#or at least approximations of these breeds in a fantasy world

[bixels]

what kind of sheep do they have in maliades?

Lüneburger Heidschnucke, Agneau du Bourbonnais, Agnello del Centro Italia, Valais Blacknose Sheep, Alpines Steinschaf, German Whiteheaded Mutton, White Polled Heath, to name a few...

#or at least approximations of these breeds in a fantasy world #if you're asking tho anon i'm assuming you're a bit of an expert on sheep #so if you have any suggestions or corrections please lemme know #i truthfully dont know much about them #i chose breeds based on the region and location as the maliades are based off northern italy/switzerland/austria #ask me #anon #fae of the maliades #ramblings #doodle #tulli's art

[norabrice1701]

Coincidence - Ch. 2

Dr. Alan Grant x Predoctoral Student Fem!Reader

Series Main List

Ch. 2 Warnings: Explicit language; inappropriate crush; minor Alan Grant/Ellie Sattler references; dinosaur PTSD

DINOSAURS AMONG US??

Astonishing reports are surfacing out of Costa Rica about creatures that have been extinct since the Jurassic period. Several local sources are coming forward to say that not only have they worked at a facility that supposedly breeds dinosaurs, but they have also personally seen the large reptiles. 

“Those eyes,” one man told reporters. “I’ll never forget those eyes. Cold… like the worst winter ever. Cold and utterly without remorse.” 

“I worked there for the money. Why else do you think?” Another man claimed. “I guess there was hazard pay in there – I heard at least one man died at the facility, mauled and eaten, so I heard.” 

“I saw them when they were little – kind of cute, in a reptilian sort of way with their little screeches.” Yet another man reported. “But within six months, they towered over us with zero restraint or control. Deadly in every way – even the herbivores. Though, the triceratops and brontosauruses were more likely to step on us than eat us.” 

All the interviewed individuals referred to an island off the Costa Rican coast, though none have named it. In total, Costa Rica has approximately 80 small islands and authorities are weighing whether or not to open an official investigation. 

Immediate suspicion has fallen to Isla Nublar, under lease from the government to InGen. Perhaps it’s coincidental that the former CEO of InGen, John Hammond, has just been terminated and replaced by Peter Ludlow. Perhaps this change in power will reveal more of the biotech company’s undertakings on the island or lead to further investigation of the surrounding areas. 

“Fucking reporters.” April grumbles next to you, distracting you from the newspaper article. “They can’t even get it right. Dinosaurs have been extinct since the Cretaceous period, not the Jurassic.” 

You chew a bite of your sandwich, glaring over at her in the shade of the mess tent. “Seriously? Of all the ludicrous claims in this article, you’re calling it out for a factual error?” 

She shrugs as she sips her water. “I like my journalists to at least have some integrity.” 

You snort around a mouthful of food. “And you say that about an article that seriously implies that dinosaurs are alive in our world today… unbelievable.” You glance back down at the article as the paper’s edge catches in the midday breeze. “They make it sound like some corporate cover-up operation – or like a James Bond villain. Recreating dinosaurs on some tropical island…” 

April offers an incredulous laugh of her own as she lifts her sandwich. “How would they ever even go about such a thing? Even the intact eggs with fossilized embryos on Dr. Grant’s ‘Egg Island’ didn’t offer enough clues about their DNA.” 

Re-folding the newspaper, you shake your head. “That makes it sound more like a sci-fi fantasy film than anything that a respectable scientist would actually endorse.” 

“The thought is incredible, though.” April muses with a wide smile. “I mean – to actually see a T-Rex… or a stegosaurus! Are they as big as we imagined? As ferocious? As gentle? As fast or slow? God, the questions are endless.” 

“I think I would be too busy arguing with myself whether to stay or run away if I ever saw one… not that it really matters because these are all completely hypothetical questions.” 

Hypothetical, maybe, but the dig site has been buzzing for at least the last hour. Ever since the two-day old newspaper arrived this morning with a food restock, everyone’s been speculating and whispering. Of course, the small mention of the InGen CEO also raised some eyebrows. It’s no secret that InGen is one of the department’s most generous donors and largely responsible for funding this year’s dig, and maybe... well, like the paper said, it’s just coincidental. But it's still curious that an article stirring up rumors of dinosaurs in the modern world just happens to discuss a company that funds dinosaur fossil excavations. 

You take another bite of your sandwich even as your stomach sours with the impossible implications. It doesn’t make sense… how could it? Even the thought of bringing prehistoric animals into the modern world just seems horrifically ill-advised. 

The din in the mess tent falls silent around you, and you glance around with confused curiosity. Over your shoulder, you notice Dr. Grant coming to a stop in the center of the tent. Despite his evident exhaustion, his eyes hold thunderous frustration and bitter disappointment. His mouth pinches to a tight line as he surveys the assembled crowd of increasingly interested people. 

He braces a hand on his hip, drawing a sharp breath. “By now, I’m sure that you’ve all read the newspaper from two days ago.” His sharp gaze lands on you before darting down to the newspaper resting in front of you. “And I’m sure that you’ve all figured out that the InGen discussed in that inflammatory article is the same InGen who so graciously funds our department. Or, rather…” The muscles of his jaw visibly tighten as a swallow works down his throat. “They used to. Our dean was just informed that with the change in leadership comes a new change in direction.” 

Your stomach drops to your feet, heavy with dread. 

Dr. Grant exhales a deep sigh. “We’re told to expect significant cutbacks effective immediately. And until the department can reassess impacts and proper funding allocation,” his voice tightens with choked emotion. “I’m afraid to say that we… we’ve been shut down.”

Gasps and groans of disbelief echo around you as your face falls. 

He raises a hand in an attempt to placate. “I know how disappointing, heartbreaking and absolutely frustrating this is.” If he tries to strike a positive, supportive tone, he fails as he continues. “Especially after all the progress we’ve made. Especially when we have such a prime specimen within our grasp….” The tension in his voice shows on his face, aging him ten years older - and you want to give him the biggest hug. “But, that should just be all the more motivation for us to secure more funding, get back out here, and get back to digging.” 

“Dr. Grant,” one of your fellow students pipes up. “You said effective immediately… so, how long until we have to leave?” 

He sighs with heavy reluctance as he scans over the group. “Unfortunately, we’ve been directed to start making immediate preparations and teardowns.” Another wave of groans echo in the tent, intermixed with cries of protest and scoffs of disbelief. Exhaustion weighs heavy on Dr. Grant’s shoulders as he nods and continues. “I completely understand - trust me, I didn’t just take this lying down.” He darts a glance over at Dr. Sattler who stands silently on the tent’s periphery with her arms crossed and a carefully neutral expression. “We told the dean exactly what we think of this order to disband, and we were still shot down. So now,” his tone sharpens with an acerbic edge. “After lunch, we must each start doing our part to return to campus before we all lose our privilege to work and study at this esteemed university.” 

He winces in the wake of his words, as if he just realizes what he said. As if he realizes he’s supposed to set some sort of example but just epicly failed instead. Another heavy sigh leaves him and he shakes his head - and goodness, you honestly don’t know how Dr. Alan Grant’s day could get any worse. 

Or yours, for that matter. 

A bead of sweat rolled down the side of your face as you worked. Between the sweat and sunscreen, dust and sand clung to every inch of exposed skin as you guided the brush over the carefully preserved skeleton. 

Pursing your lips, you continued working away at the rock matrix surrounding the fibula bone, flaking the rock away with a paintbrush in one hand and dental pick in the other. Quiet, easy conversation floated around you as others also laid prone in the dirt with their own tools, excitement building as the skeleton yielded more of its secrets with each layer of removed sediment. 

The rock continued to flake away, and surely, you must be close. The plane of weakness always revealed itself when least expected, and finally, your pick chipped through the invisible plane. Your brush swept the rest of the loose sediment away, finally revealing aged, brown bone. Satisfaction welled in your chest and a smile brightened your face as you continued to separate the final layers of rock and bone, revealing the long, tapered, thin leg bone. 

Or, perhaps… it was too thin. Or, no…? You stared quizzically down at the fractured bone embedded in the earth, at the two snapped fragments that shoot phantom pain down your own leg. You blew gently to dispel some loose sand granules as you brushed over the brittle ends and licked your top lip. “Dr. Grant?” 

He lifted his head at the sound of his name, searching your voice out with aviator-shaded eyes. You met his gaze, motioning him over. Giving you a quick nod, he looked back down to his own work, carefully setting his tools aside before rising to his feet. Sand coated the front of his clothing as he stepped around other team members to walk towards you. As much as you enjoyed the sight of him in a lecture hall, this was easily your favorite version of him - bedecked in his signature straw hat, aviators, and perpetual layer of dirt. 

“Is something wrong?” He asked, crouching down beside you for a closer look. His shadow offered some temporary relief from the sun as you motioned with your brush towards the broken bone. 

“The fibula, just here.” You said before turning to glance up at him. “I think this one might have been injured.” 

His face creased with open curiosity as he lowered himself to the dirt alongside you for a closer look. “Brush, please?” He held out a hand, and you didn't hesitate to pass it over.

His skilled hands at work never failed to mesmerize you. The delicate brushstrokes, the deliberately careful touches of his fingers, the tandem dance they wove together as the sediment yielded its treasure to him. A gust of hot wind washed over you, bringing his scent with it - exertion, earth, and plain soap. It heated your blood on a primal level, and the arousal stirring in your belly snapped you back to yourself. 

Goodness, this was hardly the time or place for your body to run away with you. 

