Snippet From My Queer Polyamorous Romance Novel, Community Witch - An Unapologetically Trope-y, Cozy,

Snippet from my queer polyamorous romance novel, Community Witch - an unapologetically trope-y, cozy, and relationship-driven romance story about the healing from trauma, found family, and joyful queer relationships. (Looking to publish next year.)

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Aspen glanced around the space but couldn’t identify anything strange. Neither were they able to sense any obvious malevolence. “Does anything here look out of place to you?”

Rav looked around, then shook his head. “Not here. But mostly it stays back in the studio.” He pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and unlocked the door behind the register. “Which is back here.”

Aspen, who had hung out with a lot of artists in university, had expected chaos and mess. They were surprised to instead see a studio that was so immaculate and neatly organized that it barely looked as if it were in use. Even more surprising was Rav’s sudden inarticulate cry of anguish as he strode over to a painting in progress on an easel. “I wasn’t done with that!” he yelled in frustration at the ceiling.

“I take it something was moved?” Aspen asked mildly from the doorway.

“It put my paints away! And the brushes I was using!” Rav gestured in frustration at the large unit of pull-out drawers. “I left out the colors I was using so I’d be able to match them!”

“And… the ghost put them away?”

Rav held up a finger, clearly mistaking their confusion for skepticism. “I know this sounds crazy, but look.” He opened one of the drawers and started tossing tubes of paint on the floor.

Not more than a second later, the tubes lifted themselves off the floor and floated back into the drawer, which then slammed shut. Aspen blinked in shock. “Well there’s something I’ve never seen before. You have a poltergeist that cleans!”

Viera is the trans option.

(I also changed to Viera when I started transitioning)

When you start to transition IRL so you’ve gotta transition your Warrior of Light too

Been really enjoying getting back into FFXIV recently, watch out for a lot more of my new bunny boy in the future

i know we joke about cis artists having the weirdest sense of anatomy, but also even when the anatomy is fine, no one seems to want to draw women doing normal things

I have a feeling that beneath the little halo on your noble head There lies a thought or two the devil might be interested to know You're like the finish of a novel that I'll finally have to take to bed You fascinate me so

You Fascinate Me So, Blossom Dearie

Oh shit, I gotta look into this

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

G'raha was staring at Alisaie with the embarrassed look he usually wore when he wanted to ask for something sexual directly. And Alisaie, it seemed, had known him long enough to recognize his tells, even in this very different context. "What do you want, G'raha?"

"You could," he began, only for his voice to break. He swallowed and tried again. "You could...if you want... fuck my throat."

Alisaie blinked. Raised an eyebrow. "Not opposed, but... not what I was expecting."

G'raha attempted to maintain composure, but the twitching of his tail betrayed him. "A skill acquired at the Studium."

Alisaie's face lit up with surprise, then delight, both eyebrows now sky-high. "At the Studium."

G'raha went adorably pink again. "While it is certainly not the experience of every man, many young men have... have certain urges, and one doesn't always want to leave the library to indulge them. Over time, I formed a circle of acquaintances of... like-minded individuals who made a habit of relieving each other without any expectation of personal attachment, and. Well. I've always believed that there's no point in doing something if you don't do it well."

G'raha looked so mortified as he finished his explanation that I honestly couldn't blame Alisaie for the cackling laugh that burst out before she could get control of herself. "I'm sorry," she said, belatedly covering her mouth. "I'm just... I'm realizing now how badly I misjudged you. We had so much more in common back then than I would have guessed."

G'raha struggled for a moment to process this, then gave up. "So..."

"Do you want me to fuck your throat? Because I'd love to do it, now that you've brought it up.""Yes."

(Look, I'm so proud of these horny nerds okay.)

I'm quite proud of this sentence:

"G'raha, the poor, sweet moron, looked as if he'd been hit over the head, as he always did when confronted with the undeniable fact that he was actually quite lovely."