#Also in that time I need to write and entire research paper for work

[saphiretarot]

8 Days left to dragoncon, then I can escape Trigun cosplay hell and return to Trigun drawing hell instead

[qqueenofhades]

For creative writing purposes, can you go into what a typical day is for a professor? Like what their teaching schedule looks like, when most fit in their research time, etc?

Ahaha, well. I don't want to just say "you can completely make it up," but also.... you can pretty much just make it up, and what is the case for one professor is definitely not going to be true for another. I have known people who will send emails at 1am and/or 4am, and actually finding and fitting in research time for most academics is also "lololololol what." So I can give you a roster of typical daily academic tasks and categories, and then let you know if that if you want to throw them up in the air and scatter them around in literally whatever-the-fuck order, there is probably a beleaguered academic who has done that, but with an even worse sleep schedule. So:

Most permanent faculty at a university are hired as assistant (tenure-track) professors. Once they pass the tenure-committee review (usually about 5 years into the job) they are appointed as associate (tenured) professors. Full professors are considerably senior and/or have been in the field for a long time and have a distinguished service record, excluding various wunderkinds who get it early (but are not common).

If the faculty is just teaching one class a semester or has an irregular appointment, i.e. they step in to teach when the university needs them, they are adjunct professors. You can gain a lot of cred and/or commiserating groaning in your AO3 comments by complaining about how little money the adjunct faculty makes, how erratic their schedule is, and how there is generally little-to-no actual career advancement possible in that position, unless they manage to reapply to a permanent post.

There are also a lot of Visiting Assistant Professors (and similar title), for 2- or 3-year/non-permanent appointments. Many institutions now also offer 1-year VAPs with only a possibility of renewal for 1 additional year or not at all. Those institutions should go straight to hell.

Most professors have 3/3 teaching loads, i.e. they'll teach 3 classes per semester (assuming winter/spring semester). Others have 2/2/2 loads for trimesters (also known as quarters). It can be more, i.e. 4/4, but that's for sucky entry-level teaching-only positions and someone in that role would be unlikely to have any research or service (i.e. institutional committee or internal college) commitments. They would probably also mostly be teaching introductory or freshman-year general survey courses. It depends on how much you want to torture your fictional academic.

Free food? Yes. You will see a healthy amount of the department there, whether faculty or student.

Please remember to have your fictional academic receive approximately 50 student emails a day wherein they ask something that is clearly answered in the syllabus or on the course website, and to see how polite they can possibly be in telling said student this.

Most grading is now done online, so the red pen is only metaphorical, but you can leave SO many Pointed Comments on Canvas Speed Grader. But if you want to torture Dr. Blorbo, you can have the e-grading system suddenly stop working, so they have to grade three classes' worth of introductory freshman history essays by hand. Not based on real events.

Likewise, there will be endless bullshit with the dean's office and/or central university administration, wherein there will be so many Urgent Budget Updates and Breaking News From The Chancellor and We Regret To Inform You We Cannot Hire Someone For That Position.

Related to the budget woes: they will ask you to do things like "make sure you print on both sides of the paper!" or otherwise "economize." Contemplating murder is acceptable and encouraged.

The administrative assistant in each department holds the entire department together. They will be extremely indispensable. Your fictional academic, if they know what's good for them, will befriend that person and/or grovel at their feet. Said person is also usually responsible for scheduling classrooms, which can cause all kinds of juicy drama in the academic fandom if there is One Particular Classroom that everyone hates and lo and behold, Dr. Blorbo is stuck there yet again. They will then probably also fire off multiple passive-aggressive emails attempting to correct the problem. The administrative assistant can grant and/or ignore these requests at their discretion, depending on how much beef they have with Dr. Blorbo and/or how motivated they are to solve their problems.

Department meetings! Who asked for them? Nobody! Who has to attend them? Everybody! They go on for two hours every other week (possibly more depending on how meeting-happy your department chair is) and you will wish for death!

Likewise, the department staff sending out passive-aggressive emails about how they really NEED one more volunteer for (insert university event here). Dr. Blorbo, if they are smart, will delete these emails and pretend they never saw them, but sometimes it may be unavoidable. Bitching and moaning will follow.

For research: it really depends on what academic field Dr. Blorbo is in, since the hard sciences, etc. look quite different and I, as a humanities person, can't speak to that. Most academics aim to fairly regularly publish a piece in a peer-reviewed journal; you can check Dr. Blorbo's field to see what journals they might be trying to submit a journal article (usually max. 8000 words, sometimes more) to.

This will go through a process called Peer Review, wherein two anonymous academics review your work (also anonymized to them) to make sure that you are not talking out of your ass. It is a running joke that Reviewer 2 will always, ALWAYS be more grumpy and critical and otherwise annoying. Invoking the specter of Dr. Blorbo receiving a peer review evaluation for their article will send a shiver down every academic's spine.

If Dr. Blorbo has recently finished their PhD, they may be working on converting their PhD thesis into an academic monograph. The most horrible part of this process, hands down, is reviewing proofs to make an index. Don't ask me how I know this.

However, academic monographs take a lot of time and work and most academics are mostly focused on publishing journal articles, book chapters (in collected volumes) or editing/working in collaboration with other projects.

Likewise: Dr. Blorbo will have to write book reviews. This is accomplished by the very scientific method of subscribing to various industry publications and/or email lists that will sometimes send out lists of books that need to be reviewed and solicit people to sign up. You will then receive a hard copy of the book (usually) and have 3 months or so to read it and write a review. The first 2 months of this, give or take, will consist of the book sitting untouched on the academic's desk as they remind themselves that they still have plenty of time to do it.

There can, however, be INCREDIBLE beef in book reviews, and while the standards of professional courtesy dictate that you don't go great-guns-flaming calling someone else in your field a moron (in more technical language), sometimes it is unavoidable.

Do they get paid for any of this extra intellectual work? Lol. No. No they do not. They don't get paid enough for their actual job.

Dr. Blorbo will inevitably hear some Hot Gossip about what nonsense has recently happened at which field-specific conference (where academics go to present research papers and network with other academics and make regrettable decisions at the open bar). They will then rush to secretly text all their other academic friends with OOH JUICY ACADEMIC DRAMA. Their friends will do the same whenever the opportunity arises to reciprocate.

Removing the coffee machine from the break room/faculty kitchen is grounds for mutiny.

Anyway. I am sure there are many, MANY more, but if you want an authentic slice of long-suffering academic life for Dr. Blorbo, this is all a good place to start.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

If you don’t mind sharing, since you don’t work for a zoo what is your job situation like? Making a living while working at a definitely zoo seems tricky. Is your main income zoology/animal related or is that more of a side thing?

Sincerely,

- a curious zoology student

I have a (mostly) unrelated jobjob - I’ve never actually been affiliated with a single facility, unless you count college internships before I started this blog. I freelance, working as a science media fact-checker and taking paid research contracts occasionally. I do work on a lot of animal / biology related fact-check content, but it’s not my entire scope of work. I also have the privilege of having family assistance, as I have chronic health issues that interfere with the normative 9-5 grind.

Everything I do in terms of blog writing/research, zoo industry research and publication, and photography is unpaid and pretty much a hobby at this point.

Prior to the pandemic I was trying to find funding for the intra-industry research and public-facing outreach I was doing, but there was never any money for it. (The industry is very used to expecting labor from young women for free. There was and is a lot of interest in the work I do, but the number of people/orgs that have ever provided compensation or financial support is in the single digits). The pandemic actually gave me the chance to pivot to focusing on professional fact-checking.

The only funding I get for any of this work is through a somewhat defunct Patreon I set up years ago when I was trying to make this blog / scicomm a full time gig. I’m terrible at updating it, and I’m conflicted enough about that to have been considering deleting it entirely. (For those of you who have stuck it out despite the radio silence, you’re incredible. You’ve facilitated the donation of my time to write a really cool paper with a zoo disaster response org, which will hopefully get through peer review soon).

To make something like this blog and everything else I do in the field actually financially sustainable, I’d need to fundraise and market more. The thing about a fact-checking career, though, is that it’s reinforced the need to make sure everything I write/say publicly is completely and 100% correct - because that level of rigor is what supports my professional reputation! Which means I’m slow to produce research and reticent to talk about it before it’s finished. My work comes out all the better for it, but it doesn’t fit into a content model that produces revenue.

So yeah, all of this is a side thing that I fit in around my paid work and my health. Because sometimes I just need to go see a tiger and smell an elephant, y’know?

[chaotic-starlight24]

Ponyboy Curtis General Headcanons

Alrighty! Glad so many of you like the Dallas headcanons! Darry is next after Ponyboy then I will probably do another vote :)

Warnings: Spoilers for the book

I did literal scientific research just to figure out some of this stuff :,) I didn't have to but I still did

He is always thinking of the worst case scenario. Not always, but if he’s left alone long enough he’s decided that Darry got hit with a meteor and Soda probably drowned in motor oil. 

He was really gullible as a young kid, like one time Dally convinced him that he (Dally) was a vampire. But then he debunks what he learns pretty quickly. “I’ve never seen you drink blood, you don’t really have “fangs”, and you really like garlic bread!” “OK kid, ya got me.”

For being so young, he hurts his neck and back a lot. He sleeps a little weird, BAM neck pain! He sits upside down, POW his back aches. He sleeps in a soldier position and doesn’t move unless Soda moves him. He also always needs support for his back, usually sitting with his back to the wall or laying down. (Same though)

As we know, this little man smokes a lot more than just about everyone in the gang combined. Which is already extremely worrying on its own, but also really surprising that he manages to be a good track runner. I might ask some of my track runner friends later for info on how they breathe when running. But let’s just say he really enjoys running but also manages to end up wheezing at the end of every practice. He has to take like a 30 minute break after practice just to breathe normally. The coach just assumes he has asthma and probably hints that he needs to get checked out. 

To add a little more to the whole track runner thing, he doesn’t say track AND FIELD. Which means he is doing the track portion and therefore a whole lot of running. I’m still researching the science behind it on what type of running he could manage though. Long distance takes shorter breaths through your nose and enhances your stamina. Sprinters run for shorter amounts of time and need deeper breathing at a quick pace. So he would most likely be a long distance runner. *EDIT* I checked with my track runner friends, I'm correct he would be a long distance runner

Ponyboy is (most likely) left-handed in the movie. And I’m going to take that and run with it. Most items with handles are made for right-handed people. So I feel like Darry or Soda have several times heard a BANG and a small ow afterwards, walked into the kitchen and Pony has once again hit himself in the head with the fridge door. Scissors are also hard to use for him. He never liked arts and crafts.

He had imaginary friends as a kid. An entire cast of them to be exact. A part of him wanted more friends that weren’t just his brothers’ friends. He wanted to be less of a little brother and more of an equal if you know what I mean. He still has those feelings nowadays but he is more thankful for the gang.

He does have some friends at school but he’s more of the “third friend” than anything. So he spends a lot of time at school doing work, reading, or staring into space. The track guys and him are good company to each other but don’t really hang out at any other times. But Pony appreciates them nonetheless.

He writes a lot of notes in the most random places. Like random ideas he gets he just grabs a piece of napkin and scribbles it down. But then it gets left behind and taken out of context. Like Darry once found a piece of paper on a kitchen chair that just said “The ceiling tile shatters and hits him.” 

He has a really contagious smile. Like he starts grinning the rest of the gang can't help but start smiling too.

After Johnny and Dally’s death, he started to see people in more of a gray scale instead of just black and white. He realized there is more to a person than meets the eye. He can still be a little hater but he is a bit nicer about people. 

Him and Cherry started running into each other every so often and will ramble about the most random things, then just walk away like they didn’t just say some analogy between books and people.

He would eventually become a writer of books and own a library. He ends up offering free reading and writing classes for the kids like Dally and Johnny who never had/have the chance to finish school. He calls it “The C&W Program '' saying it stands for Creation and Wisdom program if you ask but the real name is Cade&Winston.

He still goes swimming even after the incident but he doesn’t ever go underwater. 

His favorite books that he constantly rereads are Great Expectations, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Pickwick Papers. But he also just likes most books.

(The girl he mentions at the beginning that called him a hood) I feel like she was a middle class teen similar in age to Pony named Esther. She hangs out with the soc girls more. She actually felt bad about calling him a hood since it just kind of rolled out of her mouth and apologized later on. It greatly surprised Pony and they ended up becoming really good friends. (Possibly starting a relationship later but that is up to you)

He never stops smoking all the way but after a wake-up call from the gang he starts smoking a lot less.

He learned how to read before he even started school. He just loved it and all of the worlds that are created through writing. The funny thing is, no one can figure out who taught him in the first place! Mr. and Mrs. Curtis just guessed he got a hold of some of Darry’s books or something. But Soda was actually the one to teach him. Soda is not in any way an extremely good student. But he is good at explaining things. So a really young Pony saw him reading the comics and asked how he knew what it was saying. Soda taught him the basic words in the comics and Pony went off and grabbed one of the novels from the family’s shelves. He then proceeded to teach himself how to sound each word out and then ask Soda what it meant. Soda was really happy when Pony got a hang of it very quickly. After a couple years, Darry noticed some notes in his books and took a close look at what it was saying. They were annotations IN CURSIVE. He didn’t write them, Soda never picks up bigger books, and their parents have their own books. Eventually Darry caught Pony doing it and was like “WHAT THE HECK??? YOU’RE A LITERAL 3RD GRADER???” 

One time he had to do a presentation in 5th grade about the life of a famous person important to them. People got extra credit if they dressed up like their person and he was extremely embarrassed because he was the only one to do so. He dressed up as Paul Newman. (This legit happened to me though, it was so cringey)

He has naturally wavy hair but he uses so much grease it looks stick straight. It’s also so greased that his hair is actually shiny.

Him and Steve start getting closer post canon as Pony gets older. Mainly because Steve sees him less as an annoyance and the gang is overall a lot closer together. 

If Johnny had survived ( I have a whole explanation that I will share later) Pony would help him out all the time. Johnny may be wheel-chair bound but Pony includes him in whatever he can. He is always there for Johnny since Johnny ends up with so many problems. (Johnny would probably be adopted by a couple who lost their child and have the dedication to take care of him) With spinal cord injuries usually comes respiratory issues, pressure sores, etc. He would help Johnny through the 5 stages of grief (many people who lose limbs or lose an ability do this) and help him set up a routine on how to get through everyday things.

He ends up being a middle ground between Sodapop and Darry when he grows up. Like height and build wise.

[maxwellatoms]

Would you trust ANY Korean studio for hand-drawn animation today? I ask because, when The Powerpuff Girls came back in 2016, I noticed how slow and stiff the Korean animation was. Since then, most Burbank cartoons animated in Korea, namely Cartoon Network shows, have been like that — mostly on 2s & with less inbetweening. Look at any Digital eMation episode of Victor and Valentino or Samurai Jack Season 5; do they animate as loosely and smoothly as Digital eMation episodes of Billy & Mandy do?

Sure I would. It would all depend on the studio and the circumstances. There are good studios and bad studios, and either of those will treat your show differently based on their perception of how valuable it is to their client. In the early 2000s Rough Draft was a top-notch studio. One of the reasons I switched over to eMation from Rough Draft was that I felt like Rough Draft was putting all of its resources into making Samurai Jack look beautiful, and we were still calling retakes on three year old issues. I knew we weren't a priority to Rough Draft, and I knew that stemmed from Cartoon Network's negotiations with them, so my griping was only going to get us so far. It seemed to me that I needed a studio that was smaller and scrappier like we were. We were putting in a lot of work on our end to make cool stuff and it wasn't ending up on the screen, so we needed people who were just as hungry on the back-end, and eMation stepped up.

There's also the fact, though, that animation itself has changed a lot in the last fifteen years. Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack's animation always seemed to have an air of "motion comics" to it. And frankly, that's part of what I love about it. It was all a throwback to the old UPA cartoons, which were built on strong, clear poses and made for the cost equivalent of a turkey dinner. Likewise, CN storyboard artists usually had around four weeks to write and draw their boards on paper, so there just wasn't time to take the effort to do anything too complex. It was all about snapping between those 300-ish storyboard drawings and momentarily savoring them for their humor and design mastery. Now we have tons of digital tools that make the basics of animation a lot more accessible to everyone, and have changed the entire studio pipeline. Things just won't look like they used to because nobody makes them that way anymore.

When I've had to choose an overseas animation studio, the network's production arm usually gives me one or three choices and tells me that's all there is. Deals have already been made. (Sometimes they make you pick two to save on costs, which (IMO) usually results in two studios that are less functional than any one of them would have been.) The studios usually have reels, so that gives you a basic idea of what they can do. You can (hopefully) find some other show creators who have worked with the studios and get an honest review. It's an important enough decision that it's worth whatever research you can put into it. Even over good bones, an ill-fitting skin can ruin the mood.

The most important thing to remember, I think, is that it's your job and your crew's job to make animating the show as easy as possible. Really, it's everyone's job to make the next person in line's job as simple as they can. Ideally, there shouldn't be a lot of questions because the materials you sent down the chain are clear.

So... yeah. I'd still trust Korean studios as much as I'd trust any overseas or domestic animation studio. You get out of them what you put into them by feeding them money and your own labor. It's quite possible that the shows you mentioned didn't do enough of either.

