#<- gonna assume yeah then bc i wanna do something <3

[knightley-gambit]

“better if you don’t, it wouldn’t be a good game otherwise”

“Speaking of which, you don’t have do go yet, do ya? what about a game? right here, right now!”

[ *> Horace is trying to not look as excited as he feels about the possibility of playing a game of Chess with Simeon. he’s failing miserably. ]

[ *> He’s controlling himself enough to just barely withhold himself from shaking in excitement. ]

{BEFORE KNIGHTLEY'S DEATH; AT A PRISON VISIT}

"Hey, Knightley. I, um, got you a gift I thought you'd like."

-- Simon Keyes !!! (@people-can-be-tamed)

" no way,, really?

i will, what’d you bring? "

[eggmeralda]

spent an hour making a list related to That Fandom, followed by an hour listening to the haunting vibe playlist, followed by an hour reading the fanfic we wrote about my band and crying actual tears bc it's the peak of comedy, followed by an hour thinking about all the things I've ever created that will never be seen by anyone either bc I don't know how to show them to people or bc people just think they're bad but either way I'll never know the true answer, and now it's 10.30pm and I've basically experienced the full spectrum of emotions: autism, existential crisis, silly, and the feeling of being unseen

[destielembarker]

BUCKY BARNES x READER

my everything…

Summary: Bucky comes back from the events of Thunderbolts* and you GOTTA fix his hair with some tough love.

tags: cursing, bucky barnes x reader, fluff, alpine being a lil shit, already married fic, domestic banter turned sweet, cuddles, kisses, wound dressing, no use of y/n or pronouns, DISCUSSION ABOUT ARM IN THE DAMN DISHWASHER.

notes: i know this shit is written like a 4th grader did it and i really just don’t care enough to fix it BC I NEEDED TO GET THIS DISHWASHER DISCUSSION OFF MY CHEST. plz comment!!!

Bucky has been gone for 3 months now. It isnt uncommon for him to leave for long periods of time but, definitely been hard but you picked up some extra shifts to fill the time.

Last night you heard the front door open and close and quiet footsteps approaching your room as not to wake you. Alpine, who was lying on the end of your bed, picked up her head at the noise.

He came in the bedroom and quietly dropped his bag and coat in the corner and crawled into bed behind you and wrapped his arm around your waist. Alpine crawled over, quietly sniffing out the stranger. Immediately she registered who it was and let out multiple happy chirps and head bumps on his back.

He chuckled at her eagerness.

He turned back to you, whispering in your ear, “hey.”

You’re fully awake now, “Bucky!!”

You rolled over and hugged and kissed his face. Which he happily accepted. The room was very dim. You ran your fingers through his hair. “Getting long again, huh?” You laughed.

He let out a sigh, “Yeah, let’s go back to bed. Wanna see you in the morning.”

