and stops his wiggling, leaving him just looking up at you wide-eyed.

"Try again."

"Can we try...ch-choking? Like you - like before, like you said..."

It's like he thinks you're going to say no. As if you could say no to him.

"'Course we can," you say.

Hyunjin has been hard this whole time, but he twitches when you say that, like his cock is reacting to the idea before his brain.

"Never tried it before."

"Yeah, we established that," you say fondly.

You smooth back his shaggy black hair where it's falling in his face, because as beautiful as that is, you want to see him well, make sure he's listening.

"You gotta tell me if you want me to stop. Even a little bit," you say, "Even the littlest bit uncomfortable or scary, you have to say something."

"I will," he says.

It gets overwhelming in the moment, though, so you hold out your hand, pinkie raised. "Promise you will."

He smiles, dazzling as always. "I promise.

You link pinkies and press your thumbs together, a very serious and sexy unbreakable promise.

Talking your way through it seems like the best bet to keep him comfortable, so that's what you do. "There's a right way to do this."

"And a very wrong way, I assume," he says, talking through a pouty plush lower lip and making you want to coo at him.

"You never want to go for the windpipe," you say. "Crushing someone's throat is a boner-killer."

"I'd say so."

"So what you have to do, is go for the oxygen supply."

He's relaxed more, now, just listening to you talk, so you move over. Kneeling to his side, equally within reach of his pretty face and his pretty cock. You trace your hand over his chest, up the delicate skin of his throat.

"On the side," you say, tapping below his ear at the pulse point. "Cut off blood supply, you get dizzy but it doesn't hurt."

"I want it to hurt," he says immediately, like he's lost complete control of his mouth.

"No, you don't."

He just smiles again, so pretty.

"I'm gonna show you what it's like," you say. "Just for a second."

"Okay."

Verbal consent. He's so good.

Ever so slightly, you squeeze at the sides of his throat, as well as your hand can grasp. You can feel his pulse, hard under your fingers, and after a second, he gasps. You pull back right away, let him go, and he whines.

"Well, don't stop!"

"It was okay, then?" you smirk.

"I think it was," he says, "I think you'll need to do it more so I can decide."

He is really such a pain.

You have a very convenient way to get him to shut up, though.

The grasp you have on him is more confident this time, surer of how he's going to react. And he does, letting out a gasp that you can feel through your palm over his throat. A glance downward reveals what you'd been hoping for: the trail of precum leaking from his cock, revealing exactly how much he's enjoying this.

"You think you could cum untouched from this?" you ask, more curious than seductive.

You let go so he can answer.

"I - let's find out," he sputters. "Fuck, baby, please-"

"Correct answer."

It sounds fun, and you'll certainly give it a go at some point, you're not going to put that pressure on him, not on his first try.

This time you have a careful grip on both his neck and his cock, digging your fingers into the gorgeous column of his neck and as well as you can given the very precarious multitask, giving a good pump up his shaft and a twist around the head to match.

More pressure on his throat, less on his cock, and vice-versa, as both pulse in your hands.

His breathing gets more ragged as you go, and just to check, you let up on his throat for a second, giving him a chance to get some air properly if that's what he needs, lavishing more attention on his cock. But as you draw away, he grabs your wrist, dragging your hand back to his neck.

"Please," he says, so hoarse, so needy.

"Baby, I don't want to do too much."

"So close!" he whines, "Just - please!"

The flushing of his length, the way it's swelling in your grip, he's not lying.

"You're okay?" you ask, voice firm.

He meets your eyes, clarity under the lust. "Yes. More. Please."

Who are you to deny Hwang Hyunjin anything?

He whines, barely audible, and cums as soon as you tighten your fingers around his throat again, spilling over your hand the instant his air supply is cut off.

"Oh, baby..." you hush him, stroking him through it.

You're off his neck and his cock as soon as he's spent, going instead to cup his face in your clean hand and make him look at you.

"Jesus," he's breathing, chest heaving beneath you.

He looks fine, but you ask anyway, "Does anything hurt?"

Hyunjin shakes his head, and you have to brush back his messy hair again.

You look at him, so fond, and then you smirk. "That was fast."

#kinktober 2022 #kpop kinktober #hwang hyunjin fanfic #hwang hyunjin smut #stray kids hyunjin fanfic #stray kids hyunjin smut #stray kids fanfic #stray kids smut #sub!idol #dom!reader

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egg-emperor · 1 year

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Eggman is a villain. Remember when Eggman dominating the world was a thing in Sonic Forces? Pretty sure many suffered for that. He's really a menace like he had Sonic as a prisioner and didn't bother to unalive him IN THAT MOMENT just because he enjoyed more the idea of making others lose hope via him? Or the time he didn't care that Infinite dissapeared and instead get full mecha not giving a damn about his "indestructible invention". I don't think he even saw Infinite as nothing more than a weapon this is why I believe he was actually a sentimental creature with his memory completely erased, similar to Surge and Kit but this is more of a headcanon than a fact lol. Whatever the true is this only shows what you have said earlier about Eggman, that all his inventions are disposable no matter what

To know this isn't the worst he has done is something that shouldn't be ignored lol

YEAH Forces got it so right... It got absolutely everything right about Eggman and its only flaw is for such an important and significant role to the plot. He deserved way more screentime to see the full extent of his actions and plan on screen and spotlight in his temporary glorious victory and progress in taking over- but his characterization was perfect.

Forces is an example that Eggman is smart and capable and despite his massive ego, he has very real reasons to be as proud and confident as he is with his real 300 IQ genius and skills. It also shows that he has a reason to be so determined to win because he CAN in fact accomplish his goals, he just can't keep it as long as Sonic is around but it counts.

But I also like how he kept Sonic alive and imprisoned for six months so he could finish and show off his completed empire to him and break his last bit of hope and fully prove his victory and superiority over him before "banishing him" (definitely killing him lol) because it would've been much more satisfying to him than just killing him immediately.

Also while only present in English and people have their different opinions, I like the idea Sonic was tortured and that it's said to be Eggman specifically and not Infinite. I'd like to believe he would be delighted to toy with him in a few ways once he gets his hands on him, primarily psychologically. Love to imagine him having his fun with him.

He only saw Infinite as a tool and a weapon he'd use up for all he's worth and drop the moment he no longer needed him because he doesn't share, or failed him before. Proven by how he didn't care he was gone even despite his loyalty, he said victory would be sweeter to defeat Sonic himself and was delighted to surpass Infinite in power with the ruby.