“This bone is too fragile to move.” He said, lifting his head to look up the length of bone. “It’s clear something happened here - was this a fracture that caused the animal’s demise? Or did it occur after death? Perhaps from a stampede?” He rolled onto his right arm, glancing out over you and the surrounding dig site. “From the other specimens retrieved so far,” he paused to wet his top lip in thought. “It stands to reason that maybe they were on the move - possibly, even on the run - but yet, this one was able to keep up even with a broken leg.”  

A smile came to your face as you listened - and God, this was exactly why you’re out here. “I think the clean break would suggest injury,” you said, leaning back in towards the bone. “If it were an impact - like from a stampede or other heavy weight, I think the bone would be more splintered.” You looked up at him before scanning ahead and behind him. “We also don’t know how much larger this group - herd? Pack? - was. With time, we might discover that these three specimens were outliers or outcasts… just natural selection still at work even among global catastrophe.” 

He regarded you for a long moment, and eventually the corner of his mouth lifted with a smirk. In the shadow of his hat and the tint of his aviators, you couldn’t tell if he was proud, amused, or… something else. The heat simmering in your blood favored the latter, wanting him to see you as more than just his student, as his intellectual equal, as someone who could - 

“It’s certainly an intriguing discovery you made.” Your name rolled off his tongue, and your heart fluttered as he turned back to the skeleton. “But the bone is still too fragile to move. We’ll have to reinforce it.” He shifted again to reach into the side pouch of his belt and withdrew a small bottle. “This won’t be enough, but it’s a start. Now, we need to be careful - this resin sticks to sand and sediment just as easily as bone.” He handed back your brush, motioning you forward as he leaned in. “We’ll start with this end and work inwards, before we reinforce the other end.” He paused, glancing up at you with an encouraging lift in the corner of his mouth as he uncapped the bottle and hovered close to the bone’s surface. “Now, if you can keep the sand and dust away, we’ll have her ready in no time.” 

The fond memory nearly brings tears to your eyes. Out of all your days in the dust, it’s easily your favorite and easily the closest proximity that you’ve ever worked one-on-one with your mentor. Even now, you can still see his face so clearly, hear his voice, and recall that smirk directed only at you. If you’re perfectly honest with yourself, you have hoped to get one last chance for a similar moment with him - or, rather… you were hoping. But if the dig is well and truly disbanded, then this is it. 

Your last dig with the department ends like this. 

“One more thing,” Dr. Grant’s voice cuts through your disappointment and you glance back up at him with a heavy gaze. “Over the coming days, weeks or even months - if any of you are contacted by the media or requested to give any public statements, say nothing and direct whoever asks to the university public relations office.” 

An immediate flurry of curious questions erupt - and you can’t blame your fellow students. It’s such an odd thing to say, such an odd request, and it stirs questions of your own as you watch Dr. Grant deflect incoming questions with increasing frustration. 

Just what does he know? 

Just what else isn’t he saying? 

Series Main List

#sam neill #jurassic park #alan grant #alan grant x reader #alan grant x you #classic jurassic park #dr. alan grant #sam neill x you #sam neill x reader

[jamiewintons]

A Break in Routine (Jamie Winton/F!Reader)

Summary: Jamie’s staying late at work, but with the impending end of the world, all you want is to spend some time with him. Maybe this is your chance to fulfil one of your long-time fantasies?

Tags/Warnings: Smut (18+ ONLY). Desk Sex. Teasing. Fingering. Unprotected Sex. Slightly Dominant Jamie. Mentions of Death/End of the World. Implied Breeding Kink.

A/N: The first of the prompt fills for my request event; the prompts were “Jamie Winton + Desk Sex + Awkward Flirting”. I must admit, the "awkward flirting" part of the prompt kind of got away from me, so I'm instead interpreting it as Jamie reacting to the flirting awkwardly. Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and reblogs and comments are always appreciated!

Word Count: 2879

Jamie Taglist: @pink-booty-butts, @demontoucansam, @the-fandomgremlin, @glow-inthe-darkstarz, @definetlynotasmutaccount, @thingses-and-stuffses, @jamiewintonmybeloved @clydethesnake @bluedenimbabe @notwhateveriwasbefore (Please fill this form out if you want to be added!)

*

Well, this is the man I fell in love with, you think to yourself, idly playing with a loose thread hanging off of your skirt. You sigh, looking at him hunched over his desk, scribbling away at some paperwork. Some paperwork that really didn’t need to be done, considering that the world was going to end in approximately two weeks, and everything – this bank, all the paperwork, and the two of you – would be gone, like it had never existed in the first place.

But he loves his routine, and so he continues to show up to work every day even when no one else does. It makes him feel calmer in the face of death, he would insist.

You only wish that Jamie had instead decided to spend all of the time he had left with you, but at least he’d conceded today, and asked if you could stay by his side while he worked. Unfortunately, he decided he needed to stay late tonight, and as the evening became later and later, you grew increasingly impatient. Jamie was so focused on his work that he hadn’t noticed any of your exaggerated, exasperated sighs, which had been all a ploy to grab his attention.

This just won’t do. You’re determined that you’re going to tick at least one thing off of your bucket list before that comet destroys everything. So quietly, you stand up, removing your jacket and draping it over the back of your chair. Jamie doesn’t seem to notice that you had moved.

To demand his attention, you break the silence - which had been lingering for at least half an hour at this point - first by clearing your throat, and then by speaking up. “I think you should take a break,” you tell him, keeping your tone soft and relatively neutral. You don’t want him to know exactly what you’ve got in store for him just yet.

Jamie’s hand doesn’t cease moving, continuing to focus on the paperwork even as he speaks to you. You cross your arms over your chest, mildly irritated at not being his top priority. “I’m almost done, sweetheart. I know you’ve been waiting a long time, but I’ll be ready in five minutes.”

“You said that an hour ago, Jamie,” you say, with yet another sigh.

Now it’s Jamie's turn to sigh, and you can tell from his eyes that he feels guilty, but his gaze is still locked firmly on the paper in front of him. “I know. I’m really sorry, but I do mean it this time.”

“Well… this is important, and it can’t wait.” Finally deciding that it’s time to just take what you want, you put yourself between Jamie’s chair and his desk, blocking his view of his work. Your boyfriend looks up at you with confused eyes, only for you to lean towards him, your lips so close to his ear that they touch it when you begin to seductively whisper. “I want you to fuck me, Jamie.” Your hand rests on his thigh now, and you feel him tense beneath you. “On this desk. Right now.”

With how close you are to him, you can hear his breath quicken at your words. You smile to yourself, your hand taking a firmer grip on his thigh. Jamie blinks rapidly, trying to find the words to respond to what you’ve just said. “Love, we… we can’t do that…”

“Why not?” you ask him, and pull back to be able to look into his eyes as he considered his answer. His cheeks had gone that shade of pink that you loved, nearly the same shade as those pink boxers he always wore. You trailed your hand further up his thigh, getting dangerously close to his already hardening cock. “Come on, are you seriously telling me that you’ve never thought about it?”

Jamie stays silent, the blush on his cheeks only getting brighter and brighter. He awkwardly fidgets with the buttons of his jacket, trying not to betray the fact that he definitely has thought about it. When the day was getting far too stressful and he knew that you were the only one who could bring him any comfort. Or when you’d come into the bank to visit him, and his eyes couldn’t help but linger on the parts of your thighs he could see, uncovered by your short skirt. He’d certainly thought about it, but it was just that; a fantasy. One that shouldn’t be replicated in real life, owing to how utterly inappropriate it was to have sex at work.

“You haven’t thought of me kneeling down under your desk, unzipping your trousers and taking you into my mouth? No one else can know what I’m doing, so you have to try and keep a straight face when I’m making you feel so good?” Your hand leaves Jamie’s thigh, and his eyes flicker up to you, mourning the loss of contact. Instead, you shift his paperwork out of the way, and take a seat on his desk right in front of him. “You haven’t thought of sweeping everything off the desk and fucking me on top of it? Because I certainly have. Every time I step foot in this place. After I leave, I always find myself needing to, well… take care of business.”

Jamie takes a sharp inhale, overwhelmed by the fact that every time you visit him at work, you end up touching yourself to the thought of him fucking you on his desk. Part of him wonders how long you would wait to do it. Would you wait until you got back home? Or did you sometimes find yourself so turned on that you couldn’t help yourself but do it in your car, before you could even think about driving home? He swears under his breath as those images invade his mind. Already, his resolve is beginning to slip, and the paperwork he’d been trying to finish seems far, far away, to the point that he barely remembers it.

You know that Jamie is so close to giving in, and you’re so close to getting what you want. You cross one of your legs over the other, drawing his attention to your thighs, before speaking again. “Come on, honey, what’s the harm? It’s just the two of us here, the place is all locked up… you can do whatever you want to me, and no one will see or hear us.”

With that last push, something in Jamie’s eyes changes and before you even know it, he’s on his feet and pushing your legs apart so he can fit in between them. One hand tangles in your hair as he crashes his lips against yours with an almost bruising roughness, while the other rapidly slides up your thigh until it’s beneath your skirt and the tips of his fingers are millimetres away from touching your panties. You smile into the kiss, feeling Jamie’s very prominent erection, and you bring your hand down to brush your fingers against it through the fabric of his trousers. At this contact, Jamie deepens the kiss further, making you whimper and leaving you breathless.