I imagine the overseas studios are hurting right now, so who knows what that landscape is even going to look like in a few years.

As with every step of the process making a TV show, you just sort of have to weigh your options and find the path.

Hmm. That got long.

[pastel-charm-14]

dealing with academic burnout

hey lovelies! if you're feeling burnt out with school right now, you're not alone. here are some tips to help you push through and finish strong!! (long post incoming :))

BREAK IT DOWN -

big assignments can feel overwhelming, so break them into smaller, more manageable tasks. instead of "write a 10-page paper," think "write an outline," "research for 1 hour," "write the introduction," and so on. this makes the workload less daunting and helps you make consistent progress. it's also helpful to keep track of those smaller tasks in a list.

BE REALISTIC -

prioritize your tasks and set achievable daily or weekly goals. don't try to do everything at once. make a to-do list every day, and highlight your most important tasks. this helps you stay organized but also it feels really good to check things off your list :) for example, aim to complete two math problems instead of the entire set, or read one chapter instead of the whole book, and see where it goes from there.

TAKE BREAKS -

in order to be productive, you need to rest your mind!! try the pomodoro technique: work for 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break. after four cycles, take a longer break (15-30 minutes). during your breaks, do something completely different from your study activity. get up, stretch, grab a snack, or go for a quick walk outside. it's refreshing for your mind and body.

STAY ACTIVE -

physical activity helps reduce stress and improve your mood. so you should aim to get at least 30 minutes of exercise a day. this could be a workout, a yoga session, or even just a really fast walk. if you don't have much time, try putting short bursts of activity in throughout your day. for example, do some stretches or a few jumping jacks between pomodoro cycles.

GET SUPPORT -

talk to friends, family, or a counselor if you're feeling overwhelmed. sometimes, just having someone listen can make a huge difference!! if you’re struggling with a particular subject or area, try forming/joining a study group or seeking help from a tutor. working with others can give you new perspectives and helps with loneliness.

HAVE A HEALTHY DIET -

your brain needs proper fuel to function at its best. try to eat balanced meals with fruits, veggies, whole grains, and protein. avoid too much caffeine and sugary snacks, because those can lead to energy crashes. keep a water bottle with you and make sure you're drinking enough throughout the day to keep your energy levels stable.

GET ENOUGH SLEEP -

pulling all-nighters is going to affect your concentration and memory. go for 7-8 hours of sleep each night. get a bedtime routine in place to help signal to your body that it's time to wind down. this could include stuff like reading a book, listening to calming music, or doing some mindfulness exercises. avoid screens at least an hour before bed, because the blue light can interfere with your sleep.

REWARD YOURSELF -

give yourself something to look forward to after completing a task. a favorite snack, watching an episode of your favorite show, or spending some time on social media, really anything that makes you happy. rewards reinforce your positive behavior and make studying feel more manageable. for example, tell yourself, "after I finish this chapter, I'll take a break to watch a funny youtube video."

STAY ORGANIZED -

keep track of deadlines and dates!! it will save you so much stress!! use a planner, calendar app, or bullet journal to log all your assignments and exam dates. you can also color code by subject/priority to make it easier to see what needs attention. review your schedule often and adjust it when you need to.

GIVE YOURSELF SOME LOVE -

it's okay to feel tired and stressed!! be kind to yourself and remember that you're doing your best. if you need to take a break, don't feel guilty about it. self-care is just as important as academic achievement. try some mindfulness or meditation and just take a moment to ground yourself.

hang in there, you've got this! just a little bit more to go and it'll be all worth it in the end. 🫶

[slavic-roots-western-mind]

How to actually sit down and study📚💻🖨☕️📖📓

You've got the textbook and notebook open, the highlighter uncapped, the coffee steaming and laptop switched on.

Now what? Do I just highlight random keywords and write out key concepts whilst repeating important sounding phrases out loud?

While this may have worked in middle school or maybe even highschool, most college and university courses are an entirely different breed. Weekly pop quizzes and an in depth recap each class?

Highly unlikely, at least in my experience.

Uni very much leaves students to fend for themselves, with studying and learning the material taught in class as your own responsibility.

So what's a student to do? As someone who had to get her act together when starting the IB program, and then tackling university, here's my advice on how to actually study productively.

Create a study plan by breaking down the workload

Break down the workload:

Say you have a French vocab set to learn, an English paper due and an econ group project.

Study and write out your vocab, and then meet with your study group for practice.

Plan your paper research: what is the thesis, find relevant literary sources and highlight pontential useful concepts, do an outline of the points you want to cover, and then plan the dates and time that you'll actually sit down and write it out.

Go over the main econ project points, do your bit and then schedule a meeting with your coursemates to do the whole thing.

3. Create and maintain your study space.

If your space is messy and full of distractions, then your study sessions are probably not going to be as productive as they could be. Eliminate any distractions or at least try to minimize them

4. Join or create study groups!

They can be really useful when you actually study instead of hanging out (i'm guilty as charged unfortunately).

Divide concepts and have each member create a cheat-sheet or a short but detailed guide to share, so that you can cover more ground.

5. Use practise and past papers

You need to know how to actually approach the exam questions so that you can make the best use of your exam time, so familiarize yourself with the paper structure and the type of questions e.g. essay-based, scenario questions, numerical.

6. Take breaks!

Studying is important, but so is your well-being.

Schedule 10-15 min breaks for a quick snack and a stroll, but also 1hr-1.5 hr breaks for a proper meal, to catch up wth friends or to watch a show.

Overall, a study plan and a study group can go a long way in helping you get the most out of your study sessions, so do what's best for you!

[thegalaxysedge22]

After Ever (Chapter 3)

< Prev | Next >

pair: sylus x MC (named)

tags/tw: death/grief, the absolute pain of research, annoying MC, cannon adjacent

word count: 4.6k

song rec: bad blood by taylor swift

a/n: this is quite the lore drop

important: if you want to follow this fic and updates but don't want to follow me bc im annoying (understandable) check out the tag #after ever fanfiction also if anyone wants i can start a tag list

Work was slow yet again when Kore returned to the Hunter’s Association, leaving her with a lot of time with her thoughts. Something about the death of Dr. Higgins occuring at the same time as the death of her Grandma didn’t seem quite right. That was where her downward spiral began.

Through her clearance with the Association she was able to obtain police reports and the medical autopsy. She spent the morning meticulously going through all of it, looking for any inconsistencies that could tie the two explosions together.

Lost in thought, her eyes became unfocused from the screen, that’s when she spotted something new. On one of the police reports she had open she noticed a faint mark to the side. Zooming in on it, the writing was illegible, but it looked like something had been written in with pencil.

Despite all the advancements in technology over the recent years, the cops tended to keep things old-school, using paper copies of reports when they could and scanning them into the database once they were done. Although inefficient, their success rate showed that it seemed to work for them, so no one forced any change.

Squinting, Kore tried her best to make out the notes in the margins, but it was illegible. In a desperate attempt she took a screenshot of the paper and adjusted the contrast of the image. The markings started to become clearer and when she adjusted the sharpness of the image she could make out one word with a question mark afterwards.

Onychinus?

Hearing footsteps approaching, she took a post it note and scribbled down the word before closing the image and minimizing the reports. She quickly opened some random tab to make it look like she had been working.

Tara appeared, poaching herself on the top of Kore’s cubicle, tilting her head in curiosity. “You don’t look very well rested,” she said accusingly. Kore had forgotten her promise to her friend to rest.

“I tried my best, but it’s been difficult, I keep reliving it," Kore said, trying to deflect blame. While it wasn’t entirely a lie, she did leave out details of her rather adventurous trip. Worry plastered Tara’s face and she nodded solemnly.

“I was stopping by to see if you wanted to get some lunch,” Tara asked, changing the subject.

“I think I’ll have to pass today, I have a lot of work to get done,” Kore apologized. Tara knew damn well that that was a lie, but she didn’t push it. It was then that Captain Jenna also came over to Kore’s desk. Tara barely spared a glance at the captain, showcasing just how deep her concern went.

“Sorry to interrupt ladies, I was just wondering if I could talk to Kore for a moment,” the captain said.

“That’s alright, I was just leaving,” Tara told her, eyes still trained on her friend as she walked away.

“Kore, can I talk to you in my office please,” Captain Jenna asked. A stroke of fear overtook Kore’s expression to which she was offered a reassuring smile. “No need to worry, it isn’t anything bad.”

Kore gave her captain a brisk nod and followed her back to her office. Once the door was closed, Jenna offered her a seat while she took her place at the other side of the desk.

“I wanted to check in on you, Kore,” Captain Jenna said, folding her hands on her desk, “I know it has been hard for you recently, so I wanted to see how you are doing.”

“I am alright,” Kore said, she was in fact not alright. The Captain raised an eyebrow at this, it was clear that neither of them believed the words that just came out of Kore’s mouth. It was not a secret that she had become a husk of herself since the accident, everyone who knew her could see it and she hadn’t bothered to hide the fact either.

“I know you’re relatively new here so I wanted to inform you about some of our policies. You know that we get a lot of protections and benefits working for the government. One of those is that when a loved one dies, you are entitled to bereavement leave of up to three weeks if you need it. Now I don’t want to pressure you into doing anything but you should know that you have options, if being here is too hard for you, taking time off might be your best choice.”

“In all honesty,” Kore started, vulnerability wavering in her voice, “I think that working has helped me take my mind off of things. When I am left alone with my thoughts, I start to go down a slippery slope.”

“I had a feeling you might say something like that,” the captain responded with a sympathetic smile. “I also wanted you to know that we do offer counseling free of charge. Although it is typically reserved for work related trauma, I would be more than happy to pull a few strings and make an exception.”

“I appreciate the offer, I really do, but I think I have to decline for now.”

“Alright, well, that is all I have for you, so you can go ahead and get back to work,” Jenna said, dismissing Kore. Kore made a move for the door, about to exit when Jenna stopped her, “Please let me know if you change your mind at all.” 

“I will,” Kore gave the captain a weak smile. With that she started to return back to her desk, the idea of taking time off completely out of her brain. On her way there she took note of how the office was largely deserted, most people on their way to lunch. Grateful for a bit of peace and quiet, Kore turned back on research mode and started digging into this “Onychinus.” She couldn’t help but wonder if they had any connection to her family’s deaths.

With a pad of paper and a pen she scoured the Association’s databases, typing in the word nothing came up. She tried various other phonetic spellings of it with only zero results to appear. She tried “Onychinus” once more, this time something did turn up.

Did you mean “N109 Zone”? The database asked her. She wasn’t sure how they could be related, it wasn’t like you could misspell “N109 Zone” that badly, but it was a start.

Clicking on the link she was brought to another page. A sigh of relief passed through her. We are finally getting somewhere, she thought. The results were limited, 51 to be exact.

She had heard whispers of the N109 Zone before, but it was something that was treated more like an urban legend rather than a real place. It was hard to get a clear picture of everything as most things seemed to be redacted to shit. Most sources seemed to be regurgitating the same information over and over again, it seemed like the area was once a hub for technology but has become a wasteland after the Catastrophe, controlled by cartels who made money off of the trade of illicit goods.

There were discussions of the illegal sale of protocores at auction, most of which appeared to take place in the N109 Zone. Kore wasn’t stupid, she knew that the sale of protocores must’ve been a thing, they could be worth a lot of money and they are powerful. Protocore auctions turned up dozens of reports of raids that had occurred, only a few had a passing mention of the seemingly elusive Onychinus, but that was really it.

She tried using the information she had to expand her search, but as hours passed, there was very little that she could turn up. Frustrated, she goes to Nero, the team’s tech wizard, to see if he can help. Perhaps he has higher clearance than she does, or maybe she is just bad at researching, surely he can turn something up, she rationalizes.

Nero is deeply engrossed in something when Kore reaches the dark corner he resides in. Glancing over at his screen she sees him on some forum talking about a Lumiere?

“Who’s Lumiere?” Kore asked. Nero jumped in his seat at the sudden intrusion.

“What-I was just working, I wasn’t doing anything,” Nero stumbled, trying to cover his tracks.

“Wait, you don’t know about Lumiere?” He questioned, doing a complete 180. Kore just shook her head.

“How could you be a hunter and not know about Lumiere?? They’re an icon, a legend. They were the first Hunter. When the Chronorift Catastrophe first happened in 2034, they were the first one to fight the wanderers!!! It was reported that they alone saved dozens of lives when it happened. They were a hero, I cannot believe you have never heard of them.”

Noticing his enthusiasm, Kore started plotting. If I allowed him to talk, maybe he would be more receptive to bending the rules and helping me out, regardless of my clearance level, she thought. The remorse she would feel after manipulating him was in the far corners of her mind, she was a woman on a mission after all.

“They sound incredible, can you tell me more,” Kore asked, pulling up the chair from the empty cubicle next to his. Nero’s eyes lit up at the opportunity and his whole entire demeanor changed.

“Wow, where do I even begin… Well, Lumiere’s identity has never been confirmed. There have been whispers and speculations, but if you ask me, none of them have been right, they just don’t fit the profile. After saving the city during the Catastrophe, which Lumiere did single handedly, not even the military knew how to handle the situation, at least not like Lumiere did. Anyways, after Linkon City was saved, Lumiere completely disappeared. No traces left behind at all.

“That is until about 2 years ago - on February the 26th of 2046 - rumors of a Lumiere sighting started to circulate online. A picture was posted on one of our forums and people went crazy. None of the Lumites - Lumiere fans - could agree on if it was actually them. It caused a whole big fight online. 

“But eventually more and more sightings appeared and we Lumites came to the consensus that it was Lumiere, but then that started a whole other bout of discourse. Why would they wait this long to come back? What were they doing out and about now?

“Well, through eye witnesses and photographs we were able to piece together a little bit of information. Although some Lumites contest it, it is widely accepted that Lumiere became a Tenebra. You know what that is right?”

Kore shook her head.

“Oh I thought you would know what a Tenebra is because you’re a Hunter, but I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised considering you didn’t even know who Lumiere is,” Nero scoffed before his hands covered his mouth, “I am so sorry I didn’t mean to rude. Please forgive me.”

“It’s fine,” Kore waved off his words, “but what is a Tenebra?”

“Right, right. A Tenebra is someone who broke the Hunter’s Code. Although it is typically due to them engaging in illegal activities, most commonly protocore smuggling, that isn’t always the case.” Nero checked that the coast was clear before leaning in and continuing in a whisper, “For years now there has been a theory that the higher ups in the Association ask high level hunters to do some crazy things and that go against most people’s morals.

“A few high level former hunter’s have said as much, but they have widely been discredited as either addicts or having extreme paranoia, but some people think that is propaganda.” After that Nero sat back up and continued at his previous volume

“Anyways, another key component of being a Tenebra is ties to some sort of secret organization. So one can, in theory, be a Tenebra without participating in any illegal activities. And we know that Lumiere isn’t a bad person, so, it isn’t the illegal activities that potentially make them a Tenebra. No, we think that it is because Lumiere has ties to some of the groups in the N109 Zone.

“And this isn’t just a theory either - Lumiere has been spotted in the N109 Zone as recently as two weeks ago and as far back as two years. We think that Lumiere is the one who is keeping the wanderers out of the N109 Zone and that they potentially have ties to Onychinus, who is supposedly one of the big names in the N109 Zone.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Kore stopped him while he was taking a breath, “What do you know about Onychinus?”

“Well, there isn’t too much known other than they practically govern the N109 Zone, it’s thought that they have a big hand in protocore trade though, even if it can’t be confirmed. I have also heard whisperings of the name Sylus in connection to them, but I have never been able to figure out how that plays into everything.”

“What do you know about the N109 Zone,” Kore pried for more information. 

“I don’t know too much, it is well known that information about this and Onychinus is kept largely under lock and key for some reason, but I do know that it is a hotbed for crime, also that it used to be a tech hub. Ever was allegedly based there when it first opened, but you can’t find that now, for some reason they are trying to scrub the internet of their history. There’s also–” Nero suddenly got quiet.

Xavier had appeared, leaning over the cubical’s low walls. “I was looking for you, Kore,” he said, “we have a mission.”

Kore apologized to him and stood up also apologizing to Nero for leaving him, asking to talk more about this soon to which he eagerly nodded. She then followed Xavier’s retreating footsteps.

“I don’t know why you’re talking about Lumiere,” Xavier said once she caught up to him, “It is pretty well known that they died during the Catastrophe, protecting the city.”

The wanderer was a particularly stubborn one, making it a tough fight, especially for Kore, who was already off her game. Usually, she had an uncanny ability to predict the movements of wanderers, which was why she was put in the Alpha team fresh out of the academy, but she was slightly off her game. Most of her blows were hitting the target, which was concerning considering she was the top marksman in her class. A few of her attacks were just grazes but unfortunately the wanderer could say the same. She had been grazed by the creature several. Her movements, while not exactly sluggish, were not up to her usual standard. It was mistakes like this that made her job all the more deadly.

Reloading her pistol, she took her eyes off of the wanderer, just for a moment. Big mistake. She didn’t see it coming and would’ve been hit if it wasn’t for Xavier jumping in front of her and deflecting the hit, his sword and skill easily fending off the attack.

