#there are not programs to pay for video games

[unpretty]

idk man. from 2008 to 2019 i was self-employed. i dropped out of high school in 2006 and then dropped out of college in 2010 and moved to a swamp to watch my great-grandma die because that was the only thing i could afford to do. then i went back to college and lived off student loans for a while. if i managed to scrape together $500 in a single month, that was a very good month. i applied for a gamestop credit card i shouldn't have qualified for and used it to buy taco bell gift cards for when i couldn't afford groceries, then paid a stupid amount of interest on the cost of my taco bell gift cards because i couldn't afford to pay off the balance.

during that period i bought over 2000 ebooks and 600 steam games. i like to believe that i'll read or play them someday. i probably won't, with most of them. but it was nice to have the option. i paid $10 a year for a domain name that did nothing but show a single image when you went there because i thought that was funny. i bought every sims expansion. i bought a ps4 and pretended i was in debt for a ps4 instead of taco bell gift cards and the sims. i barely ever played anything on the ps4, but it was nice to have the option.

when i got a part-time retail job in 2019 ($12 an hour! 20 hours a week!) i felt RICH. i was getting $200-$300 a week! that's so much fucking money! i was spending most of it on gas, and food that i could eat in a store break room without dying. but it was still so much money!! i paid off all my credit cards and then immediately ran them back up. i bought matching couches for me and my cat at tj maxx. i bought a ferris wheel for mini cupcakes. i bought cute dresses and shoes that i never had a chance to wear because the only time i went anywhere was to work, in my work uniform. i was 29 and that was the most money i had ever had in my life. now i'm 32 with a full-time office job and most of my money goes toward debt but the rest of it ends up being spent on dumb shit. every month i look at my budget and try to figure out where it all went wrong and every month the conclusion is, "spent too much money on dumb shit". you would think that i would try to stop doing that, and yet.

it's like. i was poor and now i'm lurking somewhere near the low end of middle class, and in both cases buying dumb shit was simultaneously proof that i would be rich if i could just stop buying dumb shit, and that i couldn't possibly understand true poverty if i was capable of buying dumb shit. i do not know how to explain to people that i will always waste more time and money than anyone ever should on dumb shit that i think is funny. there is nothing i want more than to spend my last dollar on a laugh and my last minute laughing, and no one's insistence that they would use them better will change this.

#original #my worst habit from poverty is the superstition that #money needs to be spent immediately #because saving money invites money-costing trouble #if i have zero dollars and my car breaks down i will somehow some way pull enough money out of thin air to make it work #but if i manage to save up $500 then my car will immediately break down in a way that costs $600 to fix #poverty also brings the understanding that the charitable will pay for dinner but not dessert #metaphorically speaking #there are programs to get help paying for food and rent and utility bills #there are not programs to pay for video games #but the programs to help pay for necessities will demand to look at your bank account as proof you have no money #and will not accept 'that is my birthday money for a video game' as an explanation #so you get this bad habit of just #spending any money you happen to get free and clear #if the Helping Poor People Program sees you have $200 saved up they will demand you spend that first #if you spend the $200 on video games and comic books you will not have this problem #all of my worst habits as a Bad Poor came from restrictions put on assistance lmao

[genuinelyjustjd]

Concept- Stardew Valley but with Witches

#i've been playing with the idea but have no programing skills or friends who program #so far i got the concept of a mc witch/wizard type and 12% more characters #plus unique curses that change the game experience #and new gameplay where you collect the fears of the locals in order to strengthen them against an illusionist demon that preys on your fears #idk if anyone wants to join hmu ill try to get a job to pay ya lol #stardew valley #stardew valley mention #stardew valley farmer #stardew valley li #stardew #programming #coding #worldbuilding #video games

[friendofthecrows]

I feel like this would be a great way of pricing video games

If I ever write one I'm pricing it like this.

[image described in alt text]

#hal rambles #video games #idea #pay what you want #this might also be good for some other types of apps & programs #random thoughts

[thornshadowwolf]

If you had a million bucks right now, what would you spend it on?

For myself - top surgery, other transition related stuff, uhhhh maybe a house? And a car? After that idk not much expensive I want. Also helping my friends with similar stuff and their student loans. I'd keep some obviously for smaller purchases in the future but then I'd probably give most left over to charity and nonprofits and etc. Maybe fund some ppl's GoFundMes.

#as for smaller stuff specifically I would do with a bunch of money is buy some art programs and a screen tablet #some video games #a bunch of furry art #some clothes (that are more expensive cuz they don't use slave labor or extorsion or wage theft etc) #oh and furnishing/decorating the aforementioned house #I'd probably just get more eccentric lol #maybe pay someone to make the games I have ideas for? #so b/c houses are spensive that's maybe half a mil actually spent on me #ThornShadow.said #idk I could probably come up with better stuff but I only thought about this for like 5 mins #ask #anon

[biodigital]

idk, practiced learning how to use lightworks to edit stuff LOL

#this is one of my fav games in the entire world btw #and im not rlly a huge studio killers fan. was just listening to that one song in particular #not paying for sony vegas or cracking anything. fuck it we ball free programs #also these are all my clips lol #moon rpg #moon #videos #edits

[incomefromonlinesources]

#affiliate programs that pay instantly #100 instant commission affiliate programs #affiliate programs that pay instantly with paypal #high paying affiliate programs that pay instantly #instant approval affiliate programs #instant commission affiliate programs #instant pay affiliate programs #instant pot affiliate program #affiliate program instant approval #instant affiliate commissions #instant checkmate affiliate program #instant gaming affiliate #instant gaming affiliate program #instant paypal affiliate programs #instant paypal commission affiliate programs #instant paypal payment affiliate programs #instant pot affiliate #affiliate programs that pay instantly 2017 #amazon instant video affiliate #amazon instant video affiliate program #instant affiliate #instant affiliate marketing #instant affiliate payments #instant affiliate programs #instant affiliate website #instant article wizard affiliate program #instant checkmate affiliate #instant paying affiliate programs #instant payment affiliate programs #instant payout affiliate programs

[yxami]

Yandere streamer? some nsfw at the end bc hehe

description: yandere streamer x gn reader, obsession, possessiveness, stalking, jealousy, nsfw, masturbation, mentions of daily stalking, yandere stuff like usual

Yandere streamer that sees you in his chat every week like clock work. You loved how positive and carefree he was when he played games. He didn’t care whether he lost or not, he was just playing for fun.

You confidently called yourself his biggest fan, and sometimes he even replied to your comments. You never donated or anything, so you expected him to forget about your existence since he had so many fans.

But you were wrong, he knew who you were. He knew how you would be the first to watch every one of his streams, even with the messages flooding in he always looked for yours. He thought you were a regular fan, one that would stay in the confinement of his stream and his only.

Until he started stalking your page wondering why you weren’t the first to join like always. Once he saw you were viewing another popular streamer he was so mad he ended his stream. He was annoyed that he had to come up for a reason on why he ended it.

Right after, he joined on an unknown alt of his into the stream you were watching. He saw your comments that you quickly typed in, the ones that cheered on someone else. It made him so jealous he decided to do something about it.

Sure you were just a regular fan, but you’re supposed to only watch him! He didn’t make content just for his regular viewers to go view someone else’s. Especially someone like them! They didn’t even seem interesting yet you were commenting just like you would in his stream.