His tone indicated he was tired so you quickly nodded and leaned your head down into his chest and fell back asleep with Alpine purring between you two.

~~~~

The next morning you woke up as you usually do, 5 AM with the morning orange glow pouring into your room and alpine screaming at your feet.

“Okay okay!” You laughed, rolling out of bed to feed her.

“I hadn’t missed that.” Bucky laughed, covering his head with the blankets.

You get up and feed the beast and return back to your bedroom to see him, propped up on some pillows rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

You’re stopped dead in your tracks when you finally make eye contact with him, seeing what you didn’t see in the dim light last night.

“James…” You say in a quiet voice.

“Huh?” He tilts his head in confusion.

“Baby, have you looked in the mirror lately?” You laughed.

“Yeah, why?”

“Because, I love you, but that haircut has to go.” You said annoyed.

“I knew you were gonna say something.” He chuckled.

“Also where the fuck is your arm?” You said crossing your arms.

He stayed silent but you both knew the answer.

“James. Bathroom. Now.” He groaned like a child being punished but rolled out of bed in just a wife beater and some black briefs, which kinda made you less mad at him. He still got a perky little butt you loved from day one.

You followed him into the bathroom and rummaged through the drawers looking for your clippers. He assumed his position, sitting on the side of the tub.

You plugged them in and turned around to face him. Those beautiful blue eyes staring up at you like you hung the moon.

After all these years, you could never truly be mad at him. But you have to act like it so he doesn’t think you’re a pushover.

“Bug…” you say playing with the ends of his hair.

“I know. I know.” He said waving your hand away.

“Like I wouldn’t be so mad if this didn’t look like shit! It looks like you got your hair cut from a middle aged white lady!” You laughed.

“I just haven’t had time.” He says turning his head to watch Alpine push her way into the bathroom, chirping again when she saw him. “Hi my love!” He says patting his lap. She immediately runs over and leaps into his lap and nuzzling his chin.

You flick on the clippers. “She missed you…” you said in a softer tone.

“You think?” He said petting her gently as you made long strokes across his head.

Alpine swatting at the falling pieces of hair.

“Hey hey!” You say swatting the hair out of her paws and mouth. “No!”

She looks up at you confused.

“What’s that for?” Bucky said petting her back.

“James… don’t even get me started.” You say continuing to work your way around his head, more annoyed this time.

“Tell me.”

“Well, YOUR child decided it was a good idea to eat eighteen of my little hair ties while you were gone.” You say while scratching her ears.

“Okay…” he says, inquiring further.

“Okay? Well it cost me two fucking grand on emergency surgery, Buck!”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh! You should be lucky I took her in the second she stopped eating.”

He laughed and looked down at her on his lap, “Did my baby girl give mommy a hard time while Daddy was gone?” She chirped and head butted his chest.

“Don’t laugh! She could have died! Look!” You say reaching over to pick her up under the arms. Her legs sway below her, exposing her belly with a dark pink scar running down her abdomen and hair clipped in a perfect square.

He reached out and grabbed her with his one arm, from your grasp, kissing her forehead. “Oh my poor baby!” He said flipping her onto her back in the crook of his arm like a baby. “She didn’t mean it.” He says looking up at you with those pleading eyes again.

Everytime you see him with that tiny white cat, you cannot help but to feel your heart swell. Just the image of this big strong man with a tiny cat cradled in his arm is enough to melt anyone’s heart.

“Okay okay, well you’re not out of the doghouse yet.” You say finishing up his hair.

“Oh yeah?” He says rocking her softly.

You flip off the clippers and grab the scissors on the counter and walk back over to him, waving the scissors in his face, and bending down to eye level.

“What the fuck did I say about putting your arm in the dishwasher? Huh?” You say grabbing his chin and standing back up straight.

“But-“ he started, trying to defend himself.

“No buts Bucky! That’s nasty!” You say putting your hands on your hips.

“How is it nasty?” He says annoyed.

“Because Buck, you go out and beat the shit out of people with the arm, getting dead guy blood and dirt all over it. Then you come home and put that shit in the same place where we put plates, which we eat off of!” You say, raising your tone again.

“Well-…” he pauses.

You bend back down and kiss his forehead. “My love, I’ve told you, if you want it cleaned, that’s not a problem. Just let me clean it. In the tub. Where I can use bleach to scrub the tub afterwards.”

“Yeah but that means you have to do extra work for me….” He says with tears in his eyes, you can tell no one has ever done this for him before.

You walk over and hug his head onto your stomach. “Bug… listen to me…”

He tilts his head upward to indicate him listening.

“That’s what marriage is about. I’m not doing this because I hate you. I’m doing this because I love you, and I love myself because I don’t wanna eat off plates with dead guy juices on it, but mostly because I love you!”

He chuckles and sniffs, turning his head to wipe his nose on his shoulder. “You sure?” He says putting the cat down onto the floor.

You pull yourself off him and kneel onto the floor in front of him, cupping his cheeks into your hands, thumbing away the stray tears. “Bucky Barnes…. I wouldn’t have taken your last name if I thought you were a burden to me. You did such a good job during the courting phase to show me the good, the bad, and the ugly… and I still said yes.”

He cracked a smile and looked up at you.

“The lengths I would go to give you everything I have… my life, my soul, my body, and everything I own. You are my everything.”

He nodded and pulled you into a warm hug. “I love you so much.” He said with a broken tone.

“I love you too, Bug.”

You spend the next few seconds of the hug rubbing your hands over his back. He winced slightly every time you touched his right side.

“Buck…” you said in a worried tone.

You pull back from the hug and lift up his tank top.

“Baby… that looks bad.” You sighed, sitting back on your heels.

He nodded slowly.

You turn around to grab the first aid kit from the bottom of the cabinet and crawl over to him.

You put some rubbing alcohol onto a cotton pad and start to slowly dab the huge cut running down his back around to his stomach. He scrunched his eyes and clenched his fist and hissed quietly.

“Shhh… I know baby. But it’s gonna get infected if you don’t let me dress it. How long ago did this happen?”

“Couple days…” he mumbled through gritted teeth.

“Did you put anything on it? Actually I don’t wanna know the answer.” You said quickly.

You continue patting the scratch, using up about half of your cotton pads that are now soaked in blood.

He’s white knuckling the side of the tub by time you’re finished.

“Can you do something for me?” You say, cleaning your mess of bloody cotton balls littering the floor.

“I guess?” He says pulling his shirt back down.

“Will you tell me about your wounds.”

He scoffs, “Why?”

“Do I have to repeat the conversation we just had?”

“… no” he muttered.

“Okay then, I don’t want you unnecessarily suffering. Period. End of story. Got it?” You say standing up and opening the bathroom door.

“Got it.”

“Now come on, I’m making you breakfast.” He chuckles and bounces up to follow you to the kitchen.

[zumicho]

home┊003┊005

004: softness vs. survival

© zumicho all rights reserved. do not repost, modify, steal, plagiarize, or translate my works on any platform.

────────────────────────

on the steps in front of the bakery, there’s a shared silence between you – he finishes the pastry you gave him. you enjoy his company.

it smells like dew and fresh bread.

“how much do you owe?”

“out of everything you could ask me, that’s what you choose?”

he licks jam off his thumb, and catches you getting distracted. “what else would I ask? for your number?” coy.

you look away. “I guess not.”

“why’d you leave without saying? I would’ve made you breakfast.”

“I wouldn’t have let you. plus I needed to get outside. my… ex, texted me. jeez. sorry. tmi.” you’re grimacing.

if he’s bothered, he doesn’t show it. “boyfriend?”

“of 3 years, yeah. douchebag ended it over text, told me not to spread the news because it would make him seem like a jerk.”

eye contact. whether or not it’s pity, you take the opportunity to admire. his eyelashes are long; if you squint enough you notice the speckles of green in his irises.

“ass”

“..what?” you snap out of it.

“he seems like an ass.”

you bite back a smile. “i… that’s one way to put it.”

“there’s no way I’m not paying you for that pastry, if you must know. if you keep giving freebies out, how are you gonna pay the debt you won’t disclose to me?” half-joking, you assume. why does he care so much about the money you lose?

“it’s a lot of money.” you think about telling him.

“didn’t ask that.”

“3 million yen.”

“…oh.”

“suna—“

“call me rin.”

“okay. rin,” you suck in a breath. “I’m perfectly fine with how I manage my finances now, thank you very much, and I sort of owe you.. for.. the other night.” you close your eyes, kicking yourself in your head. why’d you say it like that? made it sound like you did something else..

you’re about to apologize, but he laughs, “I was just trying to have a conversation with you, not become your accountant—“ you open your eyes.

he wanted to say

“you have the sun inside of you and it’s not just smiles. you have an internal being that shines so bright it’s taken my heart in one single night—a childlike spark I hope you’ll never lose. you’re a walking love letter that I will never open out of the fear that I’m falling for you harder than I’ve ever wanted to fall for anyone else. I hope you open that letter. learn to love yourself and heal from the things you don’t speak about. I hope you find someone who brings out the softness in you, not the survival. you deserve that and more.”

instead he said “—and no problem. you’re worth the trouble.”

but that was enough for you. enough for you to feel the same way about him. about each other, yet say nothing about it.

“I need your number if you wanna text. we’re heading back to tokyo today.” rin adds.

“okay. tell the miyas I’ll miss them.”

mentally, he replaces their names with his.

“I will.”

────────────────────────

author’s note: my musicals phase is making a comeback bc tell me why this took me 2 hours instead of the 20 minutes it shouldve took? (hamilton soundtrack start to end, half of the heathers soundtrack, i watched a bit of newsies & watched a cover of eurydice’s parts in hadestown BC ITS MY DREAM ROLE IM SUCH A THEATRE KID GOODBYE — or gretchen from mg)

ness ur truly my motivation to keep writing this smau even tho im slowly running out of inspo for the social media part of the smau 😭 send thoughts & prayers writers block is kicking me in the butt

i feel iffy about this one 😓😓

@phoenix-eclipses @thechaosoflonging @yuminako @nbcvs @tenjikusstuff4 @intergalacticrory @sonicsolos @yenonnoff @wyrcan @cnnmairoll @causenessus @reads-stuff-quietly @giocriedpower @applepi25 @gra-eae @lilchubbyyy @thvvluvr @toges-cough-syrup @steiins @girlkissersco @wolffmaiden @iluvaquaphor

[panandinpain0]

Yo so like, r u ok writing for Peter Parker?? If so, could you write a Peter x Male Reader where the reader is both a charmer and peter’s ultimate hype man (sorry Ned). Around prom season, Peter asks the reader for help to ask his crush to the prom, and the reader is sadge bc he thinks it’s MJ. Slight chaos and maybe some nervous gay boy stuff ensues??

Roses

Yes, I'd love to write for Peter Parker! (And because you brought up Ned I'm assuming it's Tom Holland's Peter.)

Also, I'm in love with this prompt <3

@@@

Requested by: Anon

Peter Parker x Male!Reader

---

Peter was at his locker, talking to Ned about his Lego death star, when (Y/N) approached his locker. Peter closed it and raised his eyebrows at (Y/N), while Ned jumped in shock (neither had seen him approach but Peter's spidey-senses- or should I say "Peter-Tingles"- came in handy).

"Are you guys planning a Star Wars marathon without me?" (Y/N)'s jaw dropped with a betrayed look on his face, hand to his heart. "What happened to the brotherhood?"

Ned snorted and Peter laughed, turning to walk down the hallway.

"We were gonna' invite you anyways, (Y/N), we always do," Ned reassured, giving in to his teasing.

"Good. So, whaddya' say, Pete? Star Wars at your house this Friday?" (Y/N) asked, putting his hand on Peter's shoulder and smiling at him as they walked.

Clearing his throat quietly, Peter nodded. "Yeah, that sounds like a plan."

"It's a good thing too, because I need help studying for this chem test coming up, and I was wondering if you'd help me?" (Y/N) asked him, hand still on his shoulder.

In truth, (Y/N) was barely getting by in chemistry for a reason. It's not that he wasn't smart enough or that he wasn't putting in the work- it was that he was sat next to Peter and couldn't stop looking at him. Trying to goof off with him in class was one of (Y/N)'s favorite pastimes, and what got them in trouble the most.

This gave him an excuse to beg Peter desperately for help with his homework, therefore getting to spend more time with him. It was a solid plan in his mind.

"For sure! Studying and then Star Wars, sounds like the perfect Friday," Peter said back, always too nice (or too love-struck) to say no to (Y/N).

Ned looked between them, realizing they were doing the smiling-at-each-other-for-too-long thing, and coughed to get their attention.

(Y/N) and Peter both looked over at him and Ned smiled, "So, got any dates to prom yet?" It was meant to be a joke, the three of them in the "nerd" clique, even though realistically they were all very attractive and much more than just nerds. (Considering one of them was the web-slinging super hero, they were much more than just smart.)

"Nope," (Y/N) and Peter said in unison, laughing together.

"What about you, Ned?" (Y/N) asked back, and Ned shook his head like it was a joke he was even asking.

"Who'd wanna go out with me?" Ned asked a bit glumly, thinking he was the unattractive one in their friend group.

"Well, I have an idea." (Y/N) winked at him and pointed down the hallway. A girl named Darla, who they'd gone to school with since elementary, noticed she'd been caught staring and blushed, turning back to her locker quickly.

Ned stuttered for a minute, his face heating up. "No, she must've been looking at one of you-"

