#Also me to myself: Never! I will forever be inconsistent!!!!!

[squarebracketsmileyface]

if we're talking about fob songs and sorry it's locked, may I suggest "American beauty/American Psycho"

specifically the lines

"I think I fell in love again, maybe I just took too much cough medicine"

"us we were pity sex, nothing more and nothing less"

and "all those dirty thoughts of me, they were never yours to keep"

ooooooooooooo so trueeee, it works for so much of S,IL honestly, like there are some lines that work for Jay and Tim, some for Jay and Alex in uni, some for Jay and Alex during MH, like. Perfect

little lyric analysis thingy under the thingy bobber

"I think I fell in love again, Maybe I just took too much cough medicine" Like, this one feels like Jay and Tim, specifically how I first planned to write them getting together which was gonna take a lot longer, because Jay was basically gonna go the Alex route and refuse to believe he liked Tim (tho not because he didn't wanna be gay, just because he still felt really fucking hurt by everything that happened with Alex) like, he was gonna make all sorts of ridiculous excuses for ages about why he couldn't possibly like Tim in that way. And I did kinda keep that in a little bit in chapter 3 of S,IL i think, just not to the same extent as i had it in the original plan.

The idea of Jay blaming medicine for his feelings towards Tim could be so interesting though, especially with the whole thing about Tim sharing his meds with Jay after they ran into the Operator in entry 72 and Jay had his seizure. Like, idk it feels like the kinda straws Jay would grasp at (especially since he seems to resistant to getting professional help for anything) as another excuse he'd use to avoid going to the doctors to get medication of his own.

"I'm the best worst thing that hasn't happened to you yet, The best worst thing" This line is definitely Jay and Alex in uni, it just is. They are both the best worst things that have happened to each other. Nearly all their problems stem from each other and their relationships over the years, whether that's platonic or sexual or whatever. And like, yeah Alex would probably have ended up getting tangled up with the Operator no matter what, but I do feel like everything would have been different (in S,IL as well as the canon) if he and Jay hadn't been as close as they were/known each other. because without Jay rediscovering the tapes Alex gave him, the MH youtube channel wouldn't have happened and Jay would most likely have just gone on with his life none the wiser, same with Tim. Brian would probably have been the only one still in at least a similar situation.

Also "best worst thing" is a weirdly nice descriptor, it scratches my brain a lot. And "best worst thing that hasn't happened to you yet" is perfect for main series Jaylex because like, the best worst thing that will ever happen to Jay? Dying in Alex's arms (cos that's what i wanna happen in S,IL. I want Jay to die in Alex's arms with Alex crying and telling him he loves him)

"You take the full, full truth, then you pour some out" is just chapter 3 of If It Ain't Broken lol. Like, literally this is what happens in that Chapter (which i should be uploading tomorrow? Maybe tonight but most likely tomorrow). Jay talks to his friends and only really tells them half of the truth and keeps the rest for himself so that he doesn't look like a bad person. its great. he's such a little bastard man and I love him. "And as we're drifting off to sleep, All those dirty thoughts of me, They were never yours to keep" Just like Alex in general wasn't Jay's to keep, especially not after what I have planned for chapter 6 :DDDD but like, to me this feels like it just kinda ties in with all of the stuff Jay and Alex avoided. Like, they never fucked in a bed, Jay never slept over after they hooked up, Alex never used sweet pet names with Jay unless it's during aftercare where he can pass it off as 'just being a good dom' and not have to own his words etc. Like, idk why that lyric just feels like the same kinda thing as all those.

"Us, we were pity sex, nothing more and nothing less" is Alex downplaying everything that happened in chapter 1 of S,IL. Like, you now in chapter 2 where he tells Jay he only called him baby and stuff like that because he was pretending he was Amy? That. It's Alex pretending that them sleeping together again, in a bed this time, and Jay staying there overnight didn't mean anything when really they did. They meant a whole lot to him, but then he realised it had been a bad idea because it'd make Jay get attached to him again and make Jay even more dead set on finding out what's going on, so he had to scramble for something to drive Jay away all over again.

[skrunksthatwunk]

you go to a lesbian blog and find it says women only!! no men allowed!!! and go oh! excuse me, um, what about other lesbians? plenty of lesbians are genderqueer... and they go well, okay, go fuck yourself tim chop off your sweaty dick and stop calling yourself a lesbian. you do not have a dick, actually. you think about that fact often, even though it does you no good. you do not tell this person that.

you go to another lesbian blog and it says women only and you try again, and this time they change it to wlw + nblw only (non-men who love non-men :D). and you'll say hey i appreciate that but gender's not really that cut and dry for a lot of people. someone could be both a man and nonbinary, for instance. i just worry that you're looking at nonbinary as a generic third gender, or an extension of womanhood. i mean yeah you include nblw in your tags but all your posts are about pussy-havers exclusively. what's with that? and they say go fuck yourself you pervy man pretending to be a lesbian. you tried to sneak in but i won't let you.

so you go to a lesbian blog with a dozen or so posts about queer people needing to be more weird about it and you sigh in relief. but you still see the men dni. that's odd. hoping for the best, you say hey! i know you mean well but please maybe don't put men dni at the end of the lovely posts on your lesbian blog bc some lesbians are men. and they'll be like ok!! well you're allowed ;) and you say no that's not. no. some men are lesbians not just me. you think about your own dicklessness and wonder if that's why you were given entry. and you add that even if male lesbians are allowed, there's no indication of that. how would anyone know without asking? and they're like ohh gotcha gotcha well men dni + this is for sapphics only!! and you'll be like ok well that treats the concepts of men and sapphics as mutually exclusive identities and i just told you that's not true and you agreed with me so.. i don't think that solves our problem. and they're like. ok. fine. men dni but genderfluid and multigender people are allowed! and you're like no see that's. that's still the same thing.. you're saying the same thing just with different words. if you don't want men to interact but you're fine with multigender/genderfluid/etc ppl interacting then you either don't see them as Real Men (because they don't reach a standard of Full Manhood) or Complete Men (because they're only Part-Time Men), both of which suggest that they are, in some way, not men or less-than men, which is invalidating and defeats the point of the exception in the first place (accommodation) OR that you don't really mean the dni which is confusing and inconsistent and makes guydykes feel weird and uncomfortable and excluded from the lesbian space you're trying to cultivate. and they're like um. ok. so. cishet men dni? and you're like well i think that makes more sense, but what if someone identifies as both a cishet man and a sapphic? again, if we're trying to accommodate the genderfucky populace then that has to be a possibility that is considered. and they say god you people are never happy. what do you want me to do? what am i supposed to say to keep the right men out? and you pause. you empathize with the need for a space free from dudes trying to fuck you straight and feminine. dudes who watch lesbian porn and joke about what they'd do if they were allowed into girls locker rooms. who look at you like a piece of meat, and like someone who looks at women like pieces of meat in the same way he does. you get it. you know. you want a space where you can be sapphic, too. that's why you came to these blogs in the first place. you brace yourself and you say well i don't know that there are "right men" to keep out. i don't know that there's any single label that would accomplish whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. you could go for "sapphics only" or "queers only" and i think that might be the closest thing to what you want, but it's never going to be perfect. creating any exclusive space is going to shut out people you didn't account for, and the broader the label, the more people will be shut out that you didn't want to shut out. and what about people who don't know if they're allowed? what of questioning transbians, where are they supposed to go? and, frankly, i think i might rather my dykey posts get read and appreciated by a gay guy who sees me as a man than a woman who only sees me as a sacred womb, pure from male perversions or violence or whatever. i think community might just be more complex than a dni can handle. and they look at you and say i don't want to not have a dni. i think you're too permissive. you can't just "what about" or microlabel your way into everything. go fuck yourself, i bet you're not even a lesbian anyway. go find a real problem to get mad about.

you go to a lesbian blog. you ignore the men dni because you know you probably don't even count to them. or maybe you do count and, out of respect for your manhood, they'd shun you accordingly. you try to feel okay about that. you scroll past dozens of posts about mediocre men and gagging at straight friends' boyfriends and how gross and undeserving men are of the beautiful women they couple up with and how all women should be gay so they can get treated right and and and and and. you finally find a post about curling into someone you love and feeling at peace and try to lose yourself in it. you know that feeling is what unites you, what makes you belong. you try to focus on it. you think about carding your hands through a butch's hair or lacing fingers with a femme and feeling warm and loved and more yourself than you ever have before. like this is who you're meant to be. you read about lesboys and butch boytoys and genderfucky dykes and big hairy deep-voiced wonderful women (like you want to be someday, like you wish you could make yourself) and you try to ignore the men dni underneath each and every post. and you daydream about meeting someone kind and earnest at a lesbian bar even though you don't think any such bars exist within three states of you and you can't drink and don't want to drink because you need to be in control of yourself at all times so you don't fuck up like you're always about to and here in the nonexistent lesbian bar you feel wanted and safe and in good company. you picture your ideal, happiest self. it is a mistake. ideal-you has a goatee. not the mascara one you smear on and call drag even though you know it's not drag, not really, the beard you call drag because you think everyone would look at you sadly if you told them it was just to pretend you had something out of your reach. a beard that's soft and that you grew and that cannot be smudged away if you get too comfortable with it. the dream shatters. your people pull away from you, their scoffs mixing with the mind-numbing gay girl bedroom pop you learned to settle for just to have something that almost resembled you, they all pull away and turn their backs and do not look at you. you're too close to being a man now, even though you're the same amount of man as before. and they know you're not supposed to interact with men, not as you would with dykes, at least. and it sours. it's all your imagination, all in your head, but it sours.

you sigh. you think about how small you are. how short, how narrow, how feeble. how your voice pitches up when you talk to strangers because it's easier to speak quietly when it carries more, and because you're nervous. because it's a chore to talk, like everything is. you think about testosterone. you think about how your family would look at you, the questions they would ask, your answers they would only pretend to accept. the uncomfortable glances and whispered questions they'd try to hide from you. you think about how small you are, and how small you will always be. how you don't know of a way to fix it, but even if there was one, no one would want you anymore. you'd be the only one thinking it made you a cooler dyke. you think about how you don't even want a T-voice all the time, how you'll never be able to switch it at will, because you don't know how and can't bring yourself to figure it out. you think about how your throat closes around every hint of your own attraction. how wanting is perverse, how wanting is invasive, how wanting is embarrassing and too vulnerable so it must stay anonymous, as an online witness, and how you can barely manage to form or maintain friendships because your brain makes you pull away, always spinning out and struggling to recover from the simplest of interactions. how they'll all leave you and you won't chase after them at all and how that will hurt them. how stuck you get. how it looks like nothing's holding you back, how that frustrates everyone who thought you were going to be more than you were. the people you love who understand except when it comes to being ghosted, being shut out. how you don't want to hurt them. how you can't tell them that because you're stuck. how you turn to stone when touched, how you never reach out, how you lose your speech and can't look at people, how your autism is fun and sexy until it becomes real and you never see them anymore, how much you longed for someone who knew everything without you having to explain, and who loved you anyway. how unreasonable you know that is to expect of anyone. you think about that not-even-real lesbian bar. you think about how you still can't drive. how you can't leave your home on your own, without dragging somebody into helping you. how you can't leave your body. how you can't leave your manhood behind.