He thought it was a one time thing, a little slip up, until he saw you watching their stream more and more! He was so jealous and angry, you weren’t even worth getting worked up about!

He decided to learn more about you so he could cool off, he needed to since his brain worried about some stupid stranger on the internet. He shouldn’t act like this over one silly viewer.

His programming classes and interest in computers made it easier for him to learn how to hack a few months ago, he never thought he’d actually put the knowledge to use. Hacking into your computer and seeing from your camera was rather easy once he refreshed his brain.

He was a little nervous to see you, he knew that he planned to find more about you but his anxious feelings still continued. His stomach felt queasy when he clicked the final button that would pop up the view from your camera.

He at first avoided looking, quickly shutting his eyes before he could see. Once he felt like he was ready he looked at his screen. He saw your focused expression, your big eyes scanning your screen. It almost looked like you were looking at him!

He absorbed your beautiful look until you smiled.. It caused him to immediately shut off his computer. He was too embarrassed and nervous to watch another second of you.

He thought he would feel better after seeing what you looked like but it only seemed to strengthen the endless curiosity that wanted to see more of you. His mind kept replaying that moment, how you smiled and the way your adorable eyes watched the screen.

He knew you were probably watching a stupid video, maybe even that persons stream but he was too distracted with your face to pay attention to that.

He fussed around in his comfortable bed, unable to fall asleep, only able to think about you.

Because of this short little clip of you, he looked into your camera more frequently. He knew he shouldn’t have continued, he knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t stop.

He wondered what to do with your little obsession with the streamer. You weren’t the first viewer to his streams anymore, and it saddened him. He ended up with the great idea to play more games you liked, sometimes even ones that nobody really knew about that you liked.

It caused you to hyper fixate on him, happily watching his streams on your computer, even more now that he was using his secret tactic.

His daily visits to your camera eventually rewarded him with a jaw dropping view. One that he would never expect to see.

You were on your back, pushing two fingers into your wet hole, muffled moans being pressed into the pillow you bit on, it was obvious you were trying to be quiet. You must’ve wanted him to see, you must’ve! You were right in the middle of your bed and your computer showed a complete view of you.

He watched you for a few more moments, before he could feel a bulge form in his pants, he was already hard and a minute didn’t even pass. It wouldn’t be so bad if he watched for a little longer, right?

He watched you squirm at your own touch, your face was red, with a vibrator pressing against a sensitive spot.

He practically drooled over the view as he took his cock out, whimpering once he saw your face more than before. Your cute pants and lustful expression sent strange feelings in his stomach.

He pumped his cock up and down, trying to match your fingers speed. He felt a little overwhelmed after starting so fast but he couldn’t stop. Especially with your mewls gaining in volume.

He bit his lip, keeping in as much grunts as he could before ultimately succumbing to his sexual pleasure. He had a tight grip on his cock, trying to imagine that it was your hole surrounding it.

You gasped for air as you pushed another finger in, trying to satisfy your greedy hole. You used your other hand to press the vibrator closer to your opening, teasing your body even more.

You were brimming with sensitivity, but you ignored all signs of it as much as you could. You mumbled small curses, feeling a little embarrassed that you were so desperately chasing your high.

God, he couldn’t believe he was already close to cumming, this view was too good not to! He never felt such a rush from watching someone please themselves. This was different though, it was you, it was his biggest fan.

His biggest fan that was granting him this heavenly view. His moans were almost matching yours as dirty thoughts ran through his head.

He jerked his cock much faster than before, perfectly matching your pace, watching your every move as you shoved your fingers deeper inside you. He panted and whimpered, closing his eyes and focusing on the image of you riding his cock.

He moaned for one final time as he came at the same time as you, you were breathless as your cum shot out of you. He opened his eyes to see his fluids covering his screen, he shot his cum all over the live video of you.

It was plentiful and extremely sticky. You must’ve really gotten a rise out of him if he managed to cum on his keyboard too.

He groaned knowing it would be annoying to clean his computer and keyboard. He clicked off from viewing you. Well, after he watched you for a few more minutes.

He got up and shut off his computer, getting ready to clean everything. He was still wondering why he was doing all of his while he scrubbed his keyboard down. You were supposed to be his viewer after-all, not him.

#yandere #yandere x you #yandere x y/n #male yandere #pls request #yandere imagines #yandere scenarios #gn reader #gender neutral reader #creepy yandere #creepy yan #stalker #yandere stalker #stalker yan #stalker yandere #stalking mention #yandere stalking #yandere creep #yandere oc #yandere hacker #yandere streamer

[just-a-jock]

Get Digitized

Josh is your typical college kid maybe even a little nerdier. He majored in video game development and is a part of the gaming club at school he really didn’t take part in any social life. He was very average-looking, not too skinny but not too fat. Of course, he has some pudge around him One day while waking to his character design class he noticed a new flyer on the bulletin board

“Love video games? Want to earn cash? Come join our trail of Beta testers”

Josh loved the idea as he continued reading. It did pay pretty well and would provide all accommodations during the duration of the trial. He decides to take the pamphlet and heads to his apartment pondering if he is going to do it or not.

The next day Josh ends up driving to the address. Some big office parks with multiple buildings. “WAG” said the sign out front. He remembered seeing this developer when taking his Indie gaming class last semester. “We Are Gaming” is what the company was called and they specialized in virtual reality games and development. Josh was excited to see what project he would be helping in.

As he walked into the building he went to the front desk.

“Hello I’m here to be a part of the beta testing program,” Josh asked the receptionist

“Hello, please fill out the form on the iPad and one of our specialists will assist you momentarily”

Josh grabbed the iPad and started to fill out the questionnaire. It had all the reasonable questions you might think Until he got to the end

“What the fuck” Josh winced as the questions got more personal. Cock size, sexuality, perceived popularity. Josh decided to answer as he didn’t want to get disqualified and entered the form. Not that long after a man in what seemed like a doctor's uniform comes out from a secure door

“Hello, you must be Josh. My name is Doctor Houston. I’m the head of the VR department. Please follow me” Houston had a very stern voice with a seriousness that he did not want to mess around.

As he started to follow Dr.Houston Josh asked questions “Wow so you have a Ph.D. in gaming or computer science?”

Dr. Houston chuckled before answering “No, I have a MD in Internal medicine. WRG hired me to head the VR department as they want to see the reactions the body takes to long-term virtual reality gaming… and here we are” He finished saying as he opened a room to some sort of laboratory containing a monitor, sleek white gaming equipment and some sport of large computer. On the other side a window looking into what seemed to be a control room

As Josh walks in he hears a door close and lock

“Hey, what’s going on” he screams while banging at the door. After a moment he notices dr Houston walk into the control room across the room and sit down at a desk facing the main room.

Over the speaker “Dear Josh, I will be monitoring your experience from over here. Please strap onto the center platform near the screen so we can start”

Josh felt like this program was more of a medical drug trial and video game testing but decided to continue with what the doctor said anyway. As he walked up to the platform he put his two feet on the conveniently designated spots and looked at the screen as it turned on.