Everyone has always been vessels for Eggman to manipulate and use for selfish gain and later discard like they're nothing, while others are enemies and obstacles to be destroyed, and everyone else is so worthless and insignificant to him that all they should be are mindless slaves to the empire. Everything is his to use and destroy as he pleases.

I adore how Infinite is yet another example, even despite his loyalty to him the whole time. It never makes Eggman see them as anything more, doesn't make them any more worthy, and still don't deserve a fraction of his power in ruling the world in the end because everyone and everything is beneath him and disposable no matter what.

That's a cool idea for Infinite! What also works is him being heavily manipulated by Eggman after discovering their shared desires through the phantom ruby, and maybe the Jackal Squad's doom and his hatred to Shadow was yet another way to take his devotion to the empire further and allow him to use the phantom ruby on him.

And even despite his lack of genuine long term respect and value of any of his lackeys and how they'll always be temporary and worth nothing more than what they can do for him no matter how badly they get hurt is bad enough, it is indeed not even the worst thing he's done and that's why he's a magnificent evil bastard through and through! 💜🥰

#I love Forces Eggman so much :') 💖💕💗#please come back baby I miss you #eggman #dr eggman #dr robotnik #dr. eggman #sonic forces #my post #asks

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maleficentmrsofallevil · 11 months

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BJDs, face-ups, blather

Just realized the irony of this post versus my blank face avatar. Oh, well. I used all my good brain go-go-Gadget power on work, so I'm just gonna bs.

I bought this PDF face-up tutorial by Tianba on Etsy for $5 (USD), and even though I haven't tried any of the techniques, I feel like I already got my money's worth in sheer entertainment value. The entire thing is in Chinese, but I think the pictures are very good, and the steps easily determinable. Tianba starts by adding a lot of color as a base palette before painting on eyes, brows, etc. And after reading through the steps for the initial palette, I see it everywhere. I can spot a Tianba tutorial follower on Insta immediately. "Oops, a little too much blue on that ear, dude." "Oh, you chose yellow instead of green. Interesting."

Tianba uses an airbrush for the initial palette, and I was planning to do that on Sasquatch (Magical Angel Iris, or my 6-foot-tall prize possession). Then I realized that due to the size of her head, a little color blot spray from an airbrush wasn't going to work. I'd have to, like, do circles or something to make the little color blotches work on a human-sized face. I'm just not that confident in my airbrush skills, and I'm thinking on a human-sized face, mistakes are going to be very obvious. So I'm going to use make-up brushes and pastels, and save the airbrushing for the sealant.

Thank dog I got airbrush sealant. The amount of MSC I would need to seal 'Squatch could probably pay for another doll...

Oh, back to that Tianba tutorial book - I'm fairly confident it only works on white, pale peach, or maybe fantasy color resins. The color choices would just be awful on a tan or dark brown resin face. The poor doll would look like a clown. So I'm thinking of mixing in a light brown airbrush paint for all colors when I work on my brown girls.

Which reminds me - I saw Lomie's Playground do this really clever thing where she mixed a little acrylic paint and water to make the colors she wanted. Then she mixed the paint with airbrush medium (another thing I'll have to buy, but hopefully cheap) and put it in the airbrush to paint her dolls. I thought that was a cool idea, and I'm definitely going to try it. Instead of filtering the paint, there's a little filter thingie you can buy and put right in the airbrush pot. I saw it on Leona's Workshop somewhere. I'll have to search for it again.

Totally unrelated - Iplehouse is having their summer event sale until July 30, 2023 (Korean time). 5 percent off of limited dolls, 10 percent off of basic dolls, and doll choice at basic doll price, plus some limited outfits will be available for sale. I never considered the nYID body as something I'd want until I bought one from... I literally can't remember. (Please tell me who you are). Iplehouse Bianca on the right. I love her. SO MUCH. Now, I want either HID, nSID, or nYID bodies only.

#bjd #blather

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seraphtrevs · 1 year

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Gus doesn't kill people unless they threatened him in some way, but is it safe to say Lalo will kill mostly anyone because of any hint that they may jeopardize his goal? He let Margarethe live and the people he was going to be smuggled with, because it would've drawn too much attention. He let the dealers live too even though they could be seen as messy and unreliable, not to mention replaceable

Yet he had his gun out to kill the cop who pulled him over and Fred too, not to mention Howard -- the latter two I think Gus would've saw as no threat if he were in Lalo's shoes. And the fact that Howie was just Some Guy to him only strengthens my case

For a guy who was only in 1.5 seasons he's certainly the biggest headscratcher

Gus and Lalo are working with two very different motivations. Gus values caution above all else because ABQ is his home. He's spent years carefully developing his alter ego as a friendly local business owner - he can't just get up and move if the shit hits the fan, especially after he invests millions in the superlab. He's also always on thin ice with the cartel - he can't give them any excuse to find fault with his performance.

Meanwhile, Lalo doesn't really need to care about being careful in the same way. He's not planning on sticking around after the business with Fring is cleared up. You can argue that he should be careful so as not to expose the cartel...but I actually don't think the cartel cares a whole lot about ABQ, seeing as they put Tuco in charge, who has to be put somewhere out of respect to the Salamancas but not anywhere too important since he's a maniac. When we're introduced to Tuco in BrBa, the whole territory is a mess except for Gus's operation, so obviously not a huge priority. The cartel has a vast amount of territory to worry about.

But back to Lalo. He kills mostly as a matter of expedience. When he's tracking Mike, time is of the essence. He had to get that information immediately - otherwise, he was going to lose him. Fred was not cooperating, so Lalo killed him. Murder is always a risky move, but this murder was actually not all that risky from Lalo's perspective. The homicide clearance rate in the US is only about 50%, a number I'm sure goes down even further when it's a random act of violence. Lalo assumed - correctly - that the police would have no idea who he was or where to find him, since he had zero connections with Fred. Or even if they did start putting together the case, he would be long gone by then. The only reason he got caught is that Mike intervened.

The police shoot-out thing was very funny, but again, from Lalo's perspective, it would make sense for him to try to shoot his way out if there was only one or two cops, because there's a good chance he would get away clean - cops are so much worse at their jobs than TV gives them credit for. And he's not some random guy - he has the resources of a vast criminal empire at his disposal. If he made his getaway, he had people who could make his car disappear, and then he'd hop over the border until the heat cooled down. Getting put in jail is a lot more complicated, which is why he reached for his gun first until he realized there was too many of them to take on.

