#And the big secret from the folks who HAVE seen everything?

[alexis-royce]

I can see some folks in the notes going "Oh no, I don't recognize this or that genre, I guess I'm not sicko enough to call myself a horror fan yet 😔"

And no no no! Kill this fan culture that demands you have a doctorate in your favorite subject before you're allowed to call yourself a fan! As you can see here, Horror is an exceptionally varied genre, and that's due in large part to how accessible it is! Anyone with a camera, a few free weekends, and the imagination to say "Hey, wouldn't it be fucked up if [blank]" can make a Z-Budget romp!

Whether you've seen a handful of classics, or hyperfixate on one franchise, or enjoy a scattershot clutch of films, you're a fan of the stuff that YOU enjoy, and that is the only prerequisite to calling yourself a fan.

[silken-moonlight]

Lessons by the fae

A/n: This was such a loveley request to do! Thank you so much @ the person who send me this request.

You were the type of person who was easily distracted by everything around you. A wild child. Your mother sent you and your sister out to gather blueberries, but you got distracted and returned with a big bouquet of flowers instead. On walks they had to make sure that you didn’t wander off, mesmerized by a butterfly or dragonfly. Running after rabbits and watching the deers in the meadow. Abolishing shoes and sock in any weather, running barefeet. Hair open and wild, sometimes returning with little braids you claimed have been done by the faires.

It got so bad that you snuck out at night to watch over hedgehogs that were crossing the street near your house. Telling your siblings they were on a way to the secret hedgehog council. Sometimes you heard singing from the woods, wanting to chase after it. To find its cause. Telling your parents that the forest called to you, that you want to go there.

The other villagers told your parents to be careful, the light folk were known to kidnap children and raise them as their own. The whole village was afraid you would be snuck away, never to be seen again.

So…your family moved to the city. You woodland adventurers were forgotten, entirely wiped away from your memories a few years after…

But now you were back, in the village you grew up in, opening the old house that belonged to your grandmother. She had passed away, leaving the house for you. Being the only person to tell your parents: Let the child be, the fae won’t harm her.

Not that you’d remember these days anyway. You were now a child of the city, not used to so much silence and peace. After visiting for two weeks you decided to uproot your life and move back here. An instant connection to your old town, to the old forest right behind the house. People welcomed you with open arms, glad that a ‘new’ face had joined the village.

You were incredibly happy there, the peace and calm working wonders on you. In the city you had trouble sleeping and intense winter depression. Here everything was different, you woke up happy and immediately fell into deep sleep in the evening. Life was perfect in your house at the edge of the forest.

That was until you decided to take a little venture into the forest. You remembered faintly always walking the deer paths of the forest. Slim paths going through the endless trees. Brining you to meadows and lakes nobody knew that existed. Nostalgia overtook you.

Then you heard it, chimes in the wind, little bells and…tender singing. Mesmerized you followed the singing and the voices. Ignoring all the warnings in your head, blocking out the voices of your parents that yelled at you to never walk alone in the forest again. You were too curious, too naive.

“What do we have here?” A deep voice sounded left from you. Startled, you turned around, only to see two…people standing there. “A little human,” The other said. Voices, luring like a lullaby. Making you feel safe. Your breath was caught by their stunning beauty. The left was a woman, dressed in golden clothes, her hair golden blonde, eyes that shone like gold, eyelashes and brows golden in color as well. Her make up - also in yellow and gold.

On the right there was a man, dressed completely in silver, the perfect opposite. His clothes, hair, eyes, eyebrows and lashes - all in silver.

“Who are you?” You managed to ask, your voice strained. Their beauty was too much for your mind to comprehend. “You can call me Silver.” The man answered, walking around you in circles. “And you can call me Gold.” The woman said and walked the other way around.

“And who are you?” They asked with a smirk. Their voices were smooth. “You…can call me Star.” You answered, remembering not to give fae your name. The woman chuckled: “Smart girl, pretty girl. Not giving us your name…” Her voice was a purr as she stood in front of you, cupping your cheek. Her touch was gentle, her eyes so kind, you felt safe in the strangest of ways. “However, you walked into our home, and we do not like trespassers.” The man whispered into your ear from behind. His voice made you shudder. “I am very sorry.” You tried but the woman shushed you:”You need to learn your lesson, little human. Apologizing with words won’t do…Gladly you are so adorable, blessed with such doe eyes. What do you say Silver, shall we keep her as a pet?” The man hummed:” Maybe, let’s taste her first.” You were afraid they thought of literally eating you, wanting to say something but your lips were sealed by Gold’s lips.

To your own surprise you didn’t stop her, no, you enjoyed it. Closing your eyes as she kissed you with lips that tasted like honey. Their hands held you tight, beginning to roam your body and igniting such heat between your legs. “Good pet.” Silver hummed and grabbed your throat, bending you away from Gold to kiss you himself. “Let me taste her too.” He said to Gold and devoured your mouth, his tongue slipping into your mouth. Gold chuckled: “What an eager pet, look how she complies. Your mind was hazy, lost in those kisses they gave you. Their hands began to undress you, fabric slipping down your body until you stood bare in the woods. A breeze caressing your skin.

Their mouths found your neck, making you let out silent moans as they began to cover your neck in the eagerest of kisses. Your hands were guided by them to touch them too, your left massaged Gold’s breast as your right cupped Silver’s crotch. They moaned, enjoying your eagerness.

Suddenly you were on your back on a makeshift bed of moss and blankets. They must have used magic to summon it out of nowhere. Your head was in the lap of Gold as Silver kissed down your body. Your breath went quick as you watched him, whimpers left your mouth. You looked up at Gold who grinned down at you: “Pretty girl…Our girl…” She purred and began to massage your breast, pinching your nipples and making you yelp. Suddenly there was a tongue liking up and down your pussy, your gaze darting down. Silver began to eat you out, moaning into your beautiful cunt. “So delicious, I might stay here for a few hours.” He told Gold who chuckled: “Take your time, she loves it. Don’t you?” You nodded eagerly, his mouth immediately returning to your human pussy. His tongue was eager, longer and more bending than a human tongue. Vines wrapped around your thighs, their leaves having a silver sheen, spreading your legs for Silver. His lips sucking your clit, making you see stars and wriggling around. Gold’s hands teased your nipples, playing with them and pinching. Though she grew bored soon enough. “Time to put your shy mouth to use.” She whispered into your ear, you nodded, ready for anything she wanted. Silver suddenly sucked your clit inside his mouth, making you yelp and thrash, cumming against his face. Both of them giggled: “One of many.” Silver crooned, continuing to eat you out after that. No break, no mercy, just pleasure.

Gold got up behind you, removing her golden dress and underwear. She kneeled over you, presenting you with the most beautiful pussy you have ever seen. She was wet, probably aroused since she saw you. Without her asking you to, you began to kiss and lick. Gold moaned, closing her eyes. You were eager, lost in the want to make her cum. Her hand found your hair, guiding you and grinding into your face. You smirked, happy that you could give something back. Without a warning, you came again, Silver moaning into your cunt. Your arousal aroused him and seeing you eating out Gold as if your life depended on it made him incredibly hard. It didn’t take long for Gold to cum too. For an entire time you stayed like this, all of you cumming and pleasing.

Suddenly Gold lay on top of you, your hands reaching up to touch her pointy ears. She moaned loudly, looking down at you: “Yo…You…” She whispered. You didn’t know how intimate it was to touch a fae’s ears. It was more intimate than having sex. It was far more important than sex. You didn’t know that, so you continued to explore her ears while sucking hickey’s on her skin. You were so lost in your passion of making her moan that Silver was jealous and wanted your attention too, so without a proper warning he buried his fae cock inside your wet cunt. You moaned, held onto Gold who giggled at that. Silver pounded you into the makeshift bed as if his life depended on it. Gold held you down for him, cheering him on. “Take her Silver, make her juices spill onto the moss.” He definitely achieved that. Gold sat up, turned around on you so that she could look at where Silver’s dick impaled your pussy. His cock was bigger than the ones you taken, his tip brushing against all your senstive spots at once. You would loose your mind. Gold's hand found your clit and rubbed tight fast circles as she began to grind on your lower belly. You grabbed her hips, helping her to grind as your legs began to tremble. You were so exhausted already, but you just couldn’t stop. “Good pet.” Silver praised you, grabbing your legs harder. “Help your new masters to cum, you clench so good around my cock.” His voice was hoarse by now. “Clench harder for Silver, pet.” Gold crooned. Their words made you clench and cum. They came too after hearing your little moans.A knot seemed to swell in your lower belly and suddenly burst. Your whole body trembled as you squirted all over the two of them.

“Look at that…” Silver said and chuckled. “Such a good human.” They crooned. Gold giggled and got down From you, they changed positions and Gold's mouth was on you pussy, lapping up all your juices as Silver fucked her from behind, cheering her on:”Make her scream, Gold.” And That was exactly what she did.

Your body twitched in overstimulation and you whined. Wiggling to get away from the intense stimulation, but vines with golden letters held you down all of the sudden. You were just a little Pet for those fae who had such fun Playing with you.

You came another time, Your legs twitching violently. Tears streaming down your face from the immense pleasure. Your mind was torn between ther need to cum and the need to stop. Your mind was fuzzy, your visin blurry. Your hands grabbed the moss beneath you, desperatly trying to hold on to something, anything. Once again they changed positions, Silver fucking you and rubbing your puffy clit while Gold grinded on your lower belly and began to kiss you intensly, your mouth devoured by her tongue.

You closed your eyes, lost in their pleasure, lost in the need to please them and to cum and for it to stop. Suddenly Silver moaned in an language unknown to you and came inside of you. Gold, upon heariing him, came as well. Pushing you into an shee neverending orgasm..

They got up and looked down at you:”I think she learned a thing or two about trespassing…”Their faint giggle was everything you heared before you drifted into unconciousness.

When youh opened your eyes again, you found yourself in your bed, cleaned up and in clothes you did not recognize. On your bedside table stood a leafformed plate with a sandwhich and a flower formed chalice with a pinkish liquid inside.

Would you take the risk and drink and eat farie food? Your pussy definetly agreed on doing that the way she twitched…

Divider Credit @saradika-graphics

[hysteria-things]

✿ PROMISE? ✿ PART ONE.

ʚ♡ɞ 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 | 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 | 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓 | 𝐍𝐄𝐗𝐓 ʚ♡ɞ

𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: chris x fem!reader

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: guess who’s back in town: the sturniolo triplets. it’s for their birthday party their parents are throwing, the same party your parents force you to go to.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: swearing

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 1,054

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: we’re locked in on the series, folks!

𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐂𝐀𝐍’𝐓 𝐆𝐎 𝐀 𝐃𝐀𝐘 without seeing something along the lines of the sturniolo triplets, and it fucking pisses you off. your parents went to high school with theirs and were really close. your mom got pregnant with you around the same time marylou got pregnant with the triplets, your “best friends.”

the same triplets that left you months ago because of their career of being youtubers. the least they could’ve done was still message you, but no. they unfollowed you on everything.

you texted them multiple times, but all you got was one-word answers or no answer at all. as much as you didn’t want to, you stopped trying after a while because it was no use.

your parents still hang out with marylou and jimmy, sometimes even justin when he’s in town. at least you got one more best friend that you grew up with, nathan doe.

nathan is the youngest out of the four of you. nick, matt, and chris are turning twenty tomorrow and nate’s turning nineteen on the ninth. you’ve been nineteen since april, so you’re right in the middle.

you guys met him in elementary school and he was the last piece of the puzzle. you guys were even called the FOREVER FIVE, something you all made up at a sleepover in the fourth grade.

of course the three stooges didn’t drop him when they left. favoritism, i guess.

you scroll angrily on tiktok. it’s like the app senses your hatred for them and decides to put edits or clips from their videos on your for you page. this shit is definitely not for you.

then, there’s a knock on your bedroom door. “come in.” you call out, and your mother comes in. she sits on your bed and sighs. “what’s up?” you ask.

she gives you a face of sympathy, and it scares you a little. “the triplets are back in town.” she starts, and that gains your attention. “and i want you to come with me and your father to their birthday party tomorrow.”

“no.” you flat-out say. it’s no secret that your mom knows about your hatred either since you cried to her for a week straight about how they abandoned you.

“y/n, please.” your mom puts a hand on your knee. “marylou would love to see you there. she asks about you, you know. she misses you.”

frowning, you start to think. you miss her too. you never blamed her for what her sons did, but you haven’t seen her since they left. she is the sweetest lady you’ve ever met. “and they’re celebrating nate’s birthday, too. you have to at least show up for him, okay?”

you exhale sharply. “okay.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ✿ ⋆⁺₊⋆

𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐏𝐔𝐋𝐋 𝐔𝐏 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 party the next day with your parents, making your way to the backyard where it’s held. not a lot of people are there, just close friends and family. you scan the area at the top of the steps for nathan, getting disappointed when you don’t see him.

marylou engulfs you in a hug the moment you step on the grass. “hello, sweetheart!” she exclaims, pulling away with a big smile on her face. she places her hands on your shoulders. “how are you doing? you feeling okay?”

“i’m doing fine!” you reply in the same tone, putting on a fake smile.

“thank you so much for coming. i know it’s been a little… strange for you for the past few months. i’m sorry about that.”

“please don’t apologize. you did nothing wrong,” you say and she pulls you back in for another hug.

“if you want, the boys are standing by the chips and dip. if not, don’t be afraid to make yourself comfortable.” she points to the numerous folding tables set up.

god, you missed this woman. “i will. thank you so much.”

you walk over to the table where your parents are, placing your things down before joining them.

“twenty years old is fucking disgusting.” nick rants, dipping a chip in onion dip and popping it into his mouth.

the other two giggle. “yeah, well—” chris pauses when he turns his head and lands eyes on someone. “holy shit, guys.” he taps both of his brothers on the arm.

“look.” he continues, pointing at you from across the way when he gets his sibling’s attention. “we have to talk to her.”

“chris, no.” matt says. “do you not know that she hates us? it was shitty, what we did. that’s honestly my biggest regret.”

“we are petty losers for that.” nick chimes in.

chris crosses his arms. he would do anything to get you back into his life. there was no specific reason why they did what they did. they ghosted a lot of old friends ever since they moved to LA, and you got unlucky. “fine. if you guys won’t, i will. i want to get my best friend back.”

