ok. ok. sure. i'm on 6x01... and sure. buck going 'maybe i don't want to pick the wrong couch again' while looking meaningfully into eddie's eyes after domestically cooking him and chris dinner as if this is everyday occurrence... after eddie implied that couch=girlfriend... sure. that doesn't have connotations at alll

for real WHERE does the idea that [utdr humans] are nongendered so that "you can project on them" come from. their literal character arcs are about NOT being a blank slate to be filled in by the audience

i think i understand the assumption on some level for undertale, because there is a very intentional effort to make you identify with the "player character" in order to make your choices feel like your own (the beating heart of undertale's metanarrative lies in giving you an alternative path to violence against its enemies after all, and whether you're still willing to persue it for your own selfish reasons. YOUR agency is crucial).

of course, the cardinal plot twist of the main ending sweeps the rug from under your feet on that in every way, and frisk's individuality becomes, in turn, a tool to further UT's OTHER main theme: completionism as a form of diegetic violence within the story. replaying the game would steal frisk's life and happy ending from them for our own perverse sentimentality, emotionally forcing our hand away from the reset button.

i think their neutrality absolutely aids in that immersion. but also, there's this weird attitude by (mostly) cis fans where it being functional within the story makes it... somehow "editable" and "up to the player" as well? which is gross and shows their ass on how they approach gender neutrality in general lol.

but also like. there's plenty of neutral, non PCharacters in undertale and deltarune. even when undertale was just an earthbound fangame and the player immersion metanarrative was completely absent, toby still described frisk as a "young, androgynous person". sometimes characters are just neutral by design. it's not that hard to understand lol.

anyone who makes this argument for kris deltarune is braindead. nothing else to say about it.

(I left this tab open to come back and reblog it later, then OP decided 33k notes in 6 days was enough to see and turned off reblogs.)

But still wanna share my half-finished sculpture of Mudtail, the cinnamon roll alien with a speech impediment! He is very friend-shaped, and someday I'll finish it.

My friend is already finishing up season 1 of Good Omens :D

[Image Description: a set of five edited bug fables screenshots from the pre-battle zommoth encounter. The first is the same as in-game, Kabbu saying "W-What is that!? Something's coming!" The second is of zommoth appearing on screen with its sprite edited to be various shades of pink and yellow, wings the same pattern as Leif's (but still with the purple blight magic stuff in the chest area.) The next three images have the sprite edited in the same way.. The third image is of Leif's saying "...Wh, Rkejrm-m-Muse!? Kjdrira, mebsrgr...!!!" The next is Kabbu saying "Muse!? Leif, that's..." The final is Vi saying "T-That doesn't make any sense!" End ID]

I thought about one of my fucked up and evil au ideas for five minutes again, so I decided to spend like fifty hours making a thing about it. Basically what if Muse went back into Snakemouth later to try to rescue Leif or at least bring back his body and got caught by the roaches.

Putting just the edited sprites under the cut if you wanna see those without the lab mood lighting:

did you read the CNBC article "Egg prices rose 60% in 2022. One farm griup claims it's a 'collusive scheme' by suppliers"? Given how knowledgeable you are about your own birds, I'm interested to hear your thoughts! I particularly found it weird in the inflation numbers comparison where eggs went up by 59.9% in December while the "poultry" category only went up by 12.2%. Doesn't that seem counter-intuitive since it takes much longer to raise meat vs eggs even with the flu? I'm not trying to grill you at all I just like your blog and would like to see your thoughts on it :)

I have no idea why you think eggs take a shorter time, but meat birds are ready for butcher at 6-8 weeks old, and egg birds are a minimum of like 4 months, if not 6-10 depending on breed.

Don't listen to people (general) on farm groups. I'm in several, and day in and day out I see some real hot takes on stuff and a lot of people who either don't know what they're doing or are doing stuff that's like, actively harmful. The people that know what they're talking about burn out trying to argue with the people that are Very Convinced that they're right as they say the most wrong things. I'm locked in combat to the death in one group over the people there using the phrase "fertile but not fertilized" to describe an infertile/unfertilized egg. There's literally no such thing as "fertile but unfertilized." An egg is infertile or fertile, or it's unfertilized or fertilized. But by golly you cannot convince them this is the case, even directing them to google to check for themselves. I've seen med recs for overdoses and underdoses. I had one lady tell me she poured some injectable meds under her bird's wing, and flat out refuse to give more via injection or buy the pour-on version because didn't "want to overdose him." MA'AM you didn't DOSE him!!! What you did was the equivalent of pouring cough syrup on your hand. I chased my own tail for WEEKS with a lady that INSISTED 12 accidental fires in a single year, across all the farms in the US (you know, the 2.5 million farms in the US), meant that there was a government conspiracy to cause a food shortage, and that's why she kept chickens. You might be able to find A Person on those groups that knows anything correct, but the groups at large are often not great for anything other than sharing cute pics and finding homes for excess birds.