“Welcome player to your new life”

wait new life what did it mean by that. Before Josh could react clamps came out of the ground and attached to his feet holding him in place

“Hey what’s the meaning of this” he screamed

“Please stay calm as we proceed,” the doctor said over the speaker

Large laser pointers came from the side of the computer. “Beginning digitization” the computer screen announced

“Wait what?? What’s happening”

Slowly two beams from the computer started to travel up his body as everything it touched slowly disintegrated

“AHHHHH FUCK IT BURNS STOP IT STOP IT PLEASE” Josh pleated to the computer and the doctor or anyone that would notice

As the computer continued up his body in a burning pain he noticed on the screen a complete 1 to 1 replica of himself….. wait no not a replica that was him…

The computer finally made it up to his head as he pleaded one last time “PLEASE I DON'T WAN…..” He was caught off as his head was completely overwhelmed by the lights

Suddenly Josh regained consciousness but now he is in some white room with nothing around. He then hears a noise

“Customization available……. Character template chooses… JOCK…….. PROCEEDING MODIFICATIONS”

“What is happening stop this” Josh screamed but no one was around to hear him as his clothes completely vanished out of nowhere.

Slowly his body started to change to correspond to the data inside the computer

First Josh's feet grew from his regular size 9s to a huge size 14 which would be making noise anytime he walked anywhere. As the changes traveled upwards his calfs and leg muscles grew. His thighs ended up looking like watermelons and could easily break one if he wanted to between the two.

“Oh fuckkkkkkkkkk” Josh moaned as the changes continued

His cock and balls were next to change as his penis started to pull outwards slowly inching from a 6….7….8…….9……10 and finally ending at a huge size 11 which would make anyone fucked with It limp for days. His ball felt sore as they grew to baseballs filled with cum ready to fill and breed. The last touch to his groin area was the re-growth of his foreskin and ended with a continues leaky cock.

The changes moved to his torso as his abs started to chisel themselves one by one making a road all the way to the growing mountains that were his pecs. His chest looked like it was being inflated and his pecs were the Mount Everest of the range with a pointed nipple which faced downwards due to the muscle growth onto of his pecs.

“Ughh please make it stop…” Josh moaned as the changes continued

Next, his arms grew with his biceps growing to the size of footballs and his hands matching to be able to palm and grab any ball he wanted. The next set of changes started to settle in as hair started to grow across his body. His armpits started to burst out with hairs so thick that even when he put his arms down they would spew from the sizes. Next hair started to travel across his chest and legs thinking and giving him a nice rug that accentuated his already defined muscles. Lastly, but most importantly his bush started to grow more and more from his groin. Anytime of pants or underwear won’t be able to cover the spillage that will be coming over the top of them.

Josh was in a dazed state as the changes started to subside and finish up. He didn’t know how to feel…. Horny? Confused? Scared? Everything seemed so different as he started to hear the voice again.

“MODIFICATIONS COMPLETE….. STANDARD JOCK REGISTERED…… NAME: CHRIS HERNANDEZ… REGISTERED”

Wait that wasn’t his name why would it say that was someone entering all of this

“GAME WILL BEGIN MOMENTARILY… PLEASE HOLD”

Soon everything went black and it felt like Josh fell asleep.

“Oh god…. where am I” Josh woke up in what seemed to be a house much different to his one. It felt almost generated. Against his will, Josh got up from his bed and started to move to the kitchen where his body made a protein-heavy breakfast.

“Omg stop why can’t I control my body what is happening,” Josh thought in his mind completely scared of what was going on. Unbeknownst to him outside the computer his body was being fully controlled by someone on the outside.

After eating the breakfast his body immediately got up and started to walk to a new room filled with gym equipment. “Oh god no,” Josh thought.. His body started to go through an intensive workout against his will.

by the end of it he was completely exhausted with the last bits of energy he had he was able to take control for a moment and scream out

“HELP IM STUCK” . . .

“Um Doctor, there seems to be an issue,” the voice said

“What seems to be the problem?”

“The character said something weird… “Help, Im stuck” in like screaming pattern” he responded

“Ahh that’s strange don’t worry about that. We can fix that in the next patch. Might just be grabbing from some unused text files. Thank you for pointing it out” The doctor replied as he walked away taking notes and smirking

Josh was now completely trapped inside WRG new game “US” a life simulation game where gamers can be anyone their dreams can be. Unluckily for Josh, he was stuck being the complete opposite of his original self. Now is a template of a stereotypical jock for those who are too lazy to create their own characters in the game.

.

.

I hope you all enjoy. This was a story swap with @axeegliter. Check out their story and blog!

#biceps #muscle #jock tf #nerdtojock #pecs #jock #hunk

[katebishopsbow]

SOMETHING UNHOLY • NEYMAR JR (part i)

pairing: neymar jr x reader (18+)

summary: while babysitting davi, you went up to neymar’s room to get something for the two of you to play with. it turns out that the room wasn’t empty, and you ended up catching neymar doing something unholy.

tags: explicit sexual content (minors dni), voyeurism, jerking off, choking, praise kink, sir kink, age gap, dirty talking, finger sucking, dom!neymar, babysitter!reader, no mentions of y/n

word count: 2.8k

(gif is not mine)

─────── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───────

An excited squeal was heard before the front door flew open, revealing an ecstatic Davi sprinting toward you to greet you with a crushing hug. “You’re finally here!” he giggled with his face burrowed in your shirt, and you patted the back of his head comfortingly as you told him with a smile, “It’s great to see you too, buddy!”

Upon entering the house, Davi began bombarding you with everything that had happened in his life for the past few weeks, from the science fair he won with his exploding slime experiment, the pretty girl who confessed to him at school, the new video game he received from his mom, to the luxurious fishing trip his dad had taken him over the weekend. 

Being the babysitter of Neymar’s kid had its benefits - one of which was the high-paying salary. It paid relatively well compared to the other babysitting jobs you were offered, in fact, it paid so well that this single part-time job was enough to support all your daily expenses and cover part of your tuition fee. And while you initially accepted the job because of the money, you eventually decided to stay because of Davi.

And also because of Neymar - but that’s beside the point.

“Then Dad belly-flopped into the lake! It was awesome!” Davi’s smile is infectious, his genuine excitement about all the little things in life would always fill you with a sense of serene happiness, and sometimes it felt like he was more of a friend than a kid you babysat for. “Well, your dad’s always been awesome,” you chuckled quietly while switching on the TV, surfing through the channels until Davi’s favorite program was on.

Though the boy was quick to interject. “I don’t want to watch TV today… Let's play football together!” he suggested, his voice laced with so much glee and excitement that you didn’t have the heart to say no to him, even though you had absolutely zero agility and were terrible at football. “Alright, I’ll get the football for us…” you pretended to sound unimpressed, but soon broke out into a wide smile when Davi jumped up from his seat with a victorious chant.

“There’s a football in my dad’s bedroom, he said I could play with it if I want.” You contemplated for a while, unsure if it was a good idea to enter Neymar’s bedroom. While he should have been at practice at this hour, meaning that his room was probably empty, the thought of entering his room just seemed like a violation of his privacy.

But before you could ask Davi if he could get the football himself, he had already sprinted off toward the backyard, leaving you all alone in the living room as he yelled out eagerly, “I’ll wait for you outside!” Not wanting to rain on the kid’s parade, you let out a defeated sigh and got up from the couch.

 “I’ll just go in and out. I’ll not touch anything or look at anything inside,” you mumbled under your breath as you made your way up the stairs, trying to convince yourself that this was no big deal. You were only going into Neymar’s room to get the football for Davi - a fully justified reason. And just like Steve Harrington once said, “I’m stealthy, like a ninja.” You’ll go inside, grab the football, and leave - nobody would even notice you were there.