"Dude, she's been in love with you since the eighth grade!" (Y/N) insisted, moving between Peter and Ned and throwing his arm over Ned's shoulder. "I bet you twenty bucks that if you ask her out she'll say yes."

Shaking his head in doubt, Ned stuttered again, before giving up.

"She'll probably be asked out by the captain of the football team or something- that's always what happens with the cheerleaders."

"Oh, come on buddy. You've got a chance, you're the only one that doesn't see it," Peter insisted.

"She knows me because I help her with her calculus homework..."

"Just try. If not, what's the worse that can happen?" (Y/N) asked nonchalantly.

"I'll get humiliated."

"Or she could say yes," Peter countered.

"Fine, I'll do it if you guys leave me alone about it."

"That's all I ask." (Y/N) held his hands up in surrender. Then he turned to Peter and they fist bumped.

Once they got outside Ned split off, going his own way home while (Y/N) pulled out his skateboard. Happy waved from the limousine at Peter, letting him know that he was here to take him to Tony.

(Y/N) let out a low whistle, looking at the limo. "Nice ride, Parker. Perks from the internship?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, Mr. Stark sends Happy to pick me up when its more urgent." Technically it wasn't a full lie, he'd usually only get picked up by Happy if it involved emergencies.

"Well, drive safe. Text me if you need anything, or just if you're bored." (Y/N) pulled Peter into a hug, patting his back and putting down his skateboard.

"See you tomorrow!" Peter patting him back before watching him skate off, looking back to Happy. As he approached the door opened, and his jaw dropped as he saw Tony.

"Was that your boyfriend?" he teased, glasses at the end of his nose.

"Oh! Mr. Stark, I didn't know-"

"Hop in kid, we've got places to be."

...

Knocking on the Parker's apartment door, (Y/N) played with the colorful box in his hands.

May opened it, smiling when she saw who it was.

"(Y/N)! It's such a pleasure to have you, Ned and Peter are in Peter's room." May pulled him into a hug and (Y/N) returned it, smiling at the comfort he got every time he was welcomed into their home.

"Thanks, May. Here, my mom made you those cupcakes you like." He held out the box and May gasped, her smile getting brighter.

"Oh, that woman..." she shook her head in amusement. "Tell her thanks! Now I've got to make her that pasta she likes so much."

(Y/N) laughed and patted May's shoulder before making his way to Peter's room.

"Happy Friday boys!" (Y/N) announced as he walked into his room.

"You said that this morning," Ned commented laughing as (Y/N) slung his backpack to the floor.

"No, this morning I said 'It's Friday'. This time it's happy," (Y/N) corrected with a smirk, sitting down on the floor with Peter and Ned.

"Don't forget, it's not just Star Wars it's also studying," Peter reminded with a laugh, pulling his books out of his backpack.

(Y/N) let out a dramatic groan, clearly joking, because he didn't mind what he did as long as he got to hang out with his friends (especially Peter).

About half an hour into studying, Ned left to use the bathroom and Peter and (Y/N) started talking.

"You've asked people out before, right (Y/N)?"

"Yeah, why? You got someone in mind?" MJ was (Y/N)'s first guess. (Y/N) had seen how he looked at MJ and wished it was him instead.

Peter, on the other hand, was only thinking of (Y/N). He was extremely handsome and charming, always jokingly flirting with Peter- but no matter how smart he was, he was oblivious to Peter's obvious attraction to him.

"Uh, yeah, I do. I was wondering if you could help me ask them out to prom? Just like, give me tips or something on how to impress them..." Peter nervously chuckled as he trailed off, scratching the back of his head.

"Oh, sure! But I'm not sure there's much I can say to help. You're a really great guy Peter, and anybody would be lucky to have you. I know everyone says this, but just be yourself and depending on the reaction you get it'll tell you if they're the right person for you or not." (Y/N) shrugged, not really sure what else to say.

Peter nodded, trying to figure out how to impress (Y/N). "Should I get them flowers? Or make one of those 'promposal' signs?"

"I always thought those signs were kind of tacky, but if you think they'll like it then I think you should go for it. And I think the flowers are a nice idea..." (Y/N) tried to give him a smile, but he didn't think it looked very confident. It hurt, not knowing if he liked (Y/N) back- but it hurt worse knowing he liked someone else.

"Okay. Okay, I'll bring them flowers. What kind do you think I should get?"

Just then, Ned walked back into the room, stopping hesitantly in the doorway as if he'd interrupted something.

"Hey, Ned," (Y/N) greeted, smiling at him.

"What's up?" Ned asked, still not sure if he should sit back down or not. He considered making an excuse about asking May for snacks or something, but they weren't giving him any clear signs that he wasn't welcome in the conversation.

"Just talking about asking people to prom," Peter responded with a shrug, going back to his homework.

"Peter was wondering what flowers he should get for his crush," (Y/N) gained back some confidence with the joke, nudging Peter playfully.

"Oh?" Ned asked, eyebrows up as he retook his seat on the ground, looking between the two. He noticed their behavior and realized it was going to be weird for a while- and that he couldn't say anything. He held back a sigh at that thought.

"Yeah, what kind do you think I should get them, Ned?" Peter asked as (Y/N) started twirling his pen in his hand.

"Who're they for? Everyone has favorite flowers, right?" Ned thought aloud, looking through his notes.

"I say roses. Everybody likes roses," (Y/N) concluded, nodding as he talked.

The boys went back to studying (and eventually Star Wars).

...

Monday morning's were always rough, and prom was that Saturday so everybody was buzzing (much to (Y/N)'s annoyance).

Closing his locker with a yawn he turned to walk to his first class, chemistry with Peter, just to be jump scared by said boy.

"Woah! Peter, hey. Gave me a heart attack," (Y/N) mumbled as he clutched his chest, his breathing ragged.

"Sorry! Didn't mean to..." Peter looked sheepish as he gulped down his nerves.

"Are you okay? You look really... sweaty." That's when (Y/N) noticed the roses in his hand and his mood dropped. "Oh, you must be nervous to ask out your crush, huh?"

Peter nodded, taking in a deep breath.

"Yeah. I just hope he says yes." And he held out the flowers with a almost scared looking smile.

"(Y/N), will you go to prom with me?"

His jaw hit the floor, eyes wide with confusion and shock. He never thought in a million years Peter would ask him out, much less over MJ, who was watching from her locker next to his with a smirk.

Truth is, Peter knew that MJ and (Y/N) shared an art class and were friends, so he asked her for advice. That's what led to the awkward study conversation, and the roses in front of (Y/N)'s face.

"Wait- what? Really?" (Y/N) asked, searching Peter's face for any hints of a prank or deception. "You're shitting me, right Parker?"

Peter just shook his head, heart racing a mile a minute.

"You said roses, so I got you roses. I'm sure if you knew I was meaning you you'd have said another kind of flower but I couldn't figure out how to ask you what your favorite flower was without giving myself away-" Peter rambled, fumbling with the paper around the bouquet of roses.

(Y/N) put his hand on Peter's fumbling one and smiled at him, "I'd love to go to prom with you, Peter. I love the roses- and I'm so glad you didn't make one of those stupid poster boards."

The boys broke into somewhat relieved laughter and Peter pulled him into a hug.

That's when they remembered that they were in the middle of a highschool hallway. Everybody was staring at them, and both of their faces were shades warmer than before.

Ned, always the loyal friend, stepped in.

"Darla!" he all but shouted through the hallway, everybody's attention going to him. He was holding a singular tulip in his hand and was sweating bullets. "Will you go to prom with me?"

Some kids started laughing, but they turned into gasps as Darla nearly squealed as she nodded her head, her curls bouncing with her movement.

"Yes, Ned! I'd love to!" She hugged him, while he just stood there in absolute astonishment. His original plan was to pull attention away from his best friends by being humiliated, not by pulling the most beautiful and talented girl in the school.

(Y/N) started clapping and hollering, Peter soon joining him.

Then the bell rang, and everybody started going to their classes.

...

"I still can't believe that happened," Ned whispered from Peter's carpeted floor, staring up at the ceiling in amazement.

Peter and (Y/N) sat on his bed, putting together the Lego death star shoulder to shoulder. They'd steal looks at each other every once in a while, blushing at their newfound romance.

When they watched a movie with May later that night they held hands and shared a blanket, and all May did was smile at them when she noticed.

---

Yippee!!!

Not as chaotic as I'm sure you were hoping, but I thoroughly enjoyed writing this.

Thank you anon! I hope you liked it.

-Author Max <3

[yb-cringe]

im gonna throw out guesses as to where i think everythings going in ordem osnf bc i have no idea and i wanna see if im right:

- joui is definitely planning. SOMETHING. i think he genuinely likes santo berço but by god he is planning SOMETHING some sort of backstab. he just knows he can’t say anything because this place and its people are too tuned in.

- liz is gonna fucking die i can feel it in my bones man. shes dying this season its either her or joui

- i have two mindsets for santo berço;

1) it’s actually just a cave they walked into and everything- the houses the trees everything- is just that black goop. and i think liz is right i think all their healing is actually just sanity cutting off of them like it did in the sanitorium. we’re gonna see them wake up like lying on the floor covered in black shit and jouis been drinking that shit oh god—

2) htis place IS real, its a real town, but whatever goop shit death whatever spiral junk is running it. time is definitely weird too considering at one point this guy was like yeah ill plant a tree and ill be back in 3 years and the tree will be grown enough for me to chop down! which is not how trees work even slightly. i think whole ass years are passing or something IDK TIME IS DOING WEIRD SHIT and theyre gonna come out at not the right time.

3) its. REAL kind of. it’s real in the wobbily sense. and the center of the endless maze is where cris is and where thiago went to when he almost died. something something… people are getting trapped in this metaphorical heaven or between life and death state. i dontk now

- cesar is gonna have another mental break. this one just feels inevitable im not gonna lie. this ones gonna be bad tho.

- arthur is gonna survive tho. he’s gonna be fine. and he’s gonna get a mega fucking promotion because he’s lost literally everyone and everything for this and he deserves it for being a special boy

- we’re gonna find out how joui got exposed to the paranormal and its gonna be some shit where his whole team died (which we kinda know? he’s got the lil charms on his wrist for his friends and im ASSUMING. theyre dead) and joui only survived because someone stepped in to keep him safe. and he’s now emulating that bright and happy behavior that the person who saved him ahd because he’s trying to honor their memory.

(which is maybe why he was like i never told you this before dad but i love you. but it feels like he wouldve with how bright and happy he seems so often. also makes sense as to why hes so scared to BE emotionless or unempathetic since he’s trying to live up to a legacy. esp if his dad is . LIKE THAT. maybe he was also very grim and now he’s trying to make up for it)

[happyk44]

Ya know what I find really weird in PJO but I can't find an alternate explanation for/scene for and so it must stay in my brain as a "I can't find the solution for this and it's making be rage" thought?

The whole "Greek and Roman Deities Fighting Each Other" for the same brain/body. Like, I somewhat get it from the author's standpoint but as someone who knows both of their myths, I'm like??? They literally both have their own gods without "counterparts" like Bellona, which Rick acknowledges within the series and each deity literally has different values within somewhat same domains. Like, Juno? Entirely different epithets from Hera, although they share the same "place" within their pantheons. And, yes, there are some overlaps which come from the fact that Rome came after Greece and has a lot of influence from the Greeks, just like our books and literature has a lot of overlap with ancient cultures and, very specifically, America with European roots. That's just how humans work! Look at literally any fictional book with its own "world" and see all the things it took inspiration from! Even Tolkien! Especially Tolkien! And now look at the things we took from Tolkien.

It's just. I don't know what to do about this and I'm mad about it. Do I like, make the whole scene change when the gods change. Do I replace their entire beings with the other culture's. Do I make them coexist and just pop up everywhere? Answers, brain, answers.

[Coming from an author who's especially enraged bc he's trying to write a Mortal!Big Three AU after the series with a lot of roman influence but a majority of the series is based on Greek Influence--even Camp Jupiter, who has child soldiers??? Dude, they should be adults-. "Oh what about Jason and Reyna?" Make a funny little plot thing where literal adults are tasked by one of their Patron Goddess to take care of a Small Child which they literally did not ask for and raise him/it to be a functioning soldier. Make it so when we're introduced to The Camp via Percy, the soldiers groan because they're literally being run over by children, wtf man. Anyway, if someone writes this into something or finds a fic with an idea similar to this, send it to me <3--and so now he has to do a lot of research based in roman culture with very little Referenced Points.

{The author's starting to but it's gonna take a while and they wanna write this fic now-}]

<3

Fair warning it's like 4:30ish in the morning as I write this and I haven't slept yet so this might be all over the place but, yeah, Risk doesn't do enough to differentiate between the two sides within canon. So I think a lot of people come out of the series assuming that there's little to no difference between Greek and Roman gods and culture, aside from the change of their names. And since there's no perceived difference, they don't really do their own research.