He spared the migrants and Margarethe not because it would draw too much attention, but out of mercy. It's why he made sure all of the migrants got their money back - he was trying to be noble. He didn't want to kill Margarethe because he liked her. You could argue that he also didn't want to alert Gus and that was probably part of it, but I'm pretty sure it was mostly mercy. Something that s6 really drummed in is the idea that even very bad people want to view themselves as good.

As for Howard, that was another case of expediency, like Fred. He needed to get Jimmy and Kim's cooperation immediately since he was racing against the clock. Killing Howard to scare Jimmy and Kim into doing what he told them was worth any mess it might make, from his perspective

#lalo salamanca #gustavo fring #better call saul #asks

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vannahfanfics · 1 year

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Hi hi! I go by Sunny online, I use they/them, I'm 5'7, I have decently long brown hair (I'm growing it out as my years of peace and if someone provokes me to anger I'll cut it off and leave it on their doorstep as a cute reference to emperors in ancient China <3) I'm chaotic in nature, I've been described as the literal personification of a d&d bard. Which I'd say is decently true, I'm charismatic and flirty, I'm great and convincing people and I'm the hype person! My go to words/phrases are, "Slay king/queen live your truth" "Have my babies" "Naur/Hyelleur" "I'm gonna beat you up *pretend beats them up* are you dead yet?" All with a funny tone and my excellent autistic timing. I also like to do bits, and one of them includes saying no to a task that's asked of me, then proceeding to do said task. I also like to make hearts with my hands in various ways and poke my tongue out briefly at people like a frog.

This is my left eye for reference :)

I have an oval face shape with some baby fat, but not too much :P

Also I'm proven to be totally chill and super smooth around people that I find very attractive. I may get a little nervous but no one can tell until after said attractive person leaves. I'm demiromantic and demisexual so it means I don't experience those kinds of attractions without a deep bond. I don't care for gender but women and nb people tend to befriend me and get close so that skews the results some heh.

Good luck with the comissions! I hope I didn't out too little/much information, and buh-byeeeee <3333

Ahh, Sunny, I apologize for how long it took me to get to this! Between medical school shenanigans, writer's block/my ADHD squirrel-braining, and all that mess, I've just been on a rollercoaster of poor time management over here. TT.TT But, hopefully, you'll find it as having been well worth the wait! Thanks again for commissioning <3

P.S. I also do the thing where I say "no" when someone asks me to do something while immediately moving to perform said task XD

I match you with...

Ling Yao from FullMetal Alchemist!

Okay, full disclosure, I'm a little biased because Ling was one of my first great manga/anime loves... However, your personal blurb just screamed Ling to me, so I'm going with him anyways! I just think you two would be total peas in a pod—the best or worst chaotic duo, depending on who you ask, muahaha! Here's a few reasons why I think you two would be really compatible:

I think being demiromantic and demisexual works in your favor when it comes to Ling! After all, he's a guy who forms very deep and powerful bonds himself, and his devotion to those he cares about not only influences a lot of his personality but serves as the core of his motivations. I think he'd totally vibe with the idea of needing a strong, meaningful relationship in place already before any feelings beyond friendship develop. He can play at being friends with everyone and seeming like he doesn't form serious attachments, but we know that he does, and those are the relationships he puts the most value in. That being said, he is entirely personable; it would be easy to become friends with him and go from there! He's a lot like you in his extroversion, after all. People are where the party's at, and you are certainly a party people that he'd invite into his life! :)

When it comes to Ling, I feel like physical appearance is something that may be an element of catching his initial interest and cause him to take notice of someone (such as a "hot senator," wink-wink, nudge-nudge) but isn't necessarily the key factor in his decision to pursue somebody. That being said, it's not something he totally ignores, either; the more he falls for you, the more things he falls in love with about you, and that includes appearance. He'll begin to just randomly think about how luscious your hair is, how gorgeous your eyes are, how you look lovely whether you're dressed comfy or to the nines... And if you ask him why he's got a dreamy look on his face while staring at you, he's certainly not shy in telling you exactly what's on his mind! But he'd be unable to pick a favorite part about you because he just adores all of you so much, inside and outside, physical and not. And he'll tell you that, too!

Now, you did mention that you're not really keen on words of affirmation as a love language. It's not Ling's primary love language, but he's not the type to withhold compliments or be shy about his feelings, as I mentioned before. Bear in mind that, to him, they aren't words of affirmation; it's just the truth! He never says things that he doesn't genuinely believe, so it might be hard for him to stifle those urges in the beginning of navigating a relationship with you. But he will try, simply because he doesn't want to upset you or come off as disingenuous. Don't hold it against him if things slip out here and there, though! And he will more than make up for it through his primary love language, which is acts of service. I mean, we've seen what lengths Ling will go to for those he cares about and/or feels responsible for. If you asked this man to pluck the moon out of the sky for you, he'd be searching for the nearest rocketship to commandeer. He'll always try to do things to make you smile, make your day better, make your life easier... Whatever you need at the time and whatever makes you happy! Finally, he's also a lot like you when it comes to physical affection. His desire for it grows as his feelings grow; if it's a serious relationship, he can be a real cuddle monster! He won't want to go two minutes without hugging or kissing or touching you or some way. He isn't even ashamed about admitting that he's a little needy, LOL. He just adores you oh so much! If you're willing to give, why should he be shy about asking? Of course, if you're not in the mood, he can easily pick up on that and won't overstep your boundaries. He'll definitely be a little sad about it, though, and will be a little bit more of a menace when you're ready to accept physical affection from him again! >:)

A lot of the reason that I think you guys work together, as I've alluded to a bit, is that your personalities are so similar! Sometimes, this can actually be a recipe for not being able to enter a relationship with a person, but I don't that'd be the case for you and Ling. I think you two would 100% fuel each other's madness. I mean, tell me that Ling would not also cut off his hair and leave it on the doorstep of someone who provoked him. That is peak petty Ling vibes right there. To further cite your personal blurb, Ling definitely has bard energy—charismatic, shrewd, humorous, free-spirited... A lot of qualities that you also have! I can only imagine the shenanigans that the two of you would get up to. You two will definitely come up with all the chaotic/hilarious bits, witticisms, and the like. The same can be said about your sense of justice and loyalty. Those are values that Ling holds in high regard himself and immensely respects in a person. His ass will be right there with you in the jail cell. And, hello, your love of food? It totally resonates with Ling! So the fact that you like food is your ticket straight to his heart, LMAO! He loves having a good time over a nice meal, and he gets to see you super happy while he's at it? Win-win, baby! And, let's be honest, Ling can be swayed by the dollar signs... so he will definitely respect your dreams of rolling in the dough, haha!