“chris, wait! that’s not a good idea!” the two scream at him as he starts to march over to you, who’s now pouring pepsi into a red solo cup.

you gasp out of shock when you turn around and see a brunette towering over you. “hi.” he says lowly. “i didn’t think you’d come.”

“i came for nate.” you say coldly. “where is he?”

“he has to do something before he comes.” you move over to start walking, but he steps in front of you.

“chris—”

“i’m so fucking sorry.” he apologizes. “we miss you.”

“should’ve thought of that before you woke up one day and decided to pretend i didn’t exist.”

his heart aches at your words. the three of them really are assholes. “can we just start over? please?”

“start over?” you scoff. “we can’t start over after all of that. i practically known you since birth, and you want to start over?”

“y/n, i’m—”

you peek over his shoulder and cut him off. “nate’s here.” you eventually get out of his way and start to head over to nate, but stop and turn back around.

there’s a hint of hope in chris that you changed your mind, but he was wrong. “i kept the note.”

he furrows his eyebrows. “what note?”

ouch.

you laugh to yourself. of course, he doesn’t remember. “never mind. happy birthday.” you mumble, walking off into the crowd.

𝐭𝐚𝐠 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭!

@bunbunbl0gs @lexisecretaccx @thy-mission @angelic-sturniolos111 @sophssturn @mattsneezing @janiellasblog @blahbel668 @meg-sturniolo @hearts4chris @mattslolita @sturnbaby @imwetforyourmom @tillies33ssss @sturnifyed @mayhem-72 @ripmattitude @p1xieswrld @alorsxsturn @txssvx @sttzee @multiluvr @delilahprentiss @matthewsspecial @idkhowtosleep @sturniolho

[metalphoenix]

Super heroes as an allegory for Queer and Trans Narratives

Forgive me if this is a little rambley I have already taken my sleep meds.

I was just thinking about why I like super heroes so much (they have been my special interested for probably around 8 years now) and I think because they can be seen as a queer allegory.

You have a separate life, one that you have to keep separate from your day to day life. That very much feels like being in the closet/mostly in the closet. That secrete life comes with a different name and different clothes. Trans people or Drag Artists anyone? Most of the time super heroes find each other and form a tight community because no civilian will understand their experiences. This mirrors queer people finding and building community. In both Marvel and DC older heroes will take younger ones under their wings to teach them and give them community. Queer people have taken me under their wing and I've done the same for others.

Theres also the isolation. Most heroes are only "out" as heroes to other heroes and maybe a few civilians they really truly trust. Or maybe no one knows. The knowledge that you have a huge secret. You are hiding a big part of your self. Maybe the part that is more you than the you everyone else knows. You know that if you tell or someone finds out, everything will change. Others may or may not except that part of you. You may loose people you love. Maybe the people who are close to you are pro heroes (Ned from Spiderman) or maybe they are not (Foggy from Daredevil) but either way there will always be a possibility of rejection.

The danger of being a hero also lines up. They wear masks, cowls, helmets, disguises etc, to hide their identities because if people knew they and the people they love would be in danger. Heroes who's identities are known (either by their own volition or someone else's) are also in danger. Batman keeps his and his kids identities under lock and key because everything goes wrong when the wrong person finds out. Jessica Jones does not because she's tired of hiding. Queer people weather in or out of the closet are also in danger of being outed. I've been outed before and it ruined one relationship and almost ruined another. I've lost friends and family because of being queer and nonbinary and I'm from a pretty liberal area. Just look up death, houselessness, rape, unemployment, suicide statistic etc. All of them are higher for queer, trans and intersex folks.

The last parallel I can think of is how both super heroes and queer/trans people exist outside of the system/establishment. Heroes and vigilantes work outside of the justice system because in most cases because they see it doesn't work. They are usually at risk of arrest by cops or in danger from the government (the Sokovia accords are a good example of this). Queer people exist outside of many establishments: The gender binary, amatonormativity, heteronormativity, the sex binary, etc. Queer people are also at greater risk of arrest and experiencing police violence.

IDK these are just my thoughts. I hope everything made sense. If you can think of any other ways super hero narratives mirror lgbtq experiences feel free to put them in the notes! (or not its whatever)

[book--brackets]

Summaries under the cut

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman

The winter isn't ending. Nobody knows why.

And Odd has run away from home, even though he can barely walk and has to use a crutch. Out in the forest he encounters a bear, a fox, and an eagle - three creatures with a strange story to tell. Now Odd is faced with a stranger journey than he had ever imagined.

A journey to save Asgard, City of the Norse Gods, from the Frost Giants who have invaded it. It's going to take a very special kind of boy to defeat the most dangerous of all the Frost Giants and rescue the mighty Gods. Someone cheerful and infuriating and clever.

Someone just like Odd...

A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass

Mia Winchell appears to be a typical kid, but she's keeping a big secret—sounds, numbers, and words have color for her. No one knows, and Mia wants to keep it that way. But when trouble at school finally forces Mia to reveal her secret, she must learn to accept herself and embrace her ability, called synesthesia, a mingling of the senses.

Serafina by Robert Beatty

Serafina has never had a reason to disobey her pa and venture beyond the grounds of the Biltmore estate. There’s plenty to explore in her grand home, although she must take care to never be seen. None of the rich folk upstairs know that Serafina exists; she and her pa, the estate’s maintenance man, have secretly lived in the basement for as long as Serafina can remember.

But when children at the estate start disappearing, only Serafina knows who the culprit is: a terrifying man in a black cloak who stalks Biltmore’s corridors at night. Following her own harrowing escape, Serafina risks everything by joining forces with Braeden Vanderbilt, the young nephew of the Biltmore’s owners. Braeden and Serafina must uncover the Man in the Black Cloak’s true identity... before all of the children vanish one by one.

Serafina’s hunt leads her into the very forest that she has been taught to fear. There she discovers a forgotten legacy of magic, one that is bound to her own identity. In order to save the children of Biltmore, Serafina must seek the answers that will unlock the puzzle of her past.

Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Meloy

In Wildwood, Prue and her friend Curtis uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval—a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions. And what begins as a rescue mission becomes something much greater as the two friends find themselves entwined in a struggle for the very freedom of this wilderness. A wilderness the locals call Wildwood.

The Clique by Lisi Harrison

Enter Claire Lyons, the new girl from Florida in Keds and two-year-old Gap overalls, who is clearly not Clique material. Unfortunately for her, while they look for a new home, Claire's family is staying in the guesthouse of the one and only Massie Block—Queen Bee of Octavian Country Day School. Claire's future looks worse than a bad Prada knockoff. But with a little luck and a lot of scheming, Claire might just come up smelling like Chanel No. 19.

Meet the rest of the Clique:

Massie Block: With her glossy brunette bob and laser-whitened smile, Massie is the uncontested ruler of The Clique and the rest of the social scene at Octavian Country Day School, an exclusive private girls' school in Westchester County, New York. Massie knows you'd give anything to be just like her.

Dylan Marvil: Massie's second in command who divides her time between sucking up to Massie and sucking down Atkins Diet shakes.

Alicia Rivera: As sneaky as she is beautiful, Alicia floats easily under adult radar because she seems so "sweet." Would love to take Massie's throne one day. Just might.

Kristen Gregory: She's smart, hardworking, and will insult you to tears faster than you can say "my haircut isn't ugly!"

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransom

Swallows and Amazons introduces the lovable Walker family, the camp on Wild Cat island, the able-bodied catboat Swallow, and the two intrepid Amazons, Nancy and Peggy Blackett.

Spy School by Stuart Gibbs

Ben Ripley may only be in middle school, but he’s already pegged his dream job: C.I.A. or bust. Unfortunately for him, his personality doesn’t exactly scream “secret agent.” In fact, Ben is so awkward, he can barely get to school and back without a mishap. Because of his innate math skills, Ben isn't surprised when he is recruited for a magnet school with a focus on science—but he’s entirely shocked to discover that the school is actually a front for a junior C.I.A. academy. Could the C.I.A. really want him?

Actually, no. There’s been a case of mistaken identity—but that doesn’t stop Ben from trying to morph into a supercool undercover agent, the kind that always gets the girl. And through a series of hilarious misadventures, Ben realizes he might actually be a halfway decent spy…if he can survive all the attempts being made on his life!

My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara

It seems Ken can't do anything right. He loses saddle blankets and breaks reins...but then comes the worst news yet: a report card so bad that he has to repeat a grade. How can you tame the dreamy mind of a boy who stares out of the window instead of taking an exam? Enter Flicka, the chestnut filly with a wild spirit.

Over the course of one magical summer, both will learn the meaning of responsibility, courage, and, ultimately, friendship.

Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

AN ANCIENT RIVALRY REAWAKENS.

Everything I'd known about the world was a lie.

On my thirteenth birthday, I, Alcatraz Smedry ( yes, I got named after a prison, don’t ask ) received my a bag of sand . And then I accidentally destroyed my foster parents’ kitchen. It’s not my fault, things just break around me, I swear !

I thought the sand was a joke until evil Librarians came to steal it. You’re probably thinking, “Librarians are nice people who recommend good books,” but that’s just what they want you to think! It turns out they’re actually a secret cult keeping the truth from you―a hidden world filled with magical eyeglasses, talking dinosaurs, and knights with crystal swords!

Or so my Grandpa Smedry claimed when he suddenly showed up to rescue me. So now I have to go with him to invade the local library and get that sand back, before it's used to conquer the world. And Grandpa says how I keep breaking things is actually an amazing talent. There’s no way that can all be true, right?

Will I ever make it back home alive?

The Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton

Jo, Bessie and Fanny move to the country and find an Enchanted Wood right on their doorstep. In the magic Faraway Tree live the magical characters that soon become their new friends – Moon-Face, Silky the fairy, and Saucepan Man. Together they visit the strange lands (the Roundabout Land, the Land of Ice and Snow, Toyland and the Land of Take What You Want) atop the tree and have the most exciting adventures – and narrow escapes.

[fairy-verse]

Do the firstborns play any instruments or find themselves fond of any human creations?

Ink (despite seeming to hold a not-so-secret grudge) absolutely loves human creations, though he is especially fond of utensils, such as forks and spoons. He also really likes intricate belts, especially those that have other things hanging from them that go clink, clink, clink when the humans walk about. He’s stolen many, many things from the Big Folk, and he’s hung many of them up in various trees as decorations. They’re an omen of bad luck for any Big Folk that enter his forest, because they’re a sign that that certain area is often frequented by Ink himself, and that is no good thing for them.

He likes to play wooden instruments that make deep, sometimes rumbling noises, though it is the flute he excels at, and its sound is the first thing the Big Folk will hear – if they take care to listen – when Spring finally begins its arrival. It will echo through the hills, past the trees, and over the mountains as it causes the ice to melt and break, and the snow to turn into flowing water as the grass so green begins to stand up to greet the warming sun.

Nightmare doesn’t play any instruments and isn’t too fond of human creations… until the pipe organ is invented. He only needed to hear it once to find it wonderful to listen to, and he’d have a copy made straight away; once he learned how it was constructed. It was built in a naturally formed cavern beneath his Underground nest, and there he sometimes likes to go and play it, making the very earth around him tremble with awed shudders. He tends to lose himself in the moment and has been known to miss hours and hours until someone comes to remind him that he needs to return to his duties.

He is also enchanted by the discovery of the astrolabe and the compass, and he just might have had some of his fairies steal them for him. He also has a human-sized book with illustrations depicting the inside of a giant castle, and the words describing it are attention-grabbing to be sure.

Dream plays the harp and the effect it has on other fairies and Big Folk alike is strikingly clear; it’s enthralling. You’ll hear no other sound like it ever again, less it is from him. Unless you’re a fairy you might just run the risk of losing your mind once you’ve heard it, as its effect has a way of glazing your eyes with a golden glow for as long as it plays, and you’ll see the world in a near heavenly light that makes everything just look so… enchanting. It’s not strange that any Big Folk who experiences this will feel grief-stricken once the music stops and the effect goes away. Everything just looks so… dull and dark after that, and those who’re unable to cope with it go mad from the search of finding it again.

He doesn’t know too much about human creations since he doesn’t travel near the borders these days, but a few years back he’d seen a human with a very intricate chest in his hands that held some warped silver coins, a scroll, and some gunpowder in a small purse. He only knows this because he snatched the chest – with some help – whilst the man wasn’t looking. He still has it hidden within a hollow hole in his willow tree.

Error might despise humans and pretend to hate everything they do and make, but he can’t deny it to himself that he likes their wooden and woollen creations, especially those he sees around the time of the winter solstice. Shapes of stars and circles made from twigs and strings are strangely appealing, dried orange slices and wheat goats decorated with red ribbons make him tilt his head in fascination. The only Big Folk creation he’s sought out and stolen was a deep blue glass sphere with a hollow room inside of it. The reason for this theft was solely because he witnessed one of the strange Big Folk traditions where they all held one of these spheres in their hands as they walked in a line, singing softly about light wishes and hopes of peaceful times to come. He found it all oddly… beautiful, especially since their singing seemed to make the glass spheres glow a pretty dark blue. He’ll never admit (not even to himself) that he’s fond of this tradition, but the Big Folk did notice that the winter winds calmed significantly after this specific day.

He does not play any instruments, but his singing is the sound of the freezing ice expanding and thickening on the lakes on cold days, and that is a particularly special kind of instrument, so, in a way, Error himself is an instrument of music; the one of winter itself, you could say.

[wordsbymae]

"They ain't lap dogs you know, they're working dogs and you spoil em too much" but mousey is for sure his lap dog lmao

so now farmer finally has them. what now? would he propose, not like in the the other AU when he is older? or would he just start going around the town telling people about his little wife/husband/spouse? because, what is little mouse supposed to do? they just can't say no to the only person that is so nice to them, the only person that takes care and protect them (or so the farmer say). mousey must return the favour.

I literally was going to answer about an hour ago but got completely distracted by making a mood board for the farmer's two dogs cause you reminded me of them. whoops!

Anyway!

Oh for sure!!!! He doesn't need his boys to be his lap dogs when he has the prettiest thing all to himself.

There is no way on God's green earth he will ever actually propose. Don't get me wrong, he wants nothing more than to marry his little mouse and put a ring on it. But actually courting them? Actually having to be vulnerable and open himself up to rejection?

Never ever going to happen.

I can see this going really two ways, there is a third secret option but that's for later.