Xavier was quick to deliver the finishing blow and Kore was left feeling ashamed. She moved off to the sidelines and fiddled with her equipment. She could feel Xavier wandering over but tried to ignore him.

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” he said, “even the best of us have bad days.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Kore grumbled, picking lint off of her uniform.

“I’m not patronizing you, I am just letting you know,” Xavier said walking off. It was just then that Kore remembered she had something that she wanted to ask him.

“Xavier, wait,” she said, continuing when he turned back around, “Do you know anything about aether cores?”

A look of surprise flashed over his face, he was clearly not expecting that question, but he was quick to be able to mask his shock. He shook his head, responding, “No, I have never heard of such a thing.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Kore said accusatively, fire in her eyes. She had seen him falter and she would not drop the subject until she got what she wanted. Xavier sighed, shoulders relaxing before adjusting his posture.

“I should have known that you would be able to tell that something was different about that protocore,” Xavier said. Confused, Kore thinks back on their time together and remembers their first fight. It was in No Hunt Zone 7, the first time that they had met. She had noticed something was off about the protocore that came from the wanderer that they had fought, but she had always assumed that it was because she only had seen controlled specimens in her classes and never a real one out in the field.

“In its most basic form, an aether core is a type of protocore, one that has been modified somehow,” Xavier continued, unaware of the rapid thoughts in her mind, “it is very rare for aether cores to develop naturally and so they are often a result of human interference. Oftentimes their power dwarfs that of a regular protocore. They are very dangerous and not many people know about them, not even the Hunter’s Association.”

“If you know about the existence of aether cores, why haven’t you told the Hunter’s Association about them,” Kore questions.

“Well you know about them too, why haven’t you?” Xavier counters, her reaction is far from the ‘touche’ he expected.

“Now that I know that you have been hiding stuff from me AND the Association, how am I supposed to be able to trust you?” Kore practically shouts. Logically, she was aware that she was more mad than she had any right to be, but that didn't stop the fire that was coursing through her veins.

“Well you’re keeping something from me too, how did you find out about aether cores in the first place,” Xavier asked calmly.

“Because allegedly I have one in my body and that makes me feel like I have a right to know,” she said, her temper rising.

“You what?” Xavier said, his face paled, “What do you mean that you have an aether core inside of your body?” He didn’t even know that it was possible for a human to survive with an aether core inside of their body.

“Well apparently I was in some sort of experiment when I was younger, which I don’t remember by the way, and there was one placed in my heart and that is why I have Protocore Syndrome in the first place.”

“What do you mean ‘apparently’ you either were or you weren’t how do you know?” Xavier said, confused. Kore then recounted everything that had happened to her since Friday. 

She was so angry she didn’t gloss over any detail. It was if all at once all of her frustrations about the whole ordeal came out, the pot had boiled over. Xavier, for his part, stayed calm and collected as she went off on her verbal rampage.

“--and I need to find out more information on Onychinus because I just have a feeling that they are the fuckers responsible for this all happening but nothing is coming up–” Her avalanche of words stopped when Xavier placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

“I just don't know what to do,” Kore admitted as she made eye contact for the first time. Tears threatened to spill out of her eyes and her bottom lip quivered. Xavier smoothed down her hair with his other hand. A sob escaped her and she fell against him as if she no longer had control over her body, he wrapped his arms around her as she cried. Deep down she was embarrassed with how she was conducting herself, but it had been so hard recently and she hadn’t been giving herself the time or space to just feel.

Slowly but surely, Kore was able to compose herself. Although still a sniffling mess, she pulled herself off of him and said meekly “I’m sorry about that, I don’t know what came over me.”

“I think I might have something to cheer you up. Here,” Xavier said as he fiddled with his Hunter’s Watch. He put their two watches together and hers lit up, Confirm Security Clearance was on the display. “The Association’s databases are useless if you don’t have the right level of clearance. I extended my security clearance to you so hopefully more things will turn up for you.”

“Really?” Kore said, still wiping her tears.

“If it’ll help you feel better and earn back your trust then yes,” he said, “but you should know that it only lasts for 24 hours. Now go.”

Kore looked at him appreciatively, touched by his gesture, “Thank you, Xavier, for everything.”

The office was nearly empty when she arrived, which made sense as the day had been over for quite some time now. She had practically sprinted the entire way back, her leg wouldn’t stop bouncing the entire ride there, every stop the subway had made felt like a lifetime. As quickly as she could she got to her computer and logged in. Preparing herself for the worst, she typed “N109 Zone” in the search bar. The results were instantaneous, and she was shocked at just how much more information came up.

The redactions in the records that she had been reading earlier were fewer, but not gone completely. She was, however, able to learn more about these supposed protocore auctions that took place there. The auctions were allegedly held at a place only referred to as Elysium and it seemed that the vast majority of them were run by the group Onychinus. There’s that name again, she thought to herself.

Scanning the screen again she noticed that with this level of security clearance, a new database had been unlocked for her the Abyssal Chaos, which she knew existed but didn’t know what it was for. Taking a chance, she put “Onychinus” in the search bar, the results were far greater than she had expected.

This time, a shocking number of reports popped up. It seemed that Dr. Higgins’ death wasn’t the only one that had suspected ties to the criminal organization. It appeared that they had been targeting former Ever researchers but the motive was still unclear. This information, coupled with her grandmother’s former ties to the company, made her convinced that they had been involved somehow.

She became obsessed over reading every single report linking them to metaflux explosions and suspicious deaths. Falling deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole, but she didn’t mind, she was too busy developing a deep hatred for the organization. She had already felt like what had happened was not an accident and matching the similarities to their M.O. was intoxicating. She was placating a hunger she didn’t know she felt.

All of this eventually led her to find another, classified, report that vindicated her belief that Onychinus was involved in her Grandma and Caleb’s deaths. This wasn’t the one that she had been obsessing over just last week, this was a different, confidential one. As pissed as she wanted to be that this was kept from her, the desire for retribution was taking over her. She had to make them pay. 

She stumbled upon a document containing all of the data that the government had on Onychinus. In it she found a lot of information that she knew already, but there was also intel on a few potential members of the group. One of the suspected higher ups was only known as Mr. Sherman and he was thought to be the brains behind the operation. Sherman’s profile was unexpectedly deep and through, it made her wonder why they hadn’t got the guy if they knew so much about him.

However, it was another alleged member of the group that really caught her eye. There was very little on him, not even a picture, just his name, Sylus. He was suspected of being the leader of the group but there was a point of contention on if he was even real. The report mentions how some of the information about him seemed to be more stuff of urban legend than reality, for example. It was said that he could disappear into a plume of black and red smoke, Kore rolled her eyes at that. Yeah right he can do that, does he turn into a bat too? Like a fucking vampire? 

Despite the myths that seemed to surround him it was confirmed that he was, in fact, a real person, and that he was the leader, or at least figurehead, of Onychinus. Everything that she learned about them culminated into hatred for this one man. “Hatred” was too weak of a word for what she felt, she loathed nim, no she despised him.

Somehow, someway, she was determined to make him pay for what he had done. If I could just go to the N109 Zone and track him down, I could make him pay, she thought. Wait, what’s stopping me from doing that? The gears in her brain started spinning and she was calculating exactly what steps she needed to take to go there. She wasn’t even sure what exactly she would do once she got there, but for the time being that was irrelevant to her.

Kore refocused her attention on the N109 Zone, this time searching Abyssal Chaos’ database. There was something new that caught her eye. A decades old brochure with touristy information, incredibly out of place for a top secret digital archive. 

The scan resolution of the old pamphlet was abysmal, but it was still legible. What really confused her was that everytime the name of the town should have been mentioned it was scratched out. This wasn’t as if someone had redacted it digitally or with a pen, it looked like someone had been desperate to erase the name in its entirety. 

Come to think of it, she had never heard of the N109 Zone referred to anything other than that. By the age of the brochure it was clear that it was older than the Catastrophe so it could not have possibly always been the N109 Zone, she reasoned. A picture captured her attention.

Nearly an entire page was dedicated to the brand new Ever research facility that was opened in 2007. Outside of the shiny new building was the unmistakable image of her grandmother, decades younger than the woman she had known, but it was her nonetheless.

Unexpectedly seeing her grandmother like that was like a punch to the gut. Especially when she was having so many mixed emotions about the woman since she had learned more about her role in the experimentation that was done on her. She tried to clear her mind and get back to reading, but it was difficult.

Inside there was the regular touristy information one would expect a city to promote, the weather, hot spots to check out and sights to see, as well as a map of the city. Thinking ahead or acting in pure paranoia, Kore downloaded the document onto a hard drive she kept at her desk before she switched focus.

Before shutting down her computer, she made one last search. She typed in “aether cores” and waited for the results. It was exactly as Xaiver had said, the Hunter’s Association didn’t know anything about them – at least not in an official capacity. 

Kore was getting tired and her desk was looking mighty comfortable. Checking the clock, it hadn’t even struck twelve, she decided that there wouldn’t be much harm in taking a short rest, so she gave herself permission to close her eyes. Sleep hit her hard and fast.

Next >

[justgottafinishthischapter]

Writing Worlds: Homosexuality in Historical Settings

As someone who loves period romances and craves romantic relationships between queer men, it’s very alluring to write queer romances set against the backdrop of historical settings and time periods. But, due to the treatment of homosexuality for a lot of our world’s history, it can make it tricky to know the best way to handle this topic. Consider this to be a sister post to go along with my Writing Romance: Courting post. The two go hand-in-hand.

ESCAPISM VS REALISM

The first hurdle is to decide whether your story is an escapist fantasy or favors realism. In an escapist historical queer romance, the queerness is simply not an issue. The prince can flat out tell his parents to arrange his marriage to male suitors, and the only real reaction is his mother immediately listing off good matches for him. The conflict has nothing to do with the fact that the relationship is between two same-sex characters, and would work just as well for a heterosexual romance story. With an escapist fantasy, you can show the Count of Yorkshire navigating the hardships of courting by having multiple young men vying for his hand, or the whirlwind romance as he catches the eye of the Duke of Orleans. And this romance can be just as open and public as any straight relationship. This option would fall under Historical Romanticism, the term used for when historical settings are made to be more idyllic and favorable than they likely were in real life. The only media where this approach tends to show up often is Fantasy, in worlds where homophobia simply never really existed. The Elder Scrolls is one such setting where male gods are married to one another, other gods change genders and pronouns as they like, and your player character is free to romance anyone of any gender as well as adopt without anyone making biggotted remarks.

On the other hand, Realism in a Historical Queer Romance is going to come prepackaged with a lot of tension and angst, as it’s automatically a forbidden romance. Because homophobia is a real issue that real queer people deal with, having queer characters deal with these issues can help your queer audience feel seen as these fictional characters can relate to their own life experiences. It’s also just more historically accurate to have queer lovers needing to tiptoe around behind people’s backs and hoping they don’t get caught. However, due to this prejudice, it’s also very easy for such settings and stories to come off as depressing, and can perpetuate unpleasant tropes in queer media, such as Bury Your Gays, Unhappily Ever After, and downer Nomance endings. Because their relationship isn’t��“appropriate” for public eyes, it makes it hard for the couple to have a truly happy ending. For someone who’s tired of dealing with homophobia in their own life, or it just being present in almost all queer media, it can be tedious for those who want an escape to enjoy two guys smooching while looking dapper in period costumes.

Homosexuality and Religion

As a medieval historian, I actually did a full research paper on homosexuality in the middle ages as a part of my final for one of my medieval history classes. I still have the paper saved, so let me share an abridged version. Pagan cultures might have had some issues with homosexuality, such as the Norse favoring the “tops” over the “bottoms”, a sentiment shared by both the Greeks and Romans. However compared to later eras of history, these Pre-Christian cultures had little problems with same-sex relationships. Every Greek God but Ares, Hephaestus, and Hades had at least 1 male lover, Emperor Hadrian had his boy-toy Antinous deified after he drowned in the Nile, and the Sacred Band of Thebes was made up entirely of same-sex lovers. The idea that homosexuality was wrong only emerged with Christianity. Just... not as soon as you’d think. Christianity became a wide-spread faith across Europe around about 300 AD, mostly spread by Constantine’s deathbed conversion to Christianity. However, it would not be until the 12th century that homosexuality as a sin would emerge. This shift first started during what is known as the Medieval Renaissance when Christian theologians like St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome altered the theological discourse on sin and virtue. Prior to the Medieval Renaissance, the mindset was that simply being Christian and accepting Christ as one’s savior was all it took to get into Heaven. After the Medieval Renaissance, the focus shifted to individual sin and the worthiness of the individual soul. They came to view Earth as sort of a testing grounds or waiting room, and any temporary Earthly pleasure was a wicked temptation sent by Satan to lead men astray. How you did on the test impacted whether you passed or failed. One thing that was declared a sin was fornication without the prospect of procreation. And this went for everyone. Any sexual act that would not result in childbirth was a sin, because you were doing it for the pleasure, not for the purposes of making a baby. Furthermore, any position except Missionary was also sinful, again in an attempt to limit pleasure. Since cis-gendered homosexuals cannot procreate, any homosexual acts were universally labeled as a sin by happenstance. Later in 1179, Peter Comestor proposed to the Third Lateran Council a link between the biblical condemnation of sodomy with explicitly condemning homosexuals, and not just anal fornication as a whole, even stating that clerks found guilty of this act should be removed from office, and laymen should be excommunicated from the church. It is Peter Comestor and his stance on homosexuality that truly caused homosexuality to be labeled as a sin on principal, and is why so many modern Christians still believe homosexual relationships are sinful by nature. However, it’s worth pointing out that the time from when Christianity was a widespread faith in Europe (approx. 300 AD) to the Third Lateran Council (1179) is a span of 879 years. As of this point in 2023, the time between Comestor’s condemnation of homosexuality and the present is only 844 years. Meaning that Christianity has a longer history of tolerating homosexuality than it has condemning it. I say all of this because in any setting where Christianity is not a part of the worldbuilding, there is no reason to have homophobia, unless you replace Christianity with a similarly homophobic fictional religion, as George RR Martin does with the Faith of the Seven in A Song of Ice and Fire. As for Judaism and Islam, I’m at a loss there. My studies didn’t really lead me to those topics, and I can’t offer much insight there.

Handwaving Escapist Diversity

Let’s be real, we can’t even cast People of Color in fantasy stories without racists crapping their pants, so unfortunately, we’re going to face similar problems having queer couples openly courting each other in a historical setting. But, there are a few ways around this where we can have our cake and eat it too without the homophobes being able to hide behind “historic accuracy” as a reason to have a problem with queer romances in historical periods. It’s all about the genre. Let’s look at some of the genres we can use.

Historical Fiction: This is the base form. Any period piece is going to be historical fiction. However, Historical Fiction comes in a wide array. Historical Romanticism is the lighter approach, simply putting make-up on the era to make it more palatable and appealing. Think of Bridgerton where the dresses are shaped historically and the characters behave historically, but the Queen is a woman of color, and the dress materials are far more colorful and bright than they would have been at the time. It’s still the Regency era, just with a bit of rouge. On the other hand, there’s Alternate History. Historical settings where a major deviation has occurred in the timeline. Whether the Roman Empire never fell, the British crushed the American Revolution and took over the entire world, Christianity never caught on and the Roman Pantheon is the most widespread belief system, or the industrial revolution exploded even harder, resulting in a more Steampunk vibe. A major upheaval has altered the face of history, and your queer romance is set in an utterly changed world with a different timeline.

Steampunk: As I just touched on, your world can be more technologically advanced, however, Steampunk can also be a genre for completely fictional worlds, giving you a great way to have a story set in an era with an 1880s - 1910s aesthetic, but easily exist as it own world with its own history and values where homosexual relationships aren’t a problem. Steampunk is also the most optimistic and aesthetically oriented of the science-fiction -Punk genres, compared to the much bleaker and more cynical outlooks of Cyberpunk, Diesel Punk, and Gothic Punk.

Gaslamp Fantasy: Basically, Steampunk but with fantastical elements. It keeps that late Victorian - Edwardian aesthetic, but adds magic, faeries, dragons, vampires, etc. Now, Steampunk leans more Sci-fi, while Gaslamp Fantasy is more well.... Fantasy, so Gaslamp Fantasy does tend to lose some of the technological aspects of Steampunk, but it can also overlap with Magitech, a subgenre where machinery is powered and propelled by magical energy. So, you can very well have a Steampunk Gaslamp Fantasy where all of the steam and gears and machinery is powered by magic. It’ still Steampunk, so long as that train is powered by shoveling magic energy crystals into the furnace, instead of coal. Howl’s Moving Castle is a good example of how the two can coexist. There are normal trains as we see in Sophie’s town, but we also see Howl’s castle which can move because of Calcipher, a fire demon that needs to constantly eat a fuel source of one kind or another. The world is full of witches, magic, and curses, but there’s also muskets, trains, airplanes, zeppelins, and a castle that spews steam and smoke as it wanders the countryside.  

