#I don’t want to go out of my way to get obsessed with another website yk

[stealingyourbones]

I keep on being told I should post my food crimes to r/shittyfoodporn (I think that’s the right subreddit) but I don’t have enough karma because I don’t touch Reddit. Alas.

[bucks-babe]

Plastic

Summary: Bucky using a fleshlight for the first time

Warnings: Smut, toys(fleshlight, vibrator), dirty talk, watching porn, overuse of the word fucking, anal?, cum eating, degradation, use of the word bitch, slut and whore, surprise guest at the end

Word Count: 1.8k

A/N: I wrote this in like an hour so be warned. I’m kind of in the same headspace I was in when I wrote Be Mean to Me so this is quite dirty and a little mean. Anyway, you are responsible for your own media consumption. Any and all mistakes are my own. Huge thanks to the amazing @buckys-wintersoldier for beta reading; however any and all mistakes are again, my own. Bucky’s a loud, horny, little boy but he is so hot. THIS IS SOOOO HOT!🤭🤭

Bucky knows that he looks insane, standing by the door of his apartment with his ear pressed against it, listening for the footsteps of his delivery driver. He knows it’s coming soon, having his phone in his hand, obsessively checking the progress of his order. His cock, already hard and throbbing, twitches when he hears the elevator ding and he knows that it's his package. Bucky knows the sound of everyone’s steps on his floor.

As soon as the coast is clear, Bucky whips his door open and grabs his box, barely remembering to lock the door before sprinting up to his room, tearing the packaging open on the way. Flinging himself down on the bed, he moans at the sight of the fleshlight in his hand. “Oh, sweetheart, pussy’s so fucking pretty. Look at that pretty clit. Want me to rub it, huh? Make you cum around my cock?”

He tosses the toy to the side, quickly getting rid of all his clothes and grabbing the lube from his bedside stand along with the TV remote. Bucky silently thanks Sam for showing him how to use a smart TV. One of his favorite things about the 21st century had to be porn. He never had this type of porn back in his day. It would only be magazines of naked women, not that he was complaining, but watching people having sex was much hotter to him.

With the TV in his room and no one living with him, Bucky was able to watch porn in HD as loud as he wanted to, and fuck if he didn’t have the strongest orgasm of his life the first time. 

“That’s gonna be too bad, baby, because I’m fucking your ass today. Don’t give a shit if it hurts, you’re gonna take what I give you and let me fill that tight little hole up as much as I want.” He grabs the fleshlight again and pulls the silicon out, only to flip it to the other side where the fake asshole was before putting it back in its casing. 

Without thought he sticks his tongue in as far as he could, ignoring the plastic taste, and groaning at the tightness of it. “Fuck, you’re gonna choke my cock aren’t ya? Yeah, you are, bitch.” He grabs the remote and quickly gets to a porn website and logs in. “What should I watch, slut while I ruin your little ass?” He already knows exactly what video he was going to watch, there was no doubt about it. It’s the same video he’s been playing on repeat for weeks, never able to last the whole time.

The sight of the woman’s ass swallowing that huge cock sends him over the edge. Maybe it was because the man’s cock looked just like his, making it that much easier to imagine he was fucking her, making her hole gape. Her ass bouncing has him hypnotized, not able to comprehend how it was so perfect.

“Can’t wait to fuck that little hole. Leave you open and sore. Makes my dick so fucking hard.” Clicking the video and grabbing the lube, Bucky puts the tip of the bottle in the hole, squeezing until the slick was dripping out. He doesn’t wait for the intro to finish, quickly skipping past it and to his favorite part, moaning immediately when he clicks play and they’re fucking full force, both moaning, skin slapping, and ass jiggling. 

Bucky has to rewind the video to just before the man slides his cock in, wanting to imagine that he was the one fucking her. He spreads his legs out, feeling his sack hit the bed and another idea enters his brain. Rolling over he grabs the vibrator from the drawer before settling back into his spot, this time with the wand nestled under his balls. Turning it to high, Bucky grinds his sack down further, staring at the way they vibrate over the toy.