you think about finding another lesbian blog and ignoring everything. about skimming it for the parts you can juice some meaning from. the parts men ignore and don't understand, and how typical of you it is to do so. or the parts where you're not welcome and you should accept that, because it's for lesbians only. how you are a lesbian anyway. how you're meant to choose lesbian or man, how each is a betrayal of some kind to yourself or your people, your family, your lovely strangers, your rare friendly acquaintances. about the parts that tell you you're not wanted, that you're ugly and lazy and gross and insert yourself everywhere without even asking. about the parts that tell you you are hated, and how lesbians are above it all by rejecting men. how lesbians are each blessed miracles. about the parts that say you should be ashamed of being whatever twisted confused freak you are, of everything, of looking and wanting or not looking or not wanting, of picking and choosing instead of taking it all in with a smile. after all, shouldn't you take it? or is your ego too fragile, as men's so often are? aren't you tired? good. we're not here for your consumption. and we sure as hell don't want your company or "community" or whatever. didn't you read the sign? no boys allowed. and if you want to come in you have to make up your mind. as if you haven't told them the only answer you have. you're both. you're both.

you know you broke the rule by interacting.

but it gets lonely sometimes. you wonder if they know.

[diorsluv]

infrunami (lh⁴³)

❝ in which you’ve always been in love with your childhood best friend, but he would always be the right person at the wrong time ❞

wc: 5.8k

warnings: god there’s so much angst, reader is kinda inconsistent, mentions of blood/injury, mutual pining, idiots in love, running away from “rejection”, reader is touchy with jack and besties with quinn, no use of y/n, if i missed any lmk!!

notes ) when i tell you this took me WEEKS and WEEKS just to compile a simple 5k fic.. i think it’s kinda obvious where i stopped and started back up but i tried to blend it in as best i could!! this will be a two parter simply because i was draining myself trying to drag it on, so stay tuned (might take a while)! AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST thank you to my wonderful, amazing, supportive wife @dior-roses for beta reading this (i was terrified)

As a kid, you always moved wherever the Hughes moved—it was something about the bond between your fathers that couldn’t keep your families apart for more than a week. Regardless of how many times you moved, you never felt alone. You and Luke were in the same grade, and Quinn and Jack were always looking out for you two, so isolation was never a concern for you.

Although you were inseparable with Luke, Quinn had always been your best friend. The four-year age difference between the two of you was almost invisible, and throughout your youth, you would always find yourself in his room, staring at the ceiling as you talked about everything. 

You would tell him about your silly school girl crushes, and he would ramble to you about hockey and all the petty drama that happened around him. In fact, he was the reason you learned hockey in the first place. Your father could never keep your attention on the sport for over five minutes, but the way Quinn talked about it so lovingly was what motivated you to step on the ice. 

Your love for hockey spurred your relationship with not only Quinn, but also Luke and Jack, to grow closer than ever. Every day in school, you and Luke would gush about the games you had watched the night prior, and every day after school, all four of you would head off to practice for your respective club teams. If you weren’t already inseparable from the way your families were bound together by an invisible rope, then you were forever connected through hockey. 

You quit after a few years to pursue more academic routes, but the sport never left your spirit. There were many occasions where the boys would refuse to play if you weren’t there, simply because your presence was the only thing to motivate them to get on the ice, especially if they were having a bad week.

Somehow, though, along the way, you caught feelings. Feelings that were far too heavy to have just surfaced from the depths of your heart. No, what you felt for Luke seemed to have always been creeping just between the line of what was certain and what was unknown. There was no other explanation as to why you couldn’t handle being in the same room as him without being on the verge of exploding. There was no other reason as to why you could spend months on end with either of his brothers but couldn’t last one minute sitting beside him. 

As soon as you came to that revelation, you were done for. It was over. You would rather die than acknowledge the feelings you caught for the boy that had been by your side since you were born. Because of that, you spent all your time with your best friend and his younger brother, and both your families sensed the shift as soon as it happened.

Especially Luke.

Oh, the poor boy, his heart dropped into his stomach when he realized you were avoiding him. You held your breath every time he stepped into the same room as you, let alone when he tried to stand remotely close to you. You diverted your attention away from him as much as you could, and the boy you once knew as your other half now seemed to be universes away. 

It was your doing, but in a way, it was his. How dare he make you fall for him? It wasn’t fair. Not to you, and definitely not to him. It wasn’t fair how he could make you fold in seconds with the way he looked at you from the other side of the room but simultaneously have a girl wrapped around his arm trying to take all his attention away from you. He was the only boy on your mind, but he always managed to push you to the darkest parts of his brain, putting you on hold when the more important girls were right in front of him. 

If only you knew. 

Quinn bounded down the stairs of your lake house, which was conveniently right next to the Hughes’, with an old framed photo in his hand. “Hah! I was right!” His exclamations took your attention away from the pasta you were cooking as you now turned to his self-righteous figure. “You would never let go of that stupid plushie.”

The two of you were arguing over what (and who) you were and were not inseparable with just prior to his search for the picture, and he claimed there were multiple photos of you hugging your favorite Elmo plushie. There was a mutual agreement that Luke was one of the things—or rather, people—you couldn’t fathom to be away from, but neither you nor Quinn had to verbally confirm it. There was no need. 

And, to be completely honest, Quinn had barely spoken about his youngest brother throughout the time you’d been spending at the lake houses. A few years back, you had reluctantly told him how you felt about Luke, and ever since then, he’d made it his mission to make you feel the most comfortable you could possibly be whilst sharing a connected lake house with the boy you’ve loved since you were children. The eldest saw the way you tensed up when you recognized his brother’s footsteps creaking down the stairs when it came time to eat breakfast, and he sure as hell saw the way your eyes blew wide whenever you accidentally made contact with him. 

It scared you how much Quinn seemed to notice about you, especially since he and his brothers were all busy with their demanding careers that left little to no time to be tending to some childhood friend who was stuck with a crush on the most recently debuted boy. Yes, he was still your best friend (that much hadn’t changed since your childhood), but all you could do was FaceTime each other, and even then, it was difficult to find time. It was the same with Jack; sometimes, they would be too tired for practice; other times, they would be exhausted from a home game and possibly frustrated had they lost; and most of the time, they weren’t even home, so the time difference, albeit miniscule, was still difficult to navigate considering you were a busy person too. 

That meant that you met up as much as you could and you stuck by each other’s side until you were forced apart by the demands of being a professional hockey player. All that time together when you were younger meant you struggled to be without each other as you got older—maybe your parents should’ve realized that, but then again, it was probably their intention. 

“Okay, I did let go of it. Multiple times, actually,” you refuted with a small frown, the expression on your face practically meaningless as your best friend laughed. It only egged him on further, evoking a complaint from your lips. “Quinn! It’s not funny!” 

“I mean, it kinda is.” He struggled to stifle his laughter as he rounded the kitchen island to stand beside you. Your hand mindlessly dragged the wooden spoon through the soft noodles floating around in the boiling hot water, and he wondered how your skin wasn’t burning. Gently removing your hand from the utensil and replacing it with his own, the eldest Hughes boy continued his teasing once he looked at your still-upset face. “You’re such a kid sometimes, you know that?”

Your eyes practically rolled into the back of your head in annoyance. Quinn always said that to you. Always. He never failed to address you as ‘kid,’ and no matter what you did, he always managed to bring it back to how you ‘were such a kid.’ You huffed, “You’re so fucking annoying, Quinny. I’m gonna go piss off Jack. Keep cooking, and if you burn the house down, you’re paying for all of it.” 

“You’re forgetting I’m a millionaire.” His laughter filled your ears once again, and your only response was the finger you lifted at him over your shoulder.

After walking out of the kitchen of your own lake house, you took a few strides over to the sliding doors that led to the connected portion of your two homes. Your father and Jim had built it together, way back when all four of you were far too young to understand what normal lake houses were supposed to look like. It was essentially a screened-in sunroom overlooking the absolute beauty of a lake out front. They managed to hook up a large, flat-screen television on the wall, throwing a couple bean bag chairs and a rug into the room. The rest of the furnishing was left completely up to you and the Hughes brothers, so the furniture would change up every few visits. 

Oftentimes, you would find Luke there, just sitting against the one wall that had a bit of a bump-out. He liked the way it felt against his back, like it actually supported him compared to the fluffy chairs that laid in the middle of the room. Whether he be on his phone, playing video games, or reading a book that was required for summer class, he would always be in the sunroom. The floor directly before the bump-out was much more worn compared to the rest of the room, the discolored wood showing just how often the youngest Hughes would find himself in the confines of the area.

There were many times when Luke would flee to the sunroom in his times of need, wanting to be alone with his thoughts. If anyone were to try to enter the room and speak to him, he wouldn’t respond. He would only ever talk to you. You were the one and only person to talk him out of his thoughts, the only one who could convince him to leave the room. Those nights were comprised of him refusing to leave your bed and whining if you got up in the middle of the night. 

You missed it. 

But you weren’t kids anymore. And, again, it was your fault you weren’t close anymore. You deliberately distanced yourself from him. 

After pulling yourself away from your own thoughts, you tugged the Hughes’ sliding door open, the smell of freshly grilled shrimp welcoming you into the cozy house.

“Hey, sweetie,” Ellen’s soothing voice called out to you, smiling at you from her place at the kitchen sink. “How’s the pasta going?” The sound of the running water could barely be heard over the hockey game playing on the television, your father entertaining Jim and his youngest son with light chirps towards the losing team. 

You could feel Luke’s eyes set on you. Shrugging, you replied, “I told Quinny to take over and not burn the house down.” 