Paranormal Romance: Especially common with Vampires, but the fallout of Twilight and Alpha/Beta/Omegas in pop culture has also led to a rising interest in Werewolf stories, and a recent trend has also swept Faeries into the pop culture spotlight as well. All three offer stories where one or both of your characters is an immortal (or very long-lived) individual. Perhaps their world is homophobic now, but when they met and fell in love, it was perfectly acceptable. Perhaps being alive for 800 years piqued the main character’s curiosity and they decided to give it a try. The long history of homosexuals being demonized has led to a large percentage of queer people identifying with the monsters and villains of media, causing them to see themselves in the hated monsters, demons, and vampires that threaten the heterosexual heroes of old.

Historical Fantasy: For everything else that’s not within that Victorian-Edwardian window, Historical Fantasy has you covered. From Cyclopes and Sirens in Ancient Greece to Dragons and Goblins in Medieval France, or a mermaid ending up in an Americana freak show, this pretty much covers ever kind of fantasy romance in a historical setting that’s not covered by Paranormal Romance or Gaslamp Fantasy.

Renaissance Punk: It’s like Steampunk, but the world’s technology resembles the contraptions of Leonardo Da Vinci, as opposed to the clockwork, gears, and steam aesthetic plastered onto the turn of the 20th century that Steampunk offers. Also called Da Vinci Punk.

Space Punk: If you’re wanting to lean more Sci-fi, you can do Space Punk. Think Treasure Planet, though I could also call that Sail Punk. It has a very Victorian clothing and technological aesthetic, but then space is full of a breathable Ethereum, and even Doctor Doppler’s “space suit” looks closer to an old-timey diver’s suit. But the ship has solar sails, the mast charges up with a power source that propels the ship into space, lockets project holograms of still photographs, cybernetic prosthetics are technologically advanced, and aliens are a common sight, even for the poorest commoner.

Same-Sex Courting for Escapist Romance

I touched on this in my Writing Romance: Courting post, but I’ll cover it again because it’s especially applicable here. The rules of courting in the 1800s relied heavily on gender roles. So, how does one make sense of courting rules when the couple are the same sex? The basic rule of thumb is that whoever is higher in status is the one to be chased, while the one of lower class does the chasing. If a Duke is looking for a husband, does the Duke chase Viscounts or do Viscounts chase the Duke? Always, the Viscounts chase the Duke. A Duke is a valuable husband, a prize catch those Viscounts would want to have. What if the romance is between two men of equal class? Two Dukes falling in love? The one who would take the more passive role is likely to be whichever is higher in the line of succession. During the courting phase, an elligible queer bachelor is likely to recieve many gentlemen callers. They would come to the bachelor’s house where his family could keep an eye on him, and judge his prospects. They would bring gifts and trinkets, and sit in the tea room, sewing room, drawing room, or whatever room is used to entertain guests. Gentlemen callers would then talk with the bachelor, recite poetry, play the piano, or whatever else they could to impress the bachelor and his family. Again, as I said before, the one being visited by gentlemen callers is whoever is higher up in the chain of nobility. The Duke’s family is going to scrutinize every gentleman who calls on their son, while the Baron’s family is going to urge him to call on every queer man who outranks him. The other thing to keep in mind is inheritance. The first-born son inherits everything, so a second-born son or third-born son will get nothing from his father, or best case scenario, he will get a small fraction of the family fortune from his father or older brother. In order for these younger sons to stay in the lifestyle they were raised in, they will have to marry someone who is coming into his fortune. In a setting where women can inherit her father’s entire estate, a lesbian would function the exact same as a gay man. Ergo, any queer romantic lead who is not inheriting his father’s full estate must seek a first-born son who will inherit his father’s estate. Meanwhile, if your protagonist is a first-born son, he is far more likely to be chased by the younger sons of distinguished families. Finally, when it comes to the social season and courting at dances, queer nobles would likely wear something to distinguish themselves from the heterosexual nobles at the party. Something to let the other guests know their preference in dance partner. That way, gentlemen know not to ask the Baroness of Agincourt to dance, but that the Duke of Orleans is all too eager to receive male attention.

Lavender Marriages in Realist Romances

A lavender marriage is when a queer person marries someone of the opposite sex to disguise their homosexual dalliances, such as Renly Baratheon marrying Margaery Tyrell, or Laenor Valyrian marrying Rhaenyra Targaryen. In these instances, the woman knew her husband was queer and was willing to work with him to keep the secret. However, sometimes the wife wouldn’t know, and the husband was keeping his sexuality a secret from everybody. However, it was usually hard for a noble to keep his dalliances completely hidden from the court, as in both of these cases, both Renly and Laenor were well-known around court to be fanciful of male attention. Everyone typically knows the wedding is a sham, but tend to turn a blind eye to it regardless. I know I’ve been using male examples this whole post, but this does also work with lesbian romances. I believe the term is still lavender marriage with a lesbian, but I could be mistaken.

Actual Homosexuality in Historical Time Periods

Scholars debate the exact nature of their relationship, but in Arthurian Myth, King Galehaut is conquering his way across Arthur’s Kingdom when he challenges Arthur to a duel for the throne of Camelot. However, upon seeing Sir Lancelot, Galehaut offers to concede to Arthur if he’ll introduce him to Lancelot. From then on, Galehaut and Lancelot became Very Close Special Guy Friends, and it’s suspected that the pair might be lovers, or at least that Galehaut is in love with Lancelot.

Leonardo Da Vinci was involved with one of his male models, Pietri Bandielli, who Da Vinci used as a model for Jesus. Which also means, If you pray to the white version of Jesus with the little beard and long brown hair, congratulations! You’re worshiping a gay Italian male model that used to have sex with Leonardo Da Vinci.

Hans Christian Andersen fell in love with the son of his financier, Edvard Collins. But, when Collins became engaged and later married to Henriette Tybjerg, a heartbroken Andersen wrote the story of The Little Mermaid as an allegory for his unrequited love. Collins was the handsome prince who didn’t return the mermaid’s feelings, Henriette was the Temple Girl who stole the mermaid’s love, and Andersen himself was the mermaid, unable to verbalize her true feelings, and suffering great pain just to be near the one she loves.

It’s mostly speculation, but it’s believed that Richard I of England had a clandestine homosexual relationship with Phillip II of France. The majority of evidence comes from one particular courtier’s writings who described them as eating from the same dish and not being separated by their beds at night. However, it’s hard to say if this is evidence of a homosexual relationship, or just the flowery prose writing of the time describing a very close bromance.

Edward II of England had little interest in war. Hoping to toughen up his son, Edward’s father assigned a squire to Edward that excelled in tournaments, Piers Gaveston. However, this backfired spectacularly, as Edward fell in love with Piers. Gaveston flaunted his sway over the king, being so bold as to wear royal purple and the queen’s jewelry during Edward’s coronation. Gaveston was hunted down and beheaded by a group of barons, and Edward himself was killed with a red-hot poker shoved up his backside.

King James I of England was a well-known bisexual, even having a secret passageway linking his bedchambers with that of George Villiers. James’ male lovers experienced royal favoritism and protection, as James absolved one male lover for poisoning a political rival, and twice protecting Villiers from impeachment for incompetency. Following James’ death, Villiers was struck through by a sword.

Anne Lister was a noblewoman who often dressed in masculine clothing and kept a coded diary which recounted her many and varied lesbian affairs over her lifetime. Lister even earned the nickname Gentleman Jack, and is often regarded as the First Modern Lesbian.

Pirate ships were one of the few places where gay marriage was legitimate. Pirate captains could perform marriage ceremonies, and marriages between male crewmates was not uncommon, even having rules about sharing property and distrubution of goods among crew members with a married couple on-board. As well as the distribution of property following the death of a same-sex spouse.

While we know that brothels and prostitution has existed since Ancient Greece, in the 1700s, it was possible to find a Molly House. A house which featured male prostitutes who catered to male clients.

Women were not believed to have sex drives, so when two women loved each other, they were often called “bosom buddies”, and two women living together without a man in the house was called a Boston Marriage.

In the medieval era, it was believed that a woman’s womb was naturally cold and had to be kept warm with regular activity. If the woman was unmarried, the womb was to be kept warm by hand. But since using her own hands would be sinful, it often fell to the woman’s female servants to do the deed.

Men and women often existed in entirely disconnected social spheres. For a man, he would go to work where he would only work with men, after work he would go to a local bar or club that was exclusively for gentlemen, and following dinner, he would often retire to a private room in his home or another man’s home to sit, smoke, and talk with his male colleagues. Even within a single house, men would retire to the gentlemen’s lounge to smoke, while women would depart to the sewing room, tea room, or drawing room to have afternoon tea with the other ladies. As men would spend their entire days solely in the company of men, and the same for women, many men and women only spent time together in public spaces, during meals, and when going to bed. Even then, it was not uncommon to see households where the man and woman had separate bedchambers, and the woman would only sleep in the man’s bedroom when he desired sexual congress. Even the Palace of Versailles had separate chambers for the king and queen. This gave queer couples plenty of time to sneak around without anyone being the wiser.

This to Keep in Mind

One of the biggest issues behind the AIDS epidemic was the promiscuous nature of gay lovers in the 1970s. Because gay men had to be discreet, they would often have anonymous relations in public spaces like bathhouses and bars. This combination of unsafe sex practices and anonymous lovers caused STDs to run rampant through the community, and allowed the AIDS epidemic to have a devastating impact on the queer community.

In Victorian great houses, the footmen were effectively the “face” of the manor’s servants, so height and attractiveness was favored when hiring them. As such, footmen make for excellent romantic interests in a historical time period, since they’re required to be attractive to be hired.

The mafia has a long history of working with and supporting the LGBT community. In the 1920s, nightclubs in the black districts of Harlem would host drag balls, these events being known as Harlem Nights. The mafia helped these groups to meet without police interference for a kickback fee. Even the Stonewall Inn had Mafia protection. In a world where homosexuality is still seen as a sin, think about what groups are willing to turn a blind eye in the interest of profit.

Homosexuals were among those rounded up the Nazi Party during the Holocaust. Just as Jews were forced to wear the Star of David on their clothes, so too were homosexuals marked with a pink triangle. The Nazi Party also destroyed research on gender and sexuality, which destroyed a lot of evidence that had been gathered of queer existence up to that point in time. Today, the Pink Triangle is among the reclaimed symbols used by the queer community.

Queer people found ways to signal to one another. At different points in time, the visual cues have included wearing green ties, having a red carnation in their lapels, and in the 1970s, a bandana in the back pocket was a common way of indicating someone was a homosexual, and the color would even further indicate what they were looking for. Many modern slang words even started out as gay code words so that gay people could talk in public without drawing attention to themselves. Codes like “buns” for butt are still in use today, but got their start as codewords to keep gay conversations undercover.

While we often remember the Red Scare of the 1950s, we often don’t mention that there was also a Lavender Scare at the same time, which hunted down homosexuals just as the Red Scare hunted for communists. It was the belief that homosexuals would be more likely to undermine American policies or spread information to enemy nations, and thus had to be kept down.

Rich men often kept “actresses”, paying for apartments for them, paying for their food, drink, fun, costumes, and whatever else. If they really were an actress or otherwise a struggling entertainer, it was not unheard of for the wealthy benefactor to pay to get the actress roles, pay for tutors and lessons, or even buying them an entire theater. It’s not so hard to believe that a wealthy gentleman could keep a male model, actor, or artist in good stead, especially because artists in particular flourished in periods where rich people would sponsor and commission artists to paint for them. And this can work for either type of story, as a husband or wife would be equally annoyed to learn that the Duke of Orleans is keeping a young actor on the south side.

Gif Sourcing:

1. Bridgerton (2020 - present) 2. Game of Thrones (2011-2019) 3. Mary, Queen of Scots (2018) 4. Downton Abbey (2010-2015) 5. Victoria (2016) 6. Cloud Atlas (2012) 7. A Place to Call Home (2013-2018) 8. Mary Shelley (2017) 9. Brokeback Mountain (2005)

[sunshine-for-serotonin]

not really a question or request, (hope that’s allowed lol) I’m “new” to tumblr in the sense that this is my first time actually establishing a presence- I’ve had an account solely to read your works for a couple years now! Phantom is my entire life, and you have fundamentally shaped how I view him as a character. I’m an avid reader and writer elsewhere as well (elsewhere as in for actual qualitative research papers), the absurd amount of skill you have with words I’d argue is equal to Erik’s with music. My point is, you’re a wonderful writer, thank you for existing!

I’m actually shaking and crying right now, you are so incredibly sweet- it’s funny how you should mention my skill with words, as I’m actually extremely self conscious about any type of writing that I do to the point where I’ll get stuck with writers block for months! :( (this is something I’m actually going through right now)

It’s absolutely crazy for me to realize that there are people like you who have stuck with my writing for so long, and even more so that my writing actually influences how you perceive any of my written characters in cannon, not just Erik.

Truly, you and all my other followers are such sweet and kindhearted individuals, I feel completely undeserving of all your interactions, and yet words cannot express how grateful and deeply touched you all make me.

To you and all of my other followers, thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I promise I’ll get back to writing soon! Also, even though I don’t write much to begin with, I feel the need to add more select characters absolutely gnawing away on my bones, but they’re so specific to their fandoms I can’t even- I guess we’ll see what comes of that notion lol-

Please, everyone take care, and I hope to post a bit more in the future!

[puddingvalkyrie]

Reading massively improved my mental health and I want to talk about it in case it can help others!

Y'all, I think we all need to read more books.

I know I'm an author so I WOULD say that and in fact, I DO say that to children at every opportunity (my dyslexia would be a LOT worse if I hadn't read so much as a kid) but hear me out.

So back in ...March/April I was pretty miserable and it was partly because Norwegian winter will do that to an unprepared foreigner but also because it was the anniversary of The Bad Thing so I felt miserable and alone.

I had no way to really remedy the situation.

But one thing I did do was... Finally crack. See, I'd been DYING to reread my Discworld books, but they are in a different country and I can't afford to go get them or have them sent to me. I have a few paper books here though - I mainly took my fairytale collections, because what did you expect? Actually I guess hardly anyone on Tumblr knows me - Alicia does two things. Vampires. And Fairytales. Didn't bring my vampire encyclopedia, too big and heavy. Anyway.

I have a part time job with an hour on the train each way. I started taking my paper books, my fairytale collections. They were full of short things I could finish easily in a train journey.

Some info. I had managed to sour reading for myself some years previously... I mainly read for research purposes, hardly picking up anything just for the fun of it. PSA: Don't do this. Do not do this. Don't. Do NOT.

And then I reread one of the few paper fiction books I had with me. I enjoy fairytales but they do still fall under 'sort of work' for me. This did not. This was a book I am eagerly awaiting the finale to.

Anyway, I finished it quickly, reading it both on and off the train. You know. For fun. Not just fill time I was stuck somewhere.

Finishing it annoyed me. I wanted more stories. I wanted more than fairytales. And so I cracked. I bought Equal Rites as an ebook. See, I'd previously decided I would not buy anything I already owned in paperback as an ebook because... Well, waste of money, something I don't have enough of. To buy my entire discworld collection in ebook format would cost as much as getting on a plane and bringing my paper ones back.

But just ONE book would be alright, wouldn't it?

So anyway I finished the book.

Of course I'm not going to read just ONE discworld book.

So I carefully ration myself ebooks, making a condition for myself that they are mainly for the train, but I am allowed to read them at home too.

And gradually... The fog lifted. Nothing much has changed besides that I'm reading books regularly again. I still have the same problems that were upsetting me in March. I was also HORRIBLY BURNED OUT until last week. But my mood is MASSIVELY improved. Like, hugely improved. And yeah, yeah, it's summer now, so the weather will have helped also. But I can pinpoint my recovery to when I started reading regularly again. And that is to say that while I was burned out, I wasn't ALSO sad.

So from now on I will be making an effort to keep reading books for fun.

It's kind of crazy that I had stopped for so long. I mean. I write books people are supposed to read for fun. Kinda hypocritical of me to like.. not do that.

I think maybe I have created this problem for myself with many of my hobbies. I tried to make drawing into a business, tried to do too much too fast, and since then I've barely drawn. I love cartoons so I watch them in Norwegian to help me learn - means I was never just relaxing while watching a cartoon for a few years. Recently started just watching cartoons in English/Japanese if I darn well feel like it.

...enough tangent, back to Why Reading Is Good.

Don't quote me on this, I am just scribbling down thoughts I've been meaning to write down for a month, therefore, am too lazy to track down any sources, but I'm pretty sure reading books is actually scientifically proven to help your brain?? I seem to remember reading your hippocampus shrinks if you don't exercise your brain enough and reading long stories does that. And a shrinking hippocampus causes depression?? I don't know anything much about brains and psychology so I must have read that somewhere.

I think a hippocampus is also like... A horse mermaid.

Again, no source, might be thinking of something from Mermaid Melody.

I'mma go read more of my current book now. It's a history book this time.

Yay books!

[holewithinahole]

The Spirit’s in It | Egon Spengler x nb!reader [2/3]

Summary: “I didn’t know psychology doctors also specialized in particle physics, is all.”

What you meant as a light joke to relax him did quite the opposite. He straightens, righting up his glasses one more pointless time. “I have a degree in nuclear engineering,” he states before walking out, leaving you confused and feeling like you’ve spent the entire time offending him unintentionally.

Warnings: dubious science, non-native writer, non-beta’d

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

And here's part 2! I'll probably post part 3 tomorrow so I can upload everything on Ao3. I realised this work is super underwelming compared to what I've been releasing lately haha But well, if one person like it that's all I'm asking!