The first way is he just starts acting like you're married. Tells everyone in town he can't stay too long or the missus/ his partner will be getting worried. Gushes about your cooking to anyone who will listen makes it clear that he's got a sweet little thing waiting all for him back at home. Carries a Polaroid picture of you hugging Pancho, with a big wide smile and while Lefty sooks in the corner. He'll show it off whenever he has the chance, talking about you and your boys.

Those who watched you two that day at the farmers' market just nod their heads with smiles and wish him all the best. He probably starts even wearing a plain gold band. Proud to show it off.

Meanwhile, the reader is confused when the very rare times they leave the farm everyone wishes them congratulations (and asks if any kids will be coming).

Mouse brings it up to the farmer and tells them they don't want people getting the wrong idea. They're just friends. The farmer just laughs at this.

"It's a bit too late to stop them from getting the wrong idea Mouse"

He practically gaslights them, I mean what's the big problem? Who cares if a few town folks think they got hitched. They are living together. You do act like a homemaker. You can't blame anyone for thinking you two had been married for years. The only thing stopping you two from actually being seen as truly married is the lack of a ring on your finger and you not being in his bed.

And would it really be so bad? Being his?

He's been so good to you. So kind. Like how a real husband would act. He looks after you and protects you. Buys you the prettiest things and asks nothing in return.

But now he is. Now he's asking for payment. Be his little homemaker in law as well and he'll take care of you like he always has.

You can't say no. You quit your job when your cottage burned down, just as the farmer told you to.

"I'll look after you mouse. Until you get back on your feet of course"

No one is hiring in town and even if you did get a job you wouldn't be able to buy or even rent a house. There was nowhere to go. There was taking the chance on living on the streets but wouldn't it just be easier to just say yes?

He was kinda right. You've already practically been his stay-at-home sweetheart, how bad would it be if you put a ring on your finger. This is everything you've ever wanted. To be his pretty spouse, him all to yourself.

So why did it feel so wrong?

The second is mostly fem reader but he would not be against baby trapping. If for even one moment he thought you would say no to being his wife, he would resort to baby trapping. I always view this fic set in the 60s or 70s (maybe even 50s) so there would be no way you could leave him with a babe in your belly. You would have no husband and no support. So of course you don't really have a choice. You're already on thin ice living with a single man, but that was something you could cover by explaining why. But a baby? That can't be hidden, can't be explained away. So as soon as you knew, the farmer would have a priest ready and waiting.

Tag list: @floraroselaughter

[theladysherlock]

"I think you're very brave, serving on this ship."

"Aye, or mad." The boy's eyes glistened in the glimmer of wormlight from beneath Alek's jacket. "Don't you think it's daft? Like I'm trying to burn to death, same as he did?"

"Don't be absurd," Alek said. "You're honoring your father. Of course you'd want to be on this ship. If I weren't..." he paused. "I mean, if things were different, I'd want to stay here too."

"You would?"

"Well, maybe it's silly. But the last few days, it's like something's changing inside me. Everything I ever knew is upside down. Sometimes it's almost as if I'm... in love..."

Dylan's body tightened beside Alek.

"I know it sounds silly," Alek said quickly. "It's quite obviously ridiculous."

"But are you saying that...? I mean, what if things were different than you thought? If I were... or have you guessed already?" Dylan let out a groan. "Just what are you saying?"

Alek shook his head. "Perhaps I'm putting this stupidly. But it's almost as though... I'm in love with your ship."

"You're in love," Dylan said slowly, "with the Leviathan?"

"It feels right here." Alek shrugged. "As if this is where I'm meant to be."

Dylan let out a strange, choked laugh as he put the medal back into his pocket.

"You Clankers," he muttered. "You're all cracked in the head."

I tried to think of a way to condense this scene and I couldn't do it, folks. I couldn't cut anything out. Thoughts are under the read more.

1a. Before we can begin, I'd like to have a moment of silence for Dylan. Christ Alive. Getting hit by a bus would hurt less.

1b. Okay now that that's over. All of this is happening while Alek has his arm around Dylan, by the way. Dylan's already emotionally raw after talking about the absolute worst day of his life, and then this happens.

2. I do think Dylan heard "are you trying to burn to death, just like he did?" A lot while trying to convince his mother of the plan. Again, I have no basis for this, but it feels like something that would have been shouted in an argument. It's the kind of thing you carry with you once you hear it.

3. Dylan's rapid fire questions do a good job of very quickly conveying the complicated emotions that are going through his head. If Alek knows his secret and is in love, that could be good for him; but if he doesn't know then that might become a problem; but if he does know, then who else has seen through the disguise? And all of this after trying really hard not to cry while you tell your best friend and also the guy you have a crush on about your dad.

4. I think part of why this is so catastrophic is that Alek is sheltered and doesn't know how to explain himself well, so he uses what he knows (love stories) to try and explain the feeling of being comfortable and happy and safe in a new place, of belonging somewhere to someone. Which is a very sweet endorsement of how he views romantic relationships, actually. Unfortunately Dylan has better words to describe the feeling and the ones Alek chose are the equivalent of hitting Dylan with a baseball bat.

5. We're approaching another great instance where Dylan uses deflection to try and fight off big feelings, but instead of trying to ignore fear, it's rejection this time. Anger is an easier emotion to stomach, and thankfully he's aware enough to not lash out at Alek, who technically didn't even do anything wrong. Dylan just thought they were going to have A Moment™️ and it didnt turn out that way.

[captainfluffytheragdoll]

Huskerdust overview: Hazbin Hotel's worst kept secret or best set up?

Heya folks! Fluffz here. Finally, y'all are getting somethin' other than crappy art lol. Today I'd like to share my opinions on Huskerdust, Hazbin Hotel's third most famous ship. It's a slash ship between Husker and Angel Dust, both of which are common fan favourites. I myself am a big-time Huskerduster(...?), but lately I gave it some thought, and after crawling around on the web for a bit, found out that this ship may not be as simple as we all thought.

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT TO CALL OUT OR MAKE FUN OF ANY INDIVIDUALS, JUST TO SHOW WHAT I'VE SEEN SO FAR.

First off, why do fans ship Huskerdust? According to the Shipping Wiki, "The ship became popular due to the attraction Angel demonstrated towards Husk early on, and it exploded in popularity after the episode “Masquerade” where fans realized how much Husk and Angel related to each other, and subsequently the genuine bond they formed in the song “Loser, Baby”". As the episodes went on, some might even notice Angel and Husk getting closer. For any hellbent shipper, this is usually more than enough to insist that this ship is canonical. It will and it shall be canonical, just you try and change my mind. On the other hand, there are also people who don't ship Huskerdust or even understand why others do.

How could there be such a difference in opinions, with one side demanding Huskerdust to be true throughout everything, and the other not understanding or even acknowledging anything? Well, it's all a matter of perspective. That said, let's look at both point of views.

Hazbin Hotel's worst kept secret?

I've heard quite a few people calling Huskerdust "Hazbin Hotel's worst kept secret", saying the ship was provided little to no coverage, and wouldn't be a surprise if it became canonical next episode. If Huskerdust is to be canonical, it was, indeed, not very well hidden. Again, it would be totally unexpected to those who don't understand it. If we were all expecting it and then it happened, would that be a surprise to you? Here's why Huskerdust could actually become canonical:

No better couple than the ones who understand each other.

As mentioned before, Huskerdust reached it's peak popularity after fans saw how similar Husk and Angel are and how they understand each other. Husk listens to Angel about his problems, and the latter knows Husk has undergone similar things. After that, the two seem to form a mutual bond.

You don't have to be perfect.

Angel doesn't have to uphold his "perfect" façade in front of Husk, since he already knows everything Angel goes through. In future, we might see Angel open up some more, allowing more growth in the two's relationship. Both of them know what it's like to be chained up, and understand each other's situation.

Respect's important!

As some fans might have noticed, after "Masquerade", Angel never displayed any ahem... sexual attraction towards Husk, and is respective of his personal space. Also, he doesn't keep his façade up and isn't fake with him. On top of that, fans might also have noticed how before episode 4, Husk would immediately recoil from any physical touch with Angel. After the aforementioned episode, Husk doesn't seem to mind coming into physical contact with Angel, even when the latter pulls him and Sir Pentious into a hug.

It's already confirmed?!

Aw hail naw, did I miss something?! Don't worry, it hasn't been well confirmed yet, but lots of people have been saying so. Howza bout we check it out?

:000 WHAT- AJFGDSGBEIRSH *gasps for air* *ahem, please give me a moment-*

Yes, well... ehe there you have it. Again, I'm not saying Huskerdust has been confirmed, but the official Hazbin Hotel accounts have been dropping hints now and then.

They could help each other heal.

If you think about it, Husk and Angel have both experienced the pain of being "owned", and pretty much bonded over it too. In future episodes, we might even see both of them turn to the other for comfort.

You're priceless.

Vivziepop stated "Although Angel is very protective of his actual feelings, what he would like, deep down, is a solid relationship built on respect, with someone who values him and wants to be with him." Husk isn't a very open person, but is very close with chosen people. Sounds like a match.

Someone special, huh?

Vivziepop has confirmed that Angel Dust will have a love interest in the series. Give it some thought, in our currently known characters, who is most likely to be of Angel's interest? If it's not Husk, we'll probably be seeing new characters. Also, Vivz says "Husk and Angel Dust's relationship is one that will develop over the course of the series". Despite no further details were given, it's likely it might be romantic.

Or is it Hazbin Hotel's best set up?

Now that I think about it, I have almost never seen anyone acknowledge how Huskerdust may very well be a set up. Either shippers blindly insist on it, or neglect it altogether (not everyone is like this, I'm talking about the extremes). No one seems to give it any thought, that, perhaps, our beloved ship is just falsehoods. Let's see why Huskerdust may very well not be canon.

They're just friends.

Vivziepop currently describes Husk and Angel as "Best friends", and quite a few people who don't ship Huskerdust say "I want them to remain friends." Oh well, everyone needs a good chap or two on their side.

They need time to heal.

Both Angel and Husk need time to heal after their trauma, and some time to figure things out. A relationship might not be very feasible right now.

Goodbye, then.

Now that it's been proven that sinners can redeem themselves and go to heaven, maybe, just maybe, Angel could too. After all, that's why he's at the hotel. But remember the club scene in episode 6? Husk says he "ain't the one trying to get into Heaven". Husk seemingly has no intention of being redeemed, and if Angel does, he'd be most likely leaving Husk behind.

They're both in a tight spot.

Angel and Husk are both "owned" by Over lords, having made deals with them for different reasons. Angel may only have to deal with Valentino during work hours, but Alastor is at the hotel with Husk. It would be hard to maintain a relationship while they're both pulled apart and used.

Is that how it ends?

According to Vivzie, Angel will experience heartbreak in the series, possibly meaning his relationship with Husk may not last, due to various reasons. (Poor dude can't catch a break...)

We'll figure it out.

As I said before, Husk and Angel need some time to figure things out. They have to heal a little before they can open up some more. One thing's for sure, they'll be by each other's side.

Aaalright, that's about all I have to say, whatdy'all think? Do you ship Huskerdust or not? Lmk in the comments! I, personally, ship Huskerdust, but I'd be fine if they're just friends :). I really look forward to their relationship growing and season two in general. Writing all that took me a good few hours so I'd appreciate a like, reblog or some nice words <3. No pressure ofc. Tysm to anyone who liked, reblogged or left some nice words 😀. Be sure to let me know your thoughts, and as always... peace, Fluffz out. ✌

[open-hearth-rpg]

#RPGaDay2024

Sensational session

We had a great session just last week, one where things clicked for me and we wrapped up an arc. We’ve been playing Hearts of Wulin: Numberless Secrets for a couple of years now– first an arc of three mysteries, then two more, and with the recent one a single mystery over five sessions. It uses HoW: NS uses Apocalypse Keys’ system of facets in combination with clues. I adore the way that plays out– and the way the solution to the mystery builds up through connections. 

"The Legend of Bad Valley" had many complications: a large list of NPCs, disguises and multiple victims, villains who weren’t villains, old stories coming back to haunt, and difficult entanglements. We’d also had a couple of break weeks in play due to injuries and other circumstances– so I had been nervous. I came in nervous because of that– and because we’d had a less than stellar resolution to case #4– one that almost made me quit GMing for a while. 

We started the session with another round of the characters talking with NPCs, establishing background, and confirming details. One of the players rolled well on a Study, used a Shadow to push it up a degree, and then created a new Facet for the mystery. It’s one of the things I love about the AK system– the ability to shape the case actually being solved. In this case it added an additional focus: something the players had seen and now brought to the forefront: the multiple identities of the murder victim(s). 

With the pieces in place, we went to the solution phase. In this process, in turn, each player associates a clue with a facet and talks about the connection. Sometimes it’s obvious, but other times the player gets to bring in background or suggest links. Each player’s answer builds on the previous one. As we go along as the GM I’m restating what they’ve established, adding context, and talking about the big picture. Together we tell the story of what’s happened. 

I tell people this is collaborative GMing. It’s what I do as a GM all the time– looking at events which have happened, figuring out their connections, and spinning that story forward. It’s that process of reincorporation and building– very much a writers’ room approach. I know some folks don’t dig that, but I love it. 

And this one clicked– especially because the players made several connections which hadn’t occurred to me. As the GM for a game like this, you always see behind the curtain. You can’t help but have some assumptions about the way it will go– and often later clues given fit into that. But we had some genuine shockers that made absolute sense and really brought everything together: not only who the killer was, but the tragic backstory of one of the killings, other peoples’ motivations, and an ultimate solution to the power vacuum looming over everything. 

It was exactly what I’d hoped for from this game. It felt like a great episode of Ancient Detective– the revelation and denouement hit all of the beats I wanted. 

Here’s the video of the session, starting from the solution phase

[vaguelyhumanshapedbeing]

tumblr is great because yeah yeah yeah curse of Lovecraft upon ye

THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE

By H. P. Lovecraft

West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs.

The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French-Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled, but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night. It must be this which keeps the foreigners away, for old Ammi Pierce has never told them of anything he recalls from the strange days. Ammi, whose head has been a little queer for years, is the only one who still remains, or who ever talks of the strange days; and he dares to do this because his house is so near the open fields and the travelled roads around Arkham.