Plus adding in details that aren't accurate to ancient culture/ideology (re: Neptune being hated because Romans weren't seafaring. Like. They were. They had a navy. And they didn't hate Nepetune) and then not elaborating any further on those details (we never see Neptune so we don't get to be exposed to how terrifying or different from Poseidon he is, we have no active child of Neptune to give us a reason why the modern day campers would be fearful other than a story about an earthquake, which I still find ridiculous because really? None of your siblings have ever made a devastating fuckup?)

It definitely could've been more well thought out. I mean I wrote a book featuring different gods, and a key player is Kali. In some text, Kali is an aspect of the goddess Durga. Durga has other aspects as well, such as Parvati. It's sort of similar to how the gods are presented in PJO/HoO. However, I wanted to clarify that Kali is a separate entity, so over the course of the last few centuries and as a result of colonization, she and the other aspects separated out from the principal goddess to be their own. She was the last to sever out. While she is worshipped as an aspect of Durga, she's still a goddess in her own right! But the aspect wording caught my attention and I wanted it to be obvious

With PJO/HoO canon, it could be the opposite. They started as separate entities but public perception caused them to merge. We know through TKC that public perception affects the gods - gods that have been forgotten become senile. Why can't public perception affect them in other ways? In my book, less known mythologies and gods become weaker and weaker, especially as colonization has erased knowledge and artifacts, which is why I had them centralize their power into a collective that equalizes belief among the whole of them (with a little boost for the well-known and worshipped), because hey, if it can happen to them, it can happen to you.

Anyway, a fun way to go about this is maybe making a joke that Hermes and Anubis can't interact because otherwise they start to combine and separating them takes time and energy and other people's help because of Hermanubis. The Greek and Roman gods want to be separate but because public perception tends to conflate them way more than they're already conflated, they're stuck battling it out. Greek gods tend to win more because, again, public perception tends to prioritize Greek mythology (at least I think so anyway) which is one of the reason legacies are so commonplace in Camp Jupiter in a way they aren't at CHB.

By this you can have "designer" legacies - kids with more than one godly ancestor (like Frank) in order to continue on the powers or strengths of multiple gods rather than just the one. With the way New Rome is structured, I can't imagine why demigods wouldn't hook up with one another. With CHB, you can leave so relationships between demigods may fizzle out after the summer or when demigods choose to stop coming back to camp for whatever reason. They also don't have to send their kids to camp, and can train their kids on their own, so less interaction with legacies is had with CHB, and thus godly influence slowly dies out as the legacies don't hook up with one another or other demigods. There's also the ever present risk of monsters, so Greek legacies may survive less.

With CJ, everyone tends to migrate into New Rome when their service is done. Between school, work, and homing options, there's less reason to leave, less likelihood of relationships fizzling out, higher likelihood of multiple godly ancestors among legacies.

One of the things that I've complained about with the Greek vs Roman battling it out thing before and what I wanna reiterate again is that Frank should not have been the one to deal with both aspects of his dad arguing in his head. It should've been Jason!! The one who actually was unsure of his standing as a Roman or Greek demigod.

But there's no differentiation. Even the arguing in Frank's head is just "kill everyone!" and "war is great!" There's no line between Mars as war god and Ares as a war god, despite the reality that there was - Mars being more disciplined and Ares being more bloodlust.

And attempts at describing a difference are either unclear or delivered through secondhand information, like when Thalia claims that Jupiter seemed different to her when he came in that aspect of himself but in text, the actual exposure we get of him feels no different to what we've experienced of Zeus in PJO. Neptune vs Poseidon.

Why does Athena have kids but Minerva doesn't when both are virgin goddesses born from their father's head? Why does Minerva's status as a virgin goddess bear more significance than Athena's to the point she doesn't simply replicate the actions of her other self to have her own kids?

The only line of clarity I can really see is Pluto vs Hades, and even then, the characterization between the two of them is essentially the same, the only weight is in the importance of their godly priorities shown both through their kids (Hazel vs Nico) and described in text (wealth vs dead). But we get little to no other exposure or line of thought from other characters with the same godly parent, just different aspects. How does Frank differ from Clarisse, or Jason from Thalia? How does the chosen aspect of their godly parent affect their personality, their powers, the way they interact with the world or how others see them?

I do like that idea of random adults at camp being given a kid by various gods who are just "take care of this thing for me, thanks" and bouncing off. That's funny. But also lol, Jason being CJ's only child soldier. He's Jupiter's child, and a champion of Juno so he's special and must be treated as such, even if that's by being attacked by wolves nonstop as a toddler and then raised in barracks from ages 3 to 15. And when people go "what about Reyna" or "what about Frank", like, idk how commonplace it is in most places but I know the US has those like junior army clubs or whatever it's called, so why couldn't they just be part of CJ's equivalent to that and then run off to do their own thing with the others because they're teens with ADHD and impulsivity is a thing, especially when you care about your friends.

But, like, also the soldier aspect isn't really key. "What about Reyna?" She was gonna end up at Camp Jupiter either way. "What about Frank?" He needed to be trained because it'd been 16 years and the fact that he hadn't experienced any monsters up to 'til then can be written away as his mom and grandmother defeated them before he could be hurt, and then his mom died and his grandmother realized she won't always be here to defend him so fuck it, let's tell him the truth about his father and send him off to learn how to defend himself.

And again! It's as you said - epithets differ even between similar gods. Their priorities differ - both in ancient culture and with the god themselves. Principal gods differ. Mars was held to higher esteem than Ares - Frank's status as his son should've been exemplified. Mars was second to Jupiter in importance - Jason could've subconsciously adopted Frank as his second in command, which would've been neat because we know Frank struggles with anxiety and confidence and we know he wasn't all that thrilled with being Mars's son at the start, and him getting a bump up in status/importance could've been an interesting arc to navigate, as well as further cement the key moment in HoH when he takes over for Jason as praetor and leads the ghostly army.

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Hero

found u on AO3 and loved u immediately, your writing style is incredible and i’ve binged all your stories :) crack request popped into my mind the other day and i thought i’d share—> the pinocchio phenomenon about “my nose will grow” (i’m sure you’re familiar) except for its the sides (prob logan bc experiment) trying it on janus- “janus will be summoned” or something to that effect idk ily please never stop writing <3 – bumblebea2712

Okay, so I've been thinking about something for a while. In your fic, Silver Box, where Roman has that box labeled 'Ego' with all the positive reinforcement in it? What if one of the things that gets whispered from it is when c!Thomas told Roman "you're my hero"? Like, especially with the angst from POF/SvS Redux. Thinking about how Roman misinterpret Janus' nod as 'Thomas is lying' when he actually meant that Thomas was still the truth when calling Roman his hero again. I wanna see Janus trying to correct him and be like "that nod meant he was telling the truth, he still thinks of you as his hero, he still cares about you", etc. Just some Roman, Janus, and c!Thomas angst all bundled up with hurt/comfort. I have THOUGHTS, and so I wanted to share :3 – oatmeal-stans-the-trash-rat

If you're up to requests rn, could we have a Sanders Sides fic where Thomas himself is actually present maybe? – anon

Hey, would you be interested in perhaps writing a story where Logan assumes Roman is stupid because he isn’t articulate, and one day Roman has enough and is trying so hard to explain to Logan why he’s wrong but he doesn’t know the right way to phrase things so he just ends up getting more and more upset while Logan isn’t listening? – anon

Hey! I love your work (I’m definitely a Roman angst enjoyer 😅, but all of it’s good!!). If you’re open to requests, I was thinking about the control that Patton has over Roman because like,, a prince fights for honor. For good. And who decides what those concepts mean? Patton does. In some way, he controls Roman’s narrative. Anyways, h/c with Roman and potentially protective Remus. Thank you for considering!! – anon

Read on Ao3

Warnings: self esteem issues, self doubt, slightly unsympathetic logan and patton

Pairings: gen

Word Count: 5984

"What honor is there that I can find now? What—how do I know what is right anymore? I've been behind a sword for so long, I fear…I fear I'm forgetting who I am without it." His breath comes out shakier. "And I fear…if I were to ever try to explain this to someone who wasn't you, my words would come out so clumsy they would impale me on their rusted edges." "There is nothing wrong with the way you speak, Roman. Nothing at all." "If only it were something that would be listened to."

Thomas sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Okay, I think—is that all we're gonna be able to get done today?"

"I have no qualms about continuing, but I do not think it would be productive."

"I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you go around in circles again and again," Virgil groans, long ago giving up the pretense of standing and paying attention, his forehead pressed against the stairs railing, "just call it here and let us go."

"Now, kiddo, that's not a very sporting attitude!" Patton puts his hands on his hips. "If Thomas thinks we're all involved in this discussion, then there's no point if trying to discount your own importance."

"I'm not discounting my own importance, I'm questioning my relevance." He glares through a gap in the bars at Logan. "This whole thing isn't gonna make me think it's not worth being cautious about, no matter how much L tries to talk me out of it. I'm Anxiety. Literally it's my job to be irrational sometimes. By definition—"

"But we've previously established that you do have some semblance of logical reasoning at points, and this could very well be one of those points—"

"Okay." Thomas cuts Logan off with a wave of his hand. "I think—yeah, I think we're done. I'm sorry, Logan, but I don't—we're kind of at an impasse."

"Here's an idea." Virgil's hand flops lazily up in a parody of raising his hand. "Why don't we ask someone whose literal job it is to come up with ideas?"

Logan's nose wrinkles momentarily and he sighs. "I do not see the value in asking either Roman or Remus to weigh in on this discussion when it has nothing to do with them."

"Uh-huh, so you wanna try to do the create-an-idea thing without the Sides whose job it is to do that?"

"We are all capable of coming up with ideas, Virgil, Roman and Remus simply represent Thomas's Creativity."

"Oh, yeah?" Virgil heaves himself up onto an elbow. "When's the last time you came up with an idea for an experiment on your own?"

"Preposterous. I'm perfectly capable of coming up with my own experiments."

"Do it. Right now."

"We are in the middle of discussing—"

"No, no," Thomas says, "please, I could use a break from thinking about this."

Logan's mouth works for a second. "Very well. Let's see…ah. A spin on the Pinocchio paradox."

"The what?"

"The Pinocchio paradox. A simple thought experiment on what would happen if the character, Pinocchio, uttered the words: 'My nose will grow now.' An interesting thought, given that—"

"That his nose grows when he lies and if it does grow then he told the truth which means it wouldn't grow which means he lies, sure, sure, sure, what does that have to do with anything?"

Logan adjusts his ties and raises a finger. "Janus will now appear."

Everyone in the room pauses, listening for the telltale whoosh of a Side appearing. Which it does, a few seconds later, and Logan gets cuffed on the shoulder.

"What was that for?"

"I'm not an experiment," Janus says, a bit too amused to be an indictment, "and am perfectly capable of showing up to slap you for being an idiot."

"See? Experiment successful."

"That's not—okay." Thomas pinches the bridge of his nose. "Janus, while you're here, you might as well weigh in on this."

'"Being arbitrarily asked to choose a side with little to no context as to what the options are? My favorite." He claps his hands a few times. "What am I choosing between?"

"Would it be better if I responded to this email now, saying that I'm not available for a call for the rest of the day, or should I wait and just call back tomorrow when I am free?"

"Ooh, what an interesting dilemma. How badly will your life be impacted by a negative outcome to this call?"

"Don't fucking start with me, J," Virgil warns, studiously ignoring Patton's language, "I know you've been listening this whole time."

"Oh, you're no fun." Virgil tips him a lazy two-fingered salute and he sighs. "Very well. Thomas, do you want to respond to this now?"

Thomas frowns. "What? Isn't that what you all are here for?"

"We can manifest different parts of you trying to figure something out, but that doesn't mean you don't have your own thoughts about it that aren't us. What do you want to do?"

"This line of questioning is pointless. Thomas has established that he doesn't know what he wants and he's asked us—well, I suppose that now includes you—what to do."

Janus slides his gaze to Logan, eyes narrowing slightly. "That's awfully presumptuous of you, Logan."

"Thomas? Is that an inaccurate conclusion?"

"…I mean, not really."

Logan gestures at him. "See? There you are. Now, either we are agreeing to call the meeting here and simply wait until tomorrow, or we are going to rehash the same arguments from the past hour and quite frankly, I think there is a better use of our time."