Ling is highly observant, so if you've caught his attention in a way that makes him want to court you, then he's going to make sure to make all the right moves to win your heart <3 So, I figured I'd expound a bit on the kind of things Ling does when he finds out the things that make you happy!:

Ling, 90% of the time, does not do planned dates. This dude just calls and sometimes even shows up out of the blue hoping that you are free so he can spirit you off on an adventure, LOL! He just can't help it; the instant that he wants to talk to your or see you, he just has to, right then and there! Not only that, this guy lives his life by the rule of spontaneity; it's no fun if you plan every second of your day!

Honestly, he'll probably pick up on the fact that you like food during your first meeting. A lot of your friendship will involve food, whether it's you guys going out to eat together or ordering in or just talking about your shared gourmet interests, LOL. But once he gets it in his head that he wants to date you? Man, he kicks it into high gear.

You mention a new restaurant you wanna try? Dress up, love, because he'll be picking you up at seven. Your favorite snacks? He has them on hand anytime the situation could call for it just because he wants to see your face light up. You mention you have nothing to do this weekend? Knock-knock, here's Ling with some take-out and some movies or videogames, ready to waste the night away with you.

At first, Ling's not a guy who cooks. He's got people to do that for him, LMAO. But this man would 100% learn to cook for you. The notion of you enjoying something that he made just for you... Ah! It makes his heart go doki-doki! Like, literally, he might shed a tear of joy the first time because it makes him that happy to know you liked his food.

And if you do the same for him? First it will blow his mind, then he'll get stupid excited because food, and then he'll get all choked up because you did this just for him! It could honestly be burnt or salty or straight up inedible, but this guy will lick the plate clean because you made it and that makes it a five-star meal in his book :)

Real talk, he knows you don't like dishonesty, so he'll be tactfully honest if it wasn't good. But if you try to get him not to eat it, you'll just end up chasing him around the house while he's shoveling food in his mouth. Sometimes his principles overrule his brain, and he would rather die than waste a single bit of a meal you made for him!

Needless to say, eating with you is his favorite activity. He gets to eat some yummy food, whether one or both of your made it or it's from a restaurant, and enjoy quality time with you. And it makes you just as happy! Seriously, what's not to enjoy?

And, last but not least, here is the little drabble that comes as part of the Tier III match-up! I am kind of passionate about Ling just being a spontaneous gremlin that somehow is just so sickeningly sweet and heart-throbbing, so, here, have some super cliché and chaotic fluff!:

You should have known better than to talk to Ling about romantic clichés.

It was a trap. Of course it was a trap! You've known the guy forever, and yet he still managed to trick you right into the conversation with that silver tongue of his. You'd only been dating a month, so him bringing up the topic of cliché romantic gestures should have been the biggest warning flag ever. When you managed to miss that, you should have been tipped off by the even more obvious probing about which gestures you found too cheesy and which ones kind of got your heart fluttering. But the bastard was too damn smooth and navigated that conversation leaving you none the wiser.

So, here you are, staring out of your bedroom window with an expression that is a mixture of embarrassment and endearment. Why? Because Ling was sitting in your yard, singing a very off-key rendition of your favorite song while playing an acoustic guitar more terribly than you thought a person could.

Well, as they say: hindsight is 20/20. Still, you don't know how you missed that.

"Ling!" You're laughing as you open your window and lean out to call to him. He had started off looking all seductive-like at you, but very soon he started really feeling himself and now had his head thrown back, yowling to the moon like some deranged cat. In fact, you can hear several cats in the distance responding to his call. He doesn't hear them, nor does he hear you, not with him singing at a pitch that borders on one only dogs can hear. So, after a small fit of giggles, you shout louder, "Ling!"

"Eh?" he cuts off to stare owlishly at you. He then plasters a big, cheesy grin on your face that is so full of enthusiasm and adoration that you can't help but let your heart melt a little.

"Oh, hey! Whatcha think?" Before you can answer, he cocks a brow and flashes you a suggestive smirk. "You're looking a little off-balance there. Did I sweep ya off your feet?"

"I'm off-balance, all right, but only because your singing is so bad that it's given me vertigo!" you rib. "What the hell were you thinking? I bet the neighbors are on the phone with animal control telling them that there's a band of raccoons tearing each other to pieces over here!"

As always, Ling takes your teasing in stride, just offering you a sheepish smile and a little shrug.

"Well, at least I can say I tried. I should have gone for something else, though. I know I can't sing for shit. But I've always wanted to try it, you know? Those guys in the movies make it seem so swoon-worthy." He wastes no time in discarding the guitar in the grass to retrieve later. He walks over to a plastic bag sitting nearby, and when he hefts it up, you recognize the logo of one of your favorite takeout places. "It's a good thing I brought a contingency plan."

"You should have started with that," you laugh as he approaches the window. Dextrous and limber, it's no trouble for him to clamber his way up and perch himself in it, straddling the sill and smiling warmly while he holds out the bag of delicious-smelling food to you.

"Come on. Admit it; you liked it," he goads, playfully yanking the to-go bag out of your reach just when you go to take it. When you pout at him, he wiggles his brows and presses, "Come on. You're telling me that you didn't swoon just the teeniest, tiniest bit?"

You debate lying to him just to do it, but you can't bring yourself to. Underneath his playful expression is genuine eagerness. So, after releasing a little sigh of relent, you admit, "Okay. I did swoon." When his face lights up with happiness, you hastily add, "Just the teeniest, tiniest bit, though."

"Whatever, I'll take it," he chirps and deposits the bag of food in your waiting hands.

You waste no time in tearing it open to get at the boxes of scrumptious goodies within. Like you've often done, you eat there at the window using some nearby furniture as a makeshift table, Ling perched in the window and you in a chair next to him. You melt as soon as you take the first bite, and immediately, Ling's face softens.

"What?" you ask around your mouthful of food.

"Mmm, I'm just glad that at least one of my romantic gestures made you happy," he answers nonchalantly. You roll your eyes, but that hot flush of happiness and nervousness is rushing through you despite your cool-as-a-cucumber outward appearance. And Ling has known you long enough to see right through it, prompting him to add, "Don't care how I do it, as long as I can make you smile."

"You're such a simp," you mumble despite the fact that a stupidly happy smile is growing on your face.