It was all going to be fine.

Walking down the hallway until you reached the room at the very end, you twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open.

It was not going to be fine.

Nothing could have prepared you for what you saw in that room. Your heart dropped to the pit of your stomach when your eyes landed on Neymar, sitting shirtless on his bed with his trousers unzipped, hands wrapped around his length as he pumped himself at a steady pace. The way his face contorted in pleasure, eyebrows furrowed together like he was nearing his release, and then the next second his eyes flew open and he was looking at you in utter shock.

Everything was happening so fast that your brain literally short-circuited, like your entire body had shut down and rebooted itself. Every muscle within you screamed at you to flee the room, to get the heck out after walking in on such an intimate moment of his - but almost as if your legs had stopped working, you couldn’t bring yourself to move an inch.

All you could do was stare at him, eyes wide and mouth hung open like a deer caught in headlights. Neymar’s hand came to a halt, his facial expression just as dumbstruck as yours, and you had to force yourself not to glance down at the fingers still wrapping around his hardened length.

You blinked once, twice, and finally were able to collect yourself the best that you could manage. “Sir, I’m so sorry for coming inside your room unannounced. I was just here to get something, and I— I didn’t know that you were going to be in here— normally you’d be at practice so…” you began to ramble, strings of words spilling out of your mouth as you frantically tried to apologize.

“I’m just really really sorry, sir,” you apologized one last time, shoulders slumped and head hanging low from the unbelievable amount of embarrassment you were feeling, and also because you wanted to avoid looking at him and his exposed body. Squeezing your eyes shut, you waited for Neymar to say something, anything. 

You expected him to scream at you to get out, to lash out at you for entering his room without knocking, to kick you out of the house for violating his privacy like this. But when he stayed silent, not uttering a single word or exploding in anger like you expected him to, confusion began to gnaw at your mind and the silence became unsettling.

Your name suddenly fell from his lips in a hushed whisper, his voice raspy and laced with a strange, unexplainable tone. The call of your name made you glance up, and what was once a look of surprise and puzzlement on his face was now replaced with one of desire - his lips pulled up in a slanted grin, half-lidded eyes gazing into you like he had something sinister in mind, and you could feel your insides stirring when his hands began stroking up and down again.

“Lock the door and come over here,” Neymar whispered in a hushed voice, and while his words were soft and gentle, underneath them all was hiding a sense of authority, so firm and unmoving that you couldn’t help but comply. His piercing gaze never once left you as you turned to shut the door, clicked the lock shut, and slowly walked over to his bed. “Sit.” One word was enough to make you listen, taking a seat on the corner of his bed as if your body was on autopilot.

The rational side of you would’ve made you leave the room ages ago, but somehow you couldn’t bring yourself to leave, not when he’s looking at you with unbridled hunger. All you could do was follow his orders and do exactly what he said, like a girl possessed, hypnotized by all that he had, blinded by the need to find out what would happen if you stayed.

Feeling the tension in the air, you swallowed nervously as you desperately tried to figure out what exactly was happening, eyes flickering between his face and the slow pumping of his hand. “Fuck…” he hissed out through gritted teeth, his piercing green eyes now distant and cloudy with lust. “Now watch.”

Every passing second made it harder for you to breathe, to sit still when Neymar’s pleasuring himself right in front of you, and it was damn near impossible to comprehend the fact that he had asked you to stay and watch. Tightening his fingers around his length, he squeezed his throbbing cock as he thumbed his slit in teasing strokes, gathering the precum that had spilled out.

“You have no idea how many times I’ve thought of bending you over and fucking you inside this house,” he exhaled a shaky breath, smirking at the way your breath hitched as the sinful confession fell from his lips. “I’m a sick piece of shit, right? For thinking of my son’s babysitter this way,” he chuckled, but the way his voice sounded didn’t seem like he was at all guilty. 

Words didn’t need to be said for the two of you to know that this was wrong. From the fact that he was jerking off in front of you, the unholy thoughts that he always had whenever you come over, to how you were enjoying all of this no matter how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise. 

Neymar was years older than you. He was in his thirties and you were still in college. He was a world-class football player and you were an ordinary college student still trying to navigate life. Most importantly, he was a father, and you were his son’s babysitter. Your relationship never should have exceeded that, but it did, with him splayed out in his bed, admitting all the filthy thoughts he had of you while you watched him. 

This was wrong - all of this - but neither of you wanted this to stop.

“But you like this shit, don’t you?” he asked you with a knowing glint in his eyes, and the smirk on his lips only seemed to grow wider. You couldn’t find the words to answer him, any sort of coherent thoughts had longed become muddled up inside your head. Though you didn’t have to, because he already knew your answer from the way your breathing picked up and your thighs clenched together. 

“I bet…” he choked out as his head tipped backward, letting out a deep groan while speeding up his hand. “I bet you’d let me fuck you if I asked.” A little gasp escaped your lips, bright eyes flickering with a lustful gleam he had only imagined in the darkest hours of the night. You stayed quiet, nibbling on your lips to prevent the whine lodged in your throat from coming, and that’s all it took for Neymar to know that your answer was a definite yes.

“You’ll let me come inside like a good fucking girl too, won’t you?” The thought alone was enough to make you whimper, clenching your thighs together needily as arousal pooled at the pit of your stomach. Your eyes fluttered closed, allowing the sinful images to plague your mind - god, how you wished those thoughts were reality instead.

You wondered how his lips would taste like, what his reaction would be if he could feel how soaked you were right now, if he would feel as good as you imagined it to be when he finally slid himself inside you, and how he would look when he finally reached his release, emptying himself deep inside you until you milked him of his very last drop. There was nothing you wouldn’t give for all of this to come true, for him to just touch you where you needed.

Fingers suddenly clasped around your throat, pulling you out of your erotic trance and dragging you back to reality - even though the reality you were in seemed more like a fever dream. “Use your words. Yes or no?” he demanded, and he couldn’t help but admire how good you looked with his hands around you - so good for him, so sweet and breedable.

“Yes, sir,” you answer with a soft whimper, head nodding urgently at his previous question while you relish the firm grip on your neck. “Good girl,” he praised you with a smile before releasing his hold on you. There was a warmth that lingered on your skin even after he had let go, and a part of you wished he had kept his hands there longer, that he had squeezed tighter.

“I bet you’d feel so good wrapped around me… and you’ll let me do whatever I want to you…” He continued to pump himself, cock twitching at the sight of you before him - rosy cheeks and glassy eyes, so worked up and so desperate for him to just touch you. “Please…” you huffed out a pathetic plea, hands gripping tightly on the sheets below you, praying that he would do something to ease the aching need between your thighs.

He smiled - not a friendly one, but the same damned teasing grin he always had on - and had the audacity to coo at you as if he thought you were the cutest thing on earth. “Be patient, baby…” You tried to be patient, you really did, but your patience was running low and you were genuinely going to cry if he didn’t touch you soon. 

A few more rough tugs on his cock and he knew he was nearing his orgasm. “Fuck… gonna come…” he grunted out, rocking his hips up unrhythmically to meet his fist as the bed started to shake. All that could be heard inside his bedroom was the wet squelching of him jerking his cock, the quick and shallow breaths of you both, and the broken moans that rumbled in his throat with each frenzied stroke.