"Why are the twins not here?"

"Excuse me?"

"The twins. The ones who are good at coming up with solutions to problems." Janus glances around. "They seem conspicuously absent from this meeting where we are trying to come up with a solution to something."

"That's what I was saying."

Logan sighs, removing his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Alright, if you insist. I do not see what sort of valuable insight they will be able to give us, but if you all want to hear what they have to say, then I suppose I cannot object."

Thomas smiles and reaches out to summon Creativity. A moment later, Roman appears in front of the TV, wincing.

"Thomas?"

"Hey, Roman, we, uh, we were hoping you could help us out."

Roman rubs the back of his neck, glancing around the room. "Uh, sure. What, uh, what with?"

"Thomas is struggling to choose between responding to a missed phone call and voicemail with either an email today apologizing and explaining his availability tomorrow, or simply calling back tomorrow when he is immediately available," Logan says smoothly. "Which option do you think is preferable?"

Roman just blinks at him for a long second. When Logan raises his eyebrows expectantly, his shoulders hunch a little and he curls in on himself. "I, um, I don't know."

"Just as I suspected. Very well, thank you Roman, you may go."

"Wait, what?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Virgil says, sitting up, "that's not fair, he's been here, what, all of two seconds?"

"Yes, and has just admitted that he doesn't have an answer to us, which is not a productive way to continue this conversation, therefore he can go."

"Wait, Logan—" Thomas holds his hand out, silently asking Roman to stay, "can't we just—how's he gonna be able to actually give his opinion if he doesn't have time to make one?"

"Roman, are the facts I've given to you unclear?"

"Huh? N-no—"

"Do you believe you have a firm enough grasp of the situation to form a conclusion?"

"I mean, yeah, I get it, but—"

"And you still don't know what option you prefer?"

Roman's quiet for a moment, his outstretched hand slowly returning to his side. "…no."

Logan nods. "Settled, then."

"Come on, Logan," Janus says, frowning a little now, "just because you didn't want him here doesn't mean you can throw him away as soon as he's said one thing that vaguely aligns with what you wanted."

"First off, that's an incredible level of irony coming from you—" both Janus and Roman flinch— "and secondly, Roman, would you like to be part of this meeting?"

They all turn to look at Roman, who shuffles under their gazes. He keeps flicking his eyes up to Thomas, then to Patton, then to Janus, before staring back down at his hands. The buzzing of the fridge becomes oppressive. He winces and rubs the back of his neck again.

"Roman?"

"…not really."

"Then it's settled, then. Thank you for your input."

Roman glances once more at Thomas with something almost like longing before he sinks out again. Virgil, who'd been watching him closely, turns to frown at Logan. Logan adjusts his tie.

"If that's all, then, Thomas, would you still like to end the meeting here?"

"Yeah, let's…let's call it."

"Very well. I shall be available if you need me further." He sinks out.

Patton sinks out next, giving Thomas a quick thumbs-up before disappearing. Janus exchanges a brief look with Virgil before he's vanishing too, leaving just the two of them alone in the living room. Thomas puts his hands on his hips, staring at the spot where Roman was.

"So that was weird, right?"

"Yeah." Virgil grunts as he sits up, hands balled up in the pocket of his hoodie. "That…I've never seen them…do that before."

"Did Roman and Logan have a fight or something?"

"I don't think so? I mean, I've seen them argue about stuff, but they always do that and it didn't seem like it was any more, like, intense than usual, so I don't…I don't know why that happened." He shuffles. "I've also never seen Logan be that…short with Roman before."

"Yeah, like, he was here for literally, like—"

"Like two seconds—"

"And then Logan was telling him to go again. And did you notice how he kept looking—"

"At you?"

"At me, yeah, did—did I do something?"

"What? Shit, no, Thomas, I don't think that's it. I think—" he sighs— "look, he's not gonna be happy I'm telling you this, but Princey's been going through some stuff lately and I'm not sure exactly what it is but I know it's been weighing on him a lot."

Thomas frowns. "How so?"

"Well, let me put it this way: have you been daydreaming a lot more lately?"

He thinks. "Uh, yeah, I mean, I guess so, but I haven't been doing that much recently, which kind of makes sense, I guess?"

"Yeah, well, that's Princey in the Imagination." Thomas nods and Virgil gives him a pointed look. "I'm telling you that Princey's been going into the Imagination more."

"Yeah, that's—isn't that what he does?"

Virgil scrubs a hand over his face. "Yeah, it is, but not like this. Normally when he goes in, he's doing it to come up with ideas or work something out, or…something. But recently…"

"But recently that doesn't feel like what he's doing," Thomas finishes, chewing on his lip, "yeah, actually, now that you mention it, it does kind of feel…different. Like—like they're…"

"Comfort," Virgil finishes quietly when he can't quite put his finger on it, "it feels like a comfort."

"Roman's going into the Imagination to comfort himself?" Virgil shrugs. "Why?"

"Like I said, he's going through some stuff. It's not—I'm not all up on how the Imagination translates to whatever your daydreams end up being, but I don't think—Princey's not even telling us what he gets up to in there."

Thomas sucks in a breath. If there's one thing he's learned after listening to them talk about whatever goes on in the Mindscape when they're not with him, it's that Roman loves to regale them with tales of his adventures in the Imagination, even if it comes at the expense of whatever else they're doing. To hear that Roman's been going off more than usual and he isn't telling them about it? Worrying, to say the least.

"When did this start?"

Virgil blows out a breath. "After the wedding."

"Shit, that's…probably not good."

"Yeah."

They both stare at the black TV. A bit of dust gets caught in a gust from the vent and sticks to the corner.

"…he's my hero," Thomas says quietly.

"Huh?"

"He's my hero. Maybe he's…maybe he's going to the Imagination to do the things heroes don't get to do."

"Okay, you gotta break that down for me a little more."

"The heroes don't get to be vulnerable. They don't get to…to actually stop and rest, not really. They have to keep going, they have to…" Thomas swallows. When did this lump in his throat get here? "They're not—oh, god, am I gonna cry?"

"Shit, shit, shit, uh—do you want me to get Patton back?"

"N-no, no, don't—" for some reason the thought of Patton reappearing sends a bolt of fear straight through his chest and he knows Virgil feels it too, shooting to his feet and watching as Thomas stumbles back to the couch— "I—oh, god."

"Hey, hey, hey, buddy," Virgil says, voice soft and low as Thomas buries his face in his hands, "take it easy, okay? You're okay, you're safe in the house, everything's okay. I need you to take a deep breath for me, okay? Just a nice, deep breath, you're okay, that's it, good, now let it out…nice, do it again…"

Virgil helps talk him slowly through the well of emotion suddenly bubbling just at the base of his throat, the breaths coming out shaky but steady. Absentmindedly, he puts a hand to his chest and starts rubbing in slow, firm circles. The pressure does something to the frantic and flighty part of him, helping to soothe him back from whatever brink he hadn't realized he'd walked to.

"Hey," Virgil calls a few minutes later, "you with me again?"

"Yeah, I think so." He takes a couple more seconds just to breathe it out. "Roman's—Roman's my hero, and I don't know if he knows that I…that I still want to listen to him."

"What do you mean?"

"Afterwards. When I—when we were all—when the stuff happened. He said that he thought he was my hero and I told him he was and then he…"

"Freaked," Virgil finishes when he can't, "yeah, I remember."

"I don't…I don't know why that made him so upset."

"Well, hey," he says when that lump starts to come back to his throat, "let's not have you worry about that right now, okay? You—let's go do something else that'll get your mind off of it. Go rewatch the Office bloopers again, that always works."

"Will you—can you keep an eye on him for me?"

"Yeah, Thomas, I can do that. Now c'mon, those bloopers aren't going to rewatch themselves."

***

Roman walks slowly through the woods as the fireflies twinkle around him. He lifts a hand to push aside a branch, stepping through the shadows to emerge onto the thin dirt path that winds through the base of the trees. As the darkness falls, the thin blue lines grow deeper, darker, blending together to weave across the grass as little critters scurry back and forth. The whistle of the wind accompanies the crunch of his footsteps as he makes his way toward the cabin.

Movement from around the side and the man emerges, wiping dirt from his hands with a rag. He looks up and smiles as Roman approaches.

"Roman," he greets, with his voice warm, "how good it is to see you."

"I see I'm a bit too late to help with the chores." He nods to the rag. "I don't mean to impose on you."

"Nonsense, old friend, nothing you do could possibly be an imposition. As it happens, I have a stew on that I won't be able to finish by myself and it would be a great favor to me if you were to help me."

Roman chuckles. "How could I refuse?"

The man holds a hand out to him as he nears, settling it on the curve of Roman's neck and pulling him close for a brief hug of sorts. Roman turns his cheek to rest against the curve of his jaw, breathing out shakily. The man lets out a comforting noise and his fingers card through the delicate hairs at the base of his head.

"Come inside, dear friend, let the fire warm you."

"The night is warm already."

"It is young still, and will grow cold," he says as he begins to lead them up the stairs, "and you look to be the type of cold that does not thaw even in the hottest sun."

"I worry for the state of the realm sometimes, if I am truly so transparent."

"Only to me, dear friend, and only because you have seen fit to allow yourself to be so with me." He's coaxed inside a modest cabin, sat at a simple hewn table as a rich smell fills the room. He closes his eyes to breathe it in, opening them again when the low thud of a bowl and tankard draws his attention. "Eat, please. You know I can't bear a less-than-full stomach under my roof."

"You're too kind to me."

"Nonsense." The hand fits itself around his head once more. "You are worth being kind to, and even more worth allowing me to care for you. Now, come on."

The stew is simple, hearty, and as filling as he could ever want. Under the table, their legs press together, boots against boots, knee against knee. The fire crackles in the hearth as the last of the light fades from outside. He can feel his shoulders beginning to relax, the line of his body growing looser, more languid.

When they've both eaten their fill and the dishes have been set away to deal with later, he sits on the floor near the hearth and stares into the flames. A warm hand lands on his shoulder and brings his head to rest against another, light touch trailing over the bare skin under his sleeve.

"What troubles you tonight, dear friend?"

"I don't want to impose—"

"Shh, none of that now. It's an honor to be troubled by your worries."

He turns his head into the crook of his neck, breathing in the smell of clean sweat, of spiced apple, of wood smoke. "I struggle to remember what it is I fight for."

Gentle nails along his scalp. "How so?"

"What honor is there that I can find now? What—how do I know what is right anymore? I've been behind a sword for so long, I fear…I fear I'm forgetting who I am without it." His breath comes out shakier. "And I fear…if I were to ever try to explain this to someone who wasn't you, my words would come out so clumsy they would impale me on their rusted edges."

"There is nothing wrong with the way you speak, Roman. Nothing at all."

"If only it were something that would be listened to."

"Hey." He's nudged until he can look up at the man's face. "You once told me that all you wanted to fight for was this. For the chance for one to sit, in the peace and safety, with those they care for, and have that be alright. Is this still true?"

"Yes. But I don't—I no longer know how to do that."

The man goes quiet, contemplative, running his fingers gently over the edge of Roman's face. The touch coaxes a lump to his throat, a tear to his eye, and the man lets out another comforting noise, pulling him closer.

"Rest for the night, please, dear friend. My bed is warm, my touch willing. You fear losing who you are without your sword? Put it down for the night, stay. Remind yourself of how to enjoy the thing you fight for."

"If only I could be as persuasive as you," he mumbles, allowing himself to sink into the warmth of the touch, "then I might never need a sword again."

He chuckles. "Well, I don't know if I can do all that much, but I have learned how to persuade you, my dear, and that will serve me well enough."

***

"Roman?"

Roman turns, spotting Janus as he trudges back from the Imagination. "What're you doing awake?"

"I was waiting for you."

He winces. "Sorry, I, um, did we have something planned?"

"What? No, no, sweetie, nothing like that, I only—I wanted to talk to you for a moment."

A chill works its way up Roman's spine and he suppresses a shudder, walking slowly to his room and opening the door. Janus follows him in, carefully closing it behind them and waiting while Roman tucks something into a drawer on his desk and sitting down.

"What's up?"

"Are you…are you okay?"

He flinches slightly. "Why, um, why?"

Janus looks pained. He glances around and seemingly comes to a decision before sinking down to the floor, crossing his legs and sighing. "You…seemed very upset after earlier, and I wanted to come and ask you about it."

"Oh, no, I'm fine, I wasn't—Logan was right, I wasn't going to be useful in that conversation."

"The one you were in for all of three seconds before you were being shunted out of it again?"

Roman narrows his eyes. "You know, it is kind of ironic that you of all people are worrying about that right now."

Janus barely has time to process how he feels about that sentence before Roman's eyes are widening and he's leaning back.

"Sorry, I'm sorry, that came out really rude, I didn't mean that."