There was once a road over the hills and through the valleys, that ran straight where the blasted heath is now; but people ceased to use it and a new road was laid curving far toward the south. Traces of the old one can still be found amidst the weeds of a returning wilderness, and some of them will doubtless linger even when half the hollows are flooded for the new reservoir. Then the dark woods will be cut down and the blasted heath will slumber far below blue waters whose surface will mirror the sky and ripple in the sun. And the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep's secrets; one with the hidden lore of old ocean, and all the mystery of primal earth.

When I went into the hills and vales to survey for the new reservoir they told me the place was evil. They told me this in Arkham, and because that is a very old town full of witch legends I thought the evil must be something which grandmas had whispered to children through centuries. The name "blasted heath" seemed to me very odd and theatrical, and I wondered how it had come into the folklore of a Puritan people. Then I saw that dark westward tangle of glens and slopes for myself, and ceased to wonder at anything besides its own elder mystery. It was morning when I saw it, but shadow lurked always there. The trees grew too thickly, and their trunks were too big for any healthy New England wood. There was too much silence in the dim alleys between them, and the floor was too soft with the dank moss and mattings of infinite years of decay.

In the open spaces, mostly along the line of the old road, there were little hillside farms; sometimes with all the buildings standing, sometimes with only one or two, and sometimes with only a lone chimney or fast-filling cellar. Weeds and briers reigned, and furtive wild things rustled in the undergrowth. Upon everything was a haze of restlessness and oppression; a touch of the unreal and the grotesque, as if some vital element of perspective or chiaroscuro were awry. I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this was no region to sleep in. It was too much like a landscape of Salvator Rosa; too much like some forbidden woodcut in a tale of terror.

But even all this was not so bad as the blasted heath. I knew it the moment I came upon it at the bottom of a spacious valley; for no other name could fit such thing, or any other thing fit such a name. It was as if the poet had coined the phrase from having seen this one particular region. It must, I thought as I viewed it, be the outcome of a fire; but why had nothing new ever grown over those five acres of grey desolation that sprawled open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields? It lay largely to the north of the ancient road line, but encroached a little on the other side. I felt an odd reluctance about approaching, and did so at last only because my business took me through and past it. There was no vegetation of any kind on that broad expanse, but only a fine grey dust or ash which no wind seemed ever to blow about. The trees near it were sickly and stunted, and many dead trunks stood or lay rotting at the rim. As I walked hurriedly by I saw the tumbled bricks and stones of an old chimney and cellar on my right, and the yawning black maw of an abandoned well whose stagnant vapours played strange tricks with the hues of the sunlight. Even the long, dark woodland climb beyond seemed welcome in contrast, and I marvelled no more at the frightened whispers of Arkham people. There had been no house or ruin near; even in the old days the place must have been lonely and remote. And at twilight, dreading to repass that ominous spot, I walked circuitously back to the town by the curving road on the south. I vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for an odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul.

In the evening I asked old people in Arkham about the blasted heath, and what was meant by that phrase "strange days" which so many evasively muttered. I could not, however, get any good answers, except that all the mystery was much more recent than I had dreamed. It was not a matter of old legendry at all, but something within the lifetime of those who spoke. It had happened in the 'eighties, and a family had disappeared or was killed. Speakers would not be exact; and because they all told me to pay no attention to old Ammi Pierce's crazy tales, I sought him out the next morning, having heard that he lived alone in the ancient tottering cottage where the trees first begin to get very thick. It was a fearsomely ancient place, and had begun to exude the faint miasmal odour which clings about houses that have stood too long. Only with persistent knocking could I rouse the aged man, and when he shuffled timidly to the door I could tell he was not glad to see me. He was not so feeble as I had expected; but his eyes drooped in a curious way, and his unkempt clothing and white beard made him seem very worn and dismal.

Not knowing just how he could best be launched on his tales, I feigned a matter of business; told him of my surveying, and asked vague questions about the district. He was far brighter and more educated than I had been led to think, and before I knew it had grasped quite as much of the subject as any man I had talked with in Arkham. He was not like other rustics I had known in the sections where reservoirs were to be. From him there were no protests at the miles of old wood and farmland to be blotted out, though perhaps there would have been had not his home lain outside the bounds of the future lake. Relief was all that he showed; relief at the doom of the dark ancient valleys through which he had roamed all his life. They were better under water now—better under water since the strange days. And with this opening his husky voice sank low, while his body leaned forward and his right forefinger began to point shakily and impressively.

It was then that I heard the story, and as the rambling voice scraped and whispered on I shivered again and again despite the summer day. Often I had to recall the speaker from ramblings, piece out scientific points which he knew only by a fading parrot memory of professors' talk, or bridge over gaps, where his sense of logic and continuity broke down. When he was done I did not wonder that his mind had snapped a trifle, or that the folk of Arkham would not speak much of the blasted heath. I hurried back before sunset to my hotel, unwilling to have the stars come out above me in the open; and the next day returned to Boston to give up my position. I could not go into that dim chaos of old forest and slope again, or face another time that grey blasted heath where the black well yawned deep beside the tumbled bricks and stones. The reservoir will soon be built now, and all those elder secrets will lie safe forever under watery fathoms. But even then I do not believe I would like to visit that country by night—at least not when the sinister stars are out; and nothing could bribe me to drink the new city water of Arkham.

It all began, old Ammi said, with the meteorite. Before that time there had been no wild legends at all since the witch trials, and even then these western woods were not feared half so much as the small island in the Miskatonic where the devil held court beside a curious stone altar older than the Indians. These were not haunted woods, and their fantastic dusk was never terrible till the strange days. Then there had come that white noontide cloud, that string of explosions in the air, and that pillar of smoke from the valley far in the wood. And by night all Arkham had heard of the great rock that fell out of the sky and bedded itself in the ground beside the well at the Nahum Gardner place. That was the house which had stood where the blasted heath was to come—the trim white Nahum Gardner house amidst its fertile gardens and orchards.

Nahum had come to town to tell people about the stone, and had dropped in at Ammi Pierce's on the way. Ammi was forty then, and all the queer things were fixed very strongly in his mind. He and his wife had gone with the three professors from Miskatonic University who hastened out the next morning to see the weird visitor from unknown stellar space, and had wondered why Nahum had called it so large the day before. It had shrunk, Nahum said as he pointed out the big brownish mound above the ripped earth and charred grass near the archaic well-sweep in his front yard; but the wise men answered that stones do not shrink. Its heat lingered persistently, and Nahum declared it had glowed faintly in the night. The professors tried it with a geologist's hammer and found it was oddly soft. It was, in truth, so soft as to be almost plastic; and they gouged rather than chipped a specimen to take back to the college for testing. They took it in an old pail borrowed from Nahum's kitchen, for even the small piece refused to grow cool. On the trip back they stopped at Ammi's to rest, and seemed thoughtful when Mrs. Pierce remarked that the fragment was growing smaller and burning the bottom of the pail. Truly, it was not large, but perhaps they had taken less than they thought.

The day after that—all this was in June of '82—the professors had trooped out again in a great excitement. As they passed Ammi's they told him what queer things the specimen had done, and how it had faded wholly away when they put it in a glass beaker. The beaker had gone, too, and the wise men talked of the strange stone's affinity for silicon. It had acted quite unbelievably in that well-ordered laboratory; doing nothing at all and showing no occluded gases when heated on charcoal, being wholly negative in the borax bead, and soon proving itself absolutely non-volatile at any producible temperature, including that of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe. On an anvil it appeared highly malleable, and in the dark its luminosity was very marked. Stubbornly refusing to grow cool, it soon had the college in a state of real excitement; and when upon heating before the spectroscope it displayed shining bands unlike any known colours of the normal spectrum there was much breathless talk of new elements, bizarre optical properties, and other things which puzzled men of science are wont to say when faced by the unknown.

Hot as it was, they tested it in a crucible with all the proper reagents. Water did nothing. Hydrochloric acid was the same. Nitric acid and even aqua regia merely hissed and spattered against its torrid invulnerability. Ammi had difficulty in recalling all these things, but recognized some solvents as I mentioned them in the usual order of use. There were ammonia and caustic soda, alcohol and ether, nauseous carbon disulphide and a dozen others; but although the weight grew steadily less as time passed, and the fragment seemed to be slightly cooling, there was no change in the solvents to show that they had attacked the substance at all. It was a metal, though, beyond a doubt. It was magnetic, for one thing; and after its immersion in the acid solvents there seemed to be faint traces of the Widmänstätten figures found on meteoric iron. When the cooling had grown very considerable, the testing was carried on in glass; and it was in a glass beaker that they left all the chips made of the original fragment during the work. The next morning both chips and beaker were gone without trace, and only a charred spot marked the place on the wooden shelf where they had been.

All this the professors told Ammi as they paused at his door, and once more he went with them to see the stony messenger from the stars, though this time his wife did not accompany him. It had now most certainly shrunk, and even the sober professors could not doubt the truth of what they saw. All around the dwindling brown lump near the well was a vacant space, except where the earth had caved in; and whereas it had been a good seven feet across the day before, it was now scarcely five. It was still hot, and the sages studied its surface curiously as they detached another and larger piece with hammer and chisel. They gouged deeply this time, and as they pried away the smaller mass they saw that the core of the thing was not quite homogeneous.

They had uncovered what seemed to be the side of a large coloured globule embedded in the substance. The colour, which resembled some of the bands in the meteor's strange spectrum, was almost impossible to describe; and it was only by analogy that they called it colour at all. Its texture was glossy, and upon tapping it appeared to promise both brittleness and hollowness. One of the professors gave it a smart blow with a hammer, and it burst with a nervous little pop. Nothing was emitted, and all trace of the thing vanished with the puncturing. It left behind a hollow spherical space about three inches across, and all thought it probable that others would be discovered as the enclosing substance wasted away.

Conjecture was vain; so after a futile attempt to find additional globules by drilling, the seekers left again with their new specimen—which proved, however, as baffling in the laboratory as its predecessor. Aside from being almost plastic, having heat, magnetism, and slight luminosity, cooling slightly in powerful acids, possessing an unknown spectrum, wasting away in air, and attacking silicon compounds with mutual destruction as a result, it presented no identifying features whatsoever; and at the end of the tests the college scientists were forced to own that they could not place it. It was nothing of this earth, but a piece of the great outside; and as such dowered with outside properties and obedient to outside laws.

That night there was a thunderstorm, and when the professors went out to Nahum's the next day they met with a bitter disappointment. The stone, magnetic as it had been, must have had some peculiar electrical property; for it had "drawn the lightning," as Nahum said, with a singular persistence. Six times within an hour the farmer saw the lightning strike the furrow in the front yard, and when the storm was over nothing remained but a ragged pit by the ancient well-sweep, half-chocked with caved-in earth. Digging had borne no fruit, and the scientists verified the fact of the utter vanishment. The failure was total; so that nothing was left to do but go back to the laboratory and test again the disappearing fragment left carefully cased in lead. That fragment lasted a week, at the end of which nothing of value had been learned of it. When it had gone, no residue was left behind, and in time the professors felt scarcely sure they had indeed seen with waking eyes that cryptic vestige of the fathomless gulfs outside; that lone, weird message from other universes and other realms of matter, force, and entity.

As was natural, the Arkham papers made much of the incident with its collegiate sponsoring, and sent reporters to talk with Nahum Gardner and his family. At least one Boston daily also sent a scribe, and Nahum quickly became a kind of local celebrity. He was a lean, genial person of about fifty, living with his wife and three sons on the pleasant farmstead in the valley. He and Ammi exchanged visits frequently, as did their wives; and Ammi had nothing but praise for him after all these years. He seemed slightly proud of the notice his place had attracted, and talked often of the meteorite in the succeeding weeks. That July and August were hot; and Nahum worked hard at his haying in the ten-acre pasture across Chapman's Brook; his rattling wain wearing deep ruts in the shadowy lanes between. The labour tired him more than it had in other years, and he felt that age was beginning to tell on him.

Then fell the time of fruit and harvest. The pears and apples slowly ripened, and Nahum vowed that his orchards were prospering as never before. The fruit was growing to phenomenal size and unwonted gloss, and in such abundance that extra barrels were ordered to handle the future crop. But with the ripening came sore disappointment, for of all that gorgeous array of specious lusciousness not one single jot was fit to eat. Into the fine flavour of the pears and apples had crept a stealthy bitterness and sickishness, so that even the smallest of bites induced a lasting disgust. It was the same with the melons and tomatoes, and Nahum sadly saw that his entire crop was lost. Quick to connect events, he declared that the meteorite had poisoned the soil, and thanked Heaven that most of the other crops were in the upland lot along the road.

Winter came early, and was very cold. Ammi saw Nahum less often than usual, and observed that he had begun to look worried. The rest of his family too, seemed to have grown taciturn; and were far from steady in their churchgoing or their attendance at the various social events of the countryside. For this reserve or melancholy no cause could be found, though all the household confessed now and then to poorer health and a feeling of vague disquiet. Nahum himself gave the most definite statement of anyone when he said he was disturbed about certain footprints in the snow. They were the usual winter prints of red squirrels, white rabbits, and foxes, but the brooding farmer professed to see something not quite right about their nature and arrangement. He was never specific, but appeared to think that they were not as characteristic of the anatomy and habits of squirrels and rabbits and foxes as they ought to be. Ammi listened without interest to this talk until one night when he drove past Nahum's house in his sleigh on the way back from Clark's Corners. There had been a moon, and a rabbit had run across the road; and the leaps of that rabbit were longer than either Ammi or his horse liked. The latter, indeed, had almost run away when brought up by a firm rein. Thereafter Ammi gave Nahum's tales more respect, and wondered why the Gardner dogs seemed so cowed and quivering every morning. They had, it developed, nearly lost the spirit to bark.

In February the McGregor boys from Meadow Hill were out shooting woodchucks, and not far from the Gardner place bagged a very peculiar specimen. The proportions of its body seemed slightly altered in a queer way impossible to describe, while its face had taken on an expression which no one ever saw in a woodchuck before. The boys were genuinely frightened, and threw the thing away at once, so that only their grotesque tales of it ever reached the people of the countryside. But the shying of horses near Nahum's house had now become an acknowledged thing, and all the basis for a cycle of whispered legend was fast taking form.