Jamie’s just about to push you down onto the top of the desk, but suddenly he notices all of his work supplies and stationary still in their proper places sitting on the surface. “Hold on, I, uh… I need to get this out of the way.” To your surprise and horror, Jamie pulls away from you, starting to pick up all of his things and placing them meticulously on the other end of the desk. It baffles you to understand how he could even have the presence of mind to think about a few pens and sticky notes when you can barely think at all.

For a few moments, you simply watch him as he goes along, neatly rearranging things. It’d probably be funny if you weren’t so horny, but you were so you could hardly see the humour in it. When Jamie gets close enough to you, and he reaches out to grab the stapler that was beside your leg, you take hold of his wrist and stop him in his tracks.

“I’ve been waiting patiently all day,” you tell him, pouting. He opens his mouth to say something, probably about how it would take just a little bit longer for him to be done, you quickly cut him off. “None of this stuff is going to matter for much longer, Jamie. Please, don’t keep me waiting. I need you.”

Jamie hesitates. His eyes flicker between your face - as you look up at him with pleading eyes, flushed cheeks, and biting your bottom lip - and the stapler beside you. Then he looks again. And once more. After that, it only takes a few more seconds of consideration before he pulls you off the desk and brushes all of the remaining items off of it with a sweep of his arm. You barely even hear the sound of work supplies clattering onto the floor, before he lifts you onto the desk and pushes you back so that you’re laying down on the surface.

His lips are on yours in an instant, though they don’t linger there for long. Soon his kisses are trailing down to your jawline and then to your neck, where he sucks a mark into the sensitive flesh. All the while his hand slips back under your skirt, grabbing at your panties and pulling them down your legs. You do your best to lift your lower body up to make it easier to remove them, though it’s a little difficult with Jamie on top of you. He manages to get the pesky garment out of the way, letting them fall to the floor before his fingers are teasing at your already soaked entrance.

You moan loudly as one long finger slips inside of you, your hand gripping onto the fabric of Jamie’s shirt. A similar noise escapes Jamie when he feels how tight and wet you are, even around just a single digit. He begins moving his hand, eager to stretch you out so you’ll be able to take him. A second finger quickly joins the first, and before long, a third one does too. You’re squirming and whining as Jamie prepares you, wrapping your legs around him so tightly that it’s difficult for him to pull away.

He manages however, and once he’s withdrawn his fingers from you, you sit up a little so you can watch as he unbuckles his belt, before pulling his trousers and boxers down just enough to free his painfully hard cock from its confines. “Are you ready?” he asks, his voice slightly deeper than usual, and you immediately squeak out an affirmative answer, your eyes locked on his intimidating length. Once you’ve given your consent, he’s back between your legs and flipping your skirt up, before slowly, carefully pushing inside of you.

It stings a bit as you struggle to take him in - though that's true every time you have sex, regardless of how much time he puts aside to prepare you - and once he’s completely sheathed inside, you close your eyes tightly and grasp Jamie’s shoulder, adjusting to the feeling of being so ridiculously full. As you do so, Jamie presses his face against the side of yours, whispering soft, soothing praises in your ear as his large hands massage your thighs in an attempt to make you feel more comfortable. With each passing second, the pain fades away, and is replaced with a burning desire for him to just start moving already. For him to fuck you until you’re both pushed over the edge.

A quiet, strained “Jamie, please”, seems to get the point across, and he pulls back to look at your face, wanting to make sure that you’re ready. You nod, a whimper escaping you, and you brace yourself as both of his hands come to hold your hips.

Jamie starts off with slow, shallow thrusts - though they’re more than enough to have you gasping out loud, and scrambling to wrap your legs around his midsection once again. You tuck your arms beneath Jamie’s own, digging your fingernails into his shoulders through the fabric of his shirt. 

His lips find their way back to yours, your messy, open-mouthed kisses only being interrupted by the moans being pulled from both of you as Jamie begins to speed up the pace of his hips. With every thrust he’s managing to hit that sweet spot inside of you, making you squeeze him tighter with both your legs and hands.

Eventually the kisses become impossible to maintain, with how you’re practically gasping for air, so Jamie’s lips return to your neck, gently nipping and sucking and marking you even more. Now his pace is getting faster, rougher, and it’s making your head spin. You try to speak, to beg for him, but all that comes out is semi-coherent babbling; sobbed out curse words and the word “please” over and over.

Jamie knows that you’re close. He can feel it from the way you’re squeezing around him unbelievably tight, how your hands are struggling to find purchase against his shoulders but your grip is failing. All you need is that last little push and he has to do it quickly, because he knows that he’s going to come soon too, and he’ll be damned if he finishes before you’re satisfied.

He manages to pry himself from your grip and you whine at the loss of contact, but once he’s pulled back a bit and begun rubbing circles on your aching clit with his thumb, you’re no longer complaining. This combined with his deep, rough strokes has you coming hard within moments, bucking your hips up against his as your cunt pulsates around his cock. Jamie does his best to go on for as long as he can, to prolong your climax as much as possible, but soon enough it’s too much for him. He buries himself inside you as far as he can, his hips stilling with a long, breathless moan of your name as he fills you with his cum.

You feel almost like you’re seeing stars as you come down from your high, your chest moving up and down harshly. Jamie’s peppering soft kisses all over your face, murmuring sweet praises and pet names into your skin as he struggles to steady his breathing as well. Once you feel in control of yourself again you smile contentedly, bringing your hands up to run your fingers through his impossibly soft hair. You stay like that for who knows how long, just enjoying the feeling of being so close, so connected.

However it eventually becomes uncomfortable to remain in your current position, so Jamie has to slowly pull out, his legs still a little shaky from his orgasm. He looks down, and watches with barely contained interest as some of his cum leaks from your spent pussy, considering trying to push some of it back inside with his fingers - definitely because he was concerned about making a mess, and no other reasons - but decides against it on the grounds that you’re probably feeling too sensitive.

As he tucks himself back into his pants, Jamie feels worn out, but there’s no way he’s as exhausted as you look; nearly passed out there on his desk. Still, you give him that warm, loving smile, making him feel a little giddy, even after what you’ve just done. He has no idea why he’d been bothering with boring paperwork when he could be spending all of his time with you.

“I hate to say I told you so…” you begin, smugly but sweetly, and Jamie can’t help but let out a quiet laugh.

“But you did tell me so.” Jamie leans down to pick up your underwear, and when he’s standing back up again, he just happens to glance at his watch and his eyes widen. “Shit, I didn’t realise how late it was. We need to get home.”

He looks around at the mess he left when he swept everything off the desk and briefly considered tidying it up, but then his gaze returned to you. Who cares about a few bits of stationery and paperwork? All he wants to spend all the time he has left with you. In his last moments, was he going to be thinking about the bank and how he wished he’d cleaned up, or was he going to think of all the things he missed doing with you?

Jamie knows his answer, and he doesn’t know why he had been spending so much time and energy on something that in the grand scheme of things, didn’t even matter. With that thought on his mind, he picks up his bag, wanting to get you home and cook you a nice dinner. “Ready to head home, love?”

“Uh, Jamie?" you say, as you try and then fail to sit up. He's right there in an instant, tenderly stroking your arm as he looks at you with concern in his eyes. "I think you’re going to have to carry me to the car. Not sure if I can still walk after that.”

Jamie grins. “Of course.”

#jamie winton x reader #jamie winton imagine #jamie winton fluff #jamie winton smut #jamie winton fanfiction #ymata imagine #you me and the apocalypse imagine #ymata fanfiction #you me and the apocalypse fanfiction #x reader smut #x reader fic #x reader fanfiction #mari's stuff #nsft text

[yanderecandystore]

Yandere dog man in heat, please.

At first I got really confused, and I came up with three different scenarios of how this could play out:

Medieval Monster Dog Man: Kinda like a werewolf, really feral but maybe he can't transform into a human (making it a different type of monster). In this setting I imagined monsters and humans being kinda against one another.

Modern Anthro Dog Man: Beastars basically, a world where either everyone is an anthro animal (furry lol-), or a world where humans and anthro/monster animals coexist in a modernized setting.

Anime Neko Style: A dog man with more human features than dog-like, leaving his tail and his ears and a couple of mannerisms.

Let me see what I can do for you, boo.

TW/Tags: basic horniness (nsfw stuff: mentions of pillow grinding, vague biting kink, sexual frustration, implied sex after ending, slight mentions of breeding kink, etc) // gender neutral/nonspecific reader // I decided to go with a semi fantasy setting, although vaguely described so you can imagine this universe the way you like // I consider him to be from some kind of monster species-

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

Partners through tough and thin [Yandere!DogMan/Monster?? x GN!Reader - Headcanons]:

Let's start with a bit of an off-topic: Did you read my mind boo? Did you know that I was planning on adding a section to the Masterlist dedicated to humanoid/animalistic monsters? I was thinking more about driders/insectoid monsters actually- But I don't really mind this.

Regardless, let's set up the context!

🎇 Let me set the stage for a quick sec!🎇

So, I won't talk for too long this time, just a quick basic talk about your relationship with Flint (don't @ me, I'm terrible at picking names out of the blue-).

You two meet each other pretty much by coincidence, both of you were looking for people to form an adventuring party with- But ultimately finding almost no luck.

To be fair, you weren't really looking for an adventure with strangers, as mostly you just wanted to gain more knowledge by exploring your vast world with someone you would at least want to be near with. You were a couple of ranks above him, yet you found him to be such great company that you two formed some sort of bond over the time you guys spent together.

Expedition after expedition, and it started to feel like you two were more than random colleagues being together just for the sake of finishing a task, it felt like you two were mutual friends that were so accustomed to working together that it felt weird being separated or near strangers.