"You did, and that's okay. No, no—really, it is okay, Roman, you don't have to pretend like I didn't hurt you—that I'm not hurting you when I do things like that. No, no—" he stands as Roman covers his face with his hands— "please, sweetie, just—just listen to me for a second, okay?"

Roman nods, his face still hidden. Janus hesitates for a moment before gloved hands come down to rest on his shoulders. He leans down and carefully, carefully presses his chin to the top of Roman's head. Roman shudders a little under the contact but stays still.

"You've been distant lately," Janus whispers, as though afraid of breaking the silence, "and that's not a bad thing, sweetie, but it's…it seems like it's hurting you. And I'm worried because Thomas isn't—I don't know what Thomas would do without you."

Roman stiffens and immediately he knows it was the wrong thing to say. "I won't let Thomas down again, I know what I'm doing. I'm just—I'm sorry I haven't been very present lately, but I'm—"

"No, no, that's not what I meant—wait, what do you mean, 'again?'"

Roman hunches his shoulders. "I know I'm not Thomas's hero anymore, okay? You don't need to keep acting like I'm—"

"Wait, wait, sweetie." Janus crouches down, cupping Roman's face in his hands. "What do you mean, you're not Thomas's hero anymore?"

"That's what you said! After the wedding, when he said—when I said—and you nodded! Like it was a lie!" He jerks away. "We don't need to pretend that didn't happen, okay? I remember, it's not like I could forget something like that."

"No, no, Roman—no, that's not what I meant, I didn't—it wasn't a lie."

Roman goes still. He stares at Janus for a long moment, long enough for a bit of a smile to come to his face, like Roman's actually listening to him. Then Roman's expression darkens and the voice that comes out of him is darker and more venomous than anything Janus has ever heard.

"Do not lie to me."

"R-Roman—"

"No." Roman pulls away, standing up, towering over him. "You will not lie to me. Not about that, not about anything like that. Use me as your puppet all you want, everyone knows I can't stop you, but I won't let you lie to me about this. Ever."

He's already fumbling to get his gloves off, surging up and grabbing Roman in a tight hug, so close he couldn't hope to get an inch of distance between them. "I'm not lying," he hisses, almost into Roman's nose, "I'm not lying about this, Roman, I'm not. Thomas wasn't lying. You're his hero. You still are."

"Stop it—"

"My gloves are off! I can't lie with my gloves off, Thomas loves you—you're his hero—"

"Stop it!" The words leave Roman in a breathless cry and Janus is left struggling to heft his weight as his knees buckle. "Stop it, stop it—stop it, it's not true, it can't be true, it's a lie—it—it has to be—"

"Why does it have to be, sweetie?" They're back on the floor, Janus smoothing hair back from Roman's flushed face, awkwardly holding him in his lap. "Why did it have to be a lie?"

"Because—because—" he sniffles— "nothing makes sense anymore. I don't—I can't—I can't do anything."

He frowns. "What do you mean you can't do anything?"

Hands come up to circle his wrists, not to push him away, just to have somewhere else to hold onto. "Princes fight for honor, for what's good. I can't—I can't fight anymore."

Not much can break Janus's heart like hearing Roman admit something like that, fewer things still can threaten tears at the corners of his eyes like the ones badly concealed in Roman's voice. "What do you mean, sweetie? Why can't you fight anymore?"

"I don't know anything! I don't know what's good, what's honorable, what's—what's right, I can't…I'm wrong, Janus, I'm just wrong and I don't—I don't know how to be right again."

"Shh, shh, shh, easy, now, sweetie, shh…" Janus hauls him closer, pressing his mouth to his flushed cheek, still murmuring comfort. "Shh…that's it, just stay here with me a moment, okay?"

"J-Janus—"

"I'm here, sweetie, I'm right here."

Roman's stifled sobs land like mines in the room, creating a mess around them as he curls up tighter, tighter still. The door to the Imagination glistens softly and he can almost hear the distant crackle of a fireplace and that alone sends him further into the fit. Janus's hands remain gentle, holding him close, but everything keeps spinning and nothing, nothing makes sense except the hurt in his chest.

He's going to cry himself to sleep again, he realizes faintly as exhaustion starts to seep through him, but then Janus is kissing his forehead again and gently shaking him awake.

"Sweetie, listen to me: no one knows what you fight for better than you, okay? You're Thomas's Hopes and Dreams, his hero—" Roman whimpers— "you do know what's right."

"N-no, I don't."

"Then who does know?"

"Patton."

Janus's blood runs cold. "Patton? Why Patton?"

"Patton's the Heart, he's M—he's Morality. He knows—he decides. I'm—I just follow." He sniffles. "And Logan—Logan, he's right, I don't—I'm so stupid—"

"That's enough, now." He runs a hand through his hair again. "That's enough, sweetie. You're not stupid. No—shh, shh, you're not. You know you're not."

"I am. I can't—I can't talk right and I don't know what I'm doing and—an' I'm just gonna mess everything up again."

Janus closes his eyes, bowing his head and taking a deep breath of his own. Cradling Roman's head to his chest, he leans down and kisses both his forehead and his cheeks, just staying there for a long, long moment. Roman's soft sobs echo gently in his ear and he tucks a stray piece of hair back from his face.

"You're not stupid," he murmurs, "you're not going to mess everything up again. You're okay. You're okay, sweetie."

Roman sniffles and shakes his head. "No, it's not. It's not okay."

"…no," Janus concedes, pulling Roman close, "I suppose it's not."

***

Not many things can happen in the Mindscape without Remus noticing, and almost nothing can happen to his brother without him showing up to knock some heads.

Case in point: when there's a tug in his gut telling him that Roman is upset, he grabs his Morningstar and sinks out without hesitating.

When he rises up in the living room, it takes less than two seconds for him to determine one: that Logan is picking on his brother, two: Patton isn't doing anything to stop him, and three: Roman is crying.

"Remus, not now," Logan sighs, "we're in the middle of something."

"You're in the middle of hurting my brother."

"R-Re?" He's got his arm around Roman's shoulders in the next moment. "W-wait, I need to—I have to—I gotta explain."

"Explain what, Roro?"

Logan sighs. "Roman has been trying, unsuccessfully, to explain that we are at fault for—"

"Ah, no." Remus throws a knife at Logan. "I didn't ask you. Shush."

"Remus! Throwing knives at people isn't nice!"

"Neither is making them cry! We're all in agreement." He tucks his head against Roman's, gentling his voice. "What're you trying to explain, Roro?"

"The—" he sniffles— "Janus said I should try—try talking to them and I said it wouldn't work but he—he insisted an' I—"

"Shh, shh, take your time, Ro, you're doing great."

"Heart. Morality. Prince. Logic."

Remus's little black heart breaks in two and he wraps his arms tightly around his brother. "Oh, Ro, it's okay. It's gonna be okay, lemme get you somewhere safe and I'll do it for you, okay?"

"You don't have to—"

"Trust me, Ro-bro, I got this."

Roman sags in his arms. "O-okay."

Remus quickly bids the Imagination to open its doors and sinks Roman out, giving him a gentle push into the forest before reappearing in the living room. He cracks his knuckles and grins.

"Alright, where were we?"

Logan sighs. "Remus, I don't—"

"Ah, that's right!" Remus throws another knife at him. "You, not listening to people who can't articulate things as well as you can! Rude and ableist, Loganberry, not a good look on you."

"I am not—"

"Roman can't articulate his thoughts as well as you can and so you think you're better than him, smarter than him, and that he's not worth listening to, is that explicit enough?" Logan opens and closes his mouth a few times but doesn't say anything. "Mm. And you!"

Patton yelps as Remus throws something at him too.

"You have a nasty habit of making Roman feel like a helpless little kid! You have a lot of sway over things like Thomas's sense of right and wrong and when you don't talk to Roman like he's your equal, you really fuck him up!"

"Language—"

"Don't fucking talk to me about my language," Remus says with artificial cheeriness, "talk to yourself about how not to give my brother an identity crisis!"

He stops throwing things, mainly because the rest of them are exploding or things he knows Roman would rather he didn't throw at them, no matter how tempting it is. The two of them slowly get their shit together, each with a different amount of regret. He doesn't really care about that, though, so long as they're not going to hurt Roman like that again.

"Good chat!"

And he sinks out to tackle Roman into Ollie's pond so they can have fun playing and not crying.

God, he loves his brother.

***

"Hey, Thomas?"

Thomas looks up and sees Virgil on the stairs. "Oh, hey, Virge, what's up?"

"You, uh, you asked me to keep an eye on Princey."

He sits up straight. "Yeah, what's—what's going on?"

Virgil sighs, rubbing his hands together. "There was a…not a fight, but some stuff happened. Turns out that Roman, uh, didn't believe you when you said you still thought of him as your hero and it…got bad."

"Do I want to know how bad?"

"Like, bad enough that Roman wasn't—shit, Thomas, no, I don't think you wanna know. Let's just say it was bad enough that he wasn't just going to the Imagination for comfort, he was going there because it was the only place he felt safe."

"Oh, Roman…"

"The fight—the thing was about Roman trying to explain to Patton and Logan how it fucked him up really badly, and he wasn't—you know how Roman's not always the best at explaining himself?"

"Yeah?"

"It—it wasn't really going well. Remus had to step in and do it for him."

"Wait, Remus?"

"Yeah, they're brothers. Remus—shit, Remus is really protective of Roman sometimes and this time wasn't an exception. Everyone's fine now, but it's…" Virgil sighs. "Logan and Patton have apologized and everybody's working on it, but I thought you'd want to know."

"How much stuff happens with you guys that I don't know about?"

"Honestly? I don't think you want the answer to that either."

"Jesus." Thomas scrubs a hand over his face. "Alright, well, thanks for telling me, Virgil. If…if there's anything I can do, let me know?"

Virgil nods and sinks out. Thomas puts a hand to his chest, rubbing in slow circles. There's a part of him that feels cold, still. Maybe…maybe he can figure out some way to help warm it up.

***

Roman wakes up to the sound of a crackling fire. He hums, rolling over, reaching for the edge of the bed, only to stop when his hands meet the thick red comforter. He frowns. This…this is his bed. He didn't fall asleep in the Imagination. So then why…?

He looks over and his eyes widen.

Across the room, tucked into a neat little alcove that definitely wasn't there when he went to sleep, is a merrily crackling fireplace. Above it, mounted on a gold plaque, is a cardboard sword with the words you're my hero written on it in red ink.

General Taglist: @frxgprince@potereregina@gattonero17@iamhereforthegayshit@thefingergunsgirl@awkwardandanxiousfander@creative-lampd-liberties@djpurple3@winterswrandomness@sanders-sides-uncorrect-quotes@iminyourfandom@bullet-tothefeels@full-of-roman-angst-trash  @ask-elsalvador @ramdomthingsfrommymind@demoniccheese83@pattonsandershugs @el-does-photography @princeanxious@firefinch-ember@fandomssaremysoul@im-an-anxious-wreck@crazy-multifandomfangirl @punk-academian-witch@enby-ralsei@unicornssunflowersandstuff@wildhorsewolf @thetruthaboutthesun @stubbornness-and-spite @princedarkandstormv  @your-local-fookin-deadmeme @angels-and-dreams@averykedavra @a-ghostlight-for-roman @treasurechestininterweb @cricketanne @queerly-fluid-fan @compactdiscdraws@cecil-but-gayer@i-am-overly-complicated@annytheseal@alias290@tranquil-space-ninja @arxticandy @mychemically-imbalanced-romance@whyiask@crows-ace @emilythezeldafan@frida0043 @ieatspinalcords @snowyfires@cyanide-violence@oonagh2@xxpanic-at-the-everywherexx@rabbitsartcorner @percy-07734@triflingassailantofmyemotions @virgil-sanders-the-gay-emo@cerulean-watermelon@puffed-up-bees@meltheromanstan@joyrose-fandomer@insanitori@mavenmush@justablah65@10paradox10@uhhh-hi-there-i-am-nervous@cutebisexualmess@bella-bugatti-frogetti-baguetti@ultrageekygirl

[a-court-of-moonlight-and-ire]

I got caught shoplifting a few weeks ago so Im gonna have a court proceeding (? if thats what you call it in english idk) in a couple hours and Im a little bit nervous but the shit I stole was only worth 7€ and it was my first time getting caught so I dont think it'll be too big of a deal. Honestly Im just glad I didnt get caught while I was stealing ~85€ worth of acotar books, because my punishment would not only be wayyyy harsher it would also just be embarrassing, imagine stealing sjm books when theres so many good books you could steal from a bookstore

Anyway, speaking of acotar books, its livebloggin time. Last time, Feyre and Rhysand came to this cabin in the woods/inn in the middle of nowhere and stayed in a room thats so small that you couldnt even have sex in it and then they had sex. not penetrative sex, they just fingered each other. Which is to say Rhysand fingered her vagina and Feyre fingered his wings because god forbid a man be on the receiving end for anything other than a blowjob. Also, I guess Mor, Cassian and Azriel are somewhere else? I didnt wanna say anything about them being gone bc I just kinda assumed they were staying with Feysand but they seem to be gone. whatever I dont care about those guys anyway

Chapter 49

Feyres internal declarations of love and wanting to be with Rhys forever feel very shallow when you consider the fact that 1) theyve only had like 3 months worth of non-traumatic interactions with eachother, and 2) she thought the exact same way about Tamlin and then she DIED FOR HIM and then she left him after barely half a year

'"You know exactly that I would do anything for my people and my family."' 'Your people' consisting of one (1) city

Feyre's pussy feels slightly raw from getting fingered hours ago?? thats not a good sign.

'"I'm not gonna turn away from you. Not from you," I promised him quietly.' honestly, i can believe that, if you can fully forgive someone for physically torturing and sexually assaulting you after like a month or two you can forgive them anything, I have no idea why Rhys would be worried about that

can you imagine if Rhysand got shot with poisoned arrows and he just died right here. Life could be a dream but alas, I live in a nightmare world

I actually really like Feyre going feral over her love interest like this (even if that love interest is Rhys) I dont we're gonna get much more of that in this series so I shall savour it