I also love write all the different dialogues I have in mind for the Ghostbusters. It's like I can hear the voices of the actors in my head! It's all very amusing.

EDIT: I hate the third part so I'm rewriting it lmao

Fall, 1984

“What are they doing?” You mutter under your breath as you step into the psychology aisle of Columbia University. It’s the most animated you’ve ever witnessed Weaver Hall be.

Clutching your latest research papers, you stride to the paranormal studies labs, almost running into a green-shirted man in the process. You mutter a quick apology without looking back. Inside the lab, a few men are busy getting boxes on trolleys and carrying them out of the room. You clear your throat as you stand close to one of them.

“Excuse me, do you know where Dr. Spengler is?”

The man arches an eyebrow and shrugs. “No idea who that is.”

Putting down a box labeled ‘Electronics’ on his trolley with a loud crashing noise – which makes you wince, he starts making his way out of the room, smacking your flank in the process.

“You do know those items partially belong to the researchers working here,” you argue, clutching your side and standing in front of him. “You can’t just take them without permission.”

“Listen, I’ve been asked to remove this stuff, ok? So move out of the way.”

You swallow back your irritation, ready to conjure up every ounce of antagonism, but you’re halted in your need for confrontation by a giddy tone.

“Ah, Professor.”

You turn back to face an uncharacteristically smirking Dean Yaeger: a self-satisfied smug that would deserve to be wiped right out of his face. It makes you fear the worst.

“I’m sorry to announce to you that Dr. Stanz, Dr. Venkman, and Dr. Spengler have departed our university,” he declares, voice devoid of any empathy.

“Departed?” you ask. “Did they quit?”

“Oh no,” he laughs. “We’ve terminated their contracts. The psychology pole deserves better than three frauds ridiculing our university.”

It is, indeed, the worst that could happen. Baffled, you watch as the dean gives directions to the workers with a large smile. You’ve never wanted to hit someone more.

“Frauds?” you scoff, trailing behind him. “Dr. Stantz has a doctorate in parapsychology, so does Dr. Venkman. Dr. Spengler graduated from this very university and possesses several diplomas notably in nuclear engineering and psychology. What makes you possibly think they don’t deserve their places here?”

Another worker almost bumps into you. You glare at them.

“While I admire your lovely attempt at defending the undefendable, the decision is taken. This room will be emptied and used by actual scientists.”

The dean has started making his way out of the room, radiating self-satisfaction and throwing prideful looks at everything his eyes come across. You run after him, pushed forward by this revolting sight.

“Those files are their own research! You can’t take them away without consulting with them first! Yes, they were working for this university, but it’s still years of their work that you’re just confiscating.”

The smirk he gives you makes you regret your words instantly. “Since you’re so willing to maintain your questionable relationship with the three of them, you won’t see any problem with being entrusted with those files? I’m sure you can return them in person.”

“Questiona–” you stutter, but Dean Yaeger claps his hands obnoxiously.

“It’s settled then.”

Shit.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Accepting to take care of Dr. Venkman, Dr. Stantz, and Dr. Spengler’s stuff had been both your good deed of the month and a middle finger at the face of Dean Yaeger. Stuffing piles of boxes in your tiny car hadn’t been easy. Especially since the dean had decided to dump everything in front of the university, grinning all along, savoring his cruel little prank. It says a lot about the actual interest Columbia University has in the work of its researchers.

There were at least over thirty different boxes, filled to the brim with research papers, littered all around your apartment. Obviously, Yaeger had made sure to take back all equipment – broken or not, leaving you with pounds of paper stored in their cardboard containers.

That is to say, after a month, you're starting to regret it.

The cluster of your home is slowly but surely disrupting your peace of mind. It’s almost as if the air has been saturated by dust and cardboard specks, the lack of luminosity not helping. Browsing through research papers and ordering everything has been fun at first, your curiosity satisfied, but you couldn’t decently keep digging through personal stuff. Therefore, you stopped, and now you loathe the view of these boxes.

The problem is that you have absolutely no idea where the three men went, and even on your deathbed, no one would witness you ask the dean for information. You simply can’t believe they would just switch universities, despite it being the ‘logical’ course of action. Mainly because Yaeger would behave like a goddamn leech and talk shit about them ‘till all universities in the country know about their turbulent history. You hoped for one of them to drop by your department but no one ever showed up.

Opening the door to your apartment and immediately feeling dejected at the view of the stacked boxes, you let out a sigh, getting rid of your work clothes and falling head first on your couch. You grab the TV remote, zapping mindlessly before deciding to let the device run in the background as you stand up to prepare something to eat.

During the small amount of time you’ve spent with the doctors this month, you’ve learned more about spooky theories and proton cages than about their actual life stories. Well, sort of. Dr. Stantz was certainly the most open of them all.

“Have you ever experienced a paranormal experience before?” he had asked, one morning, as he leaned conspiratorially towards you.

“I don’t think so?” you replied.

He had then talked extensively about a plethora of incidents, most notably a sponge migration which he’d assured was clear proof of paranormal activity. You had simply nodded, not wanting to question nor deter his enthusiasm. You quickly noticed – despite Dr. Spengler’s eclectic choices of study which could testify about his interest in science in general, Dr. Stantz remained the most passionate of the two; his obsessions towards specific subjects going further than a simple craving for knowledge on a Sunday afternoon. He kept lending you books on the supernatural which you had to decline after a fifth one joined the pile on your bedside table. It made wonder if the man didn’t own a secret bookshop somewhere. It left you with a sour aftertaste, knowing you had some of his prized possessions in your bedroom but couldn’t return them.

Dr. Venkman was– well… he was something else entirely. If Dr. Stantz was eager to share clever insights, Venkman was eager to share made-up stories. The diplomas on the wall did attest to his title of ‘Doctor’ but he couldn’t be more detached from it. Oh, he was researching psychological phenomena alright, but never knowledge for knowledge’s sake or even out of pure professionalism as you could expect from a researcher. If psychology books were leafed through, it was for manipulation tactics and to weaponize the uses of sugary words. In that, he was talented.

“Is it my time to interview the case subject?”

It was your third time in Weaver Hall. Both Dr. Stantz and Dr. Spengler had looked up from their ‘ghost trap’ schematics as Venkman took place in the chair in front of you.

“You never do interviews,” Dr. Stantz had said, deadpan.

“I feel magnanimous today.”

Venkman was a case study on its own, a study you weren’t willing to commit to. You had trouble understanding his true intentions most of the time. In the end, he remained the most enigmatic of the three, despite a boastful, overly dramatic persona (All the world’s a stage!). In the end, you couldn’t genuinely despise the man when he was driving away nosy students and even nosier teachers with phlegm, or when, during his rare excursions in the lab, he would bring sweet treats and coffee.

As for Dr. Spengler, well… he was brilliant and devoted to his work. Alike Dr. Stantz, although sporadically, he would sometimes get caught in a tirade of explanations and postulates. Every day, you resented the apprehension that staved off your second meeting for he could make your neurons flare and burst into ideas that’d spin in your head fast enough to weave entirely new conceptions. You were somewhat drunk on the feeling, making you distracted which even your colleagues noticed, embarrassingly enough. It all ended up in a self-deprecating mantra that led you away from Weaver Hall and back to the arms of your students and lab partners.

Now, they are gone, and you have no idea how to reach out.

“Are you troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night?”

You know Dr. Spengler has spent his entire life either studying for new degrees or researching. Universities are probably all he has ever known, and that makes you wonder how he’s managing the whole thing. Maybe he was hired by another university; with his degrees, it shouldn’t be too hard, despite what happened. Damn it, you should have given either of them your number. What if he’s already halfway across the country by now?

“Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic?”

 What the–

You glide out of your kitchen, spatula in hand, almost falling as your sock-clad feet slide on the wooden floor.

“If you or any of your family ever seen a spook, specter–”

“You’re fucking with me.”

As the three of them stand inside your TV offering ghost-hunting services, it makes you wonder if they didn’t take things a tad too far – or too seriously, this time.

“Call the Ghostbusters! We’re ready to believe you!”

Well, you certainly don’t believe it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Phoning the place has been like stepping into another dimension. You’ve been bombarded with words you’ve never heard in any discussion, except in Dr Stantz and Dr Spengler’s endless chatter about compendia and other mystical publications. 

“Is your haunting an apparition, poltergeist, phantasm, wraith, banshee, demon, specter, tortured soul, or–”

“Excuse me but–”

“For your information, we do not summon dead family members.”

“I’m not calling for that–”

“Wait, hold, please. No Dr. Venkman I haven’t–”

And that was the end of the conversation. It left you with a strong puzzling sensation and a definitive confirmation of your aversion to discussions happening over the phone. The secretary never called back and you were secretly glad, leaving you time to summon all of your courage and go there directly. Which you did… eventually.

Funny how when you’re not searching for something, it comes to you from every angle. After discovering the strange choice of reconversion the doctors took, you were bombarded by advertisements, radio talks and covers of magazines. The men have managed to put all of New York in their pocket, and half if not as many ghosts in their traps. You’ve never been a firm believer in specters but Dr. Spengler and Dr. Stantz had talked extensively about them and their prototype to finally be able to catch one. You’ve been more interested in the physics aspect of it all; Dr. Spengler has been more than willing to explain and you’ve been more than willing to add your own theories.

You now stand in front of their headquarters, preparing to face them. And once again–

“Hey, it’s you!”

–it’s Dr. Stantz who nudges you in the right direction. The man smiles widely, face darkened by car oil and dirt, a crooked cigarette hanging from his lip. His uniform is equally as dirty, and he looks more like a mechanic than a ghost hunter… but no one has ever been a ghost hunter before so, what do you know?

“Hi, Dr. Stantz.” You smile. “It’s been a while.”

You can see he’s struggling to not pat your shoulder in a welcoming gesture. “Man, we thought we’d never get to see you again! Spengs’ gonna be so happy to see you!”

Somehow, you have trouble imagining Dr. Spengler overjoyed or overexcited. It’s not in his character.

“Come on!” He gestures for you to follow him. You’re barely inside that he has already strode through half the hall. “Sorry for the mess! It’s so hectic these days.”

“I saw the articles,” you say, taking in your surroundings.

At the front desk sits a fashionable lady whom you guess to be the secretary. She’s busy answering the phone, munching at her pencil and looking exhausted. She barely acknowledges your presence as you follow Dr. Stantz up the stairs.

The man never stopped talking. “Venkman is out right now; he wanted to check on one of our clients. The woman had blood dripping from her chimney, can you believe that?”

You clearly have trouble to. The blood part, not the seducing clients part.

Upstairs is as messy as the hall if not worse. It rivals the state of Weaver Hall. Dr. Stantz throws his extinguished cigarette in a nearby bin before grabbing a paper napkin to wipe his oily hands.

“Egon!”

Dr. Spengler appears from behind a desk, light on his forehead, and invested in organizing a large number of electric cables. “Ray, I found the problem with the Aura-Analyzer–”

He pauses when he sees you, which you can’t say that you did, blinded by the light of his lamp. “Hi,” you say, smiling while protecting your eyes.

“Oh,” he answers, turning it off. “Hello.”

The uneasy silence that follows throws you all the way back to your first meeting as if a month of socializing had suddenly vanished in the span of four tiny weeks.

“Do you have issues with a ghost?” he ends up asking, putting down his torch.

Your eyes widen in surprise, unsure of how to react. Dr. Stantz, however, lets out a strong laugh so you chuckle awkwardly to echo him. “No, no ghost.”

“It’s crazy that you came in today,” Dr. Stantz says, throwing away the dirtied napkins. “We have to improve the storage facility and we need to be able to boost the grid while saving as much power–”

As he speaks, he disappears behind a wall, the sound of running water overlapping his words. You stay silent, watching Dr. Spengler rearrange electric cables until his friend emerges from the bathroom, clean-faced.

“But anyway, Spengs can give you the big tour,” he declares, grinning. “I have a check-up to do at Tai Hong Lau! If we’re lucky, I’ll come back with dinner as well.”

This time, he gives you a clap on the shoulder before running to the stairs but turning back at the last minute. “You’re staying to eat with us right? The owner has the best Peking duck in town, I’m sure you’ll love it! See you later!”

And then he’s gone, leaving you alone with Dr. Spengler. The distance separating you makes the room feels even bigger. You clear your throat. “I see you were able to create your ghost trap after all.”

He nods. “The day we were… dismissed, we managed to have enough readings on our first supernatural encounter to finalize the prototype.”

“Incredible,” you praise before realizing how uncaring you might sound. “I mean, I’m sorry about the whole Dean Yaeger situation.” 

Dr. Spengler shrugs, stepping out of the corner of the room he crammed himself in. “There’s nothing you could have done to change the outcome.”

You decide not to comment. There’s a certain tension behind his words that makes you think he might truly have been upset about the situation.

“So, what’s up with the… grid?” you ask, looking at the different types of equipment stacked in the room.

He does sound relieved by the change of subject. “The Containment System is the storage facility we use for paranormal entities. Lately, the growing number of stored entities has put a strain on the main chamber.” As he explains, he searches in a pile of paper, extracting a large sheet. “The simplest course of action would be to enlarge the room but in case of an exponential increase in psychokinetic energy, it wouldn’t be possible to expand indefinitely and I’m not even addressing the energy consumption problem.”

You saunter closer to him. Half of your brain is focused on how easily he slipped back into his rambling habits. Perhaps not all socialization has been lost, you muse delightfully.

“What’s the worst that could happen? An explosion?” you joke, hands on your hips.

There’s a moment of hesitation. You stare at him in disbelief. “Don’t tell me–”

“The system has a high-voltage laser grid.”

You gape at him for a second before clearing your throat. “Uh, you’ll have to tell me more I’m afraid.”

On the table, he puts down what seems to be the blueprint of the storage chamber. You study it from the side.

“PKE bounds together the negatively charged particles composing a ghost. Our two laser grids…“ He ignores your bewildered expression. “…prevent the entities from escaping.”

He continues, “But we’re completely dependent on the city’s power grid.”

“No redundancies?” you ask, starting to see the problem.

He shakes his head. “We had no way to generate our own power supply when we moved in – we still don’t, and we weren’t planning on a strong surge in PKE.” There’s a tremor at the corner of his eye, perhaps from tiredness. “It makes us vulnerable in case of a power outage.”

It all sounds very hazardous. “I’m surprised you still haven’t had Public Services knocking at your door, with you powering high-voltage grids and…” You throw another look at the blueprint. “…a penning trap of this size.”

Dr. Spengler looks up solemnly. “We have been drawing attention.”

That’s one way to put it, you think. “Won’t you also have problems with your… residents in there?”

“It’s complicated to assess the level of ionization inside the chamber,” he explains, lost in his musings. “I do daily samplings to monitor psychokinetic energy but it’s a time-consuming process and as minimum as it is, there’s still a risk of slippage. Stronger entities could attack the grid from the inside, despite the threat of–”

He comes to a sudden stop. “...perhaps I can just show you. If you’re willing to.”

Blinking away the feeling that is suspiciously looking like infatuation, you smile, trying to convey what you hope is a convincing agreement. “Of course.”

Dr. Spengler nods, putting away the scheme of the Containment System as you stare, unable to stop yourself. Funny how history repeats itself, you think, already picturing how you’re going to neglect your work just to hear him talk more. You can’t bring yourself to care the right amount. The concretization of it all – this whole Ghostbusters thing – is exhilarating. It was fascinating when it was mere speculations but now it’s all real. Right here, in an old firehouse in the middle of New York, are new forms of life; new not in age but in terms of discovery. Your work has always been focused on the future, so this is just another step toward it. It’s – funnily enough, all thanks to the past: the dead, the undead and the spiritual.

“Say, Dr. Spengler.” He turns back. “Have you been able to learn more about that psychokinetic energy?”

“Ghost energy can take various forms. I don’t have a clear idea of what it could be yet.” He frowns. “Which makes the improvement of the unit even more complex.”

“If you and Dr. Stantz are ok with the idea,” you say, heart beating faster. “I’d like to study this matter further. Apart from the effect on the valences, there could be laser-nuclei reactions that are worth looking into, as well as interactions between the entities themselves. Perhaps, it’s too soon to theorize about potential ‘ghost particles’ though...”

Dr. Spengler looks pensive for a minute, and you’re afraid he’ll chastity you – gently, but he just walks closer, extending an arm. “I’ll show you the unit, and we can talk about a new schematic.”

The ‘we’ is a heartwarming promise. “Lead the way, Dr. Spengler.”

As you approach the stairs, he has a small smile on his face. “Egon, please.”

You’ll have to tell him about his stuff at your place someday.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

How to Diagnose scenes when you're stuck

This is basically one of those, it works for me, may work for you, but maybe not and that's OK. And no, it's not one of those, so you have writer's block, welcome to hell, and here's artificial things that might work like taking a walk, taking a shower, eating something.

It's looking at the story theory and the mechanics of story and saying, you're addicted to this story and really want to get through this, so what tools do you have to get through this before you lament it's not something you can fix and then get fixated on the fact you can't fix it and then spiral into anxiety hell, and believe a homophobic psychologist who used his own trauma to hate on others? (And yes, I wrote about that one too... you'll realize this is a theme of my blog. I find the origin of belief systems you have never questioned).