“Sir, please.” That simple sentence was enough to shatter him into a million pieces. A pleasured groan pushed past his teeth as his hips thrust up one last time, body seizing up as jolts of electricity coursed through him in waves of pure ecstasy. You weren’t even touching him, but all he could feel was you - everything else faded into darkness.

White ropes of come spilled from his cock, getting all over his skin and dirtying the white sheets below him. His mouth fell agape, throwing his head back as your name fell from his lips like a mantra, calling you again and again until he completely emptied himself into his fist.

You watched as he fell apart in front of you, refusing to take your eyes off him even for just a second while he drowned in the endless sea of pleasure. “Fuck… that felt so good,” he spoke in a soft murmur, stroking his cock lazily as he collected some of the come splattered on him with his fingers.

Leaning closer to you, he lifted his hand to your lips and pushed his fingers inside your mouth, groaning with satisfaction at the sinful sight - your lips wrapped around him, so good for him, so eager to please. “There you go, my good little girl…” You moaned at the praising nickname he had for you, twirling your tongue around him and enjoying the taste of him.

A strange silence fell upon both of you after he pulled out his fingers, neither of you was saying anything and all you could hear was your own heartbeat drumming in your ears and the ragged breath of Neymar. You could feel his stare on you, dragging his gaze down to your lips, and you wondered if he was going to kiss you.

He leaned in, so close to you that you could almost feel his hot breath fanning against your lips. You squeezed your eyes shut instinctively, but instead, he tilted his head and placed a chaste kiss on your left cheek. 

“I’m off to practice now,” he whispered into your ear, voice low and raspy, and proceeded to get up from his bed. You looked at him with utter confusion, the gears in your head still turning as you struggled to process what exactly had just happened. Was he seriously going to leave? Right now? What about you? 

The ache between your legs only seemed to grow, and the frustration building in your chest was beginning to grow as well, really quickly. “But… Sir…” you tried to think of something, but had no idea what you were even supposed to say in a situation like this.

The smirk evident on his face meant that he knew exactly what he was doing, and was well aware of how mean he was being to you, but he was doing it nonetheless. “Keep being a good girl for me, and maybe next time I’ll give you a little reward.” Sending you a wink, he pulled on his jersey and exited the room.

This motherfucker.

#neymar #neymar x reader #neymar smut #neymar jr #neymar jr x reader #neymar imagines #neymar fics #football players #fanfiction

[space-writes]

why i write in obsidian.md (and why you should try it!)

hey, hi, have I mentioned my notes app? let me tell you about my notes app! I’ve been writing in obsidian for over a year now, for fanfic and original fiction/worldbuilding (and dungeons and dragons, and life organisation, and a myriad of other things) and so far I’ve gotten at least three people to also start using it, and I am in fact on an endless quest to get more people to try it.

obsidian.md how do i love thee, let me list the ways:

It’s offline. you are not beholden to the whims of wifi!

Did i mention it’s free? it’s free!

you can pay to support the devs, or to access the sync service, but honestly I just use a free file sync service to move things between my desktop/laptop.

It’s super lightweight at its core. you can (and I do) run it with a bunch of plugins and customisation, but at it’s base it’s just text, in simple files. plaintext. readable by anything. your writing is not trapped in proprietary file formats.

HOWEVER you can in fact customise every aspect of it and if you like Making Your Notes Cute I cannot recommend it enough as a Way To Procrastinate Actually Writing

Crucially, you can link your notes. This is phenomenal for not only worldbuilding, but planning, research, outlining and connecting characters and events. You just make a note, type in square brackets, and boom. linked notes. You can make yourself a little writing wikipedia with approximately 0 effort.

I have separate vaults (Instances, pretty much. Big overarching folders with separate sets of content) for my Valloroth project, my day-to-day notes/fanfic, and my D&D game. They’re aesthetically very different, which is so so so great for getting in the right headspace for the work I’m doing.

OH and we have obsidian canvas now! which is a simple mind-mapping feature where you can make and connect note cards, which can also be notes in your vault. I haven’t had a chance to do timelines with it yet, but it’ll be fun for that. I have made relationship charts with it, and it was great for that. If you like visually laying out boxes of information and connecting them into a pepe silvia board of plot, canvas is incredible

this is a pointcrawl map I made for my D&D game. Those red words in the boxes? links to the locations in the city the players were exploring. phenomenal

do you like split screen? you can have multiple notes open at once in horizontal and vertical configurations, and you can also open multiple tabs in each split window. it’s SO great for research and outlining, when you need like ten documents open at once to move between

finally, there are so many addons to COMPLETELY CUSTOMISE your Writing Setup. styling for tags. kanban boards. LINKABLE MAPS. ways to label scenes with metadata and pull just so many different tables/lists of story information. AND SO MANY MORE. I’m gonna do a whole post of my favourite writing plugins at some point so i can yell about them

the only downsides are that it’s somewhat clunky still to export things out of obsidian—I copy my fics into googledocs for my beta, and I have a plugin to make exporting to html easier to post on ao3, but it’s still kinda fiddly. Also, if you want a program that Has Everything and Just Works, this is…not that. you can build a lot of really useful writing specific features, but you do have to build them. it’s a sandbox, so if you don’t like sandbox-style programs, this may not work for you.

that being said, I do think everyone should try it and play with it and love it like I do and convince all their friends to start using it like i did. come play with obsidian with me! it’s fun! there’s a great community in the official discord that’s very active, plus an ever-growing collection of resources, particularly on youtube (highly reccommend Danny Hatcher’s videos as a jumping in point, they’re super accessible imo)

anyway, come try obsidian!

#obsidian md #obsidian.md #writeblr #writing program #writing #writing process #notes app #space has thoughts #writing apps #writing tools #writer things #writing setup #this whole blog has just been a long con to get more people to download obsidian #notes app (beloved)

[unpretty]

da shillzone

just gonna make a fucking. megapost of affiliate and referral links for anyone who wants to support me and also get deals or whatever. i'm gonna try to be pretty clear about what i get for things also.

you get a thing, i get a thing:

Everand, formerly Scribd: read 'unlimited' (ish) books, use my link to get two free months and I also get a free month.

Mubi: it's not movies, it's cinema (it's movies). Use my link and we both get a free month.

Reel Paper: it's bamboo toilet paper with no plastic packaging and so far it's been the only one I like. It's a subscription and also spendy compared to regular toilet paper but I'm spoiled now. Use my link and we both get $15 off.

MeUndies: it's the fucking podcast underwear. I know. I know. They had a Halloween collection and I'm weak. It's so comfy I'm mad about it. Use my link and you get 20% off your first order, I get a $20 credit, enough to buy One Whole Underwear.

Unique Vintage: it's clothes, I like the collabs and am still mad about missing out on the Pusheen skirt. Don't buy anything full price imho, quality can vary WILDLY. My link will get you $10 off a $75 order and I get a $10 credit. Not the best deal but whatever.

YNAB: I was spending too much money on podcast underwear so I signed up for You Need A Budget to trick me into thinking money is real. So far it is the first thing to have ever successfully tricked me into treating money as real, and my debt situation has improved exponentially. It's $15 a month or $99 a year and my link gets you a free month, if you sign up after the trial I also get a free month.