You were surprised to find someone so easy to rely on, so sweet and kind and extremely gullible. After seeing so many narcissistic jerks who only wanted someone to carry their stuff and do all the hard work while you stood by and watched them take all the glory of completing their quest- It felt like a breeze of fresh air to find Flint looking for someone as well.

Which was weird considering how easily any of them would have taken him to be their personal walking inventory.

You two didn't get along right away, but you guys did warm up to each other as the time passed on. You thought Flint was too childish and Flint thought you were too stern, and even after five years of working with each other, nothing seems to have changed.

Nothing except a better understanding between you two. Even with your differences, it was as if you two were inseparable at this point.

Flint is a lovely guy, you can't tell if it's because of his dog side, but he radiates Good Boy Energy™. He is loyal to you as an adventuring partner, and he is the best friend someone can have, yet you would be lying if you said you knew everything about him.

Flint is not the best at hiding things, especially his own emotions and even he knows about that! Throughout these five years you two spent together, Flint would always try to keep his distance from you in certain times of the year.

At first you didn't understand why did he act so weird and be so distant from you- Until you realized what was happening and you started to feel stupid for not getting it sooner- Fling goes through a heat cycle every six months and that has proven to be quite the interesting change to your routine- Considering you never knew (and still doesn't know-) what to do about it.

Flint always told you it was fine- It was a normal thing to him at this point and you didn't need to worry about it- You just needed to keep a reasonable distance from him and… Close your ears every night through these cycles.

It was fine, you know? I mean- To you it's a bit of an awkward situation as you aren't the same species or him/or don't go through these heat cycles as him- But to him it was absolutely normal. Inconvenient, but normal.

You have no idea what he does to himself to stop it from getting in the way of your partnerships- But one can't help but be curious, especially since he could just stay home if he wasn't feeling alright, he didn't need to continue this journey.

For some reason he always preferred to ignore it and keep going, to focus on his task to be able to give in to the carnal instincts brewing inside him. That was before he met you, however.

He always had dealt with his heat by occupying his mind, and it worked for the most part- But why does it feel so strong now? Why does it feel so unbearable?

It's been a couple of days that he can't find peace anymore, even if he tries to ease his pain each night, it nevers seems to get better. Whatever medication/potion or spell he could use to stop it, it wasn't working anymore, he somehow felt just as if not more sensitive than he was before he took those.

It wasn't just his body that was struggling to find some rest, his mind was also being haunted by mockeries of his own fantasies- To be fair, he hasn't been in peace with himself for a long time now, probably longer than he thinks, but you know how it is- You don't know you have fallen in love with someone until it's too late, and he has just recently discovered the seed of affection towards you growing into something more and more.

He had a crush on you, he doesn't know for how long yet it feels like it has been an eternity- It doesn't really help that you two spend more time with each other than with other adventurers and explorers, and it doesn't help that while you're sleeping in your tent, approximately 15 meters away from his own, as his mind is filled with worse and worse thoughts about you-

It's way too late at night for him to be feeling so needy- He's been trying to relieve himself for maybe 3 hours already, yet he still hasn't been able to calm down his mind and body. He has been carefully listening to each sound that came from outside, more specifically from inside your tent. Every snore, every breath, every whine you give in your sleep is making him mad with feelings he shouldn't have let it grow to this extent. He was supposed to be listening carefully to make sure you're safe, but instead he is having lewd ideas about your sleeping noises.

The feelings and thoughts that are suddenly coming to his mind are nothing short of disgusting to him, he knows he shouldn't be thinking I'll of an friend he loves so much, he shouldn't be craving someone to this degrading extent- Yet he can't stop biting his pillow and imagining it to be you, constantly breathing out your name while crying pathetically as he continues to indulge in this act while his mind is in a half sleep state.

So sleepy in fact that he hasn't heard you coming inside his tent- He wasn't even sure if your soft caressing was real or just a figment of his own twisted mind. He feels so grossed out by his own mind, he would rather believe this is all a dream then to realize he was being so loud you decided to come inside and see if he was okay-

Please, he is already the worst being alive just for fantasizing about you- Don't tell him he woke you up with his whining, it makes him feel more pathetic.

It's such a bittersweet situation, you came here genuinely deciding to help him out however you could- Not because of pity, but for something more than just wanting to help him ease his urges- But even if he is earning for this with all his heart, he feels too bad about himself to stop crying and apologizing for what he was about to do. You two seemed to have your hearts in the same direction, but can he control his instinct to take you for himself and breed you?

It doesn't really matter if he can or not breed you, his mind is already lost to countless nights without sleeping and constant thoughts about loving you and making love with you- Whatever sense of logic has been thrown out of the window.

However, maybe he isn't completely lost! Maybe he'll try his best to be more romantic about this, as it wasn't really how he expected it to happen. Even if he is currently acting like a lovesick lust beast, you don't need to worry because the good boy as your partner is commonly known for will be back in the morning, just a bit more clingy and overly protective of you.

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

#yandere #sheep stuff #sheep's stuff #yandere x reader #yandere monster #yandere mosnter x reader #yandere monster headcanon #yandere heat #yandere headcanon #yandere monster x f!reader #special delivery headcanons #special delivery request

[not-wholly-unheroic]

On the Origins of Hook: The Complicated and Often Contradictory Backstory of a Villain

The story of Peter Pan has been told and retold in writing, on the stage, and on the big screen countless times, yet in the original storyline, we are thrust into a world with a pre-established (and presumably long-standing) relationship between its hero and villain with little information regarding their pasts. So far as the audience is concerned, Peter and Hook have always been a part of the Neverland...yet as evidenced by the many retellings that attempt to answer the question of these characters’ origins, clearly, people want to know more. Barrie, however, leaves a great deal to the imagination and while he tackles a bit of Peter’s past in The Little White Bird, there is significantly less information about Hook in his writings, and much of it is up for debate, as Barrie arguably contradicts himself. 

In terms of canon (which for the purposes of this article I am limiting to Barrie’s final published version of the novel), much of what we know about Hook can only be inferred from a few brief passages. In the initial introduction of the pirates, Barrie gives us the following description of Hook:

In the midst of them, the blackest and largest in that dark setting, reclined James Hook, or as he wrote himself, Jas. Hook, of whom it is said he was the only man that the Sea-Cook feared. He lay at his ease in a rough chariot drawn and propelled by his men, and instead of a right hand he had the iron hook with which ever and anon he encouraged them to increase their pace. As dogs this terrible man treated and addressed them, and as dogs they obeyed him. In person he was cadaverous and blackavized, and his hair was dressed in long curls, which at a little distance looked like black candles, and gave a singularly threatening expression to his handsome countenance. His eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots appeared in them and lit them up horribly. In manner, something of the grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with an air, and I have been told that he was a raconteur [storyteller] of repute. He was never more sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his demeanour, showed him one of a different cast from his crew. A man of indomitable courage, it was said that the only thing he shied at was the sight of his own blood, which was thick and of an unusual colour. In dress he somewhat aped the attire associated with the name of Charles II, having heard it said in some earlier period of his career that he bore a strange resemblance to the ill-fated Stuarts; and in his mouth he had a holder of his own contrivance which enabled him to smoke two cigars at once. But undoubtedly the grimmest part of him was his iron claw.

From this, we may be able to draw a few conclusions about who Hook was before he came to the island. (1) He was likely a sailor, if not a pirate, BEFORE he met Peter, given that he had previous interactions with “The Sea Cook”--that is, Long John Silver. (2) He was alive and most likely an adult by the mid 1700s, as in Treasure Island, Billy Bones--a former crewmate of Silver’s--has the date 1745 in his log and the dates 1750 and 1754 on his treasure maps. (3) Hook’s hairstyle and fashion is similar to that of Charles II, whose reign ended with his death in 1685. 

We are also informed by John that Hook was supposed to have been Blackbeard’s bosun. Blackbeard was born somewhere around 1680 and may have been a privateer earlier in his career at sea, but he didn’t actually take up piracy until 1716 and had only a very brief reign of terror before he was killed off the coast of North Carolina in 1718. Assuming Hook was meant to be Blackbeard’s bosun after he went pirate, this gives us a pretty narrow window of time during which Hook might have interacted with him. And, if we take the comment about the Sea Cook seriously, then Hook must have been pretty young at the time he worked for Blackbeard, given that there is a twenty-seven year gap between Blackbeard’s death and the earliest date Billy Bones offers in connection with Silver. 

Hook also uses words and phrases such as, “Pan, who and what art thou?” which would seem to indicate that he is from a time period centuries before the Darlings come to visit. (“Thee” and “thou” had pretty much completely fallen out of common use in English by the late 1700s/early 1800s.)

So far, so good. The dates might make it a bit of a stretch, but we can pretty comfortably say that prior to Neverland, Hook was a sailor--and probably a pirate--during the 1700s, was likely born in the late 1600s, and was possibly a related to Charles II, who had many illegitimate children. This possibility fits nicely with Barrie’s statement that, “Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at this date set the country in a blaze.”

We don’t know much about his parentage, however, except that Hook’s voice cracks when he is speaking to Smee about mothers regarding the neverbird’s refusal to leave her eggs even after the nest falls into the water. Whether this is because he was close to his own mother and is lamenting her loss or he had a rather indifferent (or even cruel) mother and he is lamenting his own lack of a loving childhood is up for debate, though the official sequel, Peter Pan in Scarlet--written in 2006 by Geraldine McCaughrean--favors the second interpretation. (Again, however, for the purposes of this article, I am only considering Barrie’s published novel as canon.)