"Ah, but this simp is sitting in your window, so what does that make you?" he challenges. You respond with a playful shove to his shoulder, knowing that he'll catch himself as he slips to the side. He does with a squawk, then responds with an affronted huff and a light shove to your head. "Fine! Next time I try to dazzle you with a romantic cliché, I won't bring takeout!" He even starts acting like he's climbing back out the window to leave.

"Noooooo! I'm sorry! Please don't!" you whine, throwing your arms around his middle even though you know it's an act. You feign that it's just the food you care about, but in reality, it makes you giddy that he likes you enough to embarrass himself with corny displays if only to see you smile. And he knows that, which is why he settles himself back in the window and smiles at you.

In hindsight, maybe talking with Ling about romantic clichés wasn't so bad after all.

Interested in a commission? Check out this post!

#vannahfanfics commissions #commissions #match-ups #matchups #fullmetal alchemist #fma #fullmetal alchemist brotherhood #fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood #fmab #fma brotherhood

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makingspiritualityreal · 2 years

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Why I almost lost myself and why I ultimately haven't.

Everyone is born unique. Even if just in some small way, we bring into this life something special, something noone else can quite do like we do, something that makes us all pioneers and revolutionaries. A priceless addition to our field, even if the foundation of it has been practiced many times over. There are no two Astrologers, Tarot Readers or Spiritual Influencers who would do things the exact same way.

However, as you embark on a journey of self expression which somehow brushes against a certain field, it is easy to fall into so many traps. The most dangerous one is the trap of losing yourself to conformism.

Realistically, people receive varying degrees of public attention. In our time and age, the currency of popularity has become a value in itself more than the content created. As you confront your fresh, personal ideas with a wave of external energies, it can result in a rude awakening. No matter how brilliant or inspired you are, you won't have a million followers the first day. Your success won't be immediate. And no matter how good you are at what you do, you will never manage to convince everyone of your worth. These can all be hard pills to swallow.

However, no matter how difficult this journey to receiving any public response may be, staying true to these fresh ideas that you started with is the only way to keep going. Because if you lose that unique spark of creativity in order to try to please anyone, you have just lost all reason for creating anything in the first place. Nothing you do from this point would ever be worth anything... because it's not YOU anymore.

I have had a very hard journey in that regard myself, simply because my way of contributing and creating opposes absolutely all modern social norms. I'm a Projector in Human Design, and for those who are familiar with HD know that this is enough to struggle with sharing your endeavours, because it requires swimming against the current of how the world is set up. But for those who are not familiar with HD, I will give a user-friendly explanation of my personal creativity process.

I don't believe in any working systems. I do what I do only when I feel like doing it. If that means going a year without writing a single word or recording a single video, so be it. That doesn't really happen, because my desire for self expression and sharing always calls out to me, but you get the idea. If I want to write about a particular Astrology transit, I will. If I have a phase of sharing about something particular and I get over it, then so be it. Like I got over posting tiktoks for every moon cycle because it felt too repetitive...but I might do it again one day if I feel like it. I don't even look at what everyone else is doing for the most part, and I avoid it extra in case it would try to give me an idea to think I should be doing something the way everyone else is.

I abhor routines. Whenever I thought of posting content at particular hours for viewer retention or scheduling content on specific days (the cliché of YouTube videos twice a week every Tuesday and Friday...), I felt caged before I even created anything. I gave up on that idea ages ago, and I don't promise any strict regulatity in anything I do.

I refuse to put myself in a box of any titles related to what I do. I communicate my deeper ideas, and use things such as Astrology, Tarot or Numerology to talk about what is meaningful and give people new perspective on esoteric sciences, but I bring deeper spiritual concepts through everything I say and do, and have no interest in limiting myself to any of these things. I also love the physical side of life, and will definitely post about that more also when life gives me more opportunities to do it, and I don't find it any less spiritual to talk about my love for food or decorating my home or connecting with nature.

Even in the esoteric fields, after years of experience I grew to understand Vedic Astrology contains the most truth...which means disagreeing with the Western Astrology community, still hands down the biggest social gathering for those interested in the subject. If I had it my way, everyone would wake up tomorrow having enough wisdom to understand the true depth behind the energy of the Nakshatras, understanding the revised meanings behind zodiac signs. Which is something I hope my Astrology writing helps with.

I don't subscribe to the "work-pay" system. Naturally, I charge for private readings as they require a lot of my energy and attention, but I have no interest in being an around-the-clock reading service, as I prefer a copious amount of time to breathe out and enjoy my life, which is what allows me to bring my quality of content to such heights.

For most of these things, I have been punished, traumatised, bullied and denied basic human needs, such as love, money or recognition.

My family told me to "get a normal job and get serious about life" more times than I can count. They offered me absolutely no emotional or physical support.

I went through many financial and housing problems, due to coming from a poor background and a complete lack of practical help on anyone's part since my only parent died when I was 20. My family left me alone with all my difficulties since then, offering nothing but critique and more trauma.

All my adult romantic endeavours so far have failed, because I tend to trigger everyone I'm intimate with to truly look at themselves, which people can't stand. People I loved have refused my heart for my sensitivity, openness and unapologetic commitment to my vulnerability most of my adult life, favouring people of a more cold hearted nature instead. Everyone I ever cared about has failed by choosing the easy way out.

These are the kind of situations that can ruin a person, when they accumulate. Yesterday, I had a breaking point. The mix of all my problems has become unbearable. I found myself alone, despite all my attempts, feeling unsuccessful in all areas of my life, even though I always did my best by everything and everyone. I couldn't stand being so profoundly unloved and unaccepted for everything I stand for, I couldn't stand having no reciprocity for all the love I poured out towards everything and everyone. I decided that being myself was not worth it anymore, and I hoped that if I beat myself hard enough, like everyone has always beaten and rejected me, I might actually become someone that receives that love that was always denied to me.

Then, as I was witnessing this very painful process in my mind, I caught a glimpse of what my life would have been like from now on. I saw myself losing all my magic out of that despair I was experiencing. I felt all the beautiful, deep thoughts, feelings and reflections that everything I do is based on, slip away from me. The worst part was, that I could feel myself starting to forget, that I ever had anything meaningful inside me in the first place. This one second felt more empty, than anything I have ever experienced in my life, before or after.