This was a regular occurrence whenever you came back to the lake for the break. You, your mother and Ellen would split up the food duties so that there was a lot of food but didn’t take too much time to cook everything. Quinn and Jack would help out a bit, but they would only ever take on the physical tasks. Luke used to help out when you were children, but ever since the distance you wedged between the two of you, he stopped helping out as much. 

You looked around for Jack, trying your hardest to avoid Luke’s gaze in your search for his older brother. Ellen had now returned to her cooking, and the fathers were too invested in their conversation for you to intervene. Your eyes were darting everywhere but at your ex-best friend, and as soon as you made eye contact, you couldn’t look away.

It was too difficult.

It was so stupid.

It wasn’t fair. 

His hazel eyes were too pretty. The way he looked at you made it hard to deny him the satisfaction of giving him attention. He looked at you like you hung the stars and the moon, but you couldn’t see that. You were blinded by your abundance of self-deprecating thoughts to notice. 

“Hey,” he mumbled, voice being drowned out due to the other activities occurring throughout the house. You mouthed the same word back, fighting the urge to walk over to him and apologize for avoiding him, apologize for distancing yourself from the one person you know you could never live without. If you allowed yourself to break, you would never forgive yourself. He doesn’t like you back, you told yourself. You can’t embarrass yourself.

So, instead of going with your heart, you went with your brain and made your way upstairs. If Jack wasn’t downstairs, then he had to have been upstairs doing God knows what. 

“Jack?” You called out, running your hand along the railing of the staircase once you neared the top. 

“In here!” His muffled voice came through the door to his bedroom, and you’ve seen him in enough compromising positions to the point where you couldn’t even be bothered to pretend to be cautious. Once you opened the door, you were met with four gazes planted straight on you. You suddenly felt exposed despite your thick pajamas and only felt some sort of reassurance when you found Jack’s eyes. “Look who finally came up here!”

All four boys sat on Jack’s bed with controllers in their hands, the game on the TV now paused as their attention focused solely on you. You knew Trevor, Alex, and Cole, but you hadn’t seen them in so long that it felt awkward. “Oh, uh, hey. Quinn’s probably gonna burn my house down and I didn’t wanna be down there with Lukey, so,” you trailed off, pursing your lips. 

“You’re still on that?” Alex questioned with furrowed eyebrows, placing the controller in his lap. You cocked your head to the side, not quite understanding what the boy was talking about. He continued, “I thought you got over him, like, months ago.”

Right. You had forgotten all about your accidental drunk confession the last time Jack’s friends were over. Last summer, your revelation was fresh on your mind, and you and Luke were still as inseparable as ever. His friends had also visited the lake house at the same time everyone else was staying over, so it made for a ton of chaos and little to no privacy. 

Luke and his friends had left the house to go out, and for the first time, you stayed behind. Trevor and Cole were sitting at the fire pit outside, beers in their hands as they discussed the upcoming camps they were to attend. You were on your fifth drink, and although Jack was keeping an eye on you, he hadn’t noticed how you had accidentally walked into the bathroom while Alex was in the process of throwing up. 

In the midst of your tipsy daze and the fact that it just so happened to be Luke’s bathroom, you called out for him. “Luke? Is that you? You know I’m always telling you not to drink that much, stupid.” You used your foot to shut the door behind you as you placed your drink onto the counter. 

Alex, confused but sobering up, looked up at you with puffy eyes. Only then did he notice how you were much more than tipsy. 

Your gaze was blurry and your words were beginning to slur, “If I didn’t like you so much, maybe I would be more mad at you. I don’t know why I like you, anyway. You’re always being so stupid, ‘cause you can’t see that all those girls are only ever using you for your brother or your body. They’re so mean. And I’m your best friend, not them! You always ditch me when you find another girl, and then they say shit about me behind my back. I don’t like them. What do you even see in them? God, what do I even see in you?

“My stomach hurts. I think I’m thinking about this too much. Or maybe I’m thinking about you too much. I hate you so much, Lukey, but I can’t ever hate you. You’re too pretty. This is so unfair and my head is pounding. Oh, God, I’m gonna throw up. Move over.” After your little monologue, which was definitely not directed towards the person on the receiving end, you were quick to fall to the ground beside the toilet and dip your head past the ceramic seat. 

Alex brought his right hand up to flush the toilet so you didn’t accidentally stuff your face in a load of his vomit, using his other hand to rub soothing circles on your back. “‘m not Luke, but you’re safe with me.” He continued his motions throughout the five-minute duration of your illness, bringing his hand up to massage your head once you were sure you were done.

Your head was pounding and your ears began to ring, but you were visibly more sober compared to how you were a few minutes ago. Barely able to lift your head, you thanked your friend with a weak smile.

He only returned your expression and brought you up to your feet, leading you out of the restroom and towards Jack’s room. It obviously wasn’t the best option to bring you to Luke’s room, albeit being the default room after a long night, so his older brother’s bedroom would have to do. 

Alex laid you down onto the mattress and tucked you in, lightly patting your cheek as you thanked him once more. He only chuckled and squeezed your hand reassuringly, “Anytime.”

And then you were left alone in the confines of Jack’s room.

You chuckled awkwardly at the memory, shaking your head in response. “Nope. Still on it.” Your hands brought themselves up to your thighs, rubbing your palms against your thick pants in an attempt to wipe away the tension in the room.

Trevor and Cole were aware of your feelings as well; you were sure everyone in the house knew. They only shot you sympathetic smiles, their priorities set on finishing the NHL 23 game plastered all over the screen. 

“I’m sure you’ll get over it.”

“We believe in you.”

Their words, no offense, meant nothing to you. They were great people to hang around, but they weren’t the best guys to turn to when you were in a time of need, especially since you weren’t very close to them. They had their own issues that didn’t concern you, and your issues were ever so far from their minds.

After a few beats of silence, the mood of the room began to slowly eat away at you. If you were to open your mouth and bite down, you might as well have taken a chunk out of the thick tension lingering in the room. It was even more awkward knowing that Luke was much closer to them compared to you, and you knew they would let things slip eventually. 

Not that he didn’t already know, though.

The four boys exchanged glances with one another, shrugging in unison before resuming their gameplay. You took it as your cue to stay, seeing as they didn’t seem bothered by your presence, and you were much more comfortable in Jack’s room than you were downstairs. 

Allowing yourself to flop onto the boy’s soft mattress, you fished your phone out from the pocket of your pajama pants, finding solace in the way the friends laughed with each other. You remained like that for about twenty minutes before Jack beckoned you over to the edge of his bed, where he was sitting, to ask you for your opinion on something.

After dishing him your thoughts—which barely seemed to help him—you stayed snug at the foot of the bed, extending your legs out so that they lay atop his. It was one of your more typical positions when spending time with Jack whilst he was playing video games. Whether it be with his friends or with his brothers, you always found yourself comfortably overlapping your limbs with him, and today was no exception. 

You both shuffled around a bit until you found a comfortable position. You sat with your legs resting on his thighs and your head laying on his shoulder; he sat with his forearms resting on your left leg. The others paid no mind to your odd positioning, their minds too preoccupied with the competitiveness flooding through the screen. 

So you stayed like that for a while. For a long while, actually. You only lifted your head when the sound of light knocking echoed against Jack’s door once more, and soon after, you found his youngest brother cracking the door open and peeking through. 

His eyes had yet to land on your figure. “Hey, Mom’s looking for—”

Before he could utter your name, he looked you dead in the eye. 

“Oh.” He went silent for a few seconds, his eyes flickering between you and his brother. Him, of all people, should be the least surprised to see you cuddled up with Jack. “You.”

There was a certain poison in his tone that struck you right where it hurt the most. It was the way he spat through gritted teeth and looked at you with so much indifference. (It was really a façade, but you were too entranced under his gaze to realize that he could never bring himself to hate you.) The whole room seemed to shift uncomfortably with the way the tension flowed between you and Luke. 

No matter how hard you tried to mask your pain and your desperation for him to notice you, you would never be able to hide how you really felt. Not with him. 

“You can tell her I’ll be right down,” you murmured, slowly moving your legs from Jack’s lap, but before you could even finish your sentence, Luke disappeared as quickly as he came. When you looked back in the door frame, all you were met with was a blank wall and the faint image of where the boy stood before.

You could feel Jack lightly pat your thigh, trying his hardest to support you with the little attention he was diverting toward you. With a small sigh, you pushed yourself off the mattress and wiped your palms against the fabric of your pants, reluctantly leaving the room. Alex wished you good luck, but his fleeting words flew straight through one ear and out the other. 

Downstairs, the fathers were still loud as ever, and the sizzling in the kitchen now turned into the delicious aroma of freshly cooked lunch. Quinn’s voice echoed up the staircase, and you could hear how he attempted to entertain his mom as she waited for you to come back down. 

As soon as your feet hit the bottom floor, you could already sense Quinn’s eyes on you. He looked like he was being held hostage, and you could argue that he was begging you for help. He wasn’t the only Hughes boy with his gaze locked on you, but he was the only one you would give attention to.

“Oh, look! Just who you were looking for, Mom,” the eldest boy managed to divert the attention away from him and towards you. You scowled at him just before Ellen turned around, plastering on a smile as you walked towards them.

You gently placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder, “I was just up in Jack’s room. Luke said you were looking for me?”

“Oh, that’s right! Could you grab that fancy set of plates from the cabinet in your house, sweetie? It’s too high to reach for any of us parents, and you know Lukey and Quinn don’t help out with anything anymore,” Ellen spoke, evoking an argument from her oldest son. It only took one glare from her to shut him up, and you couldn’t help but giggle at his complacence. 

You nodded your head with a grin, still fighting more giggles as you swerved past Quinn. He lunged at you, bringing his hands up to your waist as if he was going to tickle you, but you managed to jump just out of his reach before continuing on your journey to grab the plates Ellen wanted. 

Once you made it back into your house, you dragged a chair up to the counter and climbed onto the cushioned seat, opening the cabinet and setting your gaze on the fake fine china. You only grabbed a few at a time, not wanting to break anything in fear of your mother getting mad at you. Eventually, you had gotten down to the last few plates, and once you had them in your hands, you closed the cabinet and stepped down from the chair.

Perhaps you should’ve been more aware of how high you were, because somehow, the bottom plate smashed against the countertop and shattered in your hands, causing you to let out a small scream. The porcelain had broken into small pieces, cutting into your palms, but you managed to place the reset of the plates down before beginning to worry about the amount of cuts you had on your hands. 

“Shit.” You mumbled under your breath, looking at the floor to see how many shards were scattered around the floor. Your only form of protection on the soles of your feet were the fluffy socks you were wearing, and the distance between the pieces was far enough to where you could step past them. 