We also learn that Hook attended Eton, a rather prestigious school for boys between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. Assuming Hook completed his schooling there and was, therefore, at least eighteen by the time he joined up with Blackbeard, it would place his being born somewhere close to 1700. Assuming his interaction with Long John Silver was, at the earliest, probably around 1745, and that this interaction happened prior to his visiting the Neverland, it puts Hook (physically) at approximately age 45 by the time we meet him in the book, give or take a bit.

There are two potential problems with that timeline, however. (1) In Barrie’s original novel, only Peter stays young forever. The boys can technically grow up, and Peter “thins them out” when they do. (Decide for yourself whether that means banishment or something worse.) If this is the case, Hook shouldn’t still be alive or, even if the aging process is slowed down, at the very least, he should be an old man, given that the Darlings visit in the early 1900s...making him at least two hundred years old. (2) Near the end of the book, when Hook is trying to convince the boys to join his pirate crew and John asks innocently whether they would still be loyal subjects of the king, Hook responds with, “You would have to swear, ‘Down with King George!’” John (and likely the audience) assumes here that Hook is talking about King George V, who would have been the present king of England at the time the novel was published. If this is the case, how does Hook know who the king is? Has he been able to leave the island and find out this information? Or is Hook, perhaps, from a more modern era than we suspect? Cleverly, Barrie leaves this question open-ended, as Hook could just as easily have been referring to King George the First, who ruled England from 1714 until 1727. 

As for personal hobbies, we know only that he loves flowers and plays the harpsichord--an instrument that was once quite popular but which had fallen out of favor by the 1800s, replaced by the piano. 

The rest of the information we get from Barrie about Hook’s origins comes primarily from his “Hook at Eton” speech, delivered in 1927--many years after his original play (1904) and novel (1911). And here’s where things get interesting (read: contradictory). Because he wrote the speech so many years later,  as a sort of afterthought, and because of the inconsistences with the novel, I personally reject this information as canon. Nevertheless, it is Barrie’s take on his own character and, therefore, is worth at least considering.

In this work, we are told that Hook not only attended Eton but also--at least briefly--went to Oxford. This in and of itself poses no major problems for the timeline suggested by the novel.  What DOES pose a problem, however, is the fact that Barrie claims to have been in contact with Hook’s “Aunt Emily”--apparently his closest surviving relative--and has been in search of possible photographs of Hook during his time there. This would indicate that Hook MUST be from a much later, more modern era than the book suggests, as photography didn’t really come into fashion until the mid-1800s, and even if “Aunt Emily” is quite old (and she is likely a good fifteen to twenty years OLDER than Hook if we assume she is near in age to one of his parents) at the time of Barrie’s supposed meeting with her, she couldn’t have reasonably been expected to have been born before the early 1800s, placing Hook’s own birth nearer to the 1850s. While some of the information in the novel might be explained away to fit with this date (his choice of dress and hairstyle, for instance), he could not possibly have interacted with Blackbeard or Long John Silver. In fact, he could not have been a pirate--at least, not in the traditional sense--at all, as the Golden Age of Piracy (1650s--1730s) had long passed and the Age of Sail ended in the 1860s. Because of this inconsistency, some have argued that Barrie may have intended Hook to be a more modern man who essentially became trapped in a child’s fantasy land. He became a “pirate” only AFTER his interactions with Pan--that is, he took on the role of a villain because that is how Peter and the children imagined him--and that John’s assertions about his interactions with Blackbeard and Silver are merely rumors that the boy has heard.

Setting aside this apparent contradiction in the timeline, we DO learn some other interesting facts about Hook. For instance, Hook’s blood (which was said in the novel to be thick and strangely colored), is specified as having been yellow. This, along with his appearance having been described in the novel  as “cadaverous” has lead some to conclude that Hook was likely rather sickly as a child. We also learn that Hook enjoyed the Lake poets and strawberry mess (a dessert),  collected keys, performed well in sports while at Eton (though he did not like water sports as he rather surprisingly hated the feeling of water on his skin), and played the flute. We also learn that he was politically conservative and was probably never in a romantic relationship. 

There are a few other bits of information about Barrie’s idea of Hook that can be found in the early manuscripts for the play, which feature “deleted scenes.” One such manuscript--the earliest, I believe--can be found here. (Though good luck with reading it without going cross-eyed because Barrie’s handwriting is BAD.) However, I think this post has gone on long enough, yet we are still left with many unanswered questions. But perhaps this is what Barrie intended all along. Perhaps, fittingly, we are ultimately left to fill in the blanks about this villain of the Neverland with our own imagination. 

_____

Thanks to @katherinenotgreat for asking me to do a post on Hook’s origins. Thanks also to @concordia-cum-sinistro for your input. Feel free to add your own information regarding the original manuscript drafts, as I know you are more familiar with them than I am.

#peter pan #captain hook #captain james hook #james hook #jm barrie

[houseki-no-suffering]

Pssst.... gush about some thing you’ve wanted to for so long but haven’t found the ask to do so! I really like reading your metas or off-the-wall posts.

aw ty!

mmmh usually i just crank out a random meta when i feel like it, which i havent had the energy to do in a while. so have a lot of hcs about gem language, gem society and how it resembles a totalitarian system cause why not, this is already a dystopia. 

goes from cute to shady real quick, have fun

Gem Vocabulary

gems have no gender, they dont age, they dont reproduce. the whole vocabulary about relationships, aging and sex must be completely different in gem language. they probably lack a lot of words we commonly use, and have unique words for things we dont have (like winter duty, patrol duty... i wouldnt be surprised if gem language had unique grammatical features for those)

this is one of the reasons why its so unfair of aechmea to call cairn ‘wife’ and ‘princess.’ the gems have no concept of wife-ness, we dont know if a gem equivalent of marriage exists, but its definitely much, much different from what the lunarians (and us) perceive as one.

do gems have anything akin coming of age? this could be weird bc gems can potentially live forever, but they can also be abducted by the lunarians at any time, so who’s to say how long a lustrous will live? how do you calculate being ‘of age’? is it by calculating the average life-span of a gem? 

how do they measure time and seasons? we know they have winter and summer and phos mentions ‘spring’ in chapter 20, but what about months and lunar phases? do they have words for that or are months just too small a timeframe for the immortal lustrous to utilize? how do they measure time? in hours and seconds? weeks? different units altogether?

Gem Relationships

similarly, gem relationships are codified in a completely different way. we know they have a concept of romance bc dia ships phos and shinsha and makes comments here and there about other gems being in love. 

at the same time, the relationships btw alexandrite and chrysoberyl, padpa and rutile, ghost/cairn and lapis etc are little different from ‘pure’ sibling/sibling relationships or senpai/kohai relationships.

this is not to say that they’re all romantic in nature, but the way they’re codified in canon (especially in the way the characters grief for their partner) makes me think that even if the gems have no blood/physical kinship with one another they have a very articulated system of establishing family bonds.

dia and bort are clearly siblings, but the same can’t be said, for example, for rutile and padpa, even if they were partners and even if they display a similar junior/senior relationship. this means that relationships are predicated on something else in hnk, and kinship, family and romance are all codified in a different way.

think of vulcans in star trek: physical contact such as two fingers touching, holding hands and kissing is unknown of (save for very specific circumstances). and vulcan people have a completely different way of expressing intimacy and romance than humans. 

this makes me think: just how many canonically romantic relationships are there in hnk (if any) that we’re simply unaware of bc the way gems codify and express romance is so different from ours? is romance even common? rare? perceived as weird? useless? 

what about other relationships? the gems use ‘little brother/ older brother’ but what if this is just japanese approximations? what kind of relationships can lustrous language really express and how different are they from ours?

Imagination

as @ruddy-rutile​ pointed out some time ago, the gems lack a concept of fantasy. thats why i posted that panel about alex’s original lunarian designs. sure, it’s funny, but it also makes you think: these gems are not raised to think outside the box and they can do it without being told so only under exceptional circumstances.

of the vast library of texts that ghost (and lapis) used to take care of, just how many are novels and fiction? none of them? a small amount? a decent amount? in a society thats as focused on practicality, efficiency and conservatism as the lustrous’, how is fiction perceived if perceived at all? 

is there art? red beryl’s craft comes very close to art when they express their feelings about ‘fashion for fashion’s sake,’ but it’s an exception that the other gems find hard to grasp.

phos is often told to stop fantasizing about the world and get things done, the only tale we know the gems are told is the actual story of how their world came to be. the gems always talk about real things, stuff that happened, and make and do things that have a practical use. 

even bort’s jellyfish diary is just made up of a recollection of what happened when they tried to feed them. still, the fact that bort names the jellyfish makes you think that these rocks do have potential for fantasy, theyre just not used to it

Totalitarianism and Privacy

to make this even more shady, here’s your gentle reminder that:

- gems’ rooms have no doors. the only door ive been able to find is the one in shinsha’s room (ch 2) and that is because shinsha’s room is closed off to other people and full of mercury. its like putting a patch on smth you dont want to deal with (much like shinsha’s whole character arc tbh)

- the gems have little to no free time. or their free time can be revoked any time in case an emergency occurs, sensei is napping etc. the gems’ time is rigorously managed by jade, euc and sensei. each gem has a place to be and a time to be.

this means that a missing gem can be found at all times and slackers can be identified very easily. they all have a job and they have to follow it. this is not to say that they have no fun ever, but leisure time is rare and (at least as far as we know) its not contemplated when tasks are assigned each day.

the mere fact that there is a morning assembly and tasks are assigned each day makes you think. is this communism? is this totalitarianism? but most importantly, is this a scary dystopia that hits you in the face like a brick the third time you reread ch 2?   