Now don't get me wrong, if a company CAN charge a little more for something and get away with it, they're probably gonna try, and I'm sure that some of that is involved, in some places more heavily than others. But also we lost almost 58 MILLION chickens, a lot of them egg layers, to HPAI last year, from around march to june (like, for reference, the US has about 300 million egg-type production birds, across ages). There's also a higher cost in fuel, and likely an unwillingness to hire people who have standards about how they're treated factoring in. Given the processing/shipping/distribution time and the requirements (including the cost of materials, testing, cleaning, disposal etc) of sanitizing land and having to let it sit for a period before being able to resume production, that lag and then sept-dec 2022 zone was exactly where I expected the price rise to happen, and at least from what I've seen, it's already coming back down (from $6 to $4 around me anyway) as those lost facilities have reached laying ages. I expect it will keep going down, provided HPAI doesn't devastate the industry again this year.

If you want a visual representation of what the fuck happened last year, here's from the USDA:

So no, I don't think it's weird and also I don't think it's a conspiracy. Shit just happens sometimes, and instead of taking the hit to their profit, they took it out of egg prices because they had an excuse to raise them to cover costs and possibly make extra while people were tolerant. That's not really a conspiracy in my book, it's just capitalizing on a thing that happened. you know. like capitalists.

So, I'm having to play Alan Wake 2 vvveerryyy slowly cuz adulting keeps getting in the way. So, I can't go into the tag myself cuz spoilers but that just means I should just bring the tag to me.

What has Mr. Scratch been doing all these years? Wrong answers only.

i literally don't think i can make sad content. it goes against my nature. everything has to have happy end or i am torn to shreds.

so yeah dont worry about reunite or any of my other things. at worst its a lot of hurt before the comfort. but theres too much sad in the world to make more of it

—Elizabeth Wein, The Winter Prince

George progress I made a few days ago

! Can I also have Ishida and Mitsuru in halloween costumes? Party or some such?

Day 15 - You know, just to sure 💕

"xiao?"

your voice is deafening in the quiet, shattering the peaceful silence between the two of you, yet to the last remaining yaksha it is the most pleasant sound in the world.

"yes, dove?"

moonlight filters through the open window, bringing with it a cool breeze that makes you shiver and press closer to him. though to many he is pitiful, burdened by karmic debt and carrying the weight of his past sins, you find his presence to be incredibly comforting, and his warmth now is far from unwelcome.

"are you ever... lonely?"

you hesitate to finish your question, teeth scraping your bottom lip when you bite it as if to prevent the final word from escaping. saying it out loud makes the possibility so much more real, and you're not sure if you really want to know the answer.

"..."

there is no response. xiao feels how you stiffen in his arms, muscles tensing with concern that you may have hurt his feelings or offended him by assuming the conqueror of demons experienced such trivial mortal emotions. truth be told, he is considering his answer, desiring to give you the most honest one he can, for that is what you deserve after opening your heart to someone as stained by the past as him.

"yes. and sometimes it is almost overwhelming."

xiao begins, and the melancholy blossoming in your chest at his reply is simultaneously soothed by his voice. the gentleness of his tone would probably be impossible to comprehend for those who saw him daily, as his softness was reserved for you alone, and he did not particularly care about how rough others perceived him to be.

"but..."

he falls silent once more. xiao prefers not to look at the past, but now he finds himself musing over the other yakshas and mourning their fates. though he used to be ready to welcome death with open arms, grateful for his suffering to be over, things have changed since then.

"it has become easier to bear ever since i learned to love you."

others may take xiao's words at face value and believe that he loves you only out of habit, like you were constantly by his side until he was forced to figure out how to love you. but you know better. xiao learned to love you by learning to let his walls down, that being vulnerable isn't showing weakness, that opening yourself up to the possibility of being hurt provides a fountain of opportunities and love to flow.

"i'm glad."

a smile curves your lips, and you twist in xiao's arms to press a kiss to his jawline before tucking your head into the crook of his neck once more. the stars dance across the blanket of the midnight sky outside, twinkling effortlessly, burning themselves up to give beauty to the darkness, and you are here, safe with your lover.

"i love you, xiao."

perhaps in the grand scheme of the universe the two of you are insignificant, but for now that matters not in the slightest, because:

"and i love you too, dove."

©starglitterz 2022. do not plagiarise, repost nor modify in any way – reblog / follow if you enjoyed!