I pulled myself back immediately, and decided that I don't care how many times I feel hurt, rejected, unloved or unsuccessful. The beauty and purity of my inner world comes before anyone or anything else. It doesn't matter how many times in my life I heard that noone has time for who I am. It doesn't matter how many times I would get attacked or rejected for it. It doesn't matter how much heartache or suffering I go through to sustain it. It doesn't matter if noone else ever validates or loves my way of being. All of these things, as painful as they were, are nowhere as scary as the feeling of losing myself was.

The perk of this process was that it accidentally helped me dredge up some really painful feelings of rejection from childhood, when this wound originated. I never realised before how fundamentally rejected I felt for my innocence by my primary caregivers, until present day romantic situations mirrored it by rejecting me the same way. It only gave me more motivation to come back to myself as much as I can, even though it comes with a lot of fear.

As scary as it is to go around in the world, when you have been so severely, fundamentally traumatised just for being who you are, nothing is worth losing yourself. Nothing. No attempts at escape from pain can ever replace the fulfillment and peace of living in your authenticity. I'm saying this in my position, coming from a place of being downright punished just for existing and having feelings my entire life. I would still take this pain every day, tenfold, and choose it over the terror of that one second of thinking unconsciousness is the better way out. It never is.

I tested it for you. Don't try it yourself. You may not have the strength to go back, and staking your soul is the biggest risk you can take in this life. Any mistakes in this area are extremely painful and hard to go back from. It takes 10 times more effort to pull yourself back out than it takes to hold on.

#making spirituality real #spiritual growth #spiritual journey #spiritual development #spiritualawakening

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moonsdancer · 2 years

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Pre-relationship: 2 & 7 General: 8 & 9 Love: 1 Domestic life: 1, 2 & 3

You know who 😉😊

Let's get it!

meljay

PRE-RELATIONSHIP

2.What was their first impression of each other?

Mel was already curious about this particular defendant because of the intel Elora shared earlier, not only was this Talis person from a lower house but a family of some renown for their retractable socket wrenches. Add onto that, he was "Heimerdinger's favourite" and an apprenta for one of the most important families in the city. All in all, it makes for a curious set of events and was worth remarking upon.

When she sets eyes on him for the first time, her immediate thought is, "Oh dear, he's pretty. Far too pretty to be in irons." Then, the more Jayce opens his mouth about his idea, she gets an inkling that he's far more than a mere pretty face. There's something there, might even be the very thing she's been searching for (as per her previous scene). That's why she keeps pushing and needling him, provoking him to spill the beans about the true nature of his research.

Once that's revealed, her interest is fully engaged, this sounds like exactly the kind of thing she's wanted to invest in. Something that will change the face of Piltover, the world even, forever. She knows what it's like to be "banished" for thinking differently and for having a vision, and a part of her is really compassionate about that and drawn to him because of it. She would've already used her influence with Hoskel to save the Talis inventor, but when Ximena speaks up in his defense, well, that's that.

Jayce, on the other hand, didn't have such a favourable impression. He'd spent a good part of his student and now adult life on the periphery of Piltovan high society when he got the sponsorship from House Kiramman. He's observed them at their fetes and high society gatherings, experienced first hand their arrogance and classism, deemed acceptable and almost an insider, but still always aware that he's not and never will be one of them and that his entire value comes from how much wealth he can help them accumulate not any value he himself possesses. Besides Caitlyn, he wouldn't count any of them as friends or even allies.

So, he expects much the same from this Medarda woman. He's seen her from afar a few times at some of the Kiramman events but she'd never have spoken to, let alone noticed the likes of him. He's aware that she's one of the ones who voted for his pardon but it's not enough for him to view her favourably since his whole entire career has been ruined by the council ruling.

When she shows up outside Heimerdinger's office, he's sure he's done for. This beautiful (emph: because he's in trouble but he's not blind, even in the dark corridor), powerful, rich woman is going to get him tossed in the gaol and banished. But something urges him to try. To just try and convince her of the worth of what he's doing, he's got nothing left to lose. The more they talk, the more she asks questions, the more he starts to wonder about her. But it's when she lies, runs interference to protect him and Viktor from discovery by Harold, to give them a chance to prove the science, well that impresses him. Maybe there's something more to this Councilor Medarda than he thought, hence this face:

7. What would their lives be like if they had never met?

Well, Mel never really finds that one revolutionary thing or person that she was searching for. Of course she still invests and makes oodles of money but there's no tech revolution, no hope or possibility or dream of helping to build something so revolutionary that it changes the world. No one that inspires her, makes her wonder what it could mean to not always do things the Medarda way. No one who appeals to the softer, hidden parts of her that yearn for affection and love and all sorts of foolish things that her family ought to have beaten out of her by now. She hardens. Eventually, her mother sends word for her to return when Kino runs afoul of the same people and is killed. All this time, she wasn't useful or important but now that she's the only remaining heir, Ambessa can find purpose for her. So, she goes back and becomes the wolf she never wanted to be.

As for Jayce. Well, Ximena's appeal is just as heartfelt as it is in the canon but this time, there's no Mel to convince Hoskel to vote in favour of a lighter sentencing. He's banished, all of his research and work confiscated and destroyed, blacklisted entirely by anyone who could support his research elsewhere, completely without funds or any means to make an income. He wanders for a while as an exile, he's been to plenty of places in his travels for research so he's a pretty good traveler. But the loss of everything, his life's work and passion, his family, his friends and community, his home, his dream - it breaks something inside of him. Add to that, there's no one to believe in him, whose faith and encouragement can buoy him up when he gets low in the way that Mel and Viktor in different ways did. He makes some living fixing machines and tools for a pittance, tutoring some, and lives a largely unremarkable life.

[Alternative: he somehow makes his way to Noxus, as a weapons master for a middling clan, and his inventions start to make some noise, and eventually bring him to the attention of Clan Medarda, and a warhost named Mel.]

GENERAL

8.Who gets jealous easier?

I'd say they're about equal on this, maybe Mel edging Jayce out a bit. It's not that she has any insecurity about their relationship or feels threatened by the many, many, many aggressive groupies Jayce has being Piltover's resident Golden Boy but she's not particularly fond of watching people flagrantly throwing themselves at him, sending clandestine notes with detailed fanfic about all the things they'd like to do to him etc. Jayce, well, he's not blind or stupid. He knows he's with a woman so beautiful, there are probably bards composing songs about her every other day. He sees how some people look at her, and, he has no qualms about staking his proverbial claim -- not so much in public when their relationship is still a secret -- but later, when they're alone, and very much naked. He often does so emphatically that for days after, she has to wear long sleeved, high-necked gowns to at least try to cover the evidence 👄😏.