- sameness > equality. i already went over this in the past. gems society underlines sameness and conformity over anything else. the gems think theyre equal but theyre actually ‘similar.’

a system based on equality emphasizes differences so that every individual can do the best with what they have got and get back what they need, according to their personal needs. 

these gems emphasize sameness: everyone is upheld to the same standards, even when those standards dont match with a gem’s unique characteristics (ie phos cannot be a fighter, no reason to keep saying stuff like ‘if only you were stronger/you’re useless’ etc. they’re a rock with an imagination in a world where dull reality is the rule. just make them write theater plays and play with slugs with shinsha, wth)

It’s real 1984 hours:

all of the above means that:

- your sense of self is subordinated to the group. if you dont belong you’re simply a nothing. at times, the gems almost display a collective consciousness (a pretty hostile one too): everything must be decided together and done together

- you are what you do. gems identify completely with their job. thats why a job is so important, thats why this system is so fucked up. self worth is not inherent, it depends on what you can do. talk about a breeding ground for mental health issues 

- you dont have a saying in picking your career or deciding for you future. thats up to sensei (and maybe euc and jade). unless you have a very strong affinity with a certain task (like red beryl and alex)

- youre expected to follow orders all the damn time. no matter how much sensei wants his gems to exert free will, they still prefer to do what theyre told. ill admit, its much easier than taking your life in your hands and decide what youre gonna do with it, but damn if it isnt depressing. and childish

- euclase and sensei are the authority. sensei and euc are the powers that be. in the sense that they assign tasks, they decide on times and battle plans, on purpose etc. lets not forget that euc was the one to take on sensei’s role after he ‘resigned.’ 

i wonder what would happen if euc were abducted and the gems had no one to follow anymore, no orders. who’d be the new leader? would there be one? lets not forget that no matter how gentle euc is, phos is shit scared of them.

- thought police is a thing. to end this meta on what is probably the shadiest note: surveillance is a thing. the gems report on each other, it’s thought police, no sugarcoating this. 

there’s no privacy, no secrets. even antarc reads rutile’s diary. this goes from cute and childish (’you did this one wrong thing, im gonna tell sensei’) to absolutely fucked up (’you did this one wrong thing, im gonna tell sensei’)

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #hnk #meta #best #im a sociologist what did ya expect #pls feel free to add on this

[killfaeh]

Péguy

Hi everybody! In this news feed I've told you a few times about a project I named Péguy. Well today I dedicate a complete article to it to present it to you in more detail but also to show you the new features I brought to it at the beginning of the winter. It's not the priority project (right now it's TGCM Comics) but I needed a little break during the holidays and coding vector graphics and 3D, it's a little bit addictive like playing Lego. x) Let's go then!

Péguy, what is it?

It is a procedural generator of patterns, graphic effects and other scenery elements to speed up the realization of my drawings for my comics. Basically, I enter a few parameters, click on a button, and my program generates a more or less regular pattern on its own. The first lines of code were written in 2018 and since then, this tool has been constantly being enriched and helping me to work faster on my comics. :D This project is coded with web languages and generates vector patterns in the format SVG. In the beginning it was just small scripts that had to be modified directly to change the parameters and run individually for each effect or pattern generated.

Not very user friendly, is it? :’D

This first version was used on episode 2 of Dragon Cat's Galaxia 1/2. During 2019 I thought it would be more practical to gather all these scripts and integrate them into a graphical user interface. Since then, I have enriched it with new features and improved its ergonomics to save more and more time. Here is a small sample of what can be produced with Péguy currently.

Graphic effects typical of manga and paving patterns in perspective or plated on a cylinder. All these features were used on Tarkhan and Gonakin. I plan to put this project online, but in order for it to be usable by others than me, I still need to fix a few ergonomy issues. For the moment, to recover the rendering, you still need to open the browser debugger to find and copy the HTML node that contains the SVG. In other words, if you don't know the HTML structure by heart, it's not practical. 8D

A 3D module!

The 2020 new feature is that I started to develop a 3D module. The idea, in the long run, is to be able to build my comics backgrounds, at least the architectural ones, a bit like a Lego game. The interface is really still under development, a lot of things are missing, but basically it's going to look like this.

So there's no shortage of 3D modeling software, so why am I making one? What will make my project stand out from what already exists? First, navigation around the 3D workspace. In short, the movement of the camera. Well please excuse me, but in Blender, Maya, Sketchup and so on, to be able to frame according to your needs to get a rendering, it's just a pain in the ass! So I developed a more practical camera navigation system depending on whether you're modeling an object or placing it in a map. The idea is to take inspiration from the map editors in some video games (like Age of Empire). Secondly, I'm going to propose a small innovation. When you model an object in Blender or something else, it will always be frozen and if you use it several times in an environment, it will be strictly identical, which can be annoying for natural elements like trees for example. So I'm going to develop a kind of little "language" that will allow you to make an object customizable and incorporate random components. Thus, with a single definition for an object, we can obtain an infinite number of different instances, with random components for natural elements and variables such as the number of floors for a building. I had already developed a prototype of this system many years ago in Java. I'm going to retrieve it and adapt it to Javascript. And the last peculiarity will be in the proposed renderings. As this is about making comics (especially in black and white in my case), I'm developing a whole bunch of shaders to generate lines, screentones and other hatchings automatically with the possibility to use patterns generated in the existing vector module as textures! :D

What are shaders?

Well, you see the principle of post-production in cinema... (Editing, sound effects, various corrections, special effects... all the finishing work after shooting). Well, shaders are about the same principle. They are programs executed just after the calculation of the 3D object as it should appear on the screen. They allow to apply patches, deformations, effects, filters... As long as you are not angry with mathematics, there is only limit to your imagination! :D When you enter a normal vector in a color variable it gives funny results.

Yes! It's really with math that you can display all these things. :D Now when you hear a smart guy tell you that math is cold, it's the opposite of art or incompatible with art... it's dry toast, you'll know it's ignorance. :p Math is a tool just like the brush, it's all about knowing how to use it. :D In truth, science is a representation of reality in the same way as a painting. It is photorealistic in the extreme, but it is nevertheless a human construction used to describe nature. It remains an approximation of reality that continually escapes us and we try to fill in the margins of error over the centuries... Just like classical painting did. But by the way? Aren't there a bunch of great painters who were also scholars, mathematicians? Yes, there are! Look hard! The Renaissance is a good breeding ground. x) In short! Physics is a painting and mathematics is its brush. But in painting, we don't only do figurative, not only realism, we can give free rein to our inspiration to stylize our representation of the world or make it abstract. Well like any good brush, mathematics allows the same fantasy! All it takes is a little imagination for that. Hold, for example, the good old Spirograph from our childhood. We all had one! Well, these pretty patterns drawn with the bic are nothing else than... parametric equations that make the students of math sup/math spe suffer. 8D Even the famous celtic triskelion can be calculated from parametric equations. Well, I digress, I digress, but let's get back to our shaders. Since you can do whatever you want with it, I worked on typical manga effects. By combining the Dot Pattern Generator and the Hatch Generator but display them in white, I was able to simulate a scratch effect on screentones.

In the traditional way it is an effect that is obtained by scraping the screentones with a cutter or similar tool.

Péguy will therefore be able to calculate this effect alone on a 3D scene. :D I extended this effect with a pattern calculated in SVG. So it will be possible to use the patterns created in the vector module as textures for the 3D module! Here it is a pattern of dots distributed according to a Fibonacci spiral (I used a similar pattern in Tarkhan to make stone textures, very commonly used in manga).

Bump mapping

So this is where things get really interesting. We stay in the shaders but we're going to give an extra dimension to our rendering. Basically, bump mapping consists in creating a bas-relief effect from a high map. And it gives this kind of result.

The defined object is always a simple cylinder (with 2 radii). It is the shaders that apply the pixel shift and recalculate the lighting thanks to the high map that looks like this.

This texture has also been calculated automatically in SVG. Thus we can dynamically set the number of bricks. Well, this bas-relief story is very nice, but here we have a relatively realistic lighting, and we would like it to look like a drawing. So by applying a threshold to have an area lit in white, a second threshold to have shadow areas in black, by applying the screentone pattern to the rest and by adding the hatching that simulates the scraped screentone, here is the result!

It's like a manga from the 80's! :D I tested this rendering with other screentone patterns: Fibonnacci spiral dots, parallel lines or lines that follow the shape of the object.

Now we know what Péguy can do. I think I can enrich this rendering a bit more with the shaders but the next time I work on this project the biggest part of the job will be to create what we call primitives, basic geometric objects. After that I can start assembling them. The concept of drawing while coding is so much fun that I'm starting to think about trying to make complete illustrations like this or making the backgrounds for some comic book projects only with Péguy just for the artistic process. Finding tricks to generate organic objects, especially plants should be fun too. That's all for today. Next time we'll talk about drawing! Have a nice week-end and see you soon! :D Suisei

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Source : https://www.suiseipark.com/News/Entry/id/302/

#manga #software #screentones #halftones

[awildhanmonster]

More Ado about Characters:

Alright, now for round 2!  The following characters are all more one-offs and have no direct relation to each other quite the same was as Nell/Leonora/Barnes do, so let’s see if I can keep this under novel length.  