People vowed that the snow melted faster around Nahum's than it did anywhere else, and early in March there was an awed discussion in Potter's general store at Clark's Corners. Stephen Rice had driven past Gardner's in the morning, and had noticed the skunk-cabbages coming up through the mud by the woods across the road. Never were things of such size seen before, and they held strange colours that could not be put into any words. Their shapes were monstrous, and the horse had snorted at an odour which struck Stephen as wholly unprecedented. That afternoon several persons drove past to see the abnormal growth, and all agreed that plants of that kind ought never to sprout in a healthy world. The bad fruit of the fall before was freely mentioned, and it went from mouth to mouth that there was poison in Nahum's ground. Of course it was the meteorite; and remembering how strange the men from the college had found that stone to be, several farmers spoke about the matter to them.

One day they paid Nahum a visit; but having no love of wild tales and folklore were very conservative in what they inferred. The plants were certainly odd, but all skunk-cabbages are more or less odd in shape and hue. Perhaps some mineral element from the stone had entered the soil, but it would soon be washed away. And as for the footprints and frightened horses—of course this was mere country talk which such a phenomenon as the aerolite would be certain to start. There was really nothing for serious men to do in cases of wild gossip, for superstitious rustics will say and believe anything. And so all through the strange days the professors stayed away in contempt. Only one of them, when given two phials of dust for analysis in a police job over a year and a half later, recalled that the queer colour of that skunk-cabbage had been very like one of the anomalous bands of light shown by the meteor fragment in the college spectroscope, and like the brittle globule found imbedded in the stone from the abyss. The samples in this analysis case gave the same odd bands at first, though later they lost the property.

The trees budded prematurely around Nahum's, and at night they swayed ominously in the wind. Nahum's second son Thaddeus, a lad of fifteen, swore that they swayed also when there was no wind; but even the gossips would not credit this. Certainly, however, restlessness was in the air. The entire Gardner family developed the habit of stealthy listening, though not for any sound which they could consciously name. The listening was, indeed, rather a product of moments when consciousness seemed half to slip away. Unfortunately such moments increased week by week, till it became common speech that "something was wrong with all Nahum's folks." When the early saxifrage came out it had another strange colour; not quite like that of the skunk-cabbage, but plainly related and equally unknown to anyone who saw it. Nahum took some blossoms to Arkham and showed them to the editor of the Gazette, but that dignitary did no more than write a humorous article about them, in which the dark fears of rustics were held up to polite ridicule. It was a mistake of Nahum's to tell a stolid city man about the way the great, overgrown mourning-cloak butterflies behaved in connection with these saxifrages.

April brought a kind of madness to the country folk, and began that disuse of the road past Nahum's which led to its ultimate abandonment. It was next the vegetation. All the orchard trees blossomed forth in strange colours, and through the stony soil of the yard and adjacent pasturage there sprang up a bizarre growth which only a botanist could connect with the proper flora of the region. No sane wholesome colours were anywhere to be seen except in the green grass and leafage; but everywhere were those hectic and prismatic variants of some diseased, underlying primary tone without a place among the known tints of earth. The "Dutchman's breeches" became a thing of sinister menace, and the bloodroots grew insolent in their chromatic perversion. Ammi and the Gardners thought that most of the colours had a sort of haunting familiarity, and decided that they reminded one of the brittle globule in the meteor. Nahum ploughed and sowed the ten-acre pasture and the upland lot, but did nothing with the land around the house. He knew it would be of no use, and hoped that the summer's strange growths would draw all the poison from the soil. He was prepared for almost anything now, and had grown used to the sense of something near him waiting to be heard. The shunning of his house by neighbours told on him, of course; but it told on his wife more. The boys were better off, being at school each day; but they could not help being frightened by the gossip. Thaddeus, an especially sensitive youth, suffered the most.

In May the insects came, and Nahum's place became a nightmare of buzzing and crawling. Most of the creatures seemed not quite usual in their aspects and motions, and their nocturnal habits contradicted all former experience. The Gardners took to watching at night—watching in all directions at random for something they could not tell what. It was then that they all owned that Thaddeus had been right about the trees. Mrs. Gardner was the next to see it from the window as she watched the swollen boughs of a maple against a moonlit sky. The boughs surely moved, and there was no wind. It must be the sap. Strangeness had come into everything growing now. Yet it was none of Nahum's family at all who made the next discovery. Familiarity had dulled them, and what they could not see was glimpsed by a timid windmill salesman from Bolton who drove by one night in ignorance of the country legends. What he told in Arkham was given a short paragraph in the Gazette; and it was there that all the farmers, Nahum included, saw it first. The night had been dark and the buggy-lamps faint, but around a farm in the valley which everyone knew from the account must be Nahum's, the darkness had been less thick. A dim though distinct luminosity seemed to inhere in all the vegetation, grass, leaves, and blossoms alike, while at one moment a detached piece of the phosphorescence appeared to stir furtively in the yard near the barn.

The grass had so far seemed untouched, and the cows were freely pastured in the lot near the house, but toward the end of May the milk began to be bad. Then Nahum had the cows driven to the uplands, after which this trouble ceased. Not long after this the change in grass and leaves became apparent to the eye. All the verdure was going grey, and was developing a highly singular quality of brittleness. Ammi was now the only person who ever visited the place, and his visits were becoming fewer and fewer. When school closed the Gardners were virtually cut off from the world, and sometimes let Ammi do their errands in town. They were failing curiously both physically and mentally, and no one was surprised when the news of Mrs. Gardner's madness stole around.

It happened in June, about the anniversary of the meteor's fall, and the poor woman screamed about things in the air which she could not describe. In her raving there was not a single specific noun, but only verbs and pronouns. Things moved and changed and fluttered, and ears tingled to impulses which were not wholly sounds. Something was taken away—she was being drained of something—something was fastening itself on her that ought not to be—someone must make it keep off—nothing was ever still in the night—the walls and windows shifted. Nahum did not send her to the county asylum, but let her wander about the house as long as she was harmless to herself and others. Even when her expression changed he did nothing. But when the boys grew afraid of her, and Thaddeus nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him, he decided to keep her locked in the attic. By July she had ceased to speak and crawled on all fours, and before that month was over Nahum got the mad notion that she was slightly luminous in the dark, as he now clearly saw was the case with the nearby vegetation.

It was a little before this that the horses had stampeded. Something had aroused them in the night, and their neighing and kicking in their stalls had been terrible. There seemed virtually nothing to do to calm them, and when Nahum opened the stable door they all bolted out like frightened woodland deer. It took a week to track all four, and when found they were seen to be quite useless and unmanageable. Something had snapped in their brains, and each one had to be shot for its own good. Nahum borrowed a horse from Ammi for his haying, but found it would not approach the barn. It shied, balked, and whinnied, and in the end he could do nothing but drive it into the yard while the men used their own strength to get the heavy wagon near enough the hayloft for convenient pitching. And all the while the vegetation was turning grey and brittle. Even the flowers whose hues had been so strange were graying now, and the fruit was coming out grey and dwarfed and tasteless. The asters and goldenrod bloomed grey and distorted, and the roses and zinnias and hollyhocks in the front yard were such blasphemous-looking things that Nahum's oldest boy Zenas cut them down. The strangely puffed insects died about that time, even the bees that had left their hives and taken to the woods.

By September all the vegetation was fast crumbling to a greyish powder, and Nahum feared that the trees would die before the poison was out of the soil. His wife now had spells of terrific screaming, and he and the boys were in a constant state of nervous tension. They shunned people now, and when school opened the boys did not go. But it was Ammi, on one of his rare visits, who first realized that the well water was no longer good. It had an evil taste that was not exactly fetid nor exactly salty, and Ammi advised his friend to dig another well on higher ground to use till the soil was good again. Nahum, however, ignored the warning, for he had by that time become calloused to strange and unpleasant things. He and the boys continued to use the tainted supply, drinking it as listlessly and mechanically as they ate their meagre and ill-cooked meals and did their thankless and monotonous chores through the aimless days. There was something of stolid resignation about them all, as if they walked half in another world between lines of nameless guards to a certain and familiar doom.

Thaddeus went mad in September after a visit to the well. He had gone with a pail and had come back empty-handed, shrieking and waving his arms, and sometimes lapsing into an inane titter or a whisper about "the moving colours down there." Two in one family was pretty bad, but Nahum was very brave about it. He let the boy run about for a week until he began stumbling and hurting himself, and then he shut him in an attic room across the hall from his mother's. The way they screamed at each other from behind their locked doors was very terrible, especially to little Merwin, who fancied they talked in some terrible language that was not of earth. Merwin was getting frightfully imaginative, and his restlessness was worse after the shutting away of the brother who had been his greatest playmate.

Almost at the same time the mortality among the livestock commenced. Poultry turned greyish and died very quickly, their meat being found dry and noisome upon cutting. Hogs grew inordinately fat, then suddenly began to undergo loathsome changes which no one could explain. Their meat was of course useless, and Nahum was at his wit's end. No rural veterinary would approach his place, and the city veterinary from Arkham was openly baffled. The swine began growing grey and brittle and falling to pieces before they died, and their eyes and muzzles developed singular alterations. It was very inexplicable, for they had never been fed from the tainted vegetation. Then something struck the cows. Certain areas or sometimes the whole body would be uncannily shrivelled or compressed, and atrocious collapses or disintegrations were common. In the last stages—and death was always the result—there would be a greying and turning brittle like that which beset the hogs. There could be no question of poison, for all the cases occurred in a locked and undisturbed barn. No bites of prowling things could have brought the virus, for what live beast of earth can pass through solid obstacles? It must be only natural disease—yet what disease could wreak such results was beyond any mind's guessing. When the harvest came there was not an animal surviving on the place, for the stock and poultry were dead and the dogs had run away. These dogs, three in number, had all vanished one night and were never heard of again. The five cats had left some time before, but their going was scarcely noticed since there now seemed to be no mice, and only Mrs. Gardner had made pets of the graceful felines.

On the nineteenth of October Nahum staggered into Ammi's house with hideous news. The death had come to poor Thaddeus in his attic room, and it had come in a way which could not be told. Nahum had dug a grave in the railed family plot behind the farm, and had put therein what he found. There could have been nothing from outside, for the small barred window and locked door were intact; but it was much as it had been in the barn. Ammi and his wife consoled the stricken man as best they could, but shuddered as they did so. Stark terror seemed to cling round the Gardners and all they touched, and the very presence of one in the house was a breath from regions unnamed and unnameable. Ammi accompanied Nahum home with the greatest reluctance, and did what he might to calm the hysterical sobbing of little Merwin. Zenas needed no calming. He had come of late to do nothing but stare into space and obey what his father told him; and Ammi thought that his fate was very merciful. Now and then Merwin's screams were answered faintly from the attic, and in response to an inquiring look Nahum said that his wife was getting very feeble. When night approached, Ammi managed to get away; for not even friendship could make him stay in that spot when the faint glow of the vegetation began and the trees may or may not have swayed without wind. It was really lucky for Ammi that he was not more imaginative. Even as things were, his mind was bent ever so slightly; but had he been able to connect and reflect upon all the portents around him he must inevitably have turned a total maniac. In the twilight he hastened home, the screams of the mad woman and the nervous child ringing horrible in his ears.

Three days later Nahum burst into Ammi's kitchen in the early morning, and in the absence of his host stammered out a desperate tale once more, while Mrs. Pierce listened in a clutching fright. It was little Merwin this time. He was gone. He had gone out late at night with a lantern and pail for water, and had never come back. He'd been going to pieces for days, and hardly knew what he was about. Screamed at everything. There had been a frantic shriek from the yard then, but before the father could get to the door the boy was gone. There was no glow from the lantern he had taken, and of the child himself no trace. At the time Nahum thought the lantern and pail were gone too; but when dawn came, and the man had plodded back from his all-night search of the woods and fields, he had found some very curious things near the well. There was a crushed and apparently somewhat melted mass of iron which had certainly been the lantern; while a bent pail and twisted iron hoops beside it, both half-fused, seemed to hint at the remnants of the pail. That was all. Nahum was past imagining, Mrs. Pierce was blank, and Ammi, when he had reached home and heard the tale, could give no guess. Merwin was gone, and there would be no use in telling the people around, who shunned all Gardners now. No use, either, in telling the city people at Arkham who laughed at everything. Thad was gone, and now Merwin was gone. Something was creeping and creeping and waiting to be seen and heard. Nahum would go soon, and he wanted Ammi to look after his wife and Zenas if they survived him. It must all be a judgment of some sort; though he could not fancy what for, since he had always walked uprightly in the Lord's ways so far as he knew.

For over two weeks Ammi saw nothing of Nahum; and then, worried about what might have happened, he overcame his fears and paid the Gardner place a visit. There was no smoke from the great chimney, and for a moment the visitor was apprehensive of the worst. The aspect of the whole farm was shocking—greyish withered grass and leaves on the ground, vines falling in brittle wreckage from archaic walls and gables, and great bare trees clawing up at the grey November sky with a studied malevolence which Ammi could not but feel had come from some subtle change in the tilt of the branches. But Nahum was alive, after all. He was weak, and lying in a couch in the low-ceiled kitchen, but perfectly conscious and able to give simple orders to Zenas. The room was deadly cold; and as Ammi visibly shivered, the host shouted huskily to Zenas for more wood. Wood, indeed, was sorely needed; since the cavernous fireplace was unlit and empty, with a cloud of soot blowing about in the chill wind that came down the chimney. Presently Nahum asked him if the extra wood had made him any more comfortable, and then Ammi saw what had happened. The stoutest cord had broken at last, and the hapless farmer's mind was proof against more sorrow.

Questioning tactfully, Ammi could get no clear data at all about the missing Zenas. "In the well—he lives in the well—" was all that the clouded father would say. Then there flashed across the visitor's mind a sudden thought of the mad wife, and he changed his line of inquiry. "Nabby? Why, here she is!" was the surprised response of poor Nahum, and Ammi soon saw that he must search for himself. Leaving the harmless babbler on the couch, he took the keys from their nail beside the door and climbed the creaking stairs to the attic. It was very close and noisome up there, and no sound could be heard from any direction. Of the four doors in sight, only one was locked, and on this he tried various keys on the ring he had taken. The third key proved the right one, and after some fumbling Ammi threw open the low white door.