As soon as you deemed it safe to walk normally, you swiveled on your heel to analyze the messy situation you found yourself in. You definitely should have been more careful, and now you had to clean up all the small plate shards with cuts in your hands. Fuck, your hands were still bleeding, and it hadn’t even occurred to you that it was now dripping down your arms. 

All you could do was stand in place, shock still coursing in your veins. The sink on the island was in the middle of the plate murder, and you didn’t want to risk accidentally stepping on something sharp. Before you could even begin to make your way to the half-bath near the kitchen, you heard footsteps bounding through the sunroom. The glass door slid open far too aggressively—so much so that you thought it would shatter, too—and you assumed it was Quinn coming to check on you.

The plate breaking was loud enough to be heard from the other house, especially with the connected room, but you didn’t think it would be that big of a deal for him. You were usually trustworthy enough to not accidentally hurt yourself, but this was a prime example of how you really weren’t.

You didn’t want any questions to be asked, and because it was Quinn, you knew you would get made fun of before being helped. “Don’t worry—”

“Holy shit, are you okay?” The voice that spoke up was not Quinn. 

Immediately snapping your head around to look at the boy standing there, frozen, your frown contorted into a grimace. “Luke—shit—hey,” you trailed off, unsure of what to say to him. “Uh, yeah, I’m fine, I was just being stupid and—”

“What the fuck happened? You’re gonna bleed out if you don’t wash your hands and wrap them up.” His heavy footsteps inched closer and closer until he was standing right in front of you, taking your forearms into his calloused hands and inspecting how bad your injuries were. “C’mon, we gotta wash this off.” 

Luke led you to the bathroom as if it was his own house, running the tap and allowing the water to get most of the red liquid off your hands before taking a clean towel and gently tapping the rest off. 

He was unbearably gentle with you. You felt ashamed to think of how fast your heart was beating at such a simple gesture; as if him caring about you meant anything except the fact that growing up together meant you both cared for each other when someone was hurt. Sighing to hide your true feelings, you slowly took your hands away from his touch, “Luke, I’m fine. Really. You don’t have to do this.”

His eyebrows furrowed, “What do you mean? Of course I’m going to clean you up if you hurt yourself.” He immediately took your hands back into his and resumed his actions, quickly grabbing ointment from the cabinet above the toilet. Squeezing out a dollop of the cream, he soothingly rubbed it against your wounds with a focused frown adorning his features.

You took the chance to admire him candidly. He was so worried about you, and it was so cute. He wouldn’t even let you take care of yourself because he wanted to do it for you, and he was so serious about it. You had always thought his focused face was adorable, even when you were kids, but as you grew up, it only got cuter and cuter. Fuck, you were so gone for him.

You hadn’t even realized you were staring until he looked up at you and immediately looked back down at your hands. He cleared his throat awkwardly and questioned, “Does it hurt?” 

“Hm?” You snapped yourself out of your trance, your face heating up with the unexpected eye contact. “Oh, uh, no. It doesn’t hurt.” The pain you were feeling came more from your heart than it did from your body. It hurt to be in such close proximity to the boy you longed so deeply for. The awkward silence floating between the two of you pained you even more. 

Luke nodded and rummaged through the drawers until he found gauze, taking great care to wrap it around your hands without causing you too much discomfort. When he finished, all he did was usher you out of the bathroom with a hand on your lower back, turning off the lights without so much as a word. 

Only when you entered the kitchen did a small mumble leave the boy’s lips. “Try to be more careful next time, okay? Can’t have you going around injuring yourself and shit, or you’re gonna make me—us worry too much.” He cleared his throat after his slip-up, hoping you didn’t hear what he said. You did. “Oh, and Jack told me to let you know the guys are throwing a party tonight. He said to invite you so you could buy cups and shit, but you’re kinda . . . banged up right now.”

“It’s fine. I’ll go grab stuff from the store later—”

“No!” Luke exclaimed, his eyes blowing wide once he realized how loud he protested your suggestion. “I mean, no, it’s okay. I’ll go get the stuff. You shouldn’t drive with your hands all cut up like that. They don't care who buys what.”

You blinked at him. He was acting so weird; it was almost like he cared about you. But it didn’t matter. The others were throwing a party, which meant there were going to be tons of girls all over him, and it wouldn’t be right for you to get mad if you were the one who caused the rift between you two.

With a shrug, you silently agreed to his proposal and turned to grab the remaining set of plates still sitting on the counter. You couldn’t even take two steps before Luke was already sliding ahead of you and taking the ceramic platters into his arms. “Luke, you really don’t have to do all of this. I’m fine, look,” you showed him your hands, front and back, to try and convince him to let you do something. 

“No, you’re hurt. And I wouldn’t be a good best friend if I made you injure yourself more.”

Best friend.

Two very opposing emotions coursed through your veins. On one hand, the term ‘best friend’ still sent a pang through your chest, knowing you would never be more to him than just a best friend. But on the other hand, it relieved you to know that he still considered you close enough to be his best friend. 

God, you were such a mess. You were running away from him in fear of rejection, but then you couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him. What the hell was wrong with you?

Eventually, the two of you made it back into his house, the boy announcing your arrival and placing the plates down onto the dining table. He immediately found his spot back on the couch in between the fathers like before, and you instantly got hounded by both the mothers’ questions being launched at you all at once.

“I’m fine, Mom,” you grimaced. You attempted to pull your hands away from her inspecting gaze, but she brought them right back to her face. “Mom, it doesn’t even hurt anymore! Lukey already put medicine on it and wrapped them up, anyway!” You were growing impatient, and your complaints slowly turned into whines. 

Thankfully, as soon as she heard Luke’s nickname leave your mouth, she dropped your hands back to your sides and grinned widely at you.

“Well, then! I’m sure you’re just fine, aren’t you?”

You sighed begrudgingly. “Yes, Mom.” You were just happy she stopped nagging you.

What you didn’t know was that she and Ellen were in pain watching their two children stay so far away from each other for such a long time. The parents always thought you two would have confessed by the time you graduated high school, but you were in college and Luke was having an amazing rookie season. It clearly didn’t work out the way they thought it would have.

You also didn’t know that Luke’s heart practically exploded out of his chest when he heard you use his nickname so nonchalantly. He always overheard you addressing him as Lukey to his brothers, but you never did it when you knew he was listening. It was almost as if saying it made your mouth run dry. 

And it did.

It finally came time to eat lunch, and your stomach was threatening to growl before you all sat down at the table. Trevor, Alex, and Cole decided to eat at a restaurant instead, encouraging Jack to eat with your families rather than hanging out with them. So he stayed.

There was a specific order in which you sat. There were five members of the Hughes family and three members of your family, meaning there were eight seats total; the rectangular table fit the usual number of people perfectly. The fathers would sit on either end of the table, and the mothers would sit to their right. You and Jack sat next to your mothers, while Luke sat beside you and Quinn beside Jack. 

It was a routine. It never changed. Ever.

Not when Jack kissed you on New Years. He still had to sit opposite to you at the table. Not when you and Luke had the biggest verbal fight in your life, leaving you both with scars on your knees. And especially not when you finally recognized the feelings you had for your best friend.

And as you sat in your spot, with Luke’s thigh pressed against yours, you realized that maybe loving him wasn’t all that bad.

— diorsluv 2024

[thephooka]

Happy Webcomic Day! My webcomic White Noise is a labor of love--according to Procreate, this page took me 15.5 hours to complete.* Here's a look into that process!

Some other notes:

The thumbnails are done on graph paper and I script while I do them--there is no separate written script for White Noise. I usually spent a couple hours on weekends as needed thumbnailing, sometimes at a coffee shop or at home listening to records.

I then set up the file in Photoshop, so I can lay in the text and use the template I have with bleeds already set up. The text is rasterized and I shuttle the file over to my iPad via Airdrop.

The bulk of the actual work is done in Procreate, which records timelapses that I sometimes share to my Patreon. I usually spend a couple hours most nights after my day job or on the bus commuting doing this.

Once everything art-wise is done, I shuttle the file back over to my desktop to re-set in the text, add a stroke around the speech bubbles (Procreate doesn't have that took fsr) and do the resizing/exporting for web.

On Sunday mornings I get up, queue the page and write the page descriptions. I don't spend any time on the page descriptions outside of that.

Also, this process goes for the whole first arc of White Noise. I'm done with that arc (which means you can binge the whole thing I'm js!!) and am experimenting with some different methods these days, but my workflow is still generally the same.

*Some more talk about the labor (and burnout) involved below the cut:

This particular page (and most of the pages I did in 2023) took a lot longer than normal because I was heading into a burnout period that I'm still lowkey in/recovering from. It's obvious to me now in retrospect watching the timelapse here and seeing how much noodling I'm doing and how much I'm struggling with the process, but at the time I was just very frustrated generally. When I'm not burned tf out pages take maybe 10 hours max.

2023 was a pretty stressful year--lots of big life changes, uncertainty, pet death, health issues--so it's no wonder it propelled me into burnout, but it just goes to show that even the slowest and steadiest pace is not sustainable forever. I've been doing one page a week following this general process for over a decade! And I stuck to that pace because I knew it was one I could maintain. But even so, by the end of this arc I found myself working more and more slowly, not really looking forward to the work, feeling anxious about being behind, unhappy with the finished work, and extremely annoyed with myself for not being able to give it my all right there at the finish line.

I did stop for a while after the epilogue and took a more or less complete break from drawing for about a month--the longest I have EVER gone without drawing, much less working on White Noise--which did help, but these days my ability to work is...inconsistent. I should probably take another total break, but I'm reluctant. What if my passion never comes back? What if people forget about WN? It's already pretty obscure, and with the general social media collapse, it's harder than ever to get people to read my work. Now that I've left Hiveworks, WN doesn't even get the benefit of being linked to other comics (although objectively very, very few readers actually got referred to my comic that way.) And frankly, I'm also just too proud to go too long without comic updates. I've always told myself, I might not be the best artist or the fastest worker or make a popular comic, but I'm consistent. Difficult to let that go.

This is all to say that webcomics are hard. We do them because we love them, we have stories to tell, we are seized with the human compulsion to create. We spend hours of our time, almost always on top of the paying work that allows us to eat, to make something that we then give away for free. It has consequences on us that the reader doesn't often see, no matter how careful we are about it. If you ask me, webcomics deserve to be valued more.

Happy Webcomic Day! Read webcomics!