9. Who whispers inappropriate things in the other’s ear?

Mel. She likes whispering all sorts of suggestive things in Jayce's ear at some of the boring events they have to attend or during consular session tea breaks, loves seeing the way his ears turn a little red, how he tries not to get too excited at some of the pictures she paints in his ear or the news that she opted not to wear smallclothes under her dress that day. He only sometimes succeeds and usually has to spend the time in public positioned strategically behind the backs of chairs or with a large sheaf of papers in his lap to avoid taking someone's eye out 😳😂🍆. Jayce is less of a talker and more a man of action but sometimes, especially after he's had a glass or two of wine, he can get a little mouthy. And, Mel can't really claim not to enjoy it and despite protests, she has a much shorter fuse than he does and it frequently leads to them disappearing for inappropriate amounts of time in the middle of events to attend to matters of impressive urgency😏💦 .

LOVE

1.Who said “I love you” first?

Jayce. He's already there, let's be real. When someone says, "nothing feels impossible when I'm with you," that's about as close as they can get to saying I FUCKING ADORE YOU without outright saying the three words. But after the council room bombing, and the very real reality that he could've lost her for good, he tells her. And Mel eventually does the same, quietly in the dark, almost so quietly that he wouldn't have heard it if he was standing on the other side of the room. For her, it was something she was intensely afraid to say out loud for fear that this, that Jayce, would be taken away from her like most any other things she's loved. But once she works up to say it, she doesn't hesitate as much afterwards.

DOMESTIC LIFE

1.If they get married, who proposes?

Jayce. Mostly because marriage to someone you're in love with is a decidedly middle class conceit in most places, really. In Noxus (as with Piltovan high society), most marriages are political arrangements made for strategic reasons. So Mel doesn't really see the need for it. But Jayce asks her with his heart in his mouth and a ring that he forged carefully with his own hands, and she says yes. It takes a while for them to get round to sealing the deal though. A piece of paper isn't going to affirm their commitment any more than not, so no need to rush.

2. What’s the wedding like? Who attends?

It's a private, intimate, quiet affair. In fact, a lot of people outside of their inner circle don't actually even know they're married for years to come. A decision they make to protect each other and their offspring from being targeted by potential enemies. Especially as Piltover & Zaun descend further into war, and the increasing turmoil in Noxus, they have to be really careful about these sorts of things.

Ximena, Elora, Caitlyn, Ambessa attend.

3.How many kids do they have, if any? What are they like?

So many different headcanons for this. But for now:

Twins. Jae and a girl named for Kino. Jae is much like his lore counterpart, an adventurer who, inspired by his dad's stories of far-flung places he visited while searching for Brackern crystals, decides to do the same - except he's mostly hunting for treasure. Kino takes after her mother, she's a bit of an artist, and her father in that she loves working in the forge. She eventually becomes a metal weapons master, and makes jewelry in her down time.

#mel medarda #jayce talis #meljay #ask meme #i had way too much fun for this #headcanons

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sister-dear · 2 years

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Q, Y and Z? 👀

Q: Do you have any discarded scenes/storylines/projects?

SO MANY. Lol. Especially from longer stories and series. I tend to plot loosely via vague descriptions of scenes and chunks of dialogue and refine as I go, so there’s a lot of stuff that gets written down and then tossed when it doesn’t end up fitting. There’s one from almost a full year ago now that I’m still hoping to use for a future Built on Trust installment, it was meant for something else and just didn’t work, but it also didn’t work for Built on Trust without establishing some other stuff first, but I still like the scenario. And one from the Sicktember stuff before I decided to go the lighthearted route that I’m hoping to build into a full story for Whumptober.

Most of them are too rough or I just don’t like them enough to want to share, but I’ll chuck a “meet the colors” scenario under a read more at the end here that wound up getting discarded because I was having trouble getting the tone of it to go the direction I needed. Reading it again, though, I do kind of feel like it might have potential now that I’m not trying to force it to be something it wasn’t suited for lol.

Y: A character you want to protect.

See the problem here is the characters I’d list are the exact same ones it’s fun to make suffer. Everything in balance hahaha!

Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate?

I used to sometimes enjoy or at the very least be able to tolerate it, but these days I just can’t. Strikes a little too close to home! One of the few things that’s an automatic hard pass for me. (At least, in a fandom situation. A movie or book genre where you go in knowing that it’s highly unlikely for all of the characters to survive so there’s no point getting attached is a different beast entirely.)

Which is not meant to be a value judgment on people who write and enjoy it! It can be very cathartic in some circumstances, and adds suspense and drama in a way few other things can.

(Meet the Colors Discarded Scenario)

Four eyes the line of shivering heroes. They’re all drenched, in varying states of miserable, guilty, and irritated. Wild’s starting the process of retrieving what he can of their gear from the riverbed with magnesis. A few of them start changing into different gear to help him.

Four is very, very glad that he got off the raft first. The only thing wet is his feet.

“Set up camp early?” A hopeful Sky suggests through chattering teeth.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Warriors agrees.

(Next morning, something wrong.) Four is the first one awake. He hears first one cough. Then another.

“There was something going around that last town. Some kind of illness.”

“Yeah. It’s usually minor, but everyone gets it.”

“We’re not that far from town. We could go back.”

As one, they look over the group. Some of them are obviously down for the count, not up to travel.

“That might be more trouble than it’s worth.”

“Looks like we’re riding this out right here.”

Four tries. He really does. He manages one entire day. He wakes up the next morning feeling surprisingly stiff and sore; it’s a lot of work taking care of eight sick people, even when a handful of them are still well enough to help out.

That next morning though, it’s immediately obvious he’s on his own.

Four surveys camp of shivering, groaning, coughing heroes.

He’s going to need help.

#ask game #tumblr game

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icinch · 1 year

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Start a 6-Figure Newsletter Member Site

New Post has been published on https://www.cinchhomebiz.com/start-a-6-figure-newsletter-member-site/

Start a 6-Figure Newsletter Member Site

A hot online business model is to build a membership site and sell those memberships for $27 to $97 a month or more. It sounds like a great idea – theoretically just 100 members paying you $97 a month will gross $9,700 per month and $116,400 per year.

But it’s not as easy as it used to be to get someone to sign up for a hefty monthly payment. And if you do, a majority of members tend to cancel after 1-4 months.

So why do they cancel? Because in their minds you are not delivering enough value for the money. They see that their finances are tight and they look for ways to save some money. “I’ll cancel that monthly membership because I wasn’t really using it anyway.”