Z THE CONCEPT OF YOU REBOOTING VALIANT KNIGHT LITERALLY HAS ME FROTHING AT THE MOUTH. it literally never left my head i am always thinking about it at least a little bit. literally recently i came up with a concept for how some of my original characters for my spinoff would fit into valiant knight fnsnskdj and so i technically have like a rewrite/sequel concept that includes zenry and jasper/[redacted] fnsmdnkxnsn which included me rereading the chapters i beta'd for you to remember some details and i was like UGH THIS WAS SO GOOD I MISS IT

LASKDJOSKJVMODKMVLDSKJFSOKJFSLDKFJ HELLO?????????? ARE YOU AWARE THAT I'D LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU???? CAUSE I SERIOUSLY WOULD LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR YOU!!!!! BUT AHHHHHHHHHHH

SERIOUSLY THOUGH, THIS IS ONE OF THE HIGHEST COMPLIMENTS I'VE EVER RECEIVED, I'M LEGIT GONNA CRY (affectionate), I'VE BEEN STARING AT THIS ASK FOR LIKE SIX HOURS, LIKE THERE AREN'T ENOUGH WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TO ARTICULATE HOW MUCH THIS MEANS TO ME

but seriously, like I'm not trying to rag on my writing or anything, but I also know like. I'm not writing anything that's gonna be winning awards anytime soon or anything ground-breaking or anything, but that's never been my goal; and I just say all of that to say that the fact that you're still thinking about something of mine years later and it stuck with you so much that you want to put your own characters into it??????? That's literally so wild to me in the best way, I can't get over it. I'm so serious when I say again that this legit one of the best compliments I've ever received. (Also, if you're willing, I'd very much like to hear about this rewrite/sequel of sorts)

You have me legit thinking about it now. Like I told Pearl in the replies, I feel like my writing is leagues better (i reread stuff from that time period and just cringe now; but to be fair to my past self, she was a novice who was coming back to writing after a 10+ year break so it stands to reason) so I feel like I could do a lot more with it. There's soooo much of that world I want to flesh out that I wasn't skilled enough to do when I first started it. lsakdjf idk man, I might actually do it

>> wip day

was tagged a long time ago by @adelaidedrubman, @turbo-virgins and @shellibisshe to share a wip and was tagged by @morvaris and @aartyom to share six sentences from a current wip, thank you so much!! i decided to combine them and rather than sharing a wip, i'll share some information about the broker, a new character i recently introduced into the story of my cyberpunk ocs :) tagging @reaperkiller, @arklay, @steelport, @cultistbase, @faarkas, @swordcoasts, @ladybeniko, @necro-hamster, @strafethesesinners, @henbased, @coffeebucko, @awful-roffle, @bluemojave and anyone else who wants to do this!

A powerful fixer in Night City, operating from the shadows and only known by their alias. Cold and ruthless, focused entirely on wreaking havoc in the existing mercenary world by planting seeds of distrust and paranoia, to pit everyone up against each other. While their interference is still minimal, the long-term consequences can be felt in every corner of the city.

Once a powerful Arasaka asset, the Broker has access to a tight network of assassins- a few highly skilled killers who serve as their security network, all ex-Arasaka as well. Through connections they also have an entire division of Militech in their pocket, and the NCPD tends to turn them a blind eye.

The Broker is a horrible fixer, presenting themself as "one of the good guys" and luring mercs in with eddies and empty promises. With their charismatic nature, they're able to use the backstabbing and corruption in Night City's underworld as a tool to manipulate mercs into thinking no one can be trusted and the entire network has to be destroyed for good, and they themself are the only person in the whole city they can trust; this way, their mercs end up developing a strange dependency on them, meaning they'll do anything they tell them to do without giving it a second thought.

Though once the Broker has lured the mercs in, they stop paying them well and give them little support while they do all their dirty work, uncaring about what happens to them and whether or not they'll make it out alive. The mercs are mere tools to the Broker to achieve their long-term goals, and they even take pride in killing those who dare to disagree with them- turning them into an example for others.

Some time after Vincent has been cured and is no longer actively dying, one of Vitali's cargo trucks is intercepted by a group of his old mercenaries- all people who felt betrayed and abandoned by him after his departure from Night City with Vincent about six months ago, when they left for Arizona in hopes to find a cure. The attack leaves Lauren, Eddie and Mikhail gravely injured and it can be traced back to the Broker; while it is still unclear what their deal with Vitali is, they now seem to be targeting him and his entire fixer network specifically.

It's 1am, I started playing Legends of Runeterra again, and I am once again disappointed that they just went with the basic tragic true love romance for Viego. They could have fully leaned into him being a terrible abusive creepy stalker guy who got away with it cause he was born into a position of extreme power. They could have made it Isolde's tragedy because she was unable to tell him no without terrible consequences and so had to live a life of pretending and appeasing him. They could have made it Isolde's bloody revenge when we finally get her as a champion and allowed her to go fully apeshit on him, getting vengeance for not only a stolen a life but a stolen death as well. It could have been so cool.

I was thinking that I didn't have a homoerotic female friendship as a youth and then I remembered I did.