[zombie-bait]

The Death of a Vampire

Lestat as a protagonist just works so incredibly well and a very significant aspect of that is him being Anne Rice's self-insert. Lived experience can be critical when it comes to writing a good story and many memorable novels will feature elements of that. Anne is built different, though. Lestat (book 2 onwards) is basically Anne's journal for dealing with her grievances and trauma, which, on its own, is a very questionable method of writing. More often than not, it causes him to be characterized inconsistently between books because Anne's own opinions have changed. But it also makes him so real.

You follow his struggles with religion, you see him yearn for forgiveness from a god that has seemingly abandoned him a long time ago and you feel it. The passage I will never get over is in the early chapters of The Vampire Lestat, when Lestat has a breakdown over his mother's (and frankly his own) mortality. He struggles and he cries and he can't get out of bed because there's nothing he can do. Eventually he starts to live again, forces himself to.

But.

"I wandered into the church and on my knees I leaned against the wall and I looked at the ancient statues and I felt the same gratitude looking at the finely carved fingers and the noses and the ears and the expressions on their faces and the deep folds in their garments, and I couldn’t stop myself from crying. At least we had these beautiful things, I said. Such goodness. But nothing natural seemed beautiful to me now! The very sight of a great tree standing alone in a field could make me tremble and cry out. Fill the orchard with music. And let me tell you a little secret. It never did pass, really."

I think about those last two sentences a lot. I think about them even more since Anne Rice passed away.

Every page of Interview is spent talking about death and yet (imo) it's only in TVL that you really feel it. Louis in book 1 welcomes death quite readily because, besides his toxic boyfriend and their traumatized daughter, he doesn't have much to live for. He's basically given up by the time Lestat appears. The greatest torture, to Louis, is the knowledge that he can live forever on the suffering of others.

But Lestat is the complete opposite. He wants to listen to music, to explore Paris, to perform on any stage that will take him, to embrace the man he loves and to send his ailing mother letters of his accomplishments. Death matters most to those who are desperate to live and god is he desperate. He's haunted by his mother's sickness, by the wolves on the mountain that threaten to end his life before he's even lived it, the witches place that reeks of meaningless suffering. And in a way, the dark gift provides opportunity to escape that. But it is still death. It takes away Nicki in a very literal way and takes away his mother in a more personal one. Magnus, like death, chose Lestat arbitrarily. He sees the cellar of blonde corpses and knows that he was only one of dozens to meet an untimely death with no explanation.

Lestat also really wants you to know that he is, truly, a good person. He must be. He swears to only hunt criminals and then goes back on that two pages later. He reshapes stories to present himself as the noble protagonist and the audience has no choice but to believe him. He wants, desperately, to be loved for all that he is, man and monster. He wants to be the hero.

He's this awful, fascinating, very human man so clearly born out of the internal struggle to find meaning and love in a cruel, unpredictable world we all tend to share. He's made up of incredibly basic and powerful human desires hidden behind a mask of bravado and I can't recalling seeing another protagonist like him.

(Quick mention: This isn't some kind of "wow Anne Rice is an incredible author who can do no wrong" piece. She's written a lot of fucked up and bad shit that cannot be easily brushed over. But I don't think I'll ever get over reading TVL for the first time. To read someone bare their soul in such a way creates a truly unique experience. A lot of characters in a lot of pieces of media face death, but it's rare to see a character face mortality in such a personal way.)

(Also odds are I've written similar posts to this before but shhhhh these sad gay vampires are all I have)

[babacontainsmultitudes]

Ngl getting worried that "Sparrow doesn't like Normal" thing has been said so much on the show that the actual cast forgot that isn't true ......

Hi anon! Okay first of all, this was a very cathartic ask to receive, to the point that it kind of cracked me up when I first read it, so thank you, you were so real for this. I can empathize with this sentiment (though I had no plans on voicing it) and I've felt similarly for… A while honestly.

You sent this back in December (heh. classic baba.), and while I didn't forget, honestly I intended to answer this in a manner that's a bit more. Organized but… I sort of lost sight of where I wanted to go with things, to be honest with you, and I didn't wanna leave you hanging forever! Still, a couple notes and tangentially-related thoughts…

(Oh, maybe before we get into it- I assume based on the nature of this ask that you probably read this post of mine, but perhaps I'll leave it here as additional context for anyone who happens to find themselves reading this).

Okay, in Will's case to be totally real I've never confidently felt that he realizes that it's not true? If my memory serves, the first time the idea comes up at all is in episode 17:

Which irked me a bit at the time, in part because to me it feels pretty blatantly discordant with Sparrow's characterization- in general but also since he literally says this during the dance scene:

but even more so because it feels very inconsistent with Normal's degree of shock during this same scene. All the same, for a while I could still look past it, on the basis that y'know it's a very teenage thing to make mountains out of molehills and leap to increasingly cynical conclusions the way Normal tends to do, and so perhaps it was all intentional, and as both Sparrow and Normal went through a bit of growth and development, things would slowly turn out alright. :0 A bit willfully naïve, I suppose! But what can you do.

In Anthony's case… I've actually been pretty happy with what he's given us of Sparrow for the past little while, honestly. Sigh but still now and then Anthony will say things offhandedly like this (transcribing myself from episode 47 since the transcript isn't out yet):

Anthony: (…) The only thing keeping you together is the absolute ignorance you have of the fact that maybe the only person who ever showed you any real affection in the last couple years of your life is dead, and the fact that you don't know is all that keeps you going. But the only thing that keeps me going is [ADVERTIZEMENT].

And while that joke lead-in was very funny, it's also just. Objectively not true? Like even aside from all the instances of Sparrow being very affectionate with Norm (including in the dance scene), the other teens? Lark? Rebecca???? All of them have shown Normal affection in one way or another throughout the course of the show. Like, I get that he probably mostly did it for the joke but. Eh, still rubs me the wrong way I suppose.

As for the rest of the cast… It's hard to say, and I guess less important at the end of the day. The other teens' responses to Norm in the last episode make sense for the most part given their POVs imo, so while frustrating to a degree, I can't really fault them for it. Still… Hm, in Scary's case I briefly discussed what I would sort have wanted/liked to come from her own interactions with Sparrow after episode 37 here, and tbh I suppose everything outlined there is still more or less what my ideal scenario would have looked like!

So honestly I suppose that's it anon! I could talk more but I would most definitely begin to stray off topic if I did lol. Thank you kindly for the ask! 💜

[strobichie]

just sae, forever.

♡⸝⸝ summary: poor you decided to replay ddlc, but instead you were stuck in an unideal situation. this is part two of just sae!

little note: i didn't expect my last post to get 30+ likes XD, i was never good at writing per se, regardless i'm delighted to see people enjoy my small short fic even if it wasn't that eye-catching. also, oftentimes i write for gn and fem readers and honestly.. i don't know which to use for this one. i guess it's up to you then reader ^_^ (small hints of inconsistent type of reader, reader's style and etc depends on her or their mood.)

your perspective:

huh, it's been a few days after that unfortunate event.

was i just pranked? geez, hopefully it was. the shit that 'sae' pulled back there felt real as hell. even his dialogues sounded real.

i heard a knock on my apartment door and froze in place..

i haven't gone out in days, i think i already became a neet.

my legs dangled from my bed as i stood up, rushing to the front door, i opened it, expecting to get ai hoshino's fate.. but instead... ---

"it feels nice to see you in real life." that.. was sae's voice. or more realistically AND honestly, takahiro sakurai's voice.

i perked my head up, oh... he was, tall. obviously. what am i saying?

he pulled me into a sudden hug, he wore the same clothes when he appeared in the manga and anime.

i was speechless, this... couldn't be real. i was just being pranked, was i?

"why are you so quiet? why don't you speak up, love?" he looked at me lovingly, gosh, my single ass felt blood running to my cheeks.

"no way, you're real? here?! in flesh and blood??" i said, absolutely flabbergasted. he looked exactly like sae, but i was still in denial.

"why would you think that my words were just empty nonsense? i was being true to my words... and you." he shyly admitted. why was he so out of character?

"and, i may not seem like the cold person i was in the anime and manga, but i.. since i'm with you, after all those times in the literature club, i actually found happiness with you." he continued to speak.

"...yeah, let's, like, settle this inside." i brought him in my apartment, it wasn't too small, rather it was quite big. my job paid me really well and i was able to afford quite a luxurious and spacious apartment. those years in school really did pay off, haha.

sae sat on my comfortable white couch as he looked around, surprised. i dug into my pantry desperately searching for.. something.

i was really warming up to sae now, i mean, judging from my tiktok reposts i reposted videos and edits of him way more often than rin, sorry... rinrin...

my eyes caught sight of my life long worth of candy stash, it could last for like, decades. or more...

i happily hummed as i took a big basket full of candy, walking to the living room and placing it on the glass coffee table.

"what are you staring for sae? come on, i didn't bring this big basket of candy here for nothing." i shot him a smug smile, urging him to take one candy bar.

"it's nothing, i just never expected you to be this welcoming and kind.. i'm... grateful. thank you." he took a candy bar and peeled the wrapper open, taking a bite into the soft chocolate caramel.

he was secretly enjoying the candy bar, so i took one for myself and swallowed the candy bar whole after peeling the tight ass wrapper.

"riiight, since you're a famous footballer back in the bluelockverse, i guess you need to get used to getting pampered and taken care of by me since you have no job now, whatsoever. but to be frank, i don't care. it's nice to have someone around me after god knows how long!" i said out of the blue, eyes star-struck. i didn't know why, i felt happier when people were around me. but when i was with sae.. i felt.. like i was on cloud nine.

"...sae, i don't know why. but i like you, a lot." two lonely bitches staring at each other, that was us.

"i like you too, {name}... i like you, a lot more than you'd ever like me." gosh, this stings. what was i thinking? am i hallucinating or just crazy? i eyed sae sadly, a evident frown plastered on my face.

"i'll love you till the end of time, {name}." he smiled, shit, i felt butterflies in my stomach. is this true love? ironic since he was a fictional character that broke the barrier between fiction and reality.

maybe.. life with sae.. wouldn't be so bad.

we can do many things together, like drawing and painting. playing video games, and going out together. like a real couple would do.

i found myself slightly blushing a soft pink colour, i actually felt happy, with sae.