ProtonMail: privacy-focused alternative to gmail, switching is easy peasy and it's free. Use my link to get a free month of the fancy paid version, and if you decide to sign up I get $10 off my renewal (because I pay for the fancy version).

i get straight cash:

Humble Bundle and the Humble Store: use my link to buy some video games or book bundles and I get a cut. Signing up for Humble Choice after clicking my link also gets me paid. This is literally the only referral program that pays me worth a damn.

the amazon quarantine:

amazon sucks and doesn't pay for shit except 'bounties' so ignoring all of this is fine actually. i get pennies for most things. it's bad.

Here's the fucking. 'influencer page' that Amazon gave me. I don't really know how it works. Anyway the rest of this is bounties.

You can use SNAP EBT on Amazon, apparently if you register a card using my link I get five bucks.

Audible Plus, if you use my link and sign up for a free trial I get $5 and if you actually pay I get another $10.

Audible Premium Plus is the same deal.

Amazon Prime Video, I get $3 if you sign up for a free trial.

Audible Gift Subscription, buy one for someone and I get either $8 or $10 depending on whether it's 12 months or not.

non-referral gifts:

maybe you would rather just send me a dollar or some cookies or whatever so i'll put all that here

I've got tipping enabled on this post lmao

Here's my ko-fi

Here's my Amazon wishlist, I have the occasional expensive thing on there because I also use it for things I plan to buy myself eventually

Here's my Throne, I have surprise gifts enabled so in theory you can send me random weird shit as a prank if that's something that appeals to you

#original #affiliate links jsyk #i wanted to have these all in one place even though it's probably a bad look lmao

[spiderfreedom]

my suffering is profound and legitimate, yours is frivolous nonsense

Just reading a blogger I like but I had to laugh because she was talking about how beauty practices are bad for women's mental health, and she left a note saying "unlike gender affirming care! gender affirming care improves people's mental health and it's nothing at all like cosmetic practices."

TIL, when an older woman gets botox to remove her wrinkles and avoid facing the inevitability of decline and death, her problem is spiritual/structural and she needs to Do The Work to deprogram her ageism, unlike people with dysphoria, who of course have legitimate claims to cosmetic alteration.

And it is cosmetic - no part of the body that is altered by HRT or SRS or any of the feminization/masculinization surgeries is failing to function or functioning poorly. The problem is with the brain, which perceives the body parts as foreign or undesirable. We may sympathize with someone struggling with such a condition, but that does not change that the body parts being altered were already healthy and the alterations are cosmetic, and the relief being brought about is mental.

But plenty of trans people openly admit that separating body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria is a losing game. Contrapoints's video on "Beauty" (transcript) has the observation that she feels least dysphoric when she is meeting feminine beauty norms:

But I also think that trans people often talk like gender dysphoria is this intrinsic, personal experience that's always 100% valid and never has anything at all to do with the external pressure of beauty standards. But in fact, gender dysphoria is not sealed away in a vacuum away from the influence of societal ideals and norms.  [...] When I try to psychoanalyze myself, I find that my desires to look female, to look feminine, and to look beautiful are not exactly the same, but they're woven together so tightly that it's kind of difficult to untangle them. And the opposite is also true, that for me feeling mannish or dysphoric usually goes along with feeling ugly. I don't have a lot of days where I walk out the house thinking "well, I'm giving femme queen realness, but apart from that I look like absolute shit". 

Max Robinson's book "Detransition," from an FTM perspective, points out how the prospective trans man views his suffering as unique from and distinct from women's, even as the surgeries they seek are not especially different:

The stereotypical cosmetic surgery patient is seeking to become closer to being perfectly feminine - she wants to be beautiful. Transitional cosmetic surgery, on the other hand, is widely understood to mark the patient as ex-female and therefore unfemale; this is part of the meaning FTMs seek to create through surgery. FTM desire for cosmetic surgery is positioned as something totally different than the stereotype of a woman who 'merely' seeks beauty at her frivolous leisure. FTMs are deemed to have a rare affliction that needs urgent, life-saving treatment. Conversely, there is nothing more common than for a woman to become obsessed with her socially-deemed 'unsatisfactory' looks and desperately seek to change them, believing that such a change is the only thing that can restore her quality of life. This comparison will feel like an insult to the FTM. It will feel that way because we believe other women's suffering doesn't matter, and recognize how much ours does. Women's suffering is ordinary but ours is extraordinary. For us to matter, we must be differentiated from the silly little woman who wants to be pretty so badly she'll pay thousands of dollars (now billable to credit cards and loan programs designed to pay for elective surgeries!) to risk her life and health. These women don't need to be fixed; we do. FTMs know that we don't deserve a woman's fate but have not yet realized that no woman does.

I have more to write on the topic of the relationship between gender identity and beauty culture, but I'll end this one here. It makes sense that somebody who is identified with the opposite sex would also be affected by the standards of beauty expected of that sex. (Non-binary identification is more complicated and requires separate treatment.)

#mypost #beauty culture #gender identity ideology #radical feminism #100 notes tag

[fairyofshampgyu]

Corrupt File !

genre: smut, college au

pairing: programmer! beomgyu x gn reader (afab when it comes to smut)

warnings: nsfw, sub virgin nerd! beomgyu, dom! reader, corruption kink, mentions of p0rn, handjob, riding

word count: 1.8k

Choi Beomgyu. Goodie two shoes in your comp sci class who was the teacher’s pet and notorious for being an ‘excellent’ and ‘strong’ programmer who can program amazingly well in any language and has great debugging skills. Apparently he learnt how to program at the early age of 7 and made his own pac man after a week. 

He’s also a little pretentious bitch. He thinks he’s better than everyone else in the class and doesn’t bother speaking to anyone, giving others judgemental stares. You’ve seen him a couple times on campus with four other dudes though but none of them were in any of your classes. He comes to every single class early with his cute little outfits, sweater vests and cardigans whilst everyone else is in their hoodies and deranged with little sleep, sits at the front and doesn’t talk to anyone but the teacher. 

You? Well, you’re mediocre at programming. You’re not too bad but you prefer other aspects of computer science and your programming skills have always made you slightly insecure because you weren't the best of the best and you didn’t learn it at some ridiculously young age and program 24/7 all types of games and websites and other stuff. You had to work so hard to actually get to a good level of programming whilst it came so easy to people like Choi Beomgyu. He seems so perfect. It made you want to imperfect him. 

You were late to class today, getting a bit delayed by some cats on the way there. They were really cute cats what can you say! And you loved cats. But being late to class today meant that all seats were occupied except for the front row and the spare seat, unsurprisingly was next to Choi Beomgyu. He doesn’t pay you any attention though, waiting for his computer screen to load and then the teacher begins.

“Alright, today I thought our class was in great need of some partner work and we’ll be doing programming today. With whoever is sitting next to you, I’d like you to develop a program with them. It can be on everything and anything and you have the weekend to create it, using Python.”

Wow. It was just your luck. 

The boy besides you sighs, pushes his cute, round, kinda too big for his face, glasses up and turns his body to face you. 

To be honest, you wouldn’t have minded working with him. Despite being slightly jealous, you did admire his skill but with how hostile he was being and how clearly he resented the idea of working with you, you didn’t think this was going to go too well.

“...We could make like a simple video game or something...” You speak up first.