Remy Green, aka Remy:  17 years old in current canon, and still in the last leg of high school, Remy is, for lack of any better term, a reverse werewolf: perpetually stuck in the form of a gangly wolfdog monster on all nights save the brightest of full moons.  Originally just a “normal” human kid just trying to survive through graduation, her entire life wound up turned on its head when an out of control werewolf attacked and bit her while out with friends one night.  He was subdued and arrested, even later charged for the negligence and violent assault, but the damage had been done and the virus passed on— in the worst ways.

Remy essentially suffered the equivalent of a severe allergic reaction and anaphylaxis during the first shift, which took hours (normal were shifts should be minutes) and resulted in her parents frantically driving her to the ER in tears.  She survived, though the diagnosis— for a fragile kid with shaky self esteem— was, at the time, seemingly a fate worse than death.  Despite her form, she never seems to suffer the loss of mindfulness or weakened inhibitions of most werefolk during “peak” moon periods.  

Remy has since started learning how to cope with life in a new form she didn’t really want or ask for, and she has the full, unwavering support of her parents, though it’s still a lot for a teenaged kid to handle.  I’m pretty sure she wound up being pulled from high school and is trying to finish out her last year and a half or so at home, though she could really use some friends she doesn’t think are “obligated” to love her like her parents are.  I think she’s pretty lonely and dealing with a lot of depression issues.  Luckily she’ll fall in with Wayne at some point, who’s like a sweet (greasy stoner) older brother, and he and the rest of the Losers can adopt the hell out of her as a little sister and teach her how to not give a fuck about what humans think when you’re a weirdo.  She’ll earn her happy ending eventually.  

Rose Lund:  Absolutely 100% a retooling/transplant of one of my dearest, most beloved, super shitty/earnest self-insert characters as a 12 year old on Neopets and I have NO SHAME AT ALL.  Rose is a human mage (they do exist!) around 30 or so, a pale/skinny English-Caucasian mutt with green eyes, straight brown hair, and a penchant for fancifully extra looking dyed bang fringies because she’s stopped giving a fuck.  She’s one of those rare people who can strike up a conversation with just about anyone, blessed by a very… unique way with words that’s unintentionally contributed to her internet fame as a slice of life blogger about the day to day trials of pet dragon (well, wyrm) ownership.  

Rose has been passionate about rare and magical exotic creatures since she was a wee girl, and developed an obsession with dragons (‘wyrms’ being the correct term for all non-sentient varieties) before she was out of grade school.  In college she double majored cryptobiology and spell artistry, then upon graduation, acquired a pair of rare pygmy wyrms— from temperate and tundra subspecies— respectively, as pets, both for personal reasons and to aid in her pursuit of a master’s degree in cryptobiological husbandy.

Pygmy wyrms, it should be noted, are generally terrible pets.  While only growing to approximately the size of a house cat (10-12 pounds on average) and sporting the appearance of beautifully miniaturized mythological six-limbed dragons any fantasy nut would fall in love with, they are far from domesticated, exasperatingly precocious, and have the charming habit of expelling flammable gas from a myriad of orifices when startled.  They have a distinctive, vaguely musky sulfurous smell about them regardless of cleanliness and are just clever enough to ignore training commands when convenient.  Imagine giving a very ornery, very clever raccoon flappy wings with a several foot wingspan, feeding it rotten eggs, and strapping a flamethrower to both ends, then rigging it all with an excitable hair trigger.  That is a pygmy wyrm.  Rose owns two in an apartment complex: Ice Pack (Packy), who is a pale milk white/ice blue, and Sharky (Sharkbite), who is black and burgundy/red.  

Needless to say they’re the loves of her lives and she revolves around them, having garnered a massive internet following thanks to her daily posts about their antics and the realities of exotic pet care.  They’re harness trained now and reasonably polite, though this is only due to years of hard work and constant reinforcement.  She hopes one day to breed more biddable specimens and help contribute to the conservation of the species worldwide.  Also, they’ve made her very good at anti-flammability hexes.  

Shun —: known only by her first name, a kitsune who moved into the apartment complex fairly recently with her pet pipe fox, Yuzu.  It should be noted that kitsune are particularly long lived among mythicals, though how long exactly that is tends to be hotly debated and unknown by all but the foxes themselves.  What is known is how they are extremely slow to age after reaching their peak maturity/fitness, with certain individuals reported over 500 years old and, apparently, showing very little of their age beyond a massive swath of grown tails (nine being the highest on known record).  Kitsune typically grow to around 30-40 lbs, outwardly resembling a much large. leggier, more willowy silhouette than traditional foxes, and will begin life with a single tail that splits or “buds” and multiplies over time.  

Neurologically they are fairly unique among mammals, possessing a kind of distributed intelligence throughout the body that can give the tails a “mind of their own”, so to speak, in much the same way as octopi or other related cephalopods do.  In fact, due to the extremely slow rate of cell death/turnover, a severed kitsune tail will continue to move and attempt “functioning” for weeks, even years by some reports, under correct conditions.  Which I’ll get into shortly.  

Swerving back to Shun herself, she’s an artist by trade who zigzags between traditional and digital freelance work for a living.  Conservation of mass is still in place for humanoid shifts— which all kitsune can voluntarily assume— with predictably small, delicate, androgynous bodies that rarely get above 4’5’’ or so in stature.  Features like pointed ears or slit pupils/exposed tails can be morphed or shown as desired, though the chronic perception of being childlike or “cute” regardless of how old they are is a pretty common occurrence.  Shun is no stranger to this either, and hates shopping for clothes at non-mythical-specific places because she has to do so in the *really* young children’s department for anything to fit.  

Back on the subject of pipe foxes, though— Shun is a kitsune with 3 and 3/4 tails.  She had an unspecified accident several years ago in which she lost the final quarter of her fourth tail, but managed to retrieve the piece after several weeks of searching, at which point it was already trying to become a pipe fox.  Pipe foxes (at least in this world) are the result of a severed kitsune tail’s survival instincts going horribly wrong (or right) and attempting to restructure themselves for survival, and the amount of tail there (i.e. how much was separated from the body) will determine what becomes of it, though the “starting” process is pretty identical no matter what you do.  

If a severed piece of tail has no food, eventually, with time, it will die.  If, however, you keep it somewhere safe (like a drawer) and you present it with food (which could be, I don’t know, a chicken leg), it will sense it, and you will see the start of a small, gaping fanged mouth begin to grow from the stump.  Once this has formed, the tail will wriggle itself to its prize and devour everything it can, sustaining it.  Keep feeding the tail and it will continue to grow legs, organs, features, and a face— though not necessarily in that order.  Eventually, you will have a small— usually mouse to rat sized— beautiful white magic fox, prized heavily by black market collectors for its splendor and apparent luck giving properties.  A true quarter-tailed pipe fox will live somewhere between 5-40 years, unpredictably.  The distributed intelligence of the tail will reform/conglomerate into a brain relatively on par with a modern pet dog, possibly smarter (or much dumber) depending on your luck.  

If, however, there is MORE than roughly a quarter tail chopped off, with more of the nervous tissue and mass intact, the pipe fox resulting may appear larger and more robust.  Many exotic buyers have been lured into purchasing these creatures from traders without realizing, and years later the unlucky recipient will find their precious fox’s skin suddenly flaccid on the ground like a shed cocoon, having erupted into 75 tinier pipe foxes that will summarily swarm the accessible property to spirit off with literally anything they decide is valuable, never to be found again, often raging like an infestation for days or WEEKS before vanishing forever.  

Rumor has it that feeding an entire severed tail will result in 75 tiny pipe foxes bursting forth from the cocoon shell that will each burst into 75 more bug sized foxes each, resulting in a plague of nigh biblical proportions.  But that’s never actually been confirmed on record.  

Needless to say the kitsune have a lot of protocols for dealing with severed tails and will usually destroy half-formed pipe foxes of unknown origin on the spot.  Shun keeps Yuzu as a pet due to being intimately aware of the little rat-sized creature’s origins, and she still had to sign SO many extra insurance papers and wavers before the complex would let her move in.  

I am not good at keeping it short, am I?  Wow.  Well, there you have it!  I’d be happy to answer any extra stuff I forgot too if someone has a question.  I do love these nerds.  

[newslegion-blog1]

MACHINE ELVES AND HOMONCULUS STONE BABIES OF THE BRAIN

Prologue Definitions

Machine elves

Cognitive dissonance

Confirmation bias

Darwinian

Energizer Bunny

Solaris

Stone babies

Complex chemistry

Organic life

Multicellular life

DNA

Ego

Egocentric

Egomaniac

Vanity

Conceit

AI (artificial intelligence)

Machine Learning

AI singularity

AGI (artificial general intelligence)

A-con (artificial consciousness)

SCRIBBLE!

All you are exists in the gaps in brain progressing, super but accidental redundancy gone Darwinian. Life came eventually from tiny anomalies in chemistry - exceptions - then cells, multi cells, moving multi cells etc. Human accident also, rampant success, but it is standard evolution ad hoc - porking our way through all resources, like greedy consumers since the LHB. In the gaps is the gold, though.

Electricity chemistry pinging around the brain concertina organic machine learning time needed to create valid next generations. Testing testing blind watchmaking consciousness. Which it eventually did, a few times. Most didn't have it. We did.

Unto now, the gaps have their sight on AI or cybernetics. We perceive the exponential flashpoint where AI fuse is lit; to develop in picotime. We knew that's coming cuz it's not an alien concept. Same thing originated humans from the primates; and all the way back.