"...i love you, sae." i smiled at him lovingly, and he shot me a loving smile back.

i finally felt true happiness!

author's note: might do a silly lil fic of reader and sae living life together as a happy couple, gosh, i'm a sucker for lovey dovey pairs wkdjskwksfr

[nayialovecat]

The Ink Demonth 2024 - Day 29. Queer

All right. Let's start from the beginning. It means that all Ink People in the Workshop have no physical gender. They are completely devoid of genitalia. The next step is that before their death, each of them was someone - a man or a woman (those times they didn't openly talk about other affiliations - WWII). But, although they don't have a physical gender, they have their own (or artificially created) memories that make them consider themselves specific people with specific names, gender or orientation (not necessarily consistent with what was before death). There is also even big group these who don't need gender or orientation, yeah.

What I want to say is that SATIM Sammy considers himself a straight male, but no one guarantees that he wasn't actually a woman, a gay, etc. 'cause as a result of the effects of the ink poisoning, his personality and memories have been so disturbed, destroyed and replaced - that he is practically not who he was before his death. So Sammy and all the other Ink People can definitely say they are all queer.

Now let's focus on Princess Sammy, which has become my non-canon canon - forever in my heart. It started as an April Fool's Day joke, which resulted in a fanfic that was never published and never completed, and was inconsistent with the SATIM canon (but still loved by me). Then there was my first Ink Demonth and this entry where Sammy sings Anna's part and Bendy sings Elsa's part. Half a year later, I published this cool comics in response to a question from one of my fans - so these two in the current costumes of both princesses (or rather, princess and queen). Earlier, however, it was my birthday and I made myself such a birthday gift, and a few days later I coloured it. And finally last year's Ink Demonth, which gave us this oh-so-underrated crossover with Ivandoe.

So Princess Sammy will always be in my heart. I love her/him. She/He also got a new dress this time and I decided to move away from green - I think it's the best dress I've ever given Sammy. He/she seems to appreciate it too.Sammy: I'm beautiful… I mean handsome. Yeah, I'm handsome, right?

As for production interesting facts - I used strange markers here that I tested recently - very carefully, because I was afraid they would show through to the second page, but they didn't. I find the effect quite satisfactory.

[chiyeko-kurea]

one of my favorite poems + my analysis

i wanted to share it with you guys:)

(VERY poorly translated, sadly never as good as the original)

« Je vis, je meurs » Louise Labé, Sonnets, 1555

« I live, I die: I drown and I burn,

I endure at once extreme heat and cold;

Life is at once too soft and too hard,

I feel boredom mingled with joys.

At the same time, I laugh and I cry,

And I endure many torments of pleasures,

My fortune fades away, and lasts forever,

At the same time, I wither and I Bloom.

Thus I suffer love’s inconstancies

And when I believe I will suffer more,

Without knowing, I find myself at peace.

Then, when I feel my joy is certain,

And I am on top of what I could wish right now,

Love casts me back into my former grief. »

.

So there’s a few things i would translate differently.

1) I would write « I drown and burn » without the other « I » because in the original poem, the idea conveyed is really that the feeling of drowning constantly is parallel to the one of burning, happening in the same time in the author’s mind while being completely opposite.

The idea of drowning constantly (that I personally really relate to) = therefore maybe also feeling like suffocating/ choking constantly, not being able to breathe and a constant weigh inside the chest.

+ sinking further and further until one day reaching rock bottom -> the idea of giving up on ourselves?

Or you could also interpret the word ‘drowning’ as fighting to stay above water, to gasp for air, being between sanity and trying to stay there because if you give up you will drown into insanity and darkness that is trying to pull you in. With that interpretation you also get the idea of tiredness and eventually having to give up if you know you’re doomed to drown anyway, but you can’t stop trying to survive.

But i think in this case ‘drown’ is more that achingly slow, constant, oppressive feeling of slowly sinking opposed to the complete chaos of burning fire and being actively consumed alive/ having a fire inside ur mind.

2) Second verse is also poorly translated. It would be more like ‘i burn while enduring chilblain’ which is completely different from the original verse but closer in terms of meaning, to me. Same idea of opposite feelings, i think everyone interprets differently.

3) 3rd verse IS JUST SHIT!! WHAT IS THAT TRANSLATION?? It’s so lameeeee! Ugh. The idea that i felt in the OP (original poem) was like ‘Life is to me too listless/ limp/ (=basically ‘soft’ but in a pejorative way. Life is boring, tasteless, nothing worth much, nothing that excites her mind.) Also she says ‘TO ME’. To her. Her life, not life in general. Basically, how life is to her, « towards » her. But at the same time, life is too hard to her (not « for » her!) to the point it’s like torture.

4) The next verse is kind of a résumé of her whole fucking life. That i would translate as ‘i have great ennuis intertwined with joys’. « Ennuis » could be, indeed, translated as ‘boredom’, (the way i understood it) but also as ‘problems’/‘worries’. Basically either a long, dull, boring, worthless road with sometimes great joys/ or if you got for the different meaning of ‘ennuis’: lots of terrible problems and disasters in your life but sometimes also great joys, both mingled.

5) « love’s inconsistencies » -> Love is written in the OP with a capital letter. I don’t really think it’s necessarily romantic love, but love in general: what you experience, live, feel, discover, which is basically essential to life. Imagine a life where you don’t love any type of music, book, movie, food, weather, people, feeling, taste, smell… But primarily, I think she means that Love (as an entity rather than a simple feeling) kinda throws her around; and she is a ‘victim’ of it, she suffers from it and its intensity, unpredictability, force. She is condemned, as a human, to be a subject/ slave of love. She is not, and never will be, in control of that -and therefore her life.

6) The two last verses are so poorly translated it should be a crime. The idea behind them is really interesting!

« And I am on top of what I could wish right now » -> when she has everything she could wish for, she has obtained and achieved everything she ever dreamed off, longed for, ached for, when she has reached what is the ultimate completion of her desires that would grant her happiness; and finally everything that bothered her and kept her from tasting a freedom and peace of the soul is gone; when there’s nothing more she could possibly need or even wish for; she doesn’t. Feel. Happy. Anymore. She loses it. She feels the same as she used to before. It’s a never-ending cycle. She thinks she finally has it all, but it all crumbles, again and again and she can never keep it. She can taste it for a bit, but then it vanishes and she is right back in her ‘primary misery’.

She feels joy, she feels happy, she thinks it’s gonna last forever: it never does. For me, it really convey the idea of relapse. You get clean, you feel great, life is good, but then, how could you even think it was gonna last anyway? You relapse, fall right back in your misery.

I haven’t analyzed (corrected) the 2nd quatrain and the first tercet because this post is already very long (so i just corrected the most important ones)

and i don’t wanna bore you😭 but if you like poetry we could discuss it together if you want🫶

[wanderingblindly]

Thank you for the tags @vroombeams @monacotrophywife and @borntogayz 💖💖💖 sorry if I missed someone, I’m so sleepy lol

1. Do you make your bed?

Almost every morning!! Hate to admit that it’s good for the mental health.

2. Favourite number?

F I V E. It was my jersey number my entire childhood, and it’s been my family’s lucky number forever.

3. What's your job?

😎Director liquid😎

But fr im a data visualization kinda data analyst

4. If you could go back to school, would you?

PLEASE???? If money was no object, I’d be in school forever. I fucking love school, I love the structure I love the learning I love the competition and validation 😭 I’ll probs go back for my masters at some point.

5. Can you parallel park?

Inconsistently, but more often than not yes.

6. Do you think aliens are real?

Surely, it’s just a statistical likelihood isn’t it?

7. Can you drive a manual car?

Not in the slightest :(

8. Guilty pleasure?

Generally speaking, fanfiction and fandom. But also probably…. Loving cliche romances? It’s a guilty pleasure because I certainly don’t act like someone who’d enjoy them, and my general asexuality and disinterest in relationships doesn’t make me the target audience. And yet, here we are.

9. Tattoos?

9! But two of them are fairly big, so I think I look a little more tattooed than I am. Planning on 10 and 11, if I could just find an artist 😭

10. Favourite colour?

Pastel pink, light purple, and black :)

11. Favourite type of music?

Visual Kei and 2010s metalcore are my roots, though my taste is a little more varied this days ((I think due to writing)). But yeah, lots of metal. Always lots of metal.

12. Do you like puzzles?

I don’t usually have the space for puzzles, but I do enjoy them! I’m more inclined towards sudoku and word games though.

13. Favourite childhood sport?

Huge soccer kid, up until my body rejected it.

14. Do you talk to yourself?

Nearly constantly, love living alone.

15. Tea or coffee?

TEA. EXCLUSIVELY. I can’t stomach coffee, I’ve never managed to swallow a mouthful before.

16. First thing you wanted to be when growing up?

I distinctly remember finding this question really distressing as a kid — I never had an answer. Not even a fun make believe one.

17. What movies do you adore?

I’m not huge into movies? I enjoy watching them, but I’m bad at getting myself so down and do it. That said, I tend to rewatch Pride and Prejudice (2005), the Devil Wears Prada, Twilight, and Interview with the Vampire a lot. I also have a very aching soft spot for Graveyard of the Fireflies.

I’m sure you’ve all been tagged, but just in case @hurricane-heatt @ultradetectivegeek @miamimaiden @dumbf1sketches @a-amvryllis @mossistyping 💖💖

[citrus-cactus]

Citrus' Art Summary 2023!

The year is almost over, so here's my art summary for 2023! I got this template from here. This is my third year in a row being able to populate every month with a finished(/digital) piece (and really, I did a LOT more than what's shown here!), so that feels like something to celebrate!

Technically some of these choices don’t match up with their post dates; I counted some months as “when I was primarily working on them” and some as “when I actually published them,” but the sentiment remains. Like I said, it was a busy year! :)

Some more rambling + links to all featured artwork beneath the cut:

I remember last year I was quite worried about/was actually teetering on the edge of artistic burnout. There were definitely some months during this year that I felt a bit overwhelmed (particularly during the summer, when I was working on a 5-illustration series in a style that was DEFINITELY outside my norm, PLUS a bunch of other stuff), but I also appreciated the stylistic variety, and doing a lot of sketchbook drawings/marginalia that were(/are) just for me, so they never had to be "finished” or even "good." Even though almost everything pictured here is Digimon(/anime) art, I did experiment with a more "realistic" style for the Dracula Daily series (Aug/Sept), as well as trying to relearn the "Disney" style I started drawing in waaaaaaay back in high school, only now with a LOT more understanding of facial structure and anatomy. Largely, this style shake-up has been incredibly freeing (these are still sketchbook-only studies at this point, but I'm planning on some digital illustrations in the Disney style in 2024). I'm sure they still look pretty anime-influenced, and I'm not sure I'll ever truly be able to escape that, but honestly I don't mind; the anime aesthetic IS a part of my preference/style!