Yeah, now that she mentions it, how come one ash arrow was enough to straight up kill Andras but Rhysand gets hit by like a dozen and hes just fine after this. I guess it could be that Feyre shot Andras in the eye so it was more lethal than Rhys getting shot in the back and wings but still, afaik there are no longterm consequences from this, like hes not even gonna have to deal with idk, his back hurting at certain points or something

Im not a fan of Feyre being so murderhappy now when she was reluctant to even kill animals at the start of this book, like at a certain point Im not so much bothered by Feyre's character being retconned from ACOTAR but her character from start of ACOMAF

Damn I didnt think the sex would be anything other than a pointless diversion, but here it is, being plot relevant

How come these guys have been torturing him by just stringing him up and leaving the arrows while they whip him, if I was an evil torturer and had just gotten my hands on a guy with wings Im sawing those badboys off immediately. or should i say batboys ahahahha.hahha

Oh, just a splinter of ashwood can he deadly but of course Rhysand is gonna be pretty much fine after being impaled with seven whole arrows

'"And Elain would love [Velaris], I'm sure of it. Although she would probably cling to Azriel the whole time, looking for safety."' smth about that line feels icky to me, I think its the fact that I dont think Elain actually properly interacted with Azriel at this point and also, Velaris is a perfect paradisical city what on earth would she need his protection for there

ughhhh all this bullshit with the dresser is so unbearably annoying

I guess I'll see how this all actually pans out next chapter, but right now I gotta say I dont like the fact that Rhysand's wounds just heal on their own, I couldve used some good whump with him. And Im not just saying that because I dont like him and Im a sadistic little bitch, even though both of those things are true, Im saying this because I think seeing him in a vulnerable position for an extended time would make me like him more

[thatdeadaquarius]

With your language AU, I remember watching a video about a guy speaking angrily nonesense in an Indian accent and people thinking he was very angry. Imagine this as the Creator speaks angry gibberish to people and they just assume that the Creator is cursing them or something. (Or like when they speak gibberish to babies and everyone's like, "Aw the Creator is teaching that baby their divine language")

*AUDIENCE DRAMATICALLY GASPS.

✨️I look pretty good for a dead bitch✨️

She's alivveee!!!

Whats up i almost passed away from sheer academic workload, but im not in the ground yet 🥰 And with drafts outta my ass! :D

Hope yall ready for ur regularly scheduled Bullshit Genshin Sagau <3

SANDBEES THATS SUCH A GOOD USERNAME & ALSO SORRY I ANSWERED THIS SO FUCKING LATE JESUSSSSS 💀💀💀

SORRY ABT THE POLL I CANT BELIEVE I COULDNT FIGURE OUT HOW TO DELETE IT IM FUCKING CRYING I WOULD DO THIS-

Well at least i can do polls thru this in the future?? Idk tumblr is ass so we'll see how this accidental test works out...

☆

So these were the first thngs i thought of and its not super long bc ASKERS R GENIUSES OKAY

SOMTIMES I JUST WANNA PROFUSELY THANK U GUYS AS A REPLY FOR SHARING WITH THE CLASS THRU MY BLOG 💖💘💫

Saw the gif and couldnt help but think this is how ppl like Alhaitham or Diluc would react to u "speaking ur langauge"

"Our langauage" aka being a SIM 💀

◇

Stop Albedo would ask you to teach him ur lang/grammar rules 😭

What u gonna do when Zhongli asks you to teach him some words-

OH NO

NO DONT PASS ON YOUR BULLSHIT LMAO

U GIVING ZHONGLI SOME STUPID SIM WORD LIKE

Your ass: "GIGGLABAH means beautiful :) "✨️

Zhongli: "Oh thank you, how different from our own version, so excited sounding..."

You walk by him strolling the harbor and he just smiles at you and says

"You look gigglabah today my liege."

HIS REGAL FACE AND FANCY WALK WITH HIS HAND BEHIND HIS BACK AND EVERYTHING

(honestly ppl paint him as oblivious but he kinda seemed like the type of bastard who seems like he's not aware but sometimes he secretly knows the truth, he's just getting too much amusement out of it to stop doing it, LOL he does shit like the above to see YOUR reaction- LMAO)

◇

You're a maniac pls tell me u dont pass on simlish to all the serious characters-

XIAO WOULD SECRETLY THINK IT SOUNDS GOOFY BUT WANT TO BE INVOLVED BC ITS YOU ANYWAY LMAO

SO HE'S JUST SLIGHTLY SQUIRMING AND GETTIN PINK EVERYTIME HE SAYS A STUPID SIM WORD BC HE FEELS LIKE A GOOF HAHA

(& he's not the only one, others too like Kaveh, YELAN, Ningguang, Nahida, DILUC, AYAKA LMAO-)

◇

Some ppl i could see taking ur gibberish bullshittery and whether they believe its real or not is irrelevant bc theyre using it anyway-

And i dont mean in a good way 😭

LIKE IM THINKING OF VENTI.

CRAZY BARD INCLUDING SIMLISH ASS GIBBERISH WORDS IN HIS SONGS BC OF YOU

"Be cheerful like the hugkukie,

and may your cup never leaky!"

And Diluc loves you.

Really he does, deeper than he thinks-

But his eye is twitching LMAOO

◇

(Ok but if you did like multiple of these language shenanigans thruout the asks ive gotten, Kaeya would literally grow so fond of you and associate you with goofy funny shit that makes him laugh so hard that everytime he sees you he automatically is beaming with a smile, or trying to supress a warm grin- this got away from me but its 1:44am for me rn so i would love a smiley Kaeya rn -)

♡

Speaking language bs I have my 2nd oral exam for spanish tomorrow, pls send whatever good vibes u got and i am also really open to prayers from any religion as well. sobs

Hope anyone got any enjoyment out of my response bc tbh the ask is what rlly matters to me atp lmao

Until the next shenanigan-

Safe travels,

💀♒️

♡the beloveds mwah ♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist

[theneighborhoodwatch]

Found this welcome theory video that i found interesting: https://youtu.be/9Lz6OcILeSc?si=tcPnCX3QC4JmAyC-

Thoughts :3?

(functional link to video)

i tend to avoid youtube coverage of welcome home because i'm petty, but fuck it, it's a new year and i've never actually heard of this youtuber before. i'll give it a shake. liveblog under the cut:

"y'know if it wasn't for the unsettling mysteries, the feeling that somebody is always watching you, and the mold.... i'd wanna live in the neighborhood" that's exactly why the mold and paranoia's so scary babeyyyy

"update number two" Tch.

i'm less inclined to call the writing in this update character development so much as it is just character establishment. especially since before the july 22nd update (bc that's what this video is about) all we knew about the other neighbors was what the WHRP was willing to tell us. i feel like i'm preaching to the choir though.

ok i laughed at the grindset alpha male howdy joke

"now i wanna move onto eddie bc i wanna make a connection between [eddie and howdy]" :D OH DO YOU NOW.

i do love the energy in this video, very infectious. i too have recommended people welcome home solely on the basis that they would have the hots for eddie and y'know what i haven't been wrong yet.

I WAS GONNA SAY SOMETHING ABOUT HOW LIKE. almost all of the characters have that backstory element of having coming from somewhere else before settling down in home, but i see the point about howdy and eddie specifically dealing with stuff that comes from someplace else as like, an actual job. putting a pin in it.

i'm not Sure how i feel about the idea that the world of home/the world in which home exists is Within our world? pretty much from the beginning i assumed it was running on re:creators/deltarune dark world rules (i.e. it is a world that was born from human thought and its existence is dependent on/influenced by our world, but at the end of the day it does exist on like a separate plane of reality) and i still stand by that. barbieland in barbie 2023 is a more apt comparison though.

"possession route" Tch.

ok actually i can't tch at that because i have talked about it in my own posts. TL;DR: i think possession/haunting theory could work but only if it's anything other than actual literal ghosts. as soon as you try to make it FNAF 2 i sleep.

don't have much to say about Real Poppy Lover Hours except emphatic smiling and nodding. although i will say i have seen people use "oh she's more like a mom/aunt/etc.!" as an excuse to sideline her in fanwork bc for some reason some folks think that her having a motherly personality means that she can't be shipped with anyone? even though all of home's residents are adults who aren't even related to each other? that's a gripe for another post, though.

THE CONCEPT OF SALLY BEING AS BIG AS POPPY IS KILLING ME. I PROMISE SHE'S SMALL SHE JUST HAS A BIGASS HEAD. she would want to be big though wouldn't she.

...actually now i want big sally. note to self to draw that later.

i do like the examination of whether or not sally referring to the audience is meant to mean anything. personally i think it's just a bit of wordplay/red herring action but You Never Know!

i misheard "girlboss bossgirl slay" as "girlboss boygirl slay" for like a split second. still fits tbh.

IT'S FUNNY THAT THEY MENTION THINKING THAT THE WHRP IS A SINGLE PERSON bc i do have an ask about that right after this. i'll save my thoughts for that response though.

it's funny that "was the majority of the gang being some form of queer/disabled/nd/etc. planned in-universe" is a question at all bc at the risk of sounding like an asshole it feels so obvious to me that it very much was not. the interview is definitely playing into those themes though.

"them <3" yeah

again. extremely refreshing to see a welcome home video from someone who actually likes welcome home instead of the clicks that covering it will give them.

BARNABY-SANS COMPARISON IS... DISTRESSINGLY APPROPRIATE.

he always knows when to show up, huh.... huh.... i've been trying to break away from being so self-referential ever since welcome home and consequently this blog blew up but. huh...

do i think he's a service dog? i think to answer that question we would first have to answer the question of whether or not he's even a Dog or just Shaped Like A Dog. the laws of his reality say he is a dog, but we can at least guess that even even those can't be trusted. i think it's possible that he may see himself as in service to wally, that he worries about what will happen if he doesn't butt in, but i don't know if this is an objective truth.

"[wally] being so mysterious i don't think is like, him wanting to be mysterious. [...] there just may not be that much about him." and then relating that to how typically protagonists in puppet shows have more subdued personalities than their co-stars so they can be more relatable to the audience. Teehee. (this is positive)

oh there's something kind of poetic about the idea that each bug video ends bc wally's snapped out of his dissociation by one of his friends calling his name when paired with the idea that he's disassociating in part due to his connection with the audience isn't there. being reminded of one's own personhood through your connections with others, and how that has the potential to become more bittersweet the more wally continues to risk it in the process of regaining a sense of purpose as The Audience Surrogate. oogh. that's just me waxing poetic though.

oooh that whole passage about the idea of remembrance and the pursuit of a "correct" story and tying that back into how welcome home in-universe has been almost universally forgotten and the themes of living as a disabled or mentally ill or queer person. beautiful connection.

"hmmm, how much agency do you have in your life actually" AHEHEHE. HEHEHEHE. HEHE.

conclusion: Good Video. thank you for sending it.

[starboybutler]

AZZY,, MMM,,, THE LITTLE FELIX FIC IM- [fuckng e xploDes] Dude you fucking COOKED with that I literally ate it up I’ve read it 4 times over already. I cannot wait for more of Him <3 you always go so mf crazy hard

tysm mango!! i had it on anon for a bit bc i was nervous but i stopped caring lol.

i wanted to write it because felix's childhood has always been something that's intrigued me. like people assume he had a great childhood because he's rich, but honestly there doesn't feel like there's much love in the catton household. felix most likely spent his childhood being groomed to be "perfect" and "upright" and probably missed out on being an actual child.

he doesn't like to think about it much- and the second he got away from home he went Wild. parties, drugs, sex, etc. he repressed his childhood until he convinced himself that, yeah, it was totally normal that he got his hand smacked with rulers when he got some etiquette question wrong when other kids were outside playing footie. if he thinks about it for too long though, he realizes he missed out on so much.

he realizes he missed out on being a kid and now he yearns to just. be small. safe. warm. he usually just gets drunk until he can pass off that behavior as the alcohol but sometimes he can't shake it. he keeps his old teddy by his bed and sucks his thumb and he's ashamed but its not his fault.

and oliver. oh ollie. his oliver always makes him feel so small and well taken care of. he takes care of felix when he's drunk. walks him back to his dorm, undresses him, lays him down, wishes him goodnight. and felix feels small and safe. and ofc oliver would be his caretaker, he'd do anything for felix.

i'm def gonna write more because i wanna explore felix's childhood and their caretaker/little dynamic, so lookout for it!!

[fandoomrants]

ty for your response.

I think that fans usually prefer romantic pairings between characters who have nothing in common, or they're kinda of enemies... yk what I mean? like, fans ship Harry with Draco and it's literally the most popular hp ship but on the other hand, not so many ship Harry with Ron (who was willing to sacrifice himself for Harry in the third book). their friendship, their bond, especially in the books, was as strong as James and Sirius's friendship, and Weasleys loved Harry the way Potters loved Sirius. that's why i believe wolfstar still would be more interesting ... and tragic, oh god.  yeah those were just my opinions ofc ,and maybe I'm wrong haha

and please write abt tall Sirius with short, ty mwah <3

I mean, yeah, I can kinda see it and I can kinda see the appeal, even though I personally never shipped Harry and Draco (but there's this book Carry On which is basically a parody-of-a-sort (in a good way!) of Harry Potter and other popular YA books (mainly hp as we have this whole wizarding school) and there the enemies really become lovers and I ship it soo...) but I somewhat understand it. Also, sorry but for me if that person is not completely annoying and riling you up, it's not love xD I think that's why I also ship Jily, tbh, I wanna know more about them too. This being said, I know there are people like that out there too, but I'm so glad Snape and James aren't a popular ship 😂😂😂 I said I don't hate ships but I just don't think my heart would have survived if this was everywhere. Also, it would be definitely one of the unhealthy ones.