It's rather unfair that activating a non-self serving bullshit / inauthenticity / virtue signalling often causes an interruption in natural flow as one audits one's behaviour. The ironic bit is how that sincere audit, only to be genuine and not feed others blarney, causes a stuttering - the look of uncertainty - which is actually taken for insincerity or discomfort. Double irony the slick fuck who doesn't audit or care to be sincere, even the snake oil seller with a learnt parlour, comes over smooth, no discord, certain, this truthful, authentic, sincere, worthy of trust. This is a perception mismatch - imagination to lie besting intuition about who to trust (and feeling, if it needs thinking about, it is less true).

If everything is a drive to solution or at least progress, it's inevitable to eventually realise this must be engineered if it's not to rely on chances intuition (hard to pass on/teach). Once this realisation hits, the choice is how much of life gets subjected to the deconstruction engineering necessary to aspire progress cuz not doing this is devalued, success or failure. Convergence with AI, not cuz it's mechanistic thinking but cuz it's breaking down increasingly complex chunks of reality into variables and algorithms. This is also a changed perspective as it's not all about forensic past dissection but variables algorithm approach to choices and the future especially when it comes to pursuing a goal, to doing.

In the moment yeah you can live in it but if you notice it, it's gone, and if it's well lived it's something good gone that can't be forever. That's all fine. But if it's a moment full of love and life, its loss is no fun - hide, don't think, don't be sad - but whatever, the lovemoment ends with one of you gone and the other going on like a lonely Energizer bunny.

Machine elves are the brain's consciousness dead ends, like personality abortions doomed to toil and live dumb in the deepmind unable to escape the loop of their inspiral succession of doors and rooms.

Or are they the brain making personalities for fun like the oceanworld Solaris. Once made the homunculus has to live cuz that's our fundamental law of life, how much personality is invested - not too much - virtually sane is just as much a natural selection as animals with eyes. like the ocean world Solaris.

The patterns of these abortions - stone babies calcified by time and distance from origin - lose distinctive features as one sees the mass, the in-spirals zoom out to look like consciousness fractals making geometric shapes whose uberform is real grand emotions (powerful insulators) like love and hate and empathy.

There's a barrier between personality prime and subordinate praetorian subconscious, and the machine elves and the homunculus trying to live, escape, loyalists v rebels?

This barrier is reinforced over early childhood though the multiplicity of fluid personality is still within reach. Kids make believe easily, "I'm David Beckham, you be Cristiano Ronaldo," one says, and that's all is needed. This state doesn't last, though. It's not expedient and real lived experience relentlessly teaches how life needs to be lived. Single personality, compromise with the oceanworld it can admit of many moods and facets.

This is the devil's bargain all human brains make, to live. It's another bargain that's not a choice ever made but a fact of our brains today and a fait accompli (like any Darwinian process, it's very extant consideration proof it was naturally selected a long time ago).

Perhaps this bargain where the frontline personality and lieutenants are given the route to the light - the optic nerve, for one - cutting loose the machine elves (loyalists) and homunculus (rebels), denied the light. Maybe this is the real origin truth in the underground/hell metaphor. And heaven isn't a place on earth but a life in a body upon it.

Think also about psilocybin, the inspiration for machine elves. They're always benign, calming, profound, in their own universe etc. Why wouldn't one feel a profound sense of gratitude, meeting the tireless lifelong guardians of your sanity - your identity - your safety. Bad trips could be a homonculus escaping, running rampant, though our brains are creative omnipotent s (inside the skull) so the escapee is eventually brought under control, neutralized.

The patterns made by of these personality abortions / occurs - though most are turned into stone babies calcified by time and distance from origin - lose distinctive features as one sees the mass, the in-spirals zoom out to look like consciousness fractals making geometric shapes whose uberform is real grand emotions (powerful insulators) like love and hate and empathy.

The first and last glimpse of the stone baby consciousness stillborn animations has so much fidelity, so much consciousness, so much depth in layers, it feels real, it feels like seeing God. Profound, ecstatic, personality-changing.

The world is very big. Big enough to send people mad or foetal. Foetal is mostly harmless: jobs and careers and breeding, if there's evil done, at least it's only done by inches. Madness is sometimes not harmless. It can be infectious. It is turning the innumerable into an equation.

At best this means crass approximation constipated by singularities and infinities that might factor conveniently but require faith they are equal rather than unknowns. National fantasy is a paradigm here. Or the innumerable is reduced to an algorithm, confirmation bias and cogdis evidence it's a fairytale (at least to observers). Religion is algorithm, as is mysticism. These bogus attempts to imagine a world that can't be imagined in any meaningful sense require commitment to equations or algorithms. Time devoted to this commitment makes them unreasonably precious. Precious things are possessed but also must be defended.

What's my own algorithm or equation explanation? That's the difference I think matters: it's only made up of expressly human factors, often ignoble and base and sad (for me and you). It doesn't need faith or singularities or fantasy or infinity. The problem is, it may be accurate, but whether it is or isn't it's not compelling and has no spark of any magic. Magic is the light good side of the infinities. It's a fairytale that might become a myth, it's not real except if it's reality to enough people (close by or in reach). I don't think it can be faked if one's being honest. But without the magic, what's the point of life except as a kindness to a duty to others, the logical endgame of nihilism.

Irony: opinion - decisive defining of personality - this is based on past experience but weighted towards quality over quantity JUST ABOUT - education, new data, new situations, research, expertise: these build by quality. Ultimately no matter what the subject but the bigger it is the more increasingly scant facts (in absolute terms, as a % of all facts available), there's a best guess, to the best of my knowledge, far as I know, based on the evidence etc. Cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias plays to this part of the algorithm, Dunning Kruger setting the predisposition based on specifics, demeanour/mood setting the predisposition objective bias/weighting.

To act with foresight based on predicted outcomes, one being preferred to others requires IMAGINATION to try modelling the future out of facts and other opinions etc. Given there may be no visceral or personal unequivocal evidence, and data is nuanced, there's got to be tough choices that require a fantasy to make happen. The scientists with enough facts to model a future disaster must use fantasy thinking to act before it is too late. Ironically the opinionated fool who knows fuck all gets to live real world prosaic, demanding better more undeniable proofs. Which can't happen cuz it's all about the future.

Human Imagination is the universe's most incredible creation (that we know!), not just for its potential but its tiny size and complexity. Trillion trillion neurons and axons in a network that works.

Daily life is a drip drip of experiences (sensory) that fill the brain's memory with, initially, the materials imagination needs to create its own universes. These begin fascinating - FEELING compelling - because they're new enough to seem possible so the brain takes it seriously as curiosity is hard-wired with scale quickly added. Drip drip drip.

Children play imaginative games because the potential (offered by imagination) still seems possible; and there's enough newness in daily drip drip to feed in new raw materials for ever more diverse imaginings. FEELINGS loosed by imagined worlds are intense early on because of thise closeness to possible; becoming less as drip drip drip time goes by and the brain's bullshit detector advances. The imagined world, once familiar, is less compelling.

New imaginings remain a catalyst for EMOTION because in that newness is something for the brain to explore. Imagined games can last longer thus. Eventually, though, the drip drip drip of real life - which doesn't cease - becomes so familiar there's no flow of new raw materials for the imagination; and then the imagined worlds are less fascinating. The experience of the drip drip drip asserts the undeniable nature of real life versus the imagined worlds, i.e. real life is probably, imagined worlds are mostly impossible. Once the latter builds enough reinforcement and the latter is demonstrated almost entirely impossible, the brain's faith in the possibility of these imagined worlds drops markedly and no more intense feeling comes from them.

For a while the real world, which is after all quite big, fills the void left behind by receding imagined worlds - ambition and hope and dynamism reside therein. But then the person gets old and the drip drip drip of everyday life continues relentless so that very predictability and the unlikeliness of early dreams increase so the brain loses faith in that, too. From this point people often become alcoholics (stupefy the brain's bullshit detector, so the feelings can flow again with lesser or despite everyday familiarity - often with a combination of memory and former states of mind), or junkies (various types, various effects, initially respite from the everyday so feelings flow but ultimately familiarity also - needing bigger doses or cecession).

More usually the older person moves to duty, fortitude, ministering to family's needs or - in any case - simply habituates to a less intense, less emotionally charged life thereafter. There's plenty of encouragement baked into our society, to make it easier to transition. Vanity is often a useful vehicle here: maturity equated to accepting duty and eschewing a life predicated on chasing compelling emotions. In any case, that's the way it seems to work.

The bathos of old age tends to be accompanied by physical or mental infirmity, loss of health, fragmentation of brainfunction, as the living organism begins its deterioration towards death and re-atomisation; the network shutdown, memory and imagination lost both as an individual system and a future potential, since the complexity of a particular brain is so unlikely the universe won't last long enough for there to be another quite the same.

The resonating concepts of any human society's myths and legends and fairytales are founded on a shared experience (being human). These concepts become embedded, like the rings in a tree trunk, because they matter - concurrently, contemporaniously, to a high enough proportion of those living at a particular time.

Time sorts the metaphorical wheat from the allegorical chaff, generation to generation, but the artifacts of these shared mythologies - like thunder clouds as gods doing battle or icebergs crashing into the ocean as ice-giants expelled from Jotunheim - echo long after the originating beliefs have become obsolete.

The remnants of the shared metaphor, a shortcut familiarity and unquestioned value, are appropriated by modern day's trinity of evil: propaganda, advertising and art. Prior to corporate capitalism advertising was owned by religion. Prior to democratic pluralism propaganda was owned by the ancien regime.