Let's see, the prevailing fandoms for what's shown here are Digimon Survive and Adventure 02. I really want to draw more Survive art next year!! Really happy with the collabo between @vidramon and myself (July), and honestly most (if not all) of these pieces. I worked hard, I branched out, I took on some really ambitious projects, and finished a ton of things (looking at you, March! That Knight drawing was a WIP for an entire year, but I finished it instead of abandoning it, which is what usually happens when things sit around that long!). Ultimately, I believe I told (and helped tell!) some great stories through my creative projects and art this year, which is my true goal forever and always.

Honestly I'm happiest with April's drawing. That one was a ton of fun to do, but I would have to work really hard to replicate that coloring style because I don't remember my brushes/settings, ahaha. Sadly this is how it usually goes with coloring for me; I make it up as I go almost every single time, which is why series are so difficult for me. I am nothing if not inconsistent -_-;

I would be remiss to mention that a huge part of my productivity this year was due to setting and tracking monthly goals for myself. I gotta thank everyone on the @campdigimonth server for their help in keeping me organized and motivated throughout the year! I plan on continuing my creative check-in posts in 2024.

Next year, I want to a) make more Survive art (particularly with Survive Week coming up), b) draw some more flippin' gargoyles (CRIIIINGE, but no, cringe is dead, I'mma do what I want!), and c) keep working on my personal project! And I am, once again, thinking about bookbinding. That's a "maybe" for next year as well!

Descriptions and links to the full artwork pictured for each month:

January: Survive Week, Day 5

February: Survive Gang Aromantic Week

March: Knight Unryuuji and Friend

April: “Rose-Tinted” fic illustration

May: Happy Birthday Vi!

June: Happy Birthday Haru Shinkai!

July: Happy 1st Anniversary Survive! (aka BEST SOCK FRIENDS)

August: Dracula, September 13

September: Dracula, September 20

October: Adv 02 Countdown Event, Day 7

November: “Boo!” on the Cob

December: Digimon Secret Santa 2023

[boundlss]

here's my full comprehensive post about how i feel about writing my canon muses, combining 3 of my favorite things (talking, lists, making people read shit only i care about). yaaaay.

shirogane kei - he is both one of my easiest and favorite muses to write. i'll never ever complain about people asking me to write him more, nor will i ever leave or abandon him no matter how few people are left to enjoy him. i love shiroe so much.

minagawa kanami - she actually is a lot harder for me to write even though i love her. her voice tends to be inconsistent, i think, and i struggle to write high energy characters in general, but i still love getting to explore her dynamics.

nyanta - SLEEPER PICK!!!! i looooove nyanta. he's awesome. writing him is fun because of his unique voice and dialogue quirks and i love characters like him in general. like, older gentlemen archetypes hehe. it helps that he's a cat man. i love cat men. and catboys. but cat men are a good flavor. middle aged men who are cats or catlike ... nyanta san ....

abe no hirari - my little meow meow ... he is not the most consistent muse but he gets to stay here because i love him. the second muse i've ever picked up who proposes marriage to people he's just met ... anyway, i love him and i love plots with him. hirariiiii ...

lee seung-gil - i actually love writing him. i like when muses aren't very energetic and tend not to talk as much hahahah ... he doesn't get asked for but i wish he did !! i love him. he's easy to write.

roland fortis - VERY energetic so i can't write for him alll the time but he has a very unique speech pattern that makes his dialogue interesting. i can't bring myself to get overwhelmed---he's roland. he'll stay on my blog forever hahaha. he was one of my first muses on tumblr after i left bnha that WASN'T a bsd muse, and anyway it was the first time i picked up a muse from something recommended to me by a friend ... anyway, writing him is very special to me so i will continue to.

jim hawkins - i have not written him much at all but i would liiiike to. i've always related very deeply to him---i stumbled across treasure planet for the first time just after my dad left me and i was about jim's age so it sort of stuck with me. he seems like he'd have a somewhat challenging voice but i love him so i'll write through it hahaha.

sokka - to be honest writing him actively scares me. i like him, but he has a difficult voice for me to pin down sometimes, and i'm not really a person who writes major characters in popular media so the idea of having attention for my sokka muse is something that makes me nervous ... liking him is not always enough to lessen that fear hahaha.

jet - my actual favorite atla character though i'm also very scared to write him. i just struggle with larger fandoms in general but his voice comes more easily to me and he's more within the realm of the type of character i normally write and enjoy.

ty lee - i love writing ty lee as long as i have the energy for it. she's easy to get down and i like having muses with energetic voices! i am also scared to reach out with her but again, larger fandom, more worries. haha.

stolas - it might surprise even my friends to know that really love stolas ... haha, well, the hellaverse fandom intimidates me and i see fantastic stolas portrayals out there so i tend to ummm never reach out with him. ever! but i LOVE writing stolas! i love thinking about stolas! he's by far my favorite part of helluva boss and his voice comes very easily to me!

striker - a close second to stolas ... i've been trying to take baby steps with my hellaverse muses and that's writing striker more, apparently, not that i've done any of that quite yet ... well, i love cowboys and antagonists and he has a great voice to write. i am just very scared!

stella - well ... she's only here because i wanted to rewrite her and i haven't gotten the opportunity to go that in-depth yet ... it's hard to say.

vox - haha. well, he's actually my favorite character in hazbin and i think about him a lot, but i am even more scared of writing him than of stolas if you can believe it! he's only here because a friend of mine was emphatic about my adding him being a good thing, but that friend already has a different main vox so mine doesn't really have a place with the group i'm a part of or really with the groups i'm not a part of, so it's extra scary to even try saying anything about him hahaha. i think he'd be really easy for me to write as one of my homebrew dnd deities i do a lot of musing about is very much like him, but ... well. haha. the fear and such.

mukuhara kazui - i love writing him. it's fun, it's easy, he's a cat man if you read deeply enough into the cat metaphors, he's lived his life as a servant to the expectations of people who don't deserve his time ... that is to say, he's perfect for me.

kaito - i LOVE LOVE LOVE kaito, and i wish more people did too! i love kaito! he is my favorite vocaloid ever i love him so MUCH! i love writing him, i love talking about him. ahhhhh. kaito san.

yuezheng longya - you know i also really love longya, probably as much as kaito ... the chinese vocaloids will always have my heart but longya's design always captivated me hahaha. his voice is middling and sometimes hard to pin down but nevertheless ...

gumi - sleeper pick! i love gumi. i'd love to flesh her out more, she's so nice to think about. please write with my gumi hahahahaha.

five pebbles - ever since i got into rain world he's been my very favorite!! he's a little difficult for me to write but i don't mind because i love him and his themes a lot. um, i think everyone should interact with him, ever.

aalto, encore, rover, jianxin, chixia - i'm excited to write them all but the game just came out. i think i'll enjoy it but it hasn't been a week hahaha.

the long quiet - a fun and challenging muse. it's hard to write something that isn't really anything, but is also everything. i like the ordeal and i love the long quiet conceptually. slay the princess is awesome.

the princess - same hat! ^

vernon roche - um ... a polarizing muse. i like writing him but i hesitate to engage with a lot of people who write witcher muses using roche because his character is widely misinterpreted as being more sinister than he actually is. not that he's a good person, but ... anyway, i do love writing him a lot. i just don't like when people i don't know jump in with him and expect me to play into fandom views.

cahir aep ceallach - my favorite son boy, he is both easy and fun to write, i love you cahir!!!! <3 <3 <3 <3 no further notes.

dandelion - sleeper pick! i love writing dandelion and find him the most fun out of ALL my witcher muses ahahaha. he's the greatest of all time. i love you dandelion.

milva - she's new to me, so i'm anxious to write her but alslo excited. it will probably be challenging as i don't write a lot of characters like her but she brings me a lot of enjoyment so i'm ready to handle it ahahaha.

isengrim faoiltiarna - i love him, but he's a little difficult to write and i always worry i'm doing it wrong, which is insane because he has like 3 canon appearances. he scares me but i love him. i will endeavor to be less scared of him.

tom sawyer, huck finn - actually they're the only muses of mine to have received no votes on my interest checker so i know people don't care for them, but i love mark twain a lot and have voraciously consumed everything about his books, so they're probably staying no matter what. i find them both middling to write but they're staying.

aradia megido - sleeper pick. i love her and i love thinking about her. she wasn't one of my favorites until my most recent reread and then i fell in love very suddenly haha. middling to write but i love her. worth.

latula pyrope - very easy to write but naturally tends to draw less attention ... in any case i love her.

feferi peixes - the hardest to write and lowest activity of my homestuck muses! she's one of my favorite characters but it's so difficult for me to find her voice sometimes!!! argh!! and i am afraid of getting her wrong because of this.

jade harley - about as difficult to write as feferi. i find jade very complicated and worry i'm leaning too far in one direction whenever i try to write her, but i'm doing my best and i love her so i'll continue to try hard.

dirk strider - i'll be honest ... i hate writing dirk. he is very complex in both dialogue and character and i struggle to feel like i'm doing him justice. i enjoy dirk a lot, don't get me wrong, but every respoonse i write with him is a self-doubting struggle. if it weren't for the people i know want to write with him he probably would have been removed because of this, but i will keep trying for your sake!

vriska serket - i'm scared to write her but i want to so so so so badly hahahaha.

shang qinghua - my favorite hack author---easy to write, easy to get, no complications. i wish there was more interest in him! i love him!

shen qingqiu - it's been pointed out to me that i'm a lot like him in most facets of my personality so i hate him. that said, he's frustratingly easy and fun to write and think about, so he'll be staying hahaha.

luo binghe - it's not helping the sqq allegations but i actually love binghe, i love writing the type of character who is so singularly obsessed with something ... anyway, easy to write, easy to think about.

all of my CATS muses - well ... i expected no one to write with them, but i wish people would. it's my favorite musical and there's a lot i could say about these cats!

[mrsnancywheeler]

I think Say Don't Go is so Billy and Muse coded.

———

"And I'm yours/But you're not mine"

Because this is Mr. Billy "You're just another pretty face" "You're just a groupie" "I can get any girl I want" Dunne we're talking about. You know, the same man who will be pissed if you, God Forbid, flirt with Eddie while he's busy with another groupie.

You're *his* muse, *his* girl. But he's not *yours* at the end of the day. Because why should you be upset he was frenching some girl backstage? You're not *with him* ...

But why does him doing that mean you have to sit so close to Eddie and giggle every time he talks?