 “On python? And too basic.” He rolls his eyes and shuts your suggestion off.

You’re slightly agitated with him now and you show it with your tone. “Well what do you think we should do then, huh?”

“I think we should make a music suggestion tool. We could make an algorithm run that recommends music based on what we think the user will like.”

He doesn’t wait for you to agree, opening up python and already starting to write some code.

For the rest of the class, you don’t contribute much, just trying to give him some suggestions to add maybe a function over there or a loop over here, maybe trying to find a reason as to why a syntax or logic error came up. You’re already halfway done and sure it would need more refining but now you know it won’t take up your whole weekend which is good. You watch him carefully as he stays very focused, fluffy dark hair falling into his face and eyes and his circular glasses that had drooped back down to his nose. You look down to his hands. He was very fast at typing and his hands were oddly very pretty.

Upon inspecting his features, you come to the conclusion that he was in fact actually pretty attractive. How had you never noticed before?

“We can carry on working on it at my place right now if you want?” Beomgyu asks, packing up his pink laptop, pink pencil case and pink notebook back into his crossbody bag after the class had finished. You stare at your own laptop that just has a black hard case cover, your pencil case that looks like it’s been through three wars, and your notebook that was really just a bunch of lined paper. Wow, he even had a theme going on. 

“Oh I've actually got another class after this that won’t be done until about two hours but I can come after that. Just send me your address.” So you exchange phone numbers and go off your separate ways. 

Apparently you were the only one who wasn’t informed that your class was actually cancelled today, your professor going on strike or something like that. Sighing, you check your phone to see that beomgyu had sent you his address and it’s not that far from the campus. You could go there early then.

knock, knock, knock. He was taking weirdly long to open his door and you could hear some rustling and bustling until he finally did open his door.

“Oh. You’re here early.”

“Yeah turns out my class was actually cancelled.”

His room was exactly how you expected it to look; clean and cute and quite perfectly him. The room had a pastel coloured running theme but mostly just pink and white. Fairy lights, strung across the headboard of his bed, a pastel pink record player in the right corner with an assortment of vinyls underneath, ones you recognised and liked and some you didn't recognise, an acoustic guitar to the left on a stand near his shelf and there was a worn out teddy bear occupying his bed. 

He sits on his bed and you follow...and then you both just sit there doing absolutely nothing for a few seconds in awkward silence.

“Uhhh aren’t you gonna get your laptop? We wrote it on your laptop?” You laugh, awkwardly.

“Uh yeah. Right.” So he gets his laptop, very slowly opening it and he’s just about to open the .py file when his mouse board falters over the safari accidentally and the hidden window was freed with a very suggestive video on it paused and an even more suggestive website. Your eyes go wide and so does his.

“I-it’s not- it’s not what it looks like! I-it’s just when you’re watching on a dodgy website and those pop ups come up! yeah...yeah!” He’s furiously clicking the red button on the top left hand corner to close the window immediately. But you can’t help the grin slowly appearing on your face.

You move slowly closer towards him and he moves back, stopping when his head touches the pretty fairy light headboard. “Oh really? Because it seems like you were jerking off before I was here.” Your face is only a few inches away from his now and he gulps, looking up at you. When he doesn’t even say anything to defend himself, you chuckle at him. “What happened to the little goodie two shoes? I didn’t know you were such a fucking whore.”

“I’m not-i’m not a whore!”  

“Are you sure?” You move to his clothed dick which was painfully hard now, lightly palming it and his whole body jerks, moaning and eyelids fluttering. 

“More, more...” 

You scoff. “Have you ever had a handjob before?” He shakes his head. “Do you want one?” Slack-jawed, he nods his head profusely.

You free his dick and take it into your hands, starting to stroke him and his hands fly to shyly cover his face, attempting to conceal his moans but not to much success.

“Don’t cover your pretty face.” You tut at him, “I wanna see it.” You bring your own hands to remove them away from his face. Not gonna lie, it’s turning you on immensely seeing beomgyu like this. Little put together, pretentious, perfect beomgyu is like this right now, begging you to touch him, clueless and embarrassed. You want to absolutely ruin him. 

 “Aw I bet you didn’t get to cum before did you?” 

“yeah...”

“Don't worry, baby I'll let you cum.”

You use your thumb to go back and forth on his sensitive tip while your other hand grabs the base of his dick and his mouth hangs wide open in endless moans and gasps. You pump his dick fast up and down, ruthlessly jerking him off and his breath hitches.

“Close!” He lets out the loudest moan so far and you abruptly stop. He utters a frustrated whine, hips bucking up and pouting at you, “I thought you said you’d let me cum.”

You can’t help but giggle at him. He’s so cute. “I will. In my pussy.” That seems to shut him up.

You get on top of him, straddling his waist and gently pinning both of his hands to the headboard. He looks at you slightly nervous.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“But I want to.”

“You sure?” He nods his head.

“Okay.” You inhale a breath before positioning his tip to your entrance and you look to his face again for confirmation and when there’s no sign of uncertainty , you slowly sink down.

“Oh, fuck! Feels so gooood” His face contorts in pleasure and he turns his head to the side, burying it into the pillow whilst his mouth stays parted. You lift up and drop back down hard, making him cry out a loud moan and you begin to ride him slow.

He was already so blissed out by you riding him slow you wonder how he’d be if you quicken your pace so you do, riding him mercilessly now, basically bouncing on his cock and he moans uncontrollably, incoherent words coming out of him with a fucked out face in a daze. Only his moans getting higher in pitch by the second and the noise of skin slapping filling the room.

“C-cumming, cumming!” And with a loud whine and his eyes slightly rolling back, his dick jerks and spills all inside of you with his body trembling.

His face right after being fucked is gorgeous. He’s breathless and panting by his first proper orgasm with his cheeks and chest flushed, face glistening because of the sweat and his fluffy hair completely wrecked now, glasses a bit crooked and head in the clouds.

Yeah, maybe you won’t end up getting the program done in time after all.

COMMENTS AND REBLOGS ARE REALLY APPRECIATED GUYS 😭<333

#beomgyu smut #sub! beomgyu #sub!beomgyu #sub!idol #sub! idol #dom!reader #sub! txt #sub!txt #txt smut #txt scenarios #txt imagines #txt headcanons #txt reactions #beomgyu scenarios #beomgyu x reader #choi beomgyu smut #choi beomgyu x reader #kpop smut #txt hard hours

[butch-with-a-deep-voice]

Long-Distance date/bonding ideas I've learned while making it work with my femme

Streamed Movie Night: Discord has a function that let's you stream video and gaming alike! I'd recommend Nitro because otherwise stream quality is gonna SUCK (and you need to do some weird fiddling to get services like Netflix to work) but you can enjoy movie night with your boo

Tabletop Simulator: If you both have about $20, and a computer with even a low budget graphics processor, this program is invaluable. The base games are neat but the real trove is in the Steam Workshop. Mod makers upload hundreds of boardgames from Catan to Azul to outright heavy ones like D&D and Warhammer. My femme and I now have a weekly boardgame night (she actively challenges me at strategy games and it makes me so happy to have a partner that does 🥰)

Coffee shop dates: Go to a place where the shop has wifi (or you have a really good data plan with your phone), pop your headphones in, and just video call. I promise you, there will be more people there who find it sweet than those who find it weird.