The order *I* tend to go in is this... This is mostly US, UK, Korean, Japanese and maybe Chinese Storytelling.

Keep in mind these are bending to larger forces, such as theme, tone, and the story driver, such as emotion and conflict.

Also writing this to remind myself not to freak out when I get stuck.

Setting

Setting is a bunch of moving parts, but usually is the easiest thing to change.

Sometimes the smallest thing you need to change is the setting.

Where the hell are your characters in space, time and relation to each other and what are they doing and why?

You should keep in mind things like

Degree of privacy?

Time of Day?

Time of Year?

Are there seasons?

What place or location are they?

Where are they in relation to each other?

What props are in the area that might enhance or take away from their existing mood?

What was the settings you had in your previous scenes?

How are your character's physical needs interacting with this space?

Are they distracted?

What activity are they doing together, not together, alone, well or not well?

What do your characters hope for being there?

Try changing this and the emotions can change and ripple.

I should note that you still should be rewriting everything in the scene as a result of the ripple, but it should be far smaller than before.

2. Characters

Who is there? What are they doing there? Add and subtract characters. Yes, this includes extra and background characters. Sometimes adding one character or deleting can change the pace of the entire scene.

3. Events

This is what save the Cat would call "beats" But there are several types of "Beats" Emotional beats, action beats. And really events include characters and settings. No matter what that whole "plot-driven" vs. "Character-driven" nonsense tells you.

Sometimes the event are going haywire because you dealt these out too fast or not fast enough or, you the author have nothing left after this and are worried what you should do, should you let the plot move on past the will they won't they or not? Timing is in the purview of the author. 2 weeks is too fast. 1 year might be too slow.

4. Research

Yes, rabbit holes are a bane to people's exisence, but sometimes doing fact checks on your existing work can help you out of your hole. Watch a documentary on your time period--maybe one that you already watched or didn't watch. Look up a fact. Do a book or audiobook or articles on a piece that you didn't have time to investigate prior. Sometimes this shakes out ideas.

Also, this is why YOU DO NOT STEAL IDEAS FROM OTHER PEOPLE. Because you will not be passionate enough to connect all of those little threads and the guilt will eat you alive as you work, especially if you do not give credit. A Good book has some semblence of the things you changed from the "real world" or "different from other books" in order. So, you should be passionate about the idea and completing it end to end. If you do not, and do not expound, then you are just a lazy plagiarizer. Develop the themes, further than what you have on paper. 'cause I guarantee you, people can spot when you just took the idea and DID NOTHING WITH IT and then fell back onto tired old tropes. I can name books and places where people universally said they felt this becuse the theming suddenly changed from the hook, or the intial idea changed direction. Don't do this.

Develop your ideas through research. Don't be a lazy writer. What you feel is important, what you feel will work will pan out further and further and gain speed and momentum. So when you are stuck, this is the time to research. You might find some factoid that gets you unstuck.

[natashasnoodle]

𝑪𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝑯𝒐𝒎𝒆 - 𝑾𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒂𝑵𝒂𝒕 𝒙 𝑭𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒆 𝑹𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓

Masterlist | N.R Masterlist

Words: 7.3k

Summary: Your entire life is turned upside down when you discover a book of the supernatural, propelling you into days of horror just before Halloween. What or who is causing the curse?

Triggers/tags: Ghost!WandaNat, dark!WandaNat, mind control, kidnapping, blood, visions, death, burns, an all round a spooky fic. No smut but minors DNI due to dark themes and implications please and thank you &lt;3

A good ol' Halloween fic to end off the month, was multiple days of planning and writing so I hope yous enjoy 👻

✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

The chill of October air passed through you as you headed towards the campus library of the University that you attended. The way that the wind whipped the sides of your coat to the side, letting the awful freeze of the air wrap around your torso made you curse yourself for choosing to do a Master’s degree after your Bachelor’s. If you had just gotten a job like the rest of your friends had, then you would not be traipsing to the library every evening, and instead would be at home, snuggled under the comfort of many thick blankets after another day at the office. 

But instead, you were wrapping your arms around yourself in a hug, angry at the universe for your broken coat zipper as the hands of mother nature kept clawing their way through your outfit, yanking your tote bag repeatedly down in the process. By the time you arrived at the library you were already frustrated with the universe, and you hadn’t sat down to start your essay yet. 

Sighing a large puff of air from your already agape mouth thanks to the struggle of climbing stairs, you collapsed into a rickety old chair, slumping down and staring at the wall ahead, trying to mentally prepare yourself for the late night that was to be had. Thanks to your procrastination, you were missing pumpkin carving with your roommates, an activity that you adored, making this essay your arch-nemesis. 

Due to it being the Friday before Halloween, there were no fellow students also slumped in their seats, society beating them down as their burnt-out minds kept pushing on the invisible barriers that tried to stop them from working. 

You were all alone.

Taking the opportunity, you unpacked all of your things and laid them out on the desk in front of you in a haphazard way, not caring about everything being neat in front of you. You were simply here to rush through your essay, put in the absolute minimum effort, and get home to the likely ‘after pumpkin carving party’ that would be happening. After all, C’s get degrees. 

Usually, you would find any books or papers in the long line of the library resources before unpacking, in case anyone ran off with your laptop or bag, not that you had anything truly of value, your laptop was ancient. It looked like a slab of concrete and felt like one at that too, your shoulder consistently being weighed down. Every day you made a mental note to use a backpack next time, and every day you ignored yourself. 

But thanks to the emptiness of the place, you wanted to walk around without your laptop. You felt silly that it felt freeing to be walking around without holding anything. It felt as though you could walk on air. There was no rush to get back to your seat, especially because your mind was still procrastinating, so you decided to fully immerse yourself in the giant bank of knowledge that this building held, having never had the opportunity to do so in the past. 

You marvelled at the various books that students in other degrees would most likely groan at seeing due to reading them all the time for their assignments. It’s a funny thing. Most of the time you could do copious amounts of research in your own time and never get bored, digging down all the rabbit holes that you could find, but as soon as you needed to research something for a class, all interest is immediately tossed out of the window and stomped on. 

As you mindlessly ran the pads of your pointer finger along the row of books, a small smile tugging at your lips as you slowly walked on, you missed the gust of wind that passed through the closed door and towards your desk, moving all of your items before turning the corner and running past your boot-clad feet, the thick material enough to make you oblivious. 

Though when your finger landed on an old, worn-down-looking book, the gust of wind that was pooling at your feet, waiting to pounce, lifted itself into the air in a column around you, your hair flying around at the disturbance. You gasped as you felt the cool air around you, but before you could check your surroundings your eyes rolled to the back of your head as your hands grabbed the shelf in front of you to keep yourself steady.

When everything went dark you couldn’t feel your body anymore. You desperately tried to scream out in hopes that anyone in the library would be able to help you, but it was as though your voice box was clamped shut by an invisible force. No words that you were pleading to escape managed to pass through into the air. 

A low humming noise whistled through the air, overpowering your senses, your mind now completely distracted by the sound. Something had control of your mind as the humming continued, getting louder and louder. It was beautiful, rough around the edges but in the perfect way. As you allowed yourself to get lost in the symphony, the edges of your vision glowed white before a blurry room came into your sights.

A dim, yet beautiful ballet room, with mirrors on every wall and pine wood flooring, revealed itself to you, and suddenly a young woman with auburn hair appeared. Once her presence was made known to you, the humming increased in volume, and as she twirled around the room in a gorgeous choreography in a black bodice and tutu, you realised that the humming was coming from the woman herself.

She danced along to the beat of her own voice, moving her body in a way that had you mesmerised, captivating you in a way that had never captivated you before. You could watch her forever, it felt like you needed to see more like you needed to walk up to her and let her gaze meet yours. It felt as though at this moment she was the only thing in the universe that mattered. 

As the vision slowly moved closer to her, you could easily make out the flow of her hands. How her fingers danced along too, her entire being, every atom, going into this dance. But then it stopped. 

With the humming gone all that you could hear was a painful ringing, its pitch getting higher and higher with each passing second. The woman in the room stood, head looking down at the floor with her back to you, her breathing deep yet steady as she stood still. You were forced to watch as she recovered from the dance and slowly started walking towards one of the mirror walls, her head still pointed down.

It was only when her hands grabbed onto the wall railing that you realised how cold and lifeless her skin looked, how it looked as though she could break at any moment. It was at this moment that your consciousness came back to you, but your body didn’t. You were stuck in the vision. Panic flooded your system as once again you tried to scream out for help. You didn’t know this woman, and you didn’t know where you were. But maybe she could help you.

You begged whatever divinity was out there to just let you communicate with her, to let you ask for help so that you could go home, and just as you did, she looked up. Her eyes met your gaze through the mirror and you wanted to scream in pure terror. Her face was just as paper-white as her hands which only accentuated the blood pouring from her mouth as she looked at you blankly. All that she offered you as you were begging for help was a smirk and a wink before everything went black again.

Your chest heaved and you knew that you were back in your body, but with your eyes tightly screwed shut you didn’t know for sure. The column of wind that had surrounded you slowly dissipated and was absorbed by the scratchy carpeted flooring, allowing your extremities to warm up again. However long you were under that spell, the wind had made you feel freezing to the touch. Your tight jaw chattering only proved this further, though that could also be from the fear and adrenaline. 

Tentatively, you allowed your eyelids to flutter open, and you were met with the sight of your hands gripping tightly onto the shelf in front of you, knuckles painfully white as you held on for dear life. Your mouth felt dry as you tried to take in everything that had just happened, it didn’t feel real, it couldn’t be real, and yet why was your heart pounding? Why was your chest heaving with anxiety? 

You shook your head and looked up, the old book directly in front of you. An internal battle began as you fought the Angel and Devil that sat on your shoulder. The Angel telling you not to take the book, you touched it and the vision started, that couldn’t be a coincidence. But the Devil told you to take it, to put it in your bag and leave. 

The Devil won. 

Shakily, your hand reached out and gently pulled the book out. You stared at the cover, not being able to make any sense of it, it was like nothing you had ever seen before. The brown and black book looked as though it could fall apart if you dropped it, and the patterns on the front made you want to run your finger along them, so you gave in to your instincts. 

As the pads of your fingers ran along the intricate patterns, you felt a warmth run up your arm, followed quickly by a cold that made a whimper fall from your lips, the severe cold making your skin prick painfully before the feeling stopped completely, leaving as fast as it came. 

You had to take the book home, it was telling you to. Ordering you to.

With haste, you moved back to your desk and stuffed the book into your bag, not caring that you hadn’t bothered to check it out. If the book told you to take it home, then you would take it home. It was like you weren’t in full control of your movements since the book was in your hands, but you didn’t notice. 

Though when you looked up to begin packing your other things, you did notice that all of your stuff had been moved to the opposite side of the desk from where you had initially placed it. Though you just pinned it down to paranoia, you had just had the life scared out of you, so it was only natural for you to be overly paranoid now. 

So, with a shrug you packed the rest of your things, your hands still just as shaky, and you rushed out of the library without making sure that you had gotten everything, you just needed to leave, and you never wanted to step foot in there again. 

The walk home was much nicer than your work there. Other than your mind racing and being on the lookout for any sort of danger. But you felt warm, your bag felt like it weighed nothing, even with the additional book added, and no gusts of wind were hitting you, even though the trees around you were swaying with gusto, looking as though the trunks could quite easily snap. A frown rested on your forehead as you carried on speedwalking down the street, a storm was clearly coming, and yet you were feeling nothing.

It was like the book was helping you get it home as quickly as possible. Instinctually, you looked down at the book in the bag resting at your side and your feet seemed to pick up the pace, pushing you through the dark autumn night and towards the apartment you shared with your roommates. 

As soon as you pushed through the people that were at the small party that you had predicted would occur earlier on in the day, you ignored the weird looks from your friends as they saw your mindless body walk through the room and into yours. Your mind was on a mission, and nothing was going to stop you from giving that book a place in your bedroom. It would be safe with you, not out in the open for just anyone to touch. 

When it was placed on your chest of drawers opposite your bed, you let out a sigh of relief. The book was safe, and its hold on your mind eased. As you slowly regained some form of control of yourself, it was only then that you realised how crazy all of this was. Snippets of the terrifying vision flooded your senses again and hot tears began streaming down your face as you curled up into a ball on your bed. You didn’t know why this was happening to you and you didn’t know what to do.

If you told anyone then they would think of you as a crazy person, or someone spewing some ghost stories to freak people out before Halloween. So you did the thing any normal person would do, resorted to sobbing in your room whilst simultaneously trying to block the whole experience out, trying to allow the soft fabric of your sheets to give you some semblance of security.

It was an impossible thing to have happened, and you didn’t know if you believed your own mind. You didn’t trust yourself, and that was a scary thing. 

You needed to get rid of the book. 

After sniffing and wiping your nose with your sleeve, you stood shakily, your knees almost giving way, and slowly moved over to where the book lay, looking innocent as though it hadn’t just traumatised you for a lifetime. You inhaled a deep breath and closed your eyes, preparing yourself to take the leap and touch the book again, but when contact was made, a sharp pain spread across your hand, and a brief flash of an image appeared in the back of your eyelids.

You could just about make out the image of the small cabin surrounded by forests before it disappeared and you stumbled back, clutching your now wounded hand. The pain was excruciating, and you had to bite your bottom lip to avoid crying out, but when you extended your fingers and looked at your right palm, you had to stifle a scream. 

An hourglass symbol appeared as your hand continued to burn, etching itself onto your skin as you stared with wide eyes, your chest once again heaving. “What the fuck”, you whispered as your body began to shake like a leaf, very aware that your clock was mocking you, reading as 04:00. 

As you stared longer at the symbol a flash of recognition passed through you, you had most certainly seen this symbol before. It was plastered around years ago. A series of freak “accidents” had been slowly killing off the group of Earth’s mightiest heroes, the “Avengers”. It had been put down to a serial killer once more evidence was found, and the fact that they hadn’t been found had made the situation all the more terrifying until it all got shoved under the rug and everyone moved on with their lives. 

But something about a certain death or rather, two certain deaths confused you. Most of the Avengers were murdered in plain sight, the killer clearly on some sort of power trip trying to prove to people that they were just as vulnerable as regular humans. But Black Widow, whose symbol was now burned into your skin, was found dead alongside her wife, the Scarlet Witch, in their safe house after they went into hiding once the killing patterns had emerged. Very much not a public space. 

It also became clear to you, that the woman in the vision also looked like the Black Widow, a few years younger maybe, and most certainly not how she looked exactly when she was alive, but definitely her. The faces of all the Avengers were plastered around everywhere during their world-saving days, so you were sure that it looked like her.

You just wondered what this book had to do with her, especially as she was very dead. The idea that this had anything to do with the supernatural chilled you to the bone, but you shook that thought away. There must be a reasonable explanation for all of this. There was no such thing as vampires, zombies, or ghosts. They didn’t exist, and so you were safe. This was just a freak prank, nothing more nothing less. You nodded along to your train of thought, trying to convince yourself that everything was indeed okay, as you ignored the searing pain in your hand. 

Lifting up the soft duvet covers of your bed, you crawled underneath them and got into a foetal position, clutching your hand that was clenched as a fist close to your chest, your bottom lip trembling as you fought back tears, desperate to fall asleep so that you could wake up and pretend this never happened. You knew that you needed to go and get something to care for your new wound, but the bathroom was across the apartment, and there was no way that you were going to risk waking up your roommates as they would most certainly ask questions. So, you would have to wait until you awoke in a few hours' time and waltz into the room as if nothing was wrong. 

Eventually, your trembling body passed out from exhaustion, and your mind was finally at peace. For the time being.

---

The following day came with no issues, aside from the pain ebbing and flowing through your hand. Your roommates did wonder why you had a bandage wrapped around your hand, but you eased their fears by telling them that you had been stupid when trying to cook something new for breakfast. They believed you. 

You counted your lucky stars that the damned book resting in your room did not give you any nightmares or visions that day, and just put it down to a weird fluke. It was just a prank. A very painful prank, one that made you want to kick the creator of it in the shin, but a prank nonetheless. 

Having not started the essay the day prior, you had to work at double the speed yet you could only use one hand. The maths weren’t adding up, but with your mind fuelled on caffeine via various cups of coffee and cans of energy drinks, enough to make your brain go full throttle before an energy crash, you finished your essay. 

Smiling, you were satisfied with the day. It had been productive, yet calm. You sat on your bed and just let the world pass you by that evening, grateful for the peace, grateful to be able to watch the sunset, and grateful to be able to fall asleep with no issues. Your sleep went undisturbed, but what you didn’t know was that the book a mere few steps away from you was awake. Wide awake, and it had been watching your every move. 

The next day you went about your business once again. Attending your classes you typed out all the notes that you could, yet again with a singular hand, and the one that wasn’t your dominant one. It was tough but you pushed through, willing your body to continue so that when you got home you wouldn’t have to make notes on the slides in your own time. Whilst on campus you hung out with friends and engaged in some lovely chit-chat, all of them concerned for your bandaged hand but yet again you waved them off with a little white lie. 