———

The whole "I'm holding out hope for you to say: 'Don’t go'." aspect is what's getting to me.

How many times do you think that Muse, mere moments after a screaming match with Billy, was halfway out the door and hoping that he would ask her to stay? Ask her to stay and apologize for yelling and getting mad over something small?

Of course, that (sometimes half-assed) apology doesn't come until he's sober enough to even register that he's remotely in the wrong on some occasions.

———

Don't get even get me started on that bridge!!! The part when she sings "I said 'I love you'.. you say nothing back" and you can hear the backing vocals yell on the 'i love you' part...

Like, it's so painfully obvious how infatuated Muse is with Billy and I can just... picture the hurt when things had been going decently "well enough" for a little bit and Muse accidentally (or not) slips an "I love you" to Billy and he just doesn't say it back.

Not to say he doesn't love her; he does! ... just in his own... unorthodox sort of way. So he doesn't feel the need to *verbally* show it to her.

... you can see where this would cause some disturbance in the peace.

I'M OH MY KNEES ASKING FOR FORGIVENESS FOR BEING SO INCONSISTENT WITH ANSWERING I LOVE YOU ALL AND YOUR THOUGHTS 💋

this is so real, also I'm gonna be paralleling this with how it's also true for eddie and muse but in the opposite direction bc I just can't help myself 🤪

billy is so possessive but also at his worst doesn't see himself as someone who's tied down or being with someone. when he's doing better it's different, it's two people, together, but when he's drunk the world is his playground. it fuels his ego to know how many girls want him and that he can hand out tiny scraps of it that have them begging for more. and muse is desperate for more and so many times he indulges her in almost all of him and then gets angry when she expects that all the time (even though ofc she does). but when he's given so much of himself how dare she go find scraps from someone else (she's also very tied together with a smile coded)

and with eddie, muse gets huffy and jealous whenever he even tries to move on. she doesn't mean too, but eddie's always insisted that he'll never leave her, that he'll always pick her, so when she's going through a rough time with billy and suddenly her comfort in eddie is gone, she acts out. which makes it hard for eddie to try to move on because he wants her so bad and doesn't want her to be upset with him, but she's said she'll never pick him to be her forever, so why can't he find someone who will?

she really would stay forever if billy told her not to go, but most of the time he doesn't say that, he antagonizes and lets her leave. she goes back so easily most of the time that to him it probably doesn't feel like a big deal to bother being so vulnerable or give a heartfelt apology, which is what makes the dynamic so weird when she's finally had enough and gives him the ultimatum. because for so long she's been desperately waiting for him to want her not to go the way she would if he left.

and how many times has muse still left eddie when he's told her not to go versus how many times had he stayed when she asks him not to? until finally he's had enough and realizes that she really, really meant it when she said he'd never be her first choice and leaves. and then when they're on the phone and she would suddenly pick him forever just for things to feel normal, like they used to be, begging him to do what he used to do and he doesn't. and suddenly she's got nothing of her old life.

I can imagine a makeout session between billy and muse in his bed, he's been playing pieces of songs he's been working on, songs about her, and she's underneath him when she slips out a small, "I love you." and she really means it and he can hear that in her voice, which is off-putting to him because he doesn't feel like he deserves that, and he's scared to reveal too much of himself by saying it back. so there's a pause and then he just starts kissing her again like nothing happened, like he didn't hear a thing. and part of her wants to convince herself that him kissing back is confirmation, but another part feels very hurt and that he just wants her body right now, that she's being naive. she doesn't want to say anything and shake the boat that's been steady, but later she definitely cries in the bathroom about it and just has a sad aura about her that acts painfully happy when billy interacts with her. and billy can tell something's up and he knows what it is but doesn't want to bring it up. until they're in the car one day and he's driving around, she's being quiet and all sad, but acts like she's not when he talks. "you know you're my girl, right? like I write songs about you and drive you around..." he's giving a smile that feels forced because he knows it's not enough.

"yeah, I know." and your smile looks forced and he just nods.

"good, good. um, yeah, let's go to that one store you like, you mentioned they've got those dresses you were looking at in the catalogs, right?" and you're just amazed he remembered and he's just hoping that buying you some new clothes will be enough to make up for his lack of openness.

whereas with eddie muse has said i love you and so has he, but he means it in the way that she's his world and she means it like he's the thing saving her from drowning, but the water is so enticing. and there's the parallel from the blurb where eddie reiterates his love and muse runs away, out of her own house, and when they're on the phone together, she's begging him to at least talk to her, sobbing about how much she needs him, and he hangs up.

ugh my babies, i love all my tortured pookies

[beyourselfchulanmaria]

I feel that I was born for love, but not to be loved because at least in my country I never notice that someone is attracted to me, however with the passage of time this disinterest has become mutual, however I never lose hope of finding someone to whom to give all my heart with a great desire to love forever.

Miss. or Mr. Anonymous

Ah!… I understand.

▪︎ I feel that I was born for love,

Firstly the beginning of life and its essence should be "born for love". It's not inconsistent with your feelings or your thoughts, which is good!

▪︎ but not to be loved because at least in my country I never notice that someone is attracted to me,

Second, I’ll tell you very simply and straightforwardly: Congratulations, you haven’t met that person yet. LOL

So maybe you should change your masochistic thinking and mentality instead of being loved. Well, as a monk/old guy me, I want to tell you that no one deserves to be "unloved (not to be loved)".

Ask myself, even as a monk, also to be loved. There is a ambiguity between pretending not to be loved during meditation and actually speaking frankly. ha! XD (but which way for loving. Platonic?! I wonder if.) 🤔 😏 😌

▪︎ however with the passage of time this disinterest has become mutual, however I never lose hope of finding someone to whom to give all my heart with a great desire to love forever.

Maybe, I guess you are a mixture of pride and humility, and life has infinite possibilities. My intuition tells me: you should still be young, take a closer look at the people around you, without any prejudgment, even if they are not from your country, and you should learn to "be loved"; because being born for love (to love) and knowing how to be loved (accepting love) are both equally important, and one day you will completely discover it. All are life lessons.

📿🙏 Chu Lan~*

[daddymus-mamatron]

For the writers' ask, before I fall into bed...

1. What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

4. What detail in To Be Or Not To Be... Tarn are you really proud of?

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering? Answer it now!

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

42. Have you ever received a comment that particularly stood out to you for whatever reason?

1. I Want to Fuck You Like a... GUN! is very me!! Funny, with a twist and of POLY!! I almost picked Turn On Your Frame but I prefer to stick with TF terms when writing (servos, pedes, helm, etc...) and since this was my 1st TF fic it's all over the place and I don't really like SS in the last chapter.

4. It was my 1st time writing Pharma and I got a nice comment on him specifically and it made so happy!! *flail* gotta nail the blorbo also, not using Tarn for most of the fic without leaning too much into purple prose was one hell of a challenge but the results is something I'm really proud of!!

5. Hon hon hon!!

WHY THIS?!!?

Megatron's Lament A Play in Five Acts by The Fallen

*Inhale* There is one undercurrent leitmotiv in this fic I've been insanely trying to balance without revealing what I'm coming up with. I deliberately gave contradicting accounts of similar events depending on who's point of view is the focus. This right there is a clue, one of the many many. I love doing that, in one chapter I put easter eggs of some of my fav fics. Transwave and Echo Garden subtle wink was spotted which made me very happy!

23. Anything fluffy? Bakery AUs and the likes. I'm more robogore, valveplug, BDSM kinda dude than 'they rode away in the sunset happily forever after'. It would be nice to write something wholesome for once.

30. I'm always out of my comfort zone. I'm always quadruple editing myself before I even show my writing to Shots. I've been called out about using too much 'purple prose' and I've been paranoid since. My English writing is épuré compared to what I have in my head. I'm kinda stuck between being too purple prose for fics but I also can't write poetry in English, the sounds are too fucked up and inconsistent to make something potable or that makes sense. So yeah, that's why before 'Turn On Your Frame' there's a 3 years gap in my published stuff.

42. YEP!!! My best work imo is 'The Red Herring Play' specifically because of 2 comments:

Honestly, even if you never write anything like this again, this was so beautiful. I can't tell you how fun this was to read, especially because of all of the memes. [...] YOU CAUGHT ME SO OFF GUARD THAT I ACTUALLY GASPED OUT LOUD. I HAD TO READ THAT PART OVER A FEW TIMES BECAUSE I WASN'T EXPECTING [character].

Shakespeare couldn't have written a better play!

aaah that was so much fun, thank you for the wonderful ask and taking the time to choose specific fics <3

[likeabxrdinflight]

and now I've finished episode eight, which was better than seven, but still had problems.

negatives first- the thing about "aang disappearing forever" was stupid. you don't need to artificially elevate the stakes like that. yue's sacrifice doesn't hit the same. and they really did cut the thing with pakku and gran-gran, and then cut out aang and katara even training with him at all. we've just decided katara's a master waterbender now? I mean her progress was fast in the original but at least she had actual training from an actual master. and she's still a weaker version of her character despite this.

dumb. so much dumb.

zhao was good, though his fight with zuko lacked some of the tension of the original since they never had their first agni kai. this one wasn't a rematch. his death also sucked compared to the original. ken leung did get to chew the hell out of the scenery though.

...yeah it didn't stick the landing. these last two episodes were not great, and it does worry me a bit for future seasons. themes were heavy-handed, the plot progression wasn't as well-paced, and many of the character moments didn't hit the same notes.

ironically I think this adaptation as at its best when it was either straight-up adapting things or kind of doing it's own thing with the material, rather than taking what was in the original and warping it slightly to the left.

the writing was generally inconsistent in terms of the dialogue. some episodes were pretty solid, others were...not. this one was...not as good. but not as bad as episodes 1 or 7. so it's just...kind of a mixed bag.

the effects were solid, honestly. koizilla was pretty cool. and I did appreciate that the attack on the north was pretty fucking devastating. this version does get to play up the effects of the war a little more. unfortunately I find myself distracted by the clunkiness in some of the writing choices. I'll have to rewatch it, I think, now that I know what it is and how it plays out. but they have got to fix some of this dialogue for seasons two and three. if I have to hear anyone talk about "saving the world" or "I'm gonna do this with my friends!!!" again I will be annoyed. we get it, you have friends, magic of friendship, blah blah blah- it does not need to be beaten into my skull this much.

anyways, the last two episodes were not great. the middle four, I think, were ultimately pretty solid. and the first two were a mixed bag. mileage may vary.