But yeah, I totally agree with Ron and Harry being as close and James and Sirius and I actually think that these friendships are totally the best. And they shouldn't be ruined by romances. People should just normalize people being really close without anyone being in love with the other.

Still, I do ship Wolfstar a lot, maybe one of the few ships I have that is friends to lovers, lol. And yeah, in their case it's gonna be extremely tragic. Likee, the Prank. Idk, I'm the type of person who makes bad decisions and my friends are constantly angry but I don't know how you recover from something like that. And that's nothing. I can't stop imagining these twelve years where Sirius was in prison and knew everyone assumed he had killed his best friend. But that's literally nothing compared to how Remus must have felt. Like, what?? Your two best friends are dead and you assume that the third one (or your lover) did it?! In any case it's crazy.

Edit cause I totally forgot: I don't wanna think of Sirius with short hair, tho 😭 Like, I don't care that much about height difference but I can't imagine him with short hair. I want to believe it was just shortER. Bc he had long hair in PoA because of his time in Azkaban but he later kept it long too. So he either realised it's better, or at least at some point he had it like that. I mean, suits the whole motorbike vibe too.

[best-non-english-word-torunament]

Round two: Ačiū vs Bah

(poll at the end)

Ačiū (Lithuanian)

[ˈaːtʃʲuː]

Translation: Thank you

Lithuanian is an Indo-European language belonging to the Baltic branch, spoken by 2,4 million people in Lithuania. An interesting thing about Lithuanian is that it has kept many features from proto-Indo-European, the language that all Indo-European languages are descended from. The features mostly have to do with noun declensions, as Lithuanian has seven cases and three grammatical genders while most other languages have lost theirs. Some sounds are also similar, especially vowels. However, other languages are more conservative in other areas.

Motivation: It's pronounced similarly to achoo (stress on first letter) and people joke it sounds like a little sneeze <3 In 2008 it was chosen as the most beautiful Lithuanian word

Bah (Brazilian Portuguese)

[ˈba]

Translation: An interjection that can be used in any situation depending on tone. It's used in the southernmost state in Brazil and characterizes its accent. Bah comes from the word "barbaridade" (barbarity), used in older gaúcho slang as such:

Person A: (ridiculous, usually negative thing) and then those teenagers stole my sheep!

Person B: (agreeing/sympathetic with A) what a barbaridade!

Nowadays it lost it's meaning as a WORD word, being used in any context as an interjection like this:

A: and then those teenagers stole my sheep!

B: Baaah! (sympathetic with A)

(more examples given by the submitter at the end of the post)

Portuguese is an Indo-European language belonging to the Romance branch originating from Portugal. Due to colonialism it is the main and official language of Brazil, where 213 million of its 264 million speakers live. Brazilian Portuguese is considered a dialect of Portuguese as they are mutually intelligible.

Motivation: The heart of every gaúcho's vocabulary. bah is perfect. I use it in every five sentences and I'm not exaggerating. it's the best word bc without it I would die

Note: Gaúcho refers either to a native or inhabitant of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, or a cowboy of the South American Pampas according to Wiktionary. I assume the submitter is referring to the former meaning, but I liked the other too much to leave it out, also the meanings are probably linked.

More examples from the submitter of bah:

When seeing something impressive: bóóóó

When watching something you know isn't gonna end well, at the moment it goes badly (like a missed goal in soccer, someone parking badly or drunk people doing something stupid): buhiii (oof/ouch, meaning cringe)

Person A: If they apologized and you sorted this whole thing out, there isn't a reason to cut them off Person B: Yeah, but I found out they cheated on their last girlfriend... Person A: Bah. Yeah you’re right. (oh/shit/this face :/ , meaning that's stepping out of line, I tried to defend the subject but I can't deny your arguments)

Person A: Wanna go to the movies tonight? Person B: sure! -bahhh... I forgot I have some work to catch up on, I can't (ohhhh, meaning you remembered something, sad/apologetic tone)

Person A: They cancelled the concert! We're gonna have to wait for the next tour... Person B: Bahhhhhh I was so excited! (awww mannn/ughhh, meaning disappointment, frustration)

Person A: We’re finally gonna see The Concert From the Previous Example! Get your ticket ready so we can get in! Person B: Oh my god. I left it at home Person A: BA. (fuck)

[supernovaa-remnant]

@sioster

karo, I'm gonna put the responses to your ad aeternum asks under a cut just bc I posted the fic not that long ago and don't wanna, like, majorly spoil it for anyone who hasn't had the time to read it yet but wants to (also bc it's finals season and so many people are busy)

(also putting under the cut because wow these got really long actually 😭)

wilbur never calls the dream from his timeline marzenie. it would feel unfair, I think. unfair to both of them. because as he does get to know the dream of his timeline, he really does come to care about the other, but he's kinda swamped with this guilt of worrying he's just using dream as a replacement? at least for a while, he is. (swamped with guilt) so, he finds ways to keep them separate in his mind.

marzenie is the nickname he gave to the alternate timeline dream. marzenie loved the nickname. wilbur's not going to take that away by giving it to someone else. besides, it was always meant to be a way to differentiate the dreams, anyway.

he has all sorts of loving nicknames for the other dream—he has more time to find these nicknames. darling, sunshine, starlight, love, etc. but never marzenie. marzenie will always belong to the dream who was enthralled by the beauty of the earth, who was the first in a very long time to hold wilbur, who bantered with him and danced with him and *sobs* yeah </3

it would be a bit complicated, a bit messy, but ultimately good, I think. there's bureaucratic issues in starfleet wondering if wilbur bringing marzenie to their timeline breaks the prime directive. some (who don't like wilbur being in starfleet due to his ancestry) would fight extra hard to dismiss him from starfleet. wilbur's crew would fight hard for him, though. so would the manhunt. so would others. and, in the end, considering the literal time agency hasn't come to say wilbur messed up the timeline by doing so, they can only assume it's okay.

there's a lot of grief, too. from marzenie. they didn't really have a lot of time to discuss it in the 21st century, but marzenie has lost pretty much anyone he's ever known and loved. there's joys with getting to know versions of sapnap and george and others who are alive, but they're still different versions. and the versions of the people he loved who are dead are still gone. and the versions of people he loved who are alive are still gone. and maybe he felt that those alive only saw him as something broken, but he still cared about them.

so, there's a lot of grief. but wilbur is there. and wilbur loves him. and it was either live with wilbur and the grief or be erased with his timeline and leave wilbur alone, and marzenie would always choose to stay.

there's other complications (marzenie was a captain in his timeline but has no starfleet training—he ends up on the syndicate as essentially non-starfleet personnel). there's also complications with this timeline's dream. and this timeline's dream team. and this timeline's manhunt. and where marzenie fits with them. complications with wilbur's relationship with this timeline's dream, too.

but, ultimately, it's good. marzenie bonds with the crew of the syndicate when he's figuring out what to do when he's not a captain in a war. he learns to bake with niki. he also spars with her. he gets close to techno. they also spar. he loses a fair amount. he continuously pushes wilbur to discuss the complicated relationship wilbur has with techno. the human members of the crews are people familiar to marzenie. he likes to get to know these versions. he convinces wilbur to sign up for therapy. he signs up for therapy himself.

it turns out he gets along really well with dream. they reach a point where they just start introducing themselves as twins. dream's parents include him in family dinners. dream's siblings just say they have another brother. george eventually transfers to the manhunt. the entire dream team complains about marzenie staying on the syndicate but in a light hearted way. the crews of the two ships get really close, actually, and they find lots of excuses to rendezvous. congrats they've unlocked a new level of friendship

things with wilbur and marzenie are really good. they explore the earth together. they take shore leave together and travel. they cuddle and write songs. when marzenie decides to write a book, wilbur reads it and gives advice. they adopt a cat together. they peel oranges for each other. it's all really soft and domestic. and they love each other and they love their friends and they heal together. and everyone's really happy.

(anyway, I think some days wilbur would wake up after extremely vivid dreams (pun not intended) of the above scenario. he'll have incredibly vivid dreams of a universe where marzenie was never shot. and a lot of the dreams take inspiration where he's found himself in life—the crews of the syndicate and manhunt get close. they hang out a lot, actually. wilbur writes more music. wilbur goes to therapy. wilbur gets a cat. when the ships meet up, wilbur & dream often cuddle together at night. etc etc.

but I think the dreams with marzenie would be so vivid, that for a moment he'd wake up and wonder where marzenie was. on especially bad days, he wakes up with bleary eyes and, for a moment, thinks this timeline's dream is marzenie.

and he feels incredibly guilty afterwards. and in particularly bad days, he holds dream close and says "I love you" over and over again with emphasis on the "you" just so dream knows. and dream doesn't fully understand, but dream knows wilbur's been through a lot, and he knows healing isn't linear, so he just holds wilbur close and repeats the same words to him)

[catusbeanius]

tagged by @smollestduck-sketches !!! thankies!! also i'm gonna extend this to fics ive written but never published bc the only fics I've published were my frantic fanfics with some friends LSKSLKDJ

1. how many works?

If we count each franfic fanfic, then easily over twenty. A lot of my fics are half-finished though so if we discount them and the frantic fanfics, then more like 3 or 5? Probably just 1 actually smh

2. total word count?

Uhhh...... Lemme count rq. 1800 on the frantics (not distinguishing between my writing and my friends' writing), and then 7200 from whatevers in the obsidian document I opened. Theres more on scrivener and random sheets of paper, but my laptop is slow and I don't have time to find them all :(

3. what fandoms do u write for?

Twst and Enstars, pretty much. Technically some crossovers with Sam & Max as well!! Ig technically OM as well then

4. top 5 fics by kudos

Don't have any :(

5. do u respond to comments?

I would if I got them!!

6. fic u wrote with the angstiest ending?

That one fic about Cherio angsting over Trickstar (i think it's on my old laptop and that one's even slower smh. I gotta transfer these things at some point. If I find it, maybe I'll post it!! But it was a mild vent fic)

7. fic u wrote with the happiest ending?

All of my fics are mildly hopeful (if I finish them) but I liked this one Cherio lore Mally birthday fic I wrote where rat-kun showed up and ate his cake. I could probably post that one, but it doesn't make much sense without the Cherio lore context (which I haven't written down yet :( )

8. do u get hate on fics?

Yeah, from myself (I'm jk, I don't hate my writing)

9. do u write smut?

Teehee :3 Technically, I have. Probably won't do it again, though. Eh, we'll see.

10. craziest crossover fics?

OM and Sam & Max

11. have u ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of

12. ever had a fic translated?

Very, very technically yes though bc I would write fics in class in a secret script and then decode them at home SLKD (but, as I said, that's more decoding than translating)

13. ever co-written a fic?

Yes! The frantics

14. all time favorite ship?

Lilia Vanrouge x urmom /j Serious answer, idek ;v; Anything that makes Mika or Malleus happy, I suppose! (ShuNaruMika especially). I'd also say anything that makes Lilia happy but you can't really ship him with anyone bc he's so old it'll always be a little weird

15. what's a wip u wanna finish but doubt u will?

Cherio Lore :( I can write a synopsis of it, but I really want to organically present the ideas through typical novel writing as practice before I really write my own stories. Alas, idk what happens in the middle (as always)

16. writing strengths?

Abstract descriptions! I hope, at least. I love writing them!!

17. writing weaknesses?

Dialogue fs. Idk how people talk. Also, sentence variation. I'm a predictable guy and I have my favorite words!!

18. thoughts on dialogue in another language?

The thing is, if it's in a different script to the language you're writing in (for example, English and Japanese), there's not a way for the reader to read it, yk? And idk if there's a way to organically integrate a translation. Even if your reader isn't supposed to know what they're saying, what's the point in including the dialogue in the first place? You can just say they said something in Japanese. Unless it's assumed your reader knows the other language, then it adds some dramatic irony. Ofc, there's gonna be ways you can fit it in well since each situation is different, but I wouldn't add it explicitly in quotations, per se. This is coming from a semi-bilingual language nerd semi-studying to be an editor (aka, don't take it to heart bc I'm not a professional)

19. first fandom u wrote in?

Bnha. Bad, bad, bad stuff. I get chills thinking about it.

20. fav fic youve written?

Any Lilia angst, tbh. I don't even care for angst why do I always write Lilia angst istg (and it's delicious every time)

This was fun!! Hopefully it was interesting!!

I pass this game onto you, my friends :>

@unnecessarilysalty @multilevelwriter-blog