You allowed yourself to romanticise the day, that’s how you got through most of your University days. You brought yourself an iced coffee to sip on whilst studying with friends, organising your notes in a way that was aesthetic, yet effective; colour scheming everything with titles of cute yet readable fonts. It was all for vanity reasons but if it meant that you would go back and read your notes then you didn’t see the issue. 

You also took the long route home, letting your scarf get ruffled in the wind as your boots quenched your thirst for standing on the crunchiest leaves that the local flora had to offer you. After seeing a quaint, run-down bench you decided to take a seat, resting your weary legs that had taken you from class to class that day. Though that was a mistake.

The very second that you planted yourself down on the hardwood a dizzy spell hit and it felt as though your head was spinning. Out of breath and confused you clutched onto the cool, metal armrest with your good hand, and held on for dear life as you had no choice but to let whatever was coming hit you like a brick. The nauseous feeling that was crawling its way up from your abdomen came to a swift halt when your vision went black. Though that feeling was replaced by the feeling of a pit as you anticipated what was to come, expecting it to be like the previous night.

You were pleasantly surprised at seeing the same cabin as prior instead of a dead ballerina, but it still left you feeling unsettled. Unlike with the vision of Black Widow, you were in full control of your consciousness and thoughts, which allowed you to ponder why this vision of the cabin wasn’t a quick flash like the other one had been, you were again stuck, and that feeling of dread came in full swing.

It did give you time to take in the full view of the cabin, however, and it looked to be a lovely one at that. It was solitary and looked to be a good place to get away, or to hide. The wood was dark which only made it seem more cosy and hidden away, and the large size of the building allowed for a lot of windows, each with a hanging basket coming from the windowsill, full of colourful blooming flowers. The roof was made of slate slabs, with a chimney coming out of one end, the smoke slowly billowing from it completing the aesthetic. 

It was peaceful.

But then the vision changed. You were moved to see the interior, it looked just as quaint as the exterior, but something felt off. The quiet was eerie instead of comforting, and as you were moved down the hallway against your will, you spotted a photo of Natasha Romanoff and Wanda Maximoff nailed to the wall in a beautiful mahogany picture frame with golden accents on the corners. It didn’t take a genius to conclude that this was most certainly the safe house in which they met their demise. If you could feel your spine in this vision then you were sure that you would feel a chill go down it. 

As you were forced to move more forward the eeriness was ever more present, and you just wanted to go home. It wasn’t until you turned the corner and into the kitchen that you saw the reason as to why. You wanted to scream when you saw the bloodied hand and arm belonging to one of the women peeking out from behind the kitchen counter, and your fear increased tenfold when you turned to see the body of Wanda Maximoff lying on the stairs, her lifeless eyes staring at you.

With all of your might, you willed your eyes to screw shut, but it was to no avail, you continued to be met with the awful sight. The vision once again changed, though you were in the same location. The only difference this time was that you could feel your body, and as you looked down at yourself you could see your hands, your torso, and your legs. Somehow you were there, so you did the first thing that you could think of. You tried to escape. 

You attempted over and over again to move your legs, but much to your frustration it was as though they were glued to the floor. As tears began to pool at your waterline you screamed out for help, which was your second mistake of the evening. As soon as you shouted, “Help!”, Wanda’s mouth formed into a smile, and you felt your heart drop to your stomach as you froze, staring in horror at the corpse in front of you slowly start to stand and walk down the stairs, right towards you. 

A whimper escaped your lips as you tried yet again to move backwards, the tears freefalling down your cheeks as she walked with purpose towards you, eyeing you as though you were her next meal, yet smiling at you as though you were an old friend. “Hi”, she spoke with such a gentle tone that you tilted your head slightly, showing your confusion, but you instantly leaned back as she reached out to cup your jaw, her cold skin touching your warm one. 

Your bottom lip trembled when she made contact, which only made her eyes darken as she upheld the same comforting smile. “Shh, it’s okay”, she cooed and lifted her other hand, cupping your face. You cringed as her ice-cold thumbs rubbed your tears away, perhaps an innocent enough gesture if she hadn’t also been smudging blood, her blood, from her hands at the same time. 

“You’re okay, sweetheart”, she whispered, and somehow you felt calm, like whoever was in charge of your visions was willing it, getting impatient with your reactions. You wanted to scream out again, you wanted to run away, but it was like your mind wasn’t yours again. “Come home, detka, come home to us”.

Your eyes snapped open and you were met with the sight of your hand gripping the bench as you sobbed. Nausea ebbed through you as you panted, why was this happening to you? What had you done wrong to warrant being tormented, haunted like this? It was a fear that you had never felt before, and you immediately got up and began sprinting home. Maybe it was because you were in possession of the book, if you got rid of the book, then you would be free of whatever curse you now held. You nodded to yourself as tears streamed down your cheeks, confirming your plan in your head. To anyone who saw you on the street, you would have looked crazy, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You just needed to get out of this nightmare. 

Your feet padded heavily against the concrete as you tried to avoid any wet leaves that would send you slipping and tumbling to the floor, and weaved in and out of people who were just trying to go about their lives. With the speed you were sprinting, it took you a mere five minutes to complete a twenty-minute walk. You tossed your apartment block door open and took to the stairs, not having the patience to wait for the lift, taking the steps two at a time. 

After reaching your floor, legs burning from the lactic acid, you basically slammed your door down, thankful that none of your roommates was in the living room, and flung yourself into your bedroom, staring at the book on your drawers that now had a gold glow radiating off of it. Your face hardened as you stared at it, hatred flowing through you. That book had ruined you, and it was time for it to go.

Without hesitation, you reached your hand out and grasped it, but immediately you had to pull away from it as the same burning feeling hit. You cried out in pain as you clutched your ex-good hand, and watched in horror as the silhouette of the Scarlet Witches’ crown appeared on the palm of your left hand. The pain was excruciating, it felt like all of your skin was on fire, like your body was covered in tiny soldiers, stabbing you repetitively. 

All of your energy drained as you stumbled back onto your bed, your lungs rapidly filling up with oxygen before dispelling the air as you began to hyperventilate. You were at a loss for what to do. A few weak whispers escaped your lips as you tried to call out for help, but your body betrayed you, and you passed out at the bottom of your bed.

---

A pounding on the door followed by multiple yells of your name rudely awakened you from your lengthy slumber. Your eyes opened in narrow slits as you groaned at the light streaming in and attacking your retinas, drowsiness clouding your mind, rendering you unable to comprehend what was happening. Though when a series of harsh knocks yet again pounded on your door, your eyes shot open and you jumped up off of the bed, “What?!”, you moved towards your door and shouted through.

“What do you mean ‘what’? It’s halloween, we all said we were going hiking before the party later, we’re about to go and we haven’t seen you all morning”, your roommate Sharon shouted back, followed by a sound of agreement from your other roommate Maria. “Fuck”, you whispered under your breath before shouting back through, “Right yeah, my alarm didn’t go off, give me ten minutes”. You heard a couple of groans from the other two due to you making them wait, but they agreed as you stood frozen on the other side of the door. You were far too spooked to be able to go on a friendly walk with your roommates, not when you were sure that this curse was somehow going to kill you soon with the way that it was progressing. 

But, you still didn’t want to tell anyone, because they would think that you were a certified crazy person, so, you rushed around to get ready for the day. Donning some leggings, a long sleeved fleece for the chilly weather, and hiking boots, you toussled your hair a bit to make it look more presentable and like you hadn’t literally collapsed hours before. Though once you were about to leave and your nerves had eased ever so slightly thanks to the drowsiness wearing off, you noticed that your hands didn’t feel as though they were burning anymore.

You looked out your outstretched palm which sported the crown, and saw that after just a night it had faded into a scar rather than a fresh burn, a nasty scar for sure, but it was confusing how quickly it had healed. After a confused huff, you ripped the bandage off of your other hand and saw that the hourglass too had formed into a swollen scar instead of an active injury. Before you had any real time to ponder, strong hands pounded on your door again. “It’s been ten minutes hurry the fuck up”, Maria’s voice sounded through, and you shook your head, lurching across your room to grab some gloves before opening the door, shooting them an innocent smile.

“I’m ready, no need to get your panties in a twist, Hill”, you smiled and walked past her towards the kitchen, seeing Sharon rolling her eyes at you with an amused glint as you reached for your water bottle, though she quickly got up to take it out of your hands. Before you could protest she hoisted her backpack up from off the floor, “Already packed you one to save time, let’s go”. 

You allowed yourself to be dragged out of the apartment by your friends, laughing at the way they had practically picked you up off of the ground. When they had put you down in front of Sharon’s car you gave a faux-pout, “That hurt my arms”. 

“Awh”, Maria cooed and mimicked your expression from right next to you before placing a playful kiss on your cheek and shoving you lightly into the back door, “You’ll live”. You gave a dry laugh as she threw herself into the passenger seat, your mind now taken over by worry once more, wondering why your hands burned when Maria had kissed your cheek, and how it stopped as soon as she was out of your eyeline. Though you shrugged it off when the car horn sounded, urging you to get your ass into the car. 

---

The hiking trail that you had all decided to take never failed to amaze you. The wildlife that you would see as you made your way up the steep, rocky hills made your heart flutter every single time. The smell of fresh oxygen left your nose feeling grateful as you were able to escape the city air, and the way that the sun shimmered through the canopy was enough to put a smile on your face. 

Plus your friends were a welcome distraction for the horrors that had recently started occuring in your life. Many laughs were shared and you all complained about the copious amounts of work you had all been doing for your studies. It was a nice change of pace, it felt like you could finally breathe through your lungs again, the hand that had a tight grasp on them momentarily released, even with the small nagging voice in the back of your mind that wouldn’t go away. 

Eventually when you were at the halfway mark of the gorgeous walk through nature, you all had to make a pitstop to go to the toilet. Luckily you had all walked this trail so many times that you knew where the toilet shack was planted, and so you all made a beeline for it. You finished first and headed outside to wait for the others, wiping your damp hands on your leggings as the dryer was broken, as it was every time. 

As you looked ahead, taking in the sights, something felt off. Your mind started to feel clouded as your eyes glazed over and the skin of your hands started prickling, and it wasn’t long before your consciousness was taken over once again, making you a passenger in your own mind. Desperately, you wanted to yell out for Sharon or Maria to help you, to snap you back to reality, but it didn’t work. Your mouth wasn’t following your commands, and without your permission your legs began moving of their own accord, bringing you towards the treeline and off of the designated trail.

Your legs stung occasionally as a bramble or thorn pierced your leggings and drew blood, but like before, no sound could escape your mouth and you could make no movements to prevent the pain. After a few minutes of walking like a zombie, you heard your friends shouting your name in the distance, their voices getting more and more panicked the more that they shouted for you, screaming your name as they moved around to try and see where you were, scared that something bad had happened to you. They weren’t wrong. 

Another minute later their voices were finally drowned out by the distance, and your heart began to thump painfully in your chest even more than it already had, you were too far to hear them now, which meant that even if you could shout and plead for your life, they wouldn’t hear you. They wouldn’t be able to find you now. 

You were all alone. 

There were many futile attempts over the course of the walk to regain control of your mind, but none of them worked. Whoever had you under their spell was a lot stronger than you, and you had a grim feeling that you knew who it was, even if you didn’t want to admit it to yourself. 

After what must have been an hour of traipsing through the wilderness, all signs of civilisation long out of your sights you saw something in the distance. If you could have, you would have furrowed your brows at the familiarity. A small cabin sat solitary in the clearing, worn down and old. Untouched for some years, quite possibly a decade. Flower pots lay on the windowsills, dull and dead, the old soil in there the only proof of what once was. 

Your breath hitched as the realisation hit you like a truck. The cabin from your visions, the one owned by the deceased Avengers, older and unused, but the same cabin. You wanted to scream bloody murder as your feet carried on marching towards the front door. You would rather do anything else than go in there, but you were like a robot as your journey continued, up the rickety wooden steps that were clearly the victim of water damage as they creaked under your weight. 

Heart rate elevating to a dangerous rate, the door opened without any external forces, as your body entered the threshold of the cabin. Only when the door slammed behind you and the sound of the lock clicking shut echoed throughout the hallway were you granted access of your own body again. Sobs racked through you as you turned around and yanked on the door, putting your foot up on the wall to try and gain more momentum. Nothing was working. 

As your cries continued, you heard a noise in the next room, and immediately you turned your body to see the door to the living room slowly creaking open. The only other sound that could be heard were your sniffles, your cries abruptly stopping as even more fear flooded through you as you watched the door open. “Hello?”, you said uncertainly, cursing yourself for being so stupid. People in horror movies always got killed as soon as they said that. 

Almost as though the entities within the four walls could read your mind, you heard a raspy chuckle a few metres away, though you couldn’t see anyone in the dusty room ahead of you. You whimpered as you tried to gain control of your breathing, aware of how pathetic you must sound, but not finding it within you to care. For all you knew, you were about to die. You didn’t want to die.

As this train of thought passed through you, a gust of wind appeared from nowhere and flew through you, but through the whistling sound of it, you could make out a comforting voice trying to shush your cries. Your head snapped to the side to look towards the kitchen, the direction of which the wind came from, but again you could see nothing. “Hello?”, you tried again, your voice weary from how quickly your sobs drained your energy, “Please let me out, I won’t tell anyone, I promise just please-”, you tried to bargain for your life. 

However, you stopped when you noticed a faint glow coming from the living room as two people slowly came into your sight, starting as transparent and slowly coming into their full forms. You gulped as you took in the sight of them, they looked human, but they were clearly dead, their pale skin, almost white exaggerating their respective hair colours, red and brown. 

You couldn’t seem to find your voice as they slowly approached you, though this wasn’t by any mind control, you were terrified. “Sweetheart”, the brunette, Wanda, started with a small smile as she rested her cold hand on your shoulder, “We can’t let you go”, her voice was sweet, but the dark look in her eyes showed you otherwise.

“Please, I just-”, you tried again, but Natasha’s finger came up to your lips to stop you from speaking, the contrast of cold and warm sent shivers running through your body, “Nuh uh. We’ve waited for years for someone to find that book, the Darkhold, we planted it in so many places, we’ve been so lonely after all these years after having our lives ripped away from us”, she seemed to be getting frustrated, but when she looked into your eyes again she immediately calmed and remembered that you were here, “But you were the first to find it, and we’re so glad”, she whispered the last part into your ear with parted lips before pulling back with a smirk at your new flushed state. 

“So glad”, her wife repeated and cupped your jaw, her grasp firm as she moved your face from side to side, examining you. You stilled whilst she did this, and tried to move backwards, but her painful grip held you in place. Once she was done she looked satisfied, as though she had just won a prize, “Look at her, Nat. So pretty”, she spoke with sparkling eyes, Natasha nodding and running a hand through your hair.

“All ours”, the redhead added on, making you stumble out of Wanda’s grip, your back harshly hitting the door. Theirs? No. You needed to get out of there, and fast. “No, I- no”, you shook your head and reached for the handle, but your wrist was painfully pulled into the clutch of Natasha as she shook her head at you, warning you not to try that again. “Oh, but you are”, Wanda continued with a voice smooth like honey, “The branding says you are”. Branding?

Confusion must have been evident on your face, as the two chuckled at your expression, making you shrink further into yourself, humiliated. Wanda and Natasha each took one of your gloves off, revealing their sigils on your palms. You looked down, wide eyed as the meaning of the marks was revealed to you, and panic ran through your veins as you attempted to pull your arms away, you just wanted to go home, you just wanted to see Maria and Sharon.

Both women scowled at your thoughts before looking at each other as though they were silently communicating, and looked back at you with gentle smiles. “It’s time sweetheart”, Natasha’s words brought you out of the trance your anxiety had put you in, and your mouth opened and closed like a fish as you tried to find words to say, but Wanda distracted you. “Don’t fight it, okay?”.

Before you had time to ask what you were supposed to not be fighting, both women pressed the pads of their fingertips to the marks on your hands, and you screamed out as white hot searing flashes of pain erupted and travelled around your skin, your entire body feeling like it was on fire. “Stop fighting”, Wanda spoke with authority as they pressed harder on the marks, making the pain increase tenfold, and you were sure that you were going to pass out. Your knees went weak, but they quickly held you up with hands on your waist, white spots beginning to cloud your vision.

You were trying so hard to get out, to escape the clutches of the ghosts that wanted you to stay with them. You wanted to go home, you wanted to see your friends, you wanted to continue going to your classes, you wanted to… you wanted to stay. 

You wanted to stay.

Your eyes glazed over as red clouded your vision momentarily, before everything cleared, and the pain stopped. You drew in a breath as you stood up straight, and the two women in front of you looked at you expectedly as they cautiously withdrew their hands, wondering if the spell had worked, but when you offered them a dopey smile thanks to your brain being full of thoughts about them, they knew the spell hard worked. 

Their grins were genuine as you stared at them adoringly, and they both reached forward to pull you into a hug. Their cold touch no longer felt cold, the warmth that radiated off of them reserved only for you made you feel the safest that you had ever felt. As you melted into their embrace the two women smiled at each other and increased the grip they had on you, afraid that you would disappear into thin air if they let you go. 

“Welcome home, detka”.

✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

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Taglist: @fxckmiup

Natasha Romanoff Taglist: @diaryoflife @unlady-like-12-25-36

[soulsbleedink]

𝙀𝙎𝙋𝙍𝙀𝙎𝙎𝙊 | 𝙎𝙆𝘼𝙍𝙍𝘼

Prompt: [Slightly based off the song 'espresso' by Sabrina Carpenter!] Skarra's been looking for the IU scientist the whole day; concluding that she has disappeared into her haven; aka her lab. He brings her food, and spends time with her.

Warning[s]: None, it's fluffy!

Pairing: Skarra x OC [OC belongs to @edenvillee (Eden)]

Words: 2.2k

masterlist

i keep on brainrotting about dee's ocs, you can't really blame me. i had to write edarra, they're precious. <3

“Eden?” Eden could recognise that voice anywhere. She turned around to meet the familiar dumb haircut that Skarra had always had, stupid buzz. With her coffee in one hand and a calculator in another, she balanced a pointed glare at him. She didn’t want to come off as rude, but interruptions when she’d lock in weren’t too welcome. 

“What is it, Skarra?” She gave him one of her signature sarcastic smiles. He leaned down, as if he was observing her, and she raised an eyebrow at him. “Spit up, I’m a bit busy, if you can’t tell?”

“Why are you so cranky? I just wanted to check in,” He started, and she sighed, shaking her head. “Dingaan said you’ve been cooped up in the lab the entire day, you’re already wearing glasses, didn’t need you to be blind next.”

“That’s a nice sentiment, but are you sure you don’t want something? You being nice equals ulterior motives most of the time.” She fixed her glasses, placing the coffee away, away from her reports and research papers. Nothing was safe around Skarra.

“I didn’t realise you thought so low of me.” He feigned a pout at her and she rolled her eyes. 

“Think you earned that reputation by yourself, himaar.” 

“I swear I knew what it meant yesterday—” Apparently it didn’t take more than a few seconds to get distracted, with something that was completely irrelevant too. “Just one more time—”

Eden turned away, running a hand through her hair as she glanced back at her papers spread all over her work-desk. A soft sigh slipped past her lips, and she could hear rustling behind her, evidently Skarra taking his umpteenth stroll around the lab that didn’t even interest him. She could swear he was only here to piss her off. 

“How many cups of raw espresso are you on…?” Skarra asked from somewhere in the background, the soft scraping of discarded cups following his words. Eden turned to him again, eyeing him as he cleaned up the mess that Eden said she would eventually, once she was done with the never-ending research she had to conduct. 

“Quite a few, I’ve lost count honestly,” She answered, rather honestly this time, “also, you don’t need to clean that up, I’ll do it myself soon enough.”

Skarra glared at her, and she glared back. “Eden, I swear, you have to take care of yourself!” He threw the cups away into bins, now making his way back to the scientist. “Take a break, now.”

“Shush, I still have half a dozen reports to read over, the other scientists aren’t particularly reliable, you know?” She pinched the bridge of her nose in annoyance, one that was prevalent on her face for most parts of the day anyway. Skarra laughed, and she huffed.

“Well, you can catch a break, can’t you?” He asked, a grin playing on his lips.

“Apparently not, actually.” She tried to turn back to the tumultuous pile of papers, but her chair stopped mid-spin, and she craned her neck up, meeting Skarra’s amused expression, lips forming a frown. He flicked her forehead and she reached forward but he reacted quickly, moving back.

Footballers and their reflexes. She rolled her eyes at the thought. 

“That wasn’t a question.” He retreated into whatever corner of hell he originated from, and she stared into the dark until he appeared, and he had some sort of box in his hands, a lunch box…? What? 

Choosing to ignore the box in his hands, she recounted his words, “yes it was.”

“No, it wasn’t.” He was trying to gaslight her again.

“This just feels like that one time you went buff mode and then embarrassed yourself.” She smirked at him, knowing he would hate the mention.

Stretching her limbs, she watched as he pouted at her like a kid, the box still in his hands, but he was standing still and looking at her like a mad toddler about to throw their tantrum. Only then did she realise that it seemed to be growing even darker outside, the digital clock on the wall displayed a neon green 21:10. Time in fact did not wait for her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded, feeling relatively happier. Apparently, the idiot knew how to make her feel better, with his stupid way of speaking, and acting around her. What a clown, honestly.

“Whatever, I thought I could be nice to you today, but you just want me to—” He stopped mid-sentence, as if he lost his train of thoughts (not that she believed he had any in the first place), and she wondered what stopped him.

“To what?”

“Nothing.” He walked over to her and placed the box on her desk, pushing away the papers and the mess that she had to look into. “I got you food.” 

“What?” She didn’t quite catch him. “What do you mean?” 

“I got you dinner.” And he refused to elaborate. Great.

“Skarra, I swear to god—” She tried to pry his hands away from her desk but he just wouldn’t budge. And then she just sighed, letting go. He continued unboxing what she assumed was food. “Thank you…” She resigned herself to her fate, if he wasn’t going to just let her off the hook, then perhaps she could just accept the fact that he would make her eat.

“Dingaan and Akira told me you barely responded to their messages too,” He mentioned off-handedly. 

She looked up at him. “And?”

“Don’t just ‘and’ me!” He huffed, and it reminded her of herself. She fought back a laugh, letting the guy place the food in front of her.

And suddenly she was surprised by how good it actually looked, it didn’t look too bad. Did he even cook this himself? In front of her, there were sandwiches, nice and simple, with the crust trimmed off, and they smelt wonderful, just for the fact.

“I made them…” He whispered, and she looked up, feeling a smile tug at her lips. Okay, maybe she did appreciate him a lot sometimes. She reached for his shoulder, squeezing it and mouthing the words ‘thank you’. 

“I appreciate it.” She looked back at the food, picking one of the sandwiches up and tentatively taking a bite. The taste was ethereal, or maybe it was the fact that for the last few hours she’d been sustaining herself on coffee only, but really, it did taste good. “It tastes amazing, are you sure you made it?” She asked jokingly, grinning. 

Noticing her grin, he grinned too, and nodded like a little puppy. Her heart winced maybe a tad bit, and she continued eating away. Skarra found a chair and rolled it over to her, so he was now next to her. He picked up his own sandwich and she could swear he bit off more than half of it in one single bite. Her eyes widened slightly at him, had he not had at all during the day?

“Have you not had any food today…?” She asked between bites, as she waited for him to meet her gaze. 

Slowly he met her eyes, and she smiled at him softly, urging him to answer. “No.”

“Why, Skarra?” She asked gently, fighting the urge to reach for his hands. This idiot honestly, she should’ve been mad at him, but she couldn’t even bring herself to fully be angry. She was exhausted, and at the moment really felt appreciative of him. She mentally face-palmed herself because of  her own thoughts.

He raised a questioning brow and she just shook her head. He just shrugged, and she watched him closely, noticing his relaxed shoulders, and the way he tapped at the arm of the chair twice every three seconds. 

“Skarra? Are you fine?” She mentally cringed a bit at her tone, but smiled up at him.

“Yeah, I guess I just wanted to spend some time with you.” He sighed, picking at scabs on his arms, and she pried his hands away from his arms, shaking his head. 

“Go on,” She whispered.

“I don’t really know, you’ve been so busy recently, and I kinda miss your banter, and your stupid insults.”

She felt her heart warm up. She didn’t know he could be this cute sometimes, gosh, did she hate him for it. For playing with her feelings like this, and making unwelcomed butterflies flutter in her stomach like that. 

“Well, you know what? I miss you too, idiot.” She laughed, for the first time fully in all these hours that she’d been in this lab, researching away, ignoring Vince’s calls, and Dingaan’s messages. Maybe she felt bad, but she had priorities, and she wouldn’t let go of that for anyone, really. Or maybe just a select few people.

“I never thought I’d be hearing you say that,” He said, feigning a heart attack, and striking the classic ‘damsel-in-distress’ pose, prompting Eden to laugh, run a hand through her brown curls. 

What she didn’t notice was that he looked at her for that moment like she could be the best thing he’d ever seen, and he would never—never look at someone like that, or he hoped he wouldn’t, at least. But seeing her let her guard down, and laugh, and be absolutely stupid with him really filled his heart with some type of warmth he only knew a few years ago.

Eden finally got out of her small laughing fit, and Skarra started picking up the crumbs from the bread on her desk, and she tried to convince him that he needn’t do that, but he was stubborn, and of course he wouldn’t listen. Of course not.

She sighed, picking a report from her stack and skimming through it while Skarra cleaned up lightly. 

New training sequences… Post-injury recovery statistics…. Dingaan…  Dingaan? That wasn’t even written in a font, it looked plainly scribbled with pen, and the handwriting looked familiar. She spun around in her chair.

“Skarra? Care to explain?” She looked at him through the lenses of her glasses, trying her best to glare at him.

He straightened up, slowly meeting his gaze and then glancing down at the paper, then back at her with an apologetic smile… “Sorry.”

“At least you’re apologising.” She sighed, turning back and just finishing up the last few rounds of proof-reading. 

She wasn’t sure how long it’d been since she locked in again, but when Skarra placed his hands on her shoulders, she could swear she saw heaven for a moment, the pure fear sending her heart jumping into her head. She shook, leaning her head up to glare at him and frown.

“Need help?” He asked, what had gotten into him, today?

“No, thank you. I appreciate the offer, though.”

He sighed at her words, and just resigned himself to sitting beside her, criss-crossed. 

It wasn’t too long before she considered herself far too drained without her unlimited resources of caffeine. She put away anything and everything related to her work and slouched, resting her head on the desk in front of her.

“No espresso, no energy?” Skarra taunted, and she laughed, nodding.

“Shut up, Skarra.”

“I lo—hate you too.” He got up and ruffled her hair, packing up her stuff for her.

She didn’t even have the energy to tell him not to, because god knew when he’d use this against her and try to gaslight her into doing something for him. 

“Dingaan will be hearing about this.” She sighed.

“I’ll let Vince know about the espresso.”

“Don’t you dare.” She tried to fake a threatening tone with him, but her exhaustion was getting the better of her too. 

“Come on, there's no way you're falling asleep here.” He tugged on her arm, and she tried to swat him away. 

“There's many ways, actually.” She deadpanned up at him.

“There's a reason I call you the nerd emoji.” 

“Excuse you. You have like no respect for me.” She hoisted herself from the clamlike position she was in, resigning herself to whatever was going through Skarra's small skull. 

Skarra turned to her, and grinned, before hoisting her bag onto his shoulder and lunging for the door that led to his freedom.

Now that caught her off-guard.

“Get back here, you rascal!” She called out as she forced her feet to pick up pace and run after him. Surely he would've realised her legs wouldn't be able to reach the speeds he could? Or probably not, this was Skarra she was thinking about. 

“Get me, Eden!” He turned back briefly, almost running right into a pole. 

She fought back a laugh as she finally cornered him at his car. “Give me my stuff back, or risk losing your head.” 

“No.” 

“Skarra.” 

He grinned at her like an idiot, and she was growing perplexed and maybe agitated. She tried to reach for her stuff but he held it above her head. 

“Come on, Eden, Dingaan's waiting.”

“Don't use him as bait.” 

Maybe she was hallucinating but Skarra started pouting again. Maybe all of that caffeine was getting to her and she was really ascending to heaven or—He reached out for her face and she stepped back. Yeah, she definitely was still alive and well.

“Whatever, get in that car and don't kill me because you're horrendous at driving.”

“Duly noted.” Maybe it wasn't too bad with him. Just her typical day-to-day IU scientist experience with her dumb footballer.

[gingerjunhan]

hii!! i love your writing and i was wondering if you could write a sweet little imagine where reader is sick (maybe from working too much or not taking care of themselves) and gaon them feel better:) thank you and i’m excited to read your future works!!!

☆彡 ooo I absolutely love this idea, thank you for sending it in! I’m really proud of how this turned out, so I hope you enjoy it. Sorry it took a little longer than usual. Also, please remember to take breaks and let yourself rest. You will never be setting yourself back by taking a break 🩷

word count: 1,126 | pronouns used: none | genre: angst if you squint?, fluff, established relationship | cws: overworking, stress, burnout, reader isn’t sleeping or eating well, eating, feelings of self doubt, crying

Every day your deadline grew closer, and your hard work began to feel more and more futile.

You had a huge project due at the end of the week, and you were behind on your work. You’ve had about a month to work on this project, and you started out strong; starting your research and notes right away once the project was assigned. However, life got in the way, and now the notes you felt confident about were basically gibberish to you. You had to start from square one, squeezing an entire month-long project into a week.

hi sweetie :) are you free to get lunch today? miss you 🩵

It was a text from your boyfriend, Jiseok. You didn’t get a chance to see him over the weekend because you remembered your project was due Friday. As much as you wanted to spend time with your boyfriend, the empty notebooks and blank Google Doc you had pulled up on your computer seemed to be screaming at you. You frowned as you typed a reply.

I’m sorry baby, I can’t :( I’m still really struggling with this project. Rain check for tomorrow?

Jiseok replied almost immediately, sending back a happy “ok!” and a loving message to remind you to take breaks. Well, his reminder remained unhelpful as your day full of work turned into a night full of work. Your “rain check” for lunch was pushed back again due to your late night, and this pattern continued for the rest of the week. Late night, no lunch, reschedule, repeat.

As the week went on you grew more tired, and Jiseok grew more worried. He hasn’t seen you in almost a week, so he decided it was time to do something. You watched as his name appeared on your phone. He had opted to FaceTime you.

“Hello?”

“Hi, honey.” Jiseok greeted you softly. “Are you feeling okay?” He didn’t bother to build up to the question. You looked so tired on the other end of the phone.

“Yeah-“ you yawned. “I’m good. Just a little stressed. Why?”

“(Y/N), I haven’t seen you in five days. I’ve hardly heard from you either. Have you been working this whole time?” You weren’t even looking at Jiseok on call. Instead, you were hunched over your laptop, typing furiously.

“Yes, Jiseok, I have been.” You blinked slowly, struggling to keep your eyes focused on your computer screen.

“(Y/N), how late were you up last night?” His question came out with a steady mix of confusion and concern. You took a few seconds to think about your answer.

“Probably… 3 a.m.?”

“And were you working the whole time?” You hummed in response. Jiseok sighed. “What time did you wake up this morning?”

“7:00.”

“You got four hours of sleep?” The frown of Jiseok’s face was prominent, but you were too occupied by your work to notice.

“I had to start early,” you argued.

“No, (Y/N), you really didn’t.” You didn’t respond. Deep down you knew he was right, but you couldn’t find it in you to admit it out loud. “Have you eaten today?”

You checked the time, letting out another yawn. “I’ll probably make another bowl of ramen soon.”

“Another?” Jiseok looked around at what he could see on your desk. Amidst all of your papers were empty bowls and used cups- all of which he assumed had been used for the same meal throughout the week so far. “That’s it,” he protested. “I’m coming over.”

“No,” you simply stated.

“Yes.”

“Jiseok, I need to get this project done.”

“(Y/N), you need to take a break. If you don’t let yourself rest you’re gonna burn yourself out if you haven’t already. I’m coming over, cooking you a proper meal, and forcing you to take a break.” You wanted to tell him no, to argue that the only thing you needed was to finish your work- but you stayed silent, clicking away on your laptop. “I’ll be there in 15 minutes. See you soon.”

☆

When Jiseok arrived at your place, he didn't show up empty-handed. He had brought the ingredients to make you your favorite meal, a bottle of water, and his favorite hoodie for you to wear.

“(Y/N)?” Jiseok called out into your seemingly empty home. “Where are you?”

“In my room,” you called back quietly. Jiseok made his way down the hallway to your room. When he opened the door, he found you slumped over your desk, shoulders shaking ever so slightly.

“(Y/N)-” You cut him off by getting up from your desk and rushing over to him. He wrapped you in his arms, taking note of the tears currently staining your cheeks. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this anymore,” you cried to him. “There’s no way I’ll get this project done on time, and I’ve already had so much time to work on it I can’t ask for an extension. It’s going to turn out horribly and I feel so terrible.” You finally let yourself cry, relieving the stress these past few days have put on you. “I’ve been working so hard and now all my hard work won’t even be worth it.”

Jiseok rubbed one of his hands up and down your back. “Your hard work won’t be for nothing. I think you just need to step away for a while and give yourself a break. Once you look at it after you’ve rested, maybe you’ll really like what you’ve done so far.” Jiseok waited for a response and didn’t get one. “I’m gonna go make you some food. Why don’t you go into the living room and turn on something for us to watch once the food is ready, hm?” You simply nodded in response, reluctantly letting go of your shared embrace and making your way toward the living room. Jiseok followed closely behind you, making his way to the kitchen to dig through his ingredients.

☆

As he was cooking, Jiseok felt a pair of arms wrap around him from behind.

“Food is almost ready,” he announced to you as he stirred the contents of the pot he had on the stovetop. “Did you pick what we’re watching?”

“Not yet,” you admitted. “I wanted us to pick it out together.” A comfortable silence fell over the kitchen. You felt as though you were physically soaking Jiseok in- taking in his warmth and the feeling of safety he provided to you. You placed a kiss on his shoulder. “Thank you for being here,” you were practically whispering. “I missed you.”

Jiseok turned in your embrace, wrapping you in his arms and giving you a light kiss. “There’s nowhere else I’d want to be. I’ll always be here for you.”