The only way to prevent this from happening is to be indispensable to their business or their lives. If, for example, your membership gives them the software or the content that enables them to run their business, they’re not going to cancel. Same way if you provide them with something they can immediately turn into profit, such as high quality PLR. But these things tend to take more time and resources than the average marketer has, at least in the beginning.

So how can you start a continuity program that people readily join and don’t quickly cancel? By offering an inexpensive newsletter on a topic they’re passionate about. If your newsletter is in the $5 to $12 a month range and if it’s providing value, they’re not likely to cancel. After all, what’s a few bucks to read something they really enjoy? It’s less than a pizza and it provides value. And it’s almost too much effort to bother to cancel – it’s easier to just let it continue.

But you might be wondering how it can be worth it to sell a newsletter for, say, a $9 a month subscription. After all, 100 subscribers is only $900 – is it worth your time? And how long will it take to get those 100 subscribers?

Frankly, it generally doesn’t happen overnight. You may only get a handful of subscribers the first month, and another handful the second. But if your subscribers are sticking around, then your income is steadily building month after month.

Better still, whether you have one subscriber or 10,000 subscribers, your work stays the same. This means you can continue to add subscribers to infinity and your workload never goes up but your income does.

Plus, it doesn’t have to take a tremendous amount of effort. If you’re already knowledgeable about your topic you can write about it in your spare time. If you’re not, you can interview others and transcribe the interviews, or get other experts to write articles for you. In fact, if you’re smart you won’t spend the majority of your time creating content because you’ll spend it growing your subscriber base. This way every month you’ll earn more than the month before and that’s a great feeling.

Plus, you can market additional related products and services to your newsletter subscribers, thereby further increasing your income. Remember, your newsletter is far more likely to be read than ordinary emails, articles and blog posts because people are paying to receive it. This means you can build a tremendous amount of rapport and power with your readers. And so long as you never steer them wrong, they are more likely to follow your suggestions.

Here are 16 tips to get your newsletter up and running and make it as successful as possible.

1. Choose a topic with a high perceived value for the market. Making or saving money is always good. So is any niche with fanatical followers, many health niches, hobbies and even dating and relationships. If you can find something that people are obsessed with you’ve got a winner. For example, bodybuilders are obsessed with finding better/faster ways to gain muscle and they’ll subscribe to numerous magazines and websites to find the latest techniques.

2. Write a bullet rich sales page with tons of teasers on what they’ll discover in the newsletter.

3. Write one monthly newsletter or break your newsletters up into weekly editions. To begin with, the monthly newsletter format is easier and feels less overwhelming to produce. Plus it can be more impressive looking when subscribers see one big newsletter instead of several small ones each month. However, if there’s a lot of news in your niche then you might want to go with 2 or more smaller newsletters, since you’ll be able to put the news out in a much more timely manner before it gets old.

4. The amount of content you put into each newsletter is going to depend on your preferences, the niche and what your readers want. Remember that quality is much more important than quantity. For example, if you write a newsletter about making money from home, one detailed method they can implement each month is worth more than 100 pages of generic information they can get anywhere.

5. You don’t have to limit yourself just to written content – you can also do podcasts and videos.

6. Use experts in your field to help you generate the content. If you rely just on yourself you’ll run out of info. But with a steady stream of experts you’ll always have something fresh to say. Do interviews, use guest authors and even hire people to write articles for you.

7. In addition to information, negotiate discounts on products and services they might need. Getting these “inside deals” can be an added benefit of being a subscriber to your newsletter. For example, if your newsletter is about how to best use WordPress, you might negotiate discounts on popular themes, plugins or hosting. If you’re good at negotiating these deals they could even pay for members’ subscriptions.

8. Use a $1 trial to bring in more new subscribers.

9. Convert your newsletter to PDF and deliver via autoresponder or download link.

10. Ask your subscribers to submit their own tips and advice and offer them a link in your newsletter or some other reward if you publish what they write. Do this in every issue and over time you won’t have to produce as much content yourself.

11. Survey your subscribers to find out what they would like to see covered in your newsletter.

12. Once you know the value of your subscribers, you can purchase advertising to bring in new subscriptions. For example, if you know that your average subscriber stays for 6 months and you charge $9 a month for your newsletter, that’s $54. If it costs you $15 in advertising to get that subscriber, you’ve made (on average) $39 for every new subscriber that advertising brings in, not including other sales you might make to them.

13. Have a back end. It should be something more expensive than your newsletter and it needs to fit your niche perfectly, but it doesn’t have to be your own product. You can offer an affiliate product – just be sure it’s something you really, truly believe in yourself.

14. Depending on your niche, you might offer a “fixed term” membership. This is generally used when teaching specific skills that don’t change much over time, such as how to run a membership site or how to survive a disaster. You wouldn’t want to use this model if the information were constantly changing – for example, investing.

If the fixed term membership model is applicable to your niche, it offers a double benefit: First, you write the content once and continue to get paid on it for a long time. Second, members see the end in sight and are even less likely to cancel. Weekly publication tends to work well for a fixed term membership.

15. Rinse and repeat. Once you get one newsletter off the ground and successful, you might consider doing a second newsletter. This might be directly related to your first niche or in an entirely new niche.

For example, if your first newsletter is on Commodity trading, you might start a second newsletter on Forex trading. Then you can offer a discount to your commodity subscribers when they subscribe to your Forex newsletter. This will give your new newsletter a financial jump start and also enable you to immediately begin paying for content if you’re having it outsourced.

16. Cash out. If there comes a day when you’re ready to move on, sell your newsletter. Keep in mind that having built in recurring income along with a list of paying members makes your business VALUABLE, so you should get a very good price for it.

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grabyourluck-blog · 1 year

Text

Start a 6-Figure Newsletter Member Site

New Post has been published on https://www.referral-master.com/start-a-6-figure-newsletter-member-site/

Start a 6-Figure Newsletter Member Site

But it’s not as easy as it used to be to get someone to sign up for a hefty monthly payment. And if you do, a majority of members tend to cancel after 1-4 months.

Here are 16 tips to get your newsletter up and running and make it as successful as possible.

2. Write a bullet rich sales page with tons of teasers on what they’ll discover in the newsletter.

5. You don’t have to limit yourself just to written content – you can also do podcasts and videos.

8. Use a $1 trial to bring in more new subscribers.

9. Convert your newsletter to PDF and deliver via autoresponder or download link.

11. Survey your subscribers to find out what they would like to see covered in your newsletter.

0 notes