If he didn’t have as much control as he did, Bucky could have came just from that. He wants so bad to have her lay down on his bed while he straddles her face, smothering her with his sack, grinding and sliding his balls around face, listening to her choke on them, all while fucking into his toy, pounding, pouring load after load into it.

With that thought in his mind, Bucky lines the fake hole with his cock, the cold lube leaking onto his dick causes him to jerk, his tip grazing her hole. “Fuck, bitch, can’t even get the tip in. Don’t worry, I won’t stop. Don’t cry, you’ll get used to me fucking you whenever. Your little holes are gonna stretch and swallow my cock without problem eventually.”

He has to press to get his thick tip to pop it, and when it does Bucky loses his mind. “Ohhhh, fuccckkk. So fucking tight, shit, gonna make me nut already. So fucking wet, fucking made for me. Shitshitshit.” He has to use every bit of self control in his body to not shove the rest of his length inside, not wanting to blow just yet, not when he hasn’t even seen his girl swallow his dick in her ass while bouncing on his lap.

For just a moment, Bucky regrets placing the vibrator on his sack, but it feels too good to take off, now adding wiggles to his grind, moving the vibe all over his huge sack. “Ready for the rest of it, whore?  No? Well too fucking bad because I want it and I’ll fucking take it, bitch.” It takes him a minute to find the remote, pressing play and turning the volume up, fuck the neighbors. 

He groans in frustration when the people decide to take their good ol’ time getting to the fucking, but when he sees her squat over his lap Bucky feels his cock pulse in anticipation. Her perfect ass swallows his cock without hesitation, and Bucky follows. As soon as he gets past the tip, he slams the rest of his length in, frantically bucking his hips to meet the toy, head falling back and eyes shut.. The sound of his cries, the lube squelching and leaking down to his balls where they bounce between the base of the toy and the vibrator, all drown out the video playing.

“Ohfuckohfuck, so fucking good. Oh shit, ass so tight, cock fucking choking. Can’t. Shit, I, oh fuck.” Bucky’s mind becomes mush, only the carnal urge to fuck and fuck hard drive him. “Love this, love th, fuck! Bet it fucking hurts. Can’t do anything but get fucked. Does my big fat cock hurt? ‘S it tearing you open? Just meant to take this fat fucking dick. Don’t care, bitch. Don’t give a fuck that it hurts. Better get fucking used to it because I’m gonna keep you on my cock all the time.”

When he opens up his eyes, that’s when he truly starts to fuck. He’s almost positive that the bed is going to break any second, creaking and shaking with every thrust. He puts all of his strength into fucking up into the toy while both of his hands come down to help his brutal pounding. “Look at that fucking ass, oh my fuck. Take it, fucking take it. See, slut, told you. You fucking like that shit, fucking like being my cocksleave.”

His moans get higher in pitch, balls still slapping against the vibe with every thrust, practically being thrown around with the speed of his fucking. “‘M’gonna fucking nut. Gonna pour every fucking drop in you ass. Fuuuccckkk, wanna cum on it, watch it bounce while I keep fucking you. Gonna bust so fucking hard. When I’m fucking done you’re gonna be gaping so fucking much I’ll shove my sack inside. Uh, huh, you’ll fucking like that.”

He takes one hand off, searching for the remote that’s been bouncing all over the bed, and turns the volume up all the way, not able to hear over the cacophony of sound he was making. “Ohhhhh, shit, ready? Ready for this fucking nut? There’s so much fucking cum, oh fuck. So much, gonna blow. C’mon, keep bouncing that big ass on me. Don’t you fucking dare stop when I nut, you fucking hear me, bitch? You’re gonna milk every fucking drop from my sack. Gonna be more than one tonight. Have me so fucking horny.”