Spotify Jam Sessions: I don't know about other music apps, but we both have spotify and it now has a function that let's you invite others to a shared listening session. Music is really important to both my femme and myself, and the ability for us to literally listen at the same time and talk about the music is truly quite lovely.

Parallel crafting time: Admittedly, I'm Neurodivergent as hell, and parallel play baseline is big for me. But pop on a videocall and make some crafts together. Bonus points if you get similar materials and share what you've made together

Call every night: no seriously, even if you both are busy the entire day and can't talk, call for at least a half hour or so to round your day off. That lack of certain forms of intimacy means you need to be really on top of other forms. On top of affirming love for one another. If you're trying to make long distance work long term, calling to just. Be with eachother is so important.

Schedule Time: As an extension of the above, just because you're calling every day, doesn't mean ensuring you have dedicated time for eachother isn't important. I'm talking like. An afternoon/evening once a week type thing. Be together for a long period of time while you can't be physically together.

Technology has honestly made what I always thought impossible for myself feel possible. The advent of videocalling my femme every day helps so much of the potential pitfalls that could have happened, and the best part is its more or less free (I pay for discord nitro but I digress). Don't get me wrong I'm having my hard days still. The inability to hold her when I want to take care of her is particularly bad. I show care and love through things like physical touch and food so much. But getting creative, and being consistent have really made this feel possible and sustainable until we get to the "next stages" bridge.

If you have ideas you found fun/helpful please toss em in the replies, tags, etc. Always open to more date ideas with my girl 💕

#we also do regular check ins but honestly you should be doing that IRL too #oh vampling... 💕 #long distance #long distance relationship #bite me #lesbian #butch #sapphic #butch/femme

[onlycosmere]

REGARDING AUDIBLE

Brandon Sanderson: Hey, all. Brandon here, with what I consider to be some pretty exciting news. Many of you may remember when I wrote last year about my worries regarding audiobook royalties (particularly for independent authors). You can read it HERE, but some of the main bullet points are as follows:

I seriously worried about the opacity of reporting to authors about audio sales. We didn’t know what a sale meant, how much of an Audible credit was given to authors when a book sold via one, and how royalties were being accounted.

I felt that the industry was taking advantage of authors because of their lack of powerful corporate interests to advocate for them. While video game creators and musicians get 70–80% (88%, in fact, on two major platforms) of a sale of their products in a digital platform, Audible was paying as low as 25%–with the high end being instead 40%.

I felt I could have gotten a better deal for myself, but the entire state of this industry was seriously concerning to me. So, I made the difficult decision NOT to release the four Secret Projects on Audible, costing me a large number of sales, to instead try to bolster healthy competition in the space, highlighting some of the smaller Audible competitors.

I hoped this wake-up call would prompt change. I didn’t refuse to put my books on Audible out of retribution or to declare war; I did it because I wanted to shine as powerful a light as I knew how on a system that highly favored the audio distributors over the authors. I was convinced that the people at Audible really did love books and writers, and that with the right stand taken, I could encourage them toward positive change.

I’m happy to say that this stand has borne some fruit. I’ve spent this last year in contact with Audible and other audio distributors, and have pushed carefully–but forcefully–for them to step up. A few weeks ago, three key officers high in Audible’s structure flew to Dragonsteel offices and presented for us a new royalty structure they intend to offer to independent writers and smaller publishers.

This new structure doesn’t give everything I’ve wanted, and there is still work to do, but it is encouraging. They showed me new minimum royalty rates for authors–and they are, as per my suggestions, improved over the previous ones. Moreover, this structure will move to a system like I have requested: a system that pays more predictably on each credit spent, and that is more transparent for authors. Audible will be paying royalties monthly, instead of quarterly, and will provide a spreadsheet that better shows how they split up the money received with their authors.

This part looked really good to me, as I understand their decisions. I tried poking holes in the system, looking for ways it could be exploited, and found each issue I raised had already been considered. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect, and people smarter than me might still find problems that I didn’t. However, I think everyone is going to agree the new system IS better. We will better be able to track, for example, how Audible is dividing money between books purchased with a credit and books listened to as part of their Audible Plus program.

It’s all very technical, but I have to say I’m impressed with the effort they have made. The people there listened to my complaints, and have tried to improve. I’m not at liberty to explain in its entirety their new structure right now, as they’re still tweaking it, but they did say I could announce its existence–and that I could promise new, improved royalties are on the horizon.

Now, before we go too far, I do anticipate a few continuing issues with the final product. I want to manage expectations by talking about those below.

What I’ve seen doesn’t yet bring us to the 70% royalty I think is fair, and which other, similar industries get.

Audible continues to reserve the best royalties for those authors who are exclusive to their platform, which I consider bad for consumers, as it stifles competition. In the new structure, both exclusive and non-exclusive authors will see an increase, but the gap is staying about the same.

Authors continue to have very little (basically no) control over pricing. Whatever the “cover price” of books is largely doesn’t matter–books actually sell for the price of a credit in an Audible subscription. Authors can never raise prices alongside inflation. An Audible credit costs the same as it did almost two decades ago–with no incentive for Audible to raise it, lest it lose customers to other services willing to loss-lead to draw customers over.

These are things I’d love to see change. However, this deal IS a step forward, and IS an attempt to meet me partway. Indeed, even incremental changes can mean a lot. When I was new in this business, my agent spent months arguing for a two-percent change in one of my print royalties–because every little bit helps. These improvements are going to be larger than two-percent increases.

Because of this, I will be bringing the Secret Projects to Audible very soon. I consider Audible to again be a positive force for the industry, and I have decided to shake hands with them. Audible has promised to release their new royalty system for all authors sometime in 2024, though I should be testing it in the next month or so.

And…if you’ll allow me a moment, I’d like to say that this feels good. It isn’t what I wanted, but I’d begun to think that nothing would ever change–that even my voice, loud though it can be, wouldn’t be enough. Yet change IS possible.

I know that there are plenty of people out there who are tired of hearing about me and my works (I’m sorry–I do have quite the group of evangelists, and we can be an enthusiastic lot). However, for better or for worse, I am one of the bestselling authors in the world. Historically, one of the best ways to change things in my industry is for authors like myself to force it to happen.

Feeling this responsibility, when I was first talking to Audible about these issues in 2022, I made it very clear that I wasn’t just seeking some quiet deal that gave me an individual advantage. I wanted to see positive change for all authors. And while I don’t think I can take sole credit, I do feel like my efforts this year have had a significantly positive effect. Soon every independent author who publishes on Audible (and maybe, eventually, traditionally published authors with the huge publishers–depending on what New York decides) will be getting a larger cut of the profit, with more transparency about how that cut is allocated.

So, for those who have been waiting until Audible had the Secret Projects, you’ll get your chance soon. I hope you’ll support them, and support Audible for their decisions. And thank you to all of you who shared the news about my problems with the audio industry last year; I believe that pressure really did help. This is a victory for all of us, because happier authors able to make a better living (particularly those authors who are struggling in the midlist trenches) make for a more vibrant world for everyone.

#Brandon Sanderson #cfsbf #audible #branderson #root #wob #kind of #long post

[ravenstargames]

✦ Lost in Limbo Devlog #9 | 02.29.24

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

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

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

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

Also, Raeya got a hair update!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Say hi to the Ravenstar family, Riki! 💜

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

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

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