It was quite dark inside, for the window was small and half-obscured by the crude wooden bars; and Ammi could see nothing at all on the wide-planked floor. The stench was beyond enduring, and before proceeding further he had to retreat to another room and return with his lungs filled with breathable air. When he did enter he saw something dark in the corner, and upon seeing it more clearly he screamed outright. While he screamed he thought a momentary cloud eclipsed the window, and a second later he felt himself brushed as if by some hateful current of vapour. Strange colours danced before his eyes; and had not a present horror numbed him he would have thought of the globule in the meteor that the geologist's hammer had shattered, and of the morbid vegetation that had sprouted in the spring. As it was he thought only of the blasphemous monstrosity which confronted him, and which all too clearly had shared the nameless fate of young Thaddeus and the livestock. But the terrible thing about the horror was that it very slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to crumble.

Ammi would give me no added particulars of this scene, but the shape in the corners does not re-appear in his tale as a moving object. There are things which cannot be mentioned, and what is done in common humanity is sometimes cruelly judged by the law. I gathered that no moving thing was left in that attic room, and that to leave anything capable of motion there would have been a deed so monstrous as to damn any accountable being to eternal torment. Anyone but a stolid farmer would have fainted or gone mad, but Ammi walked conscious through that low doorway and locked the accursed secret behind him. There would be Nahum to deal with now; he must be fed and tended, and removed to some place where he could be cared for.

Commencing his descent of the dark stairs, Ammi heard a thud below him. He even thought a scream had been suddenly choked off, and recalled nervously the clammy vapour which had brushed by him in that frightful room above. What presence had his cry and entry started up? Halted by some vague fear, he heard still further sounds below. Indubitably there was a sort of heavy dragging, and a most detestably sticky noise as of some fiendish and unclean species of suction. With an associative sense goaded to feverish heights, he thought unaccountably of what he had seen upstairs. Good God! What eldritch dream-world was this into which he had blundered? He dared move neither backward nor forward, but stood there trembling at the black curve of the boxed-in staircase. Every trifle of the scene burned itself into his brain. The sounds, the sense of dread expectancy, the darkness, the steepness of the narrow steps—and merciful Heaven!—the faint but unmistakable luminosity of all the woodwork in sight; steps, sides, exposed laths, and beams alike.

Then there burst forth a frantic whinny from Ammi's horse outside, followed at once by a clatter which told of a frenzied runaway. In another moment horse and buggy had gone beyond earshot, leaving the frightened man on the dark stairs to guess what had sent them. But that was not all. There had been another sound out there. A sort of liquid splash—water—it must have been the well. He had left Hero untied near it, and a buggy-wheel must have brushed the coping and knocked in a stone. And still the pale phosphorescense glowed in that detestably ancient woodwork. God! how old the house was! Most of it built before 1700.

A feeble scratching on the floor downstairs now sounded distinctly, and Ammi's grip tightened on a heavy stick he had picked up in the attic for some purpose. Slowly nerving himself, he finished his descent and walked boldly toward the kitchen. But he did not complete the walk, because what he sought was no longer there. It had come to meet him, and it was still alive after a fashion. Whether it had crawled or whether it had been dragged by any external forces, Ammi could not say; but the death had been at it. Everything had happened in the last half-hour, but collapse, greying, and disintegration were already far advanced. There was a horrible brittleness, and dry fragments were scaling off. Ammi could not touch it, but looked horrifiedly into the distorted parody that had been a face. "What was it, Nahum—what was it?" He whispered, and the cleft, bulging lips were just able to crackle out a final answer.

"Nothin' ... nothin' ... the colour ... it burns ... cold an' wet, but it burns ... it lived in the well.... I seen it ... a kind o' smoke ... jest like the flowers last spring ... the well shone at night.... Thad an' Merwin an' Zenas ... everything alive ... suckin' the life out of everything ... in that stone ... it must o' come in that stone ... pizened the whole place ... dun't know what it wants ... that round thing them men from the college dug outen the stone ... they smashed it ... it was that same colour ... jest the same, like the flowers an' plants ... must a' ben more of 'em ... seeds ... seeds ... they growed ... I seen it the fust time this week ... must a' got strong on Zenas ... he was a big boy, full o' life ... it beats down your mind an' then gits ye ... burns ye up ... in the well water ... you was right about that ... evil water ... Zenas never come back from the well ... can't git away ... draws ye ... ye know summ'at's comin', but 'tain't no use ... I seen it time an' agin Zenas was took ... whar's Nabby, Ammi? ... my head's no good ... dun't know how long sence I fed her ... it'll git her ef we ain't keerful ... jest a colour ... her face is gittin' to hev that colour sometimes towards night ... an' it burns an' sucks ... it come from some place whar things ain't as they is here ... one o' them professors said so ... he was right ... look out, Ammi, it'll do suthin' more ... sucks the life out...."

But that was all. That which spoke could speak no more because it had completely caved in. Ammi laid a red checked tablecloth over what was left and reeled out the back door into the fields. He climbed the slope to the ten-acre pasture and stumbled home by the north road and the woods. He could not pass that well from which his horses had run away. He had looked at it through the window, and had seen that no stone was missing from the rim. Then the lurching buggy had not dislodged anything after all—the splash had been something else—something which went into the well after it had done with poor Nahum....

When Ammi reached his house the horses and buggy had arrived before him and thrown his wife into fits of anxiety. Reassuring her without explanations, he set out at once for Arkham and notified the authorities that the Gardner family was no more. He indulged in no details, but merely told of the deaths of Nahum and Nabby, that of Thaddeus being already known, and mentioned that the cause seemed to be the same strange ailment which had killed the livestock. He also stated that Merwin and Zenas had disappeared. There was considerable questioning at the police station, and in the end Ammi was compelled to take three officers to the Gardner farm, together with the coroner, the medical examiner, and the veterinary who had treated the diseased animals. He went much against his will, for the afternoon was advancing and he feared the fall of night over that accursed place, but it was some comfort to have so many people with him.

The six men drove out in a democrat-wagon, following Ammi's buggy, and arrived at the pest-ridden farmhouse about four o'clock. Used as the officers were to gruesome experiences, not one remained unmoved at what was found in the attic and under the red checked tablecloth on the floor below. The whole aspect of the farm with its grey desolation was terrible enough, but those two crumbling objects were beyond all bounds. No one could look long at them, and even the medical examiner admitted that there was very little to examine. Specimens could be analysed, of course, so he busied himself in obtaining them—and here it develops that a very puzzling aftermath occurred at the college laboratory where the two phials of dust were finally taken. Under the spectroscope both samples gave off an unknown spectrum, in which many of the baffling bands were precisely like those which the strange meteor had yielded in the previous year. The property of emitting this spectrum vanished in a month, the dust thereafter consisting mainly of alkaline phosphates and carbonates.

Ammi would not have told the men about the well if he had thought they meant to do anything then and there. It was getting toward sunset, and he was anxious to be away. But he could not help glancing nervously at the stony curb by the great sweep, and when a detective questioned him he admitted that Nahum had feared something down there—so much so that he had never even thought of searching it for Merwin or Zenas. After that nothing would do but that they empty and explore the well immediately, so Ammi had to wait trembling while pail after pail of rank water was hauled up and splashed on the soaking ground outside. The men sniffed in disgust at the fluid, and toward the last held their noses against the foetor they were uncovering. It was not so long a job as they had feared it would be, since the water was phenomenally low. There is no need to speak too exactly of what they found. Merwin and Zenas were both there, in part, though the vestiges were mainly skeletal. There were also a small deer and a large dog in about the same state, and a number of bones of smaller animals. The ooze and slime at the bottom seemed inexplicably porous and bubbling, and a man who descended on hand-holds with a long pole found that he could sink the wooden shaft to any depth in the mud of the floor without meeting any solid obstruction.

Twilight had now fallen, and lanterns were brought from the house. Then, when it was seen that nothing further could be gained from the well, everyone went indoors and conferred in the ancient sitting-room while the intermittent light of a spectral half-moon played wanly on the grey desolation outside. The men were frankly nonplussed by the entire case, and could find no convincing common element to link the strange vegetable conditions, the unknown disease of livestock and humans, and the unaccountable deaths of Merwin and Zenas in the tainted well. They had heard the common country talk, it is true; but could not believe that anything contrary to natural law had occurred. No doubt the meteor had poisoned the soil, but the illness of person and animals who had eaten nothing grown in that soil was another matter. Was it the well water? Very possibly. It might be a good idea to analyse it. But what peculiar madness could have made both boys jump into the well? Their deeds were so similar—and the fragments showed that they had both suffered from the grey brittle death. Why was everything so grey and brittle?

It was the coroner, seated near a window overlooking the yard, who first noticed the glow about the well. Night had fully set in, and all the abhorrent grounds seemed faintly luminous with more than the fitful moonbeams; but this new glow was something definite and distinct, and appeared to shoot up from the black pit like a softened ray from a searchlight, giving dull reflections in the little ground pools where the water had been emptied. It had a very queer colour, and as all the men clustered round the window Ammi gave a violent start. For this strange beam of ghastly miasma was to him of no unfamiliar hue. He had seen that colour before, and feared to think what it might mean. He had seen it in the nasty brittle globule in that aerolite two summers ago, had seen it in the crazy vegetation of the springtime, and had thought he had seen it for an instant that very morning against the small barred window of that terrible attic room where nameless things had happened. It had flashed there a second, and a clammy and hateful current of vapour had brushed past him—and then poor Nahum had been taken by something of that colour. He had said so at the last—said it was like the globule and the plants. After that had come the runaway in the yard and the splash in the well—and now that well was belching forth to the night a pale insidious beam of the same demoniac tint.

It does credit to the alertness of Ammi's mind that he puzzled even at that tense moment over a point which was essentially scientific. He could not but wonder at his gleaning of the same impression from a vapour glimpsed in the daytime, against a window opening in the morning sky, and from a nocturnal exhalation seen as a phosphorescent mist against the black and blasted landscape. It wasn't right—it was against Nature—and he thought of those terrible last words of his stricken friend, "It come from some place whar things ain't as they is here ... one o' them professors said so...."

All three horses outside, tied to a pair of shrivelled saplings by the road, were now neighing and pawing frantically. The wagon driver started for the door to do something, but Ammi laid a shaky hand on his shoulder. "Dun't go out thar," he whispered. "They's more to this nor what we know. Nahum said somethin' lived in the well that sucks your life out. He said it must be some'at growed from a round ball like one we all seen in the meteor stone that fell a year ago June. Sucks an' burns, he said, an' is jest a cloud of colour like that light out thar now, that ye can hardly see an' can't tell what it is. Nahum thought it feeds on everything livin' an' gits stronger all the time. He said he seen it this last week. It must be somethin' from away off in the sky like the men from the college last year says the meteor stone was. The way it's made an' the way it works ain't like no way o' God's world. It's some'at from beyond."

So the men paused indecisively as the light from the well grew stronger and the hitched horses pawed and whinnied in increasing frenzy. It was truly an awful moment; with terror in that ancient and accursed house itself, four monstrous sets of fragments—two from the house and two from the well—in the woodshed behind, and that shaft of unknown and unholy iridescence from the slimy depths in front. Ammi had restrained the driver on impulse, forgetting how uninjured he himself was after the clammy brushing of that coloured vapour in the attic room, but perhaps it is just as well that he acted as he did. No one will ever know what was abroad that night; and though the blasphemy from beyond had not so far hurt any human of unweakened mind, there is no telling what it might not have done at that last moment, and with its seemingly increased strength and the special signs of purpose it was soon to display beneath the half-clouded moonlit sky.

All at once one of the detectives at the window gave a short, sharp gasp. The others looked at him, and then quickly followed his own gaze upward to the point at which its idle straying had been suddenly arrested. There was no need for words. What had been disputed in country gossip was disputable no longer, and it is because of the thing which every man of that party agreed in whispering later on, that strange days are never talked about in Arkham. It is necessary to premise that there was no wind at that hour of the evening. One did arise not long afterward, but there was absolutely none then. Even the dry tips of the lingering hedge-mustard, grey and blighted, and the fringe on the roof of the standing democrat-wagon were unstirred. And yet amid that tense, godless calm the high bare boughs of all the trees in the yard were moving. They were twitching morbidly and spasmodically, clawing in convulsive and epileptic madness at the moonlit clouds; scratching impotently in the noxious air as if jerked by some allied and bodiless line of linkage with sub-terrene horrors writhing and struggling below the black roots.

Not a man breathed for several seconds. Then a cloud of darker depth passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe, but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper darkness the watchers saw wriggling at the treetop height a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that come down on the apostles' heads at Pentecost. It was a monstrous constellation of unnatural light, like a glutted swarm of corpse-fed fireflies dancing hellish sarabands over an accursed marsh; and its colour was that same nameless intrusion which Ammi had come to recognise and dread. All the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting brighter and brighter, bringing to the minds of the huddled men, a sense of doom and abnormality which far outraced any image their conscious minds could form. It was no longer shining out; it was pouringout; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow directly into the sky.

... and in the fearsome instant of deeper darkness, the watchers saw wriggling at that treetop height, a thousand tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire of St. Elmo ... and all the while the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting brighter and brighter and bringing to the minds of the huddled men, a sense of doom and abnormality.... It was no longer shining out; it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well, it seemed to flow directly into the sky.

The veterinary shivered, and walked to the front door to drop the heavy extra bar across it. Ammi shook no less, and had to tug and point for lack of a controllable voice when he wished to draw notice to the growing luminosity of the trees. The neighing and stamping of the horses had become utterly frightful, but not a soul of that group in the old house would have ventured forth for any earthly reward. With the moments the shining of the trees increased, while their restless branches seemed to strain more and more toward verticality. The wood of the well-sweep was shining now, and presently a policeman dumbly pointed to some wooden sheds and beehives near the stone wall on the west. They were commencing to shine, too, though the tethered vehicles of the visitors seemed so far unaffected. Then there was a wild commotion and clopping in the road, and as Ammi quenched the lamp for better seeing they realized that the span of frantic grays had broken their sapling and run off with the democrat-wagon.

The shock served to loosen several tongues, and embarrassed whispers were exchanged. "It spreads on everything organic that's been around here," muttered the medical examiner. No one replied, but the man who had been in the well gave a hint that his long pole must have stirred up something intangible. "It was awful," he added. "There was no bottom at all. Just ooze and bubbles and the feeling of something lurking under there." Ammi's horse still pawed and screamed deafeningly in the road outside, and nearly drowned its owner's faint quaver as he mumbled his formless reflections. "It come from that stone—it growed down thar—it got everything livin'—it fed itself on 'em, mind and body—Thad an' Merwin, Zenas an' Nabby—Nahum was the last—they all drunk the water—it got strong on 'em—it come from beyond, whar things ain't like they be here—now it's goin' home—"

At this point, as the column of unknown colour flared suddenly stronger and began to weave itself into fantastic suggestions of shape which each spectator later described differently, there came from poor tethered Hero such a sound as no man before or since ever heard from a horse. Every person in that low-pitched sitting-room stopped his ears, and Ammi turned away from the window in horror and nausea. Words could not convey it—when Ammi looked out again the hapless beast lay huddled inert on the moonlit ground between the splintered shafts of the buggy. That was the last of Hero till they buried him next day. But the present was no time to mourn, for almost at this instant a detective silently called attention to something terrible in the very room with them. In the absence of the lamplight it was clear that a faint phosphorescence had begun to pervade the entire apartment. It glowed on the broad-planked floor where the rag carpet left it bare, and shimmered over the sashes of the small-paned windows. It ran up and down the exposed corner-posts, coruscated about the shelf and mantel, and infected the very doors and furniture. Each minute saw it strengthen, and at last it was very plain that healthy living things must leave that house.

Ammi showed them the back door and the path up through the fields to the ten-acre pasture. They walked and stumbled as in a dream, and did not dare look back till they were far away on the high ground. They were glad of the path, for they could not have gone the front way, by that well. It was bad enough passing the glowing barn and sheds, and those shining orchard trees with their gnarled, fiendish contours; but thank Heaven the branches did their worst twisting high up. The moon went under some very black clouds as they crossed the rustic bridge over Chapman's Brook, and it was blind groping from there to the open meadows.

When they looked back toward the valley and the distant Gardner place at the bottom they saw a fearsome sight. All the farm was shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour; trees, buildings, and even such grass and herbage as had not been wholly changed to lethal grey brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues of foul flame, and lambent tricklings of the same monstrous fire were creeping about the ridgepoles of the house, barn and sheds. It was a scene from a vision of Fuseli, and over all the rest reigned that riot of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow of cryptic poison from the well—seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scintillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and unrecognizable chromaticism.

Then without warning the hideous thing shot vertically up toward the sky like a rocket or meteor, leaving behind no trail and disappearing through a round and curiously regular hole in the clouds before any man could gasp or cry out. No watcher can ever forget that sight, and Ammi stared blankly at the stars of Cygnus, Deneb twinkling above the others, where the unknown colour had melted into the Milky Way. But his gaze was the next moment called swiftly to earth by the crackling in the valley. It was just that. Only a wooden ripping and crackling, and not an explosion, as so many others of the party vowed. Yet the outcome was the same, for in one feverish kaleidoscopic instant there burst up from that doomed and accursed farm a gleamingly eruptive cataclysm of unnatural sparks and substance; blurring the glance of the few who saw it, and sending forth to the zenith a bombarding cloudburst of such coloured and fantastic fragments as our universe must needs disown. Through quickly re-closing vapours they followed the great morbidity that had vanished, and in another second they had vanished too. Behind and below was only a darkness to which the men dared not return, and all about was a mounting wind which seemed to sweep down in black, frore gusts from interstellar space. It shrieked and howled, and lashed the fields and distorted woods in a mad cosmic frenzy, till soon the trembling party realized it would be no use waiting for the moon to show what was left down there at Nahum's.

Too awed even to hint theories, the seven shaking men trudged back toward Arkham by the north road. Ammi was worse than his fellows, and begged them to see him inside his own kitchen, instead of keeping straight on to town. He did not wish to cross the blighted, wind-whipped woods alone to his home on the main road. For he had had an added shock that the others were spared, and was crushed for ever with a brooding fear he dared not even mention for many years to come. As the rest of the watchers on that tempestuous hill had stolidly set their faces toward the road, Ammi had looked back an instant at the shadowed valley of desolation so lately sheltering his ill-starred friend. And from that stricken, far-away spot he had seen something feebly rise, only to sink down again upon the place from which the great shapeless horror had shot into the sky. It was just a colour—but not any colour of our earth or heavens. And because Ammi recognized that colour, and knew that this last faint remnant must still lurk down there in the well, he has never been quite right since.

Ammi would never go near the place again. It is forty-four years now since the horror happened, but he has never been there, and will be glad when the new reservoir blots it out. I shall be glad, too, for I do not like the way the sunlight changed colour around the mouth of that abandoned well I passed. I hope the water will always be very deep—but even so, I shall never drink it. I do not think I shall visit the Arkham country hereafter. Three of the men who had been with Ammi returned the next morning to see the ruins by daylight, but there were not any real ruins. Only the bricks of the chimney, the stones of the cellar, some mineral and metallic litter here and there, and the rim of that nefandous well. Save for Ammi's dead horse, which they towed away and buried, and the buggy which they shortly returned to him, everything that had ever been living had gone. Five eldritch acres of dusty grey desert remained, nor has anything ever grown there since. To this day it sprawls open to the sky like a great spot eaten by acid in the woods and fields, and the few who have ever dared glimpse it in spite of the rural tales have named it "the blasted heath."

The rural tales are queer. They might be even queerer if city men and college chemists could be interested enough to analyze the water from that disused well, or the grey dust that no wind seems ever to disperse. Botanists, too, ought to study the stunted flora on the borders of that spot, for they might shed light on the country notion that the blight is spreading—little by little, perhaps an inch a year. People say the colour of the neighboring herbage is not quite right in the spring, and that wild things leave queer prints in the light winter snow. Snow never seems quite so heavy on the blasted heath as it is elsewhere. Horses—the few that are left in this motor age—grow skittish in the silent valley; and hunters cannot depend on their dogs too near the splotch of greyish dust.

They say the mental influences are very bad, too; numbers went queer in the years after Nahum's taking, and always they lacked the power to get away. Then the stronger-minded folk all left the region, and only the foreigners tried to live in the crumbling old homesteads. They could not stay, though; and one sometimes wonders what insight beyond ours their wild, weird stories of whispered magic have given them. Their dreams at night, they protest, are very horrible in that grotesque country; and surely the very look of the dark realm is enough to stir a morbid fancy. No traveler has ever escaped a sense of strangeness in those deep ravines, and artists shiver as they paint thick woods whose mystery is as much of the spirits as of the eye. I myself am curious about the sensation I derived from my one lone walk before Ammi told me his tale. When twilight came I had vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul.

Do not ask me for my opinion. I do not know—that is all. There was no one but Ammi to question; for Arkham people will not talk about the strange days, and all three professors who saw the aerolite and its coloured globule are dead. There were other globules—depend upon that. One must have fed itself and escaped, and probably there was another which was too late. No doubt it is still down the well—I know there was something wrong with the sunlight I saw above that miasmal brink. The rustics say the blight creeps an inch a year, so perhaps there is a kind of growth or nourishment even now. But whatever demon hatchling is there, it must be tethered to something or else it would quickly spread. Is it fastened to the roots of those trees that claw the air? One of the current Arkham tales is about fat oaks that shine and move as they ought not to do at night.

What it is, only God knows. In terms of matter I suppose the thing Ammi described would be called a gas, but this gas obeyed laws that are not of our cosmos. This was no fruit of such worlds and suns as shine on the telescopes and photographic plates of our observatories. This was no breath from the skies whose motions and dimensions our astronomers measure or deem too vast to measure. It was just a colour out of space—a frightful messenger from unformed realms of infinity beyond all Nature as we know it; from realms whose mere existence stuns the brain and numbs us with the black extra-cosmic gulfs it throws open before our frenzied eyes.

I doubt very much if Ammi consciously lied to me, and I do not think his tale was all a freak of madness as the townsfolk had forewarned. Something terrible came to the hills and valleys on that meteor, and something terrible—though I know not in what proportion—still remains. I shall be glad to see the water come. Meanwhile I hope nothing will happen to Ammi. He saw so much of the thing—and its influence was so insidious. Why has he never been able to move away? How clearly he recalled those dying words of Nahum's—"can't git away—draws ye—ye know summ'at's comin', but 'tain't no use—" Ammi is such a good old man—when the reservoir gang gets to work I must write the chief engineer to keep a sharp watch on him. I would hate to think of him as the grey, twisted, brittle monstrosity which persists more and more in troubling my sleep.

THE END

[antimony-medusa]

heyy im thinking of joining ao3 with my works, but they’re not fanfics, they’re original writings. do you think it would still get accepted/viewed by folks? bc from what i see on tumblr it sounds like ao3 is mostly engaged with fanfic, i could be wrong but thats what it sounds like lol

Ohhh, original works on Ao3 my beloved.

Okay so there are two general baskets of Original Works, and one is "everything original people are putting on Ao3", and one is the one that people do in exchanges, where people sign up to write relationships like "Teen Who Is Turning Into A Werewolf & Her Sister" or "Retired General/His Arranged Marriage Spouse Who Was Formerly The Enemy General".

In my experience people broadly speaking do not really find the stuff in the first basket on Ao3. I'm in the tag right now and a lot of these works have very low hits. The stuff in the Second basket, which is things tagged interestingly enough that they catch people's eye, with a fun high concept— maybe? Some of these works clearly have a following!

Okay so there are 286,322 works in the Original Works tag, with something like over a hundred works posted a day, and there are not hundreds of people hovering in the tag looking for whatever gets posted, because honestly, like half of it is people posting vent fic. The spectrum of quality varies WILDLY, like it does in any big tag, and there is a lot of stuff that is people just starting out. Also a lot of it is people writing niche porn. Original Work is a very horny tag. So you have to find a way to rise into people's vision.

And this HAS been done— I'm subscribed to two people on Ao3 specifically because I loved their original works, I have an original work that's sitting at 200 kudos, there's an 86k novel I read in chapter updates last year that updated on fridays where I was like "ohhh it's friday it's jewel day" for ages and it's sitting at almost 2k kudos. I have read a published novel that started as an OW on Ao3, though I can't find the title now. But again, this is the stuff that rises to the top of the 286k fics in the tag, this is not everything. So how do you rise to the top and get seen?

My first advice is luring people over from another source. So if you already have a following from other fic, some people might follow you to original works? And then if it's GOOD, they'll stick around. This is the equivalent of "this romance author I liked is trying thrillers— I might try it?" So not everybody is gonna follow you, but some might. And if you already have people following your blog where you talk about your writing on Tumblr, you can say "check it out on Ao3", and people will head on over!

And then my second advice is that if you tag and do the summary interestingly, people might click when they see you. But you have like 2 seconds to catch people's attention, so how do you maximize that?

A) if do your relationship in an interesting way that tells people something, that helps. "Original Male Character/Original Male Character" just tells me it's M/M. "Supervillain Working As A Barista/Flirty Superhero With A Caffeine Addiction" tells me a LOT more. If you can cram your whole story concept into 100 words there, you can do a lot to hook people.

B) same as you do for any fic on Ao3— your summary and tags written in an interesting way. This is the equivalent of having interesting cover copy in a bookstore— why would people want to pick up your story? Certainly not if you say "this is kinda bad but please read it", they'll put it right back. But if you say "Alice is a woman on the run from the mafia with a dark secret— she's slowly turning into a vampire. Can she find a community, learn how to feed herself without endangering her soul, and maybe even find a girlfriend or two before her past catches up with her?" Well then people know what your story is about and are much more interested.

C) you don't want to become that person with a wall of tags nobody reads, but if you do tag the right tags so that you show up in OTHER tags people might be searching: if I find your fic when I'm looking for "asexual character" or "alternate universe - high school" or "meet-cute" or "fluff and angst" or "open/bittersweet ending", or alternately, a lot of really specific porn tags, and you've made your summary and relationship and tags interesting, I might click through.

And then my third advice is to do exchanges. A LOT of exchanges do include an Original Works component, and if you can write short stories, you can lure people into reading your work because you're writing "Lonely God & Baby Abandoned On Their Altar" or Lighthouse Keeper/Siren Trying To Wreck Ships" or something, because people DO click around exchanges reading the original works because they're fun and there aren't 286 of them, there are 12 of them in an exchange. If you like writing for a challenge, you can get people to read your work if you write it for an event.

So I'm not an expert in either original works or getting my work seen, I am not good at search engine optimization, but that is some stuff I have seen other people doing. Good luck!

[mj-102009]

Hi, I'm a fanfiction writer that likes feeling sad, movies, (long walks on the beach) and talking. And guess who just watched "It Ends With Us" and can't sleep because of it. Strap in folks, I have a lot to say and nothing to do for the next hour.

First if you haven't read the book or seen the movie here's a brief summary: "Lily Bloom moves to Boston to chase her lifelong dream of opening her own business. A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid soon sparks an intense connection, but as the two fall deeply in love, she begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents' relationship. When Lily's first love, Atlas Corrigan, suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with Ryle gets upended, leaving her with an impossible choice." -this was all found in google.

If you're interested then I would recommend you read or watch it before continuing. Should you move past this point you will find that this is a view of the MOVIE not the book. I have not read the book (however I plan too) and I will not claim to make a comparison between the two pieces. I have never been in a relationship similar to the one portrayed in the movie so if I do make a mistake regarding the circumstances then please do let me know.

-SPOLIERS BEYOND THIS POINT-

I have so many feelings about this movie that its getting ridiculously difficult not to listen to sad music and lay down in a puddle of my own tears.

I assume that its no secret to anyone that planned on watching this movie that it would be a wee bit sad. I'm here to tell you that I left this movie with my face covered behind my popcorn bucket trying to hide my swollen eyes. I've seen so many critics, comments, blogs, and even some articles that have said that there was too much angst in one movie; and when I had first seen them I scoffed and said "this movie was PERFECT," she babbles through gut tearing tears. But over the past few hours after watching this movie I feel as though there were a few things that seemed unnecessary.

Ryle's toxic behavior was definitely shown early in the film literally in the first SECONDS that he was introduced as he kicks a chair. And I think a portion of the audience may have seen the red flags but the remaining chunk (including me) was gawking at Ryle's biceps. As he progresses through the movie I definitely went back and saw the signs. However, I feel as though going from literally biting his wife's neck...to seeing what he did was wrong...was a little plot convenient. I didn't stay long after the big "IT ENDS WITH US" at the end so it there was a post credit scene please correct me. But, once he left the room after the divorce talk, did they coparent? Did he dip and start that prostitute career? This all seems very tied up with a bow to me.

Why can't we all find a man like Atlas? I loved Atlas from the start, I had no gripes with him. My guy did everything PERFECT. My issue however is not with his character or his writing- its the screen time. I would like to say that you can't try to convince an audience that they're in love when the only time we see Atlas is when Ryle is pouting off camera. The movie definitely was trying this messed up love triangle, there is literally a scene where the camera is behind a man and you can't tell who is really is until his face comes into view and we're all like- "Lily are you efing serious?" because it wasn't Atlas. And I can't even be happy at the end because I didn't know the guy enough to care about his relationship.

I want to hug and lecture Lily both at once. If I'm sitting on a roof and some crazy hot guy kicks a chair and ten minutes later tell me he want to have sex; I'm taking my chances with the street. Lily is so dumb blond coded, which isn't a jab at Blake Lively...its a statement. She has the personality of wet cardboard and ten minutes in I was so done. The whole time they're talking she's smiling like a toddler after pissing its pants. "It ends with us, blah blah blah" I inhaled deeply and dropped my head into my hands. How much more cliche can you be? She would be the first to die in a horror movie just because I'd get tired of her.

Another big issue I had was the time skips, how long was this on for? Two years before they got a divorce? (complete guess) In two years I would have spend a total of 700 days doing nothing. And Lily's dad died, she got married, divorced him, had a baby, and got back with the high school sweetheart? Dude I'm struggling to get up at 7 everyday and do my homework.

Again this is a really poor analysis, I write about fictional men.

[chevelleneech]

I don't know why some jkkers get so hung up on their own theories, none of us actually know anything at the end of the day anyway. I see moments/things in them that clearly (in my opinion) cross a friendship barrier by most people's standards and stuff that pretty clearly leans into attraction from both of them. Beyond that, who tf knows? There's an entire spectrum of possibilities clear from them having nothing going on romantically and never have, all the way to having been dating for the past 8 years + secret engagement (this is a joke for those with their panties on too tight). They could label it, they could not, they could be involved currently, they could've been involved in the past, but are no longer, they could be planning to be involved in the future, they could be exclusive and committed, they could also not be.

I wish jkkers weren't so one-track/hive mind sometimes because I do actually think a lot of the fandom sees their relationship as special or different in some way even if they don't want to post about for fear of being called a shipper or the fact that so many big accounts are tkkers. I also think a lot of people are like me, where they see things that are sus, are open to the possibility, but don't want to delve too deeply/cross boundaries into conspiracies and then go into jkk spaces where they kind of force the "they clearly started dating around here, got serious around here, had a fight here, etc." theories and get turned off. I like the tumblr jkker space because I feel like there is a lot more conversation here, but it can also get echo-chambery. Its ok to just be chill and acknowledge you see some stuff going on that seems unique to them and enjoy and support that special bond. If they are involved romantically, I don't need to know when that started or for how long or any other personal details (unless they want to tell us of course) and I can still enjoy them together as they are.

Yeah, I don’t see why what I said triggered anyone let alone two people, lol. I’ve done nothing but post about how cute they are together and the fact that them being platonic seems extremely unlikely to me, even if they aren’t romantically involved. So me saying I have a theory that they might have put off making things official until after their service, should not have been an issue.

That said, I know for a fact I have differing views on when they got together, if they are. I’ve seen people fight others on it too many times, because for some reason people hate even the suggestion that JM and JK haven’t been together since the day they met, lol. But I agree with folks who say somewhere between 2017-2019 is when things officially shifted between them. Any time before that seems extremely unrealistic to me, but I don’t talk about it because it brings “Why would they act like THIS if they weren’t dating yet!?!?!?!????” anons, and nobody has time for that.

So yeah, I’m enjoying myself here and enjoying their interactions as they come. I thinks it’s obvious they view each other differently than they view the other members, but that’s the extent of my sort of “fact” talk. Everything else is speculation, even if a singular conclusion makes the most sense.

[basket-of-cats-and-witches]

Toxic era hallmark durgetash

I can't write full fics right now so I'm in hell and y'all have to suffer with me with snippets.

Anyway hallmark durgetash, durge fled and had to fake their own death after their sister nearly killed them. (That's more Lifetime but stay with me.)

Durge finds out they're pregnant during all this.

Fast forward several years, where Durge settles into a small town, running a small ranch, when a familiar name comes into town. A name carrying a lot of money, meeting with the richest folk in town....

(just snippets of thoughts, feat. my durge, Aelune and if you like it, reblogs are appreciated!)

---

"Wait!" Gortash's hand whipped out, capturing Aelune's wrist. "I just want a word."

"That's five right there," Aelune bit out. They yanked away, rubbing the skin tenderly. "You abandoned me, Enver. My own sister was going to kill me, and you did nothing. You had your chance. I shouldn't have had to change everything about who I was just to keep safe."

Gortash took in the sight before him. Eyes filled with old, tired anger, hair whipping in the wind, the golden hour illuminating their form and making them seem heavenly.

Nothing had changed. They were still as beautiful as the day he'd last seen them.

Everything had changed. They wanted nothing to do with him.

"I didn't know," he said softly, holding out his hand beseechingly. "Please. I thought you were dead. I thought I had lost you."

Aelune laughed bitterly. "You did, Enver. For a powerful man who supposedly knows everyone's secrets, you are surprisingly thickheaded." They looked away, arms wrapped tightly around themselves as if they were attempting to keep from falling apart.

From giving in to that outstretched hand.

"Ignorance isn't bliss, Enver. It's malice. It's destructive. Saying you didn't know fixes nothing. There's a lot you don't know. That you may never know."

"Mama?"

Both of them froze at that tiny voice.

Behind Aelune, opening the big front door, was a small child. Frail and dark-haired, with luminous grey eyes. Behind him, a woman looked on apologetically.

"I'm sorry Aelune, I tried to keep him inside," she whispered, as the child scampered over, clinging to Aelune's pants. "He missed you while you were working."

Aelune shook their head. "It's okay, Amaira. He's a wiggly one when he wants to be." They picked up the boy, settling him on their hip.

Enver could only watch helplessly. The child's hair was as wild and as dark as his own, nearly a carbon copy to how he looked when he had been that young.

While he'd been toiling away, working to bring his company to the height of power, Aelune had been raising a child alone.

His child.

They met his eyes squarely. "I'm sorry, Enver. We'll have to speak another time. It's dinnertime for me and my son."

The distance between them yawned wide, like a chasm that stretched ever onwards. Long gone was the vicious rival he'd fallen in love with. Cold corporate takeovers and violent displays of power had been replaced with gentle words and rough hardworking hands.

"Goodnight, Enver," they said firmly.

For a moment, he saw double. The past stood behind them with a cruel smirk and a powerful stance. Clean, well-dressed, and ready to kill.

And then it faded. To tired, dirty jeans, a well-worn flannel, and a sorrowful parent hellbent on protecting their son from anything that would threaten them.

Including him.

He gave a half-bow. "Goodnight, Aelune," he whispered.

As they walked away, his son on their hip, he couldn't help but feel as if he had been saying farewell.

[cats-mayhem]

Ein MyStreet isn't a compelling villain to me.

Please note how I said ME in the title. This is just how I feel. You're entitled to your own opinions. Also this isn't the most professional analysis, I am just saying what's on my mind in the moment. Anyway, let's get into it.

OK so basically: Ein had a lot of potential. In the first half of season 1 he was a cute "bad" boy who just wanted to not be the Omega of the school whilst also having a crush on Aphmau. Then Aphmau made him Alpha Male and then he stopped being a character.

It's framed that everything he did with Aphmau was just a ploy to get the position of Alpha but like... He was so genuine so many times? He was blushing and all, he helped her out with the hair dye. He was a good boy who actually had a thing for Aph.

But ok, let's just ignore his characterization up until the twist because ooohhh he's actually really mean and manipulative. Maybe it's because of the power he now has after being bullied for so long but it's SUCH a jarring shift in character for him.

I guess Jessica wanted to make an actual Villain character since Gene and Balto weren't the most threatening and evil but like... They're in high school? They're not gonna be evil masterminds like what she was trying to do with Ein.

Gene and Balto were just bullies and that fit for PDH S1. Ein being evil is to shut down any romantic progression he would have with Aphmau since Kai got character assassinated and was a dick to her on a date (+ Ein's meddling)

All so that Aaron can come "save the day" and beat up Ein and save Aphmau from an evil man that she never figured out was evil. The most Evil things Ein did was pick an Omega without Aph and also ruin her date.

Ein didn't want to be the omega anymore since he was sick of being seen as weak and being bullied and ignored, and the teacher WANTED him to take that title willingly, even after everything he's gone through with it. And he KNOWS that Aph would try and convince him To take it on as well, so that's why he picked one by himself. And the date thing... Yeah idk why he did that maybe he was just jealous idk i forgor.

OH YEAH and he beat the shit out of Kasey so that Katelyn can have a reason to be racist towards werewolves when the Ultima Reveal. Completely forgot about that.

I honestly think PDH S2 had an interesting set up with the love triangle. Kai has Aaron's personality whilst Ein has Aaron's attitude. (Aph & Aaron's romance is awful but i'm just pointing out symbolism).

Ein was also racist towards Humans since he is a werewolf supremacist and he wanted to make Aphmau a werewolf so that she'd be perfect. Also werewolves are a minority that's discriminated against so this character trait is a bit uh... Yikes!

Also I just remembered this but Ein was working with Gene to get close to Aphmau and Gene wanted pictures of Aphmau for some fucking reason?? What was that about. We get no context on this other than 1 scene btw.

So the next time we see Ein is in Emerald Secret! Oh boy, I got some words.

So about 15 years pass since PDH S2 and everyone is an adult in their late 20s. What has Ein been doing in all that time? Obsessing over a girl he met in high school, researching heavily into a folk lore in order to turn her into a werewolf. Also he's been doing illegal potion making and used one of those potions to turn an actual wolf, human, so that he can be the alpha of her wolf pack.

Also he's working with the biggest bad of them all, Micheal! But we don't meet him until Season 6 or something. He also may or may not be mind controlling Ein during Emerald Secret we don't know.

So what else does Ein do this season now that he's the big bad again? Other than the wolf thing, he also brainwashes Aphmau's friends into thinking he's their brother, makes Aphmau obey his every word and love him whilst also despising Aaron.

And makes her attempt to kill Aaron. Despite the fact that he needs Aaron to turn her into a werewolf first, after he denies when he's asked, Ein was like "Ok well. Aph kill him lmao."

He also "dies" in the end by getting mauled by the pack of wolves he made himself Alpha of.

I don't think it takes that much brainpower to see why this is an awful twist (he was also a twist villain btw we didn't know it was him until midway). His motivation is stupid, why are you still obsessed with some girl from high school, you're 28.

Why does he even still have those pictures of her in high school? Like if you're gonna be obsessed with her, at least stalk her so you can get the modern update???

Also, his werewolf supremacy is played up big time here to the point it makes you question why he wasn't obsessing over Aaron like Xavier was. Maybe Jessica didn't wanna repeat motivation? But Ein & Xavier are very different characters, you could make it work.

He was just a mess of a villain once you think about his motivation for 2 seconds. And then he shows up in When Angels Fall!! This one is shorter I promise.

So in WAF Ein uses another illegal potion to make werewolves (who were in hiding since the Government is taking every single one of them and interrogating them because they might be some ancient folklore beast). And makes them all obey his every word and call him Alpha.

It's confirmed that after High School, werewolf packs and Alphas don't matter in the real world so it's weird that he was obsessed with it in Emerald Secret.

Anyway after that, he kidnaps Aphmau to hold Aaron ransom and when he gets his werewolf ears back (Aaron took them away in ES) he kills Aphmau because he was being mind controlled by Micheal.

And then Aaron and Ein fight on a bridge, Aaron kills his mind controlled friends, and then kills Ein. So let's talk about it.

the thing with this is that... It just shows that Ein COULD'VE been written well if he was mind controlled by Micheal with the illegal potions. Since Micheal had 100% access to Ein at any time and Ein played a major role in Micheal's plan to trauma trigger Aaron.

And honestly it would've made Ein a much more compelling character if he just... Didn't have control over his actions. One theme with the main group is that they decide what to do with their lives and how to move forward.

But that wouldn't apply to someone who was controlled, now, would it? And since we know that the person under the effects of a forever potion still have a conscious, and can see all the acts that they don't have control over, it would've made Ein a tragic villain.

And if he was mind controlled by Micheal during Emerald Secret it would explain why Ein was obessed with Aphmau despite it being so weird. Because guess what, Ein & Aphmau are half siblings! So that re-contextualizes every interaction they ever had.

I think that Ein should've had an actual character instead of being a cartoon villain like Micheal was. Ein is the only character to have so much DIRECT action towards the main cast. Why would you make him so messy and one dimensional?

And the whole Mind Control thing is something that can be easily done. Ein uses forever potions to make people Obey Him, and since Micheal doesn't have enough power to mind control Ein 24/7, him using a potion like that on Ein would make so much sense.

Since Ein is shown to be decent at potion making and magic by the time we meet him. Micheal is the only one who could've taught him all of that. And the thing is: IT'S CANNON ONLY IN WAH. They met before ES but it's left so vague on what their relationship was that you could say Ein did everything in Emerald Secret by his own volition and you'd be right since nothing is confirmed.

If Jessica wanted to make this a serious story, WHY WOULD YOU STOP AT THE MOST RELEVANT VILLAIN??? He's literally related to Aphmau and was apart of the experimentation in some way but we don't know because he's not a character enough for him to be lore relevant other than him being a plot device. I'm so upset on the way Jessica wrote him since he could've been so much more than he actually was.

I wanna add something: The mind controlled by Micheal thing is only one possibility with his character. You can do a whole lot of other things. The reason why I focused on the mind-control thing is that it's an easy cop-out Jessica could do in order to make Ein an actual character.

Jessica isn't the best writer and loves tropes & cop-outs so it very well could've been done in story. But instead she let Ein be vague as hell and also tying him so closely into the lore.

I just want Ein to be a coherent character with understandable motivations behind his actions. There is no excuse for him to be this important and yet so messily written.

And now he's dead. RIP Ein MyStreet. You could've been one of the greatest.