His thrusts become sloppy before he decides to just stop bucking and let his sack rest on the vibe and his hands take over the work. “Ohhhhh, fucking gonna blow, gonna nut. Ready, fucking ready? Bouncebouncebounce, just like that, just like that. FUCK, YES. GIVE ME IT. GIVE ME THAT FUCKING HOLE. TAKE THIS FUCKING NUT.”

The string of curses doesn’t slow down for minutes, his orgasm not abiding at all. “Fuck me! Leaking everywhere. All over the fucking bed. Cum’s filling you up so much can’t even handle it.” He keeps going until he’s almost too sensitive, pulling the fleshlight off wasting no time bringing it up to his mouth, swallowing mouthfulls of cum until it’s all gone. “So fucking good, but I’m not fucking done. Get over here, baby.”

Still laying on the bed, Bucky looks over to you, leaning against the doorframe. “I’m surprised you heard me over all that noise you were making.” Bucky just chuckles and lazily reaches an arm out for you, beckoning you over, which you happily do.

You take off all your clothes before joining him in bed, grabbing the fleshlight and licking the drops of cum he missed off, humming at the taste. “You know, you could have just called me over instead of watching our videos? I’m pretty sure we’re gonna get another noise complaint. The whole building probably heard you.”

Bucky rolls to his side. “Can’t help it, baby. You’re so fucking sexy and the way you take my cock. Can’t get off to anyone else, only my favorite pornstar.” He cuts himself off with a groan.

“I don’t know if it counts as being a pornstar if we only have sex with each other, Buck.”

“Of course it counts. Last time I checked, thousands of people come to watch us fuck each other dumb. Speaking of, we haven’t made a video in a while and I bet they would love to see you squirt on my dick, don’t you think?”

At your giggle, Bucky goes and sets the camera up, making sure not to show anything in the room that would give away who you both are, knowing that you would blur your faces when you go to edit. As much as he loved to hear how crazy men and women go over the two of you, Bucky didn’t want them to know your identities. 

“Sweetheart, you are so fucking beautiful, can’t even put it into words.”

“Don’t have to, show me, big guy because I’m dripping and I need a big cock to fill me up and my boyfriend's right here.” And Bucky’s going to do just that.

[urauntiefaye]

can we get more hard thoughts on &team pretty plssss🥺🤎?

&Team as Perverts + Scenarios 🔞

WC: 1634 

TW: Ngl this might make a lot of people uncomfy so viewer discretion advised, Pervert &Team, groping without consent?, Mastubating, Secret photos of the reader, reader is AFAB, Corruption kink, Church Girl reader in Euijoos, Watching reader touch themselves privately, so much panty stealing, Camgirl reader in Takis,  Menaces all of them, Maki is in this, Harua has a sister in this, if uncomfortable with any of this don’t read!, Not proof read, let me know if I forgot anything. 

A/N: Hmm more &Team hard thoughts you say? Let’s see, something that’s been on mind is &Team as Perverts (Def not because of my obsession over Euijoo guys I promise, please you have to believe me)

Kei-

Kei as a pervert guyzo, so I imagine him being like your office boss/manager, maybe even the CEO who knows. But when you started working there, you were always wearing skirts or dresses to work. He really can’t help himself but to stare when you bend over, maybe even trying to catch a peek. When you’re in the break room he always brushes against you, pressing against your back when he grabs a mug. Apologizing saying he was only trying to get the cup, when you’re at work dinners he always sits next to you, maybe even leaning against you. He makes it so obvious though with how he always checks you out, and going to the extent of flirting with you. He follows you on social media and even masturbates to your photos, even maybe taking a video or photo and ‘accidentally’ sending it to you. When the office has a ‘Team Building Exercise Vacation’, where your office has to go on a two nights three day vacation to build up that team work. He would be in charge of renting a hotel, or a vacay house, but would conveniently accidentally rent one less extra room. 

Fuma-

Fuma as a pervert would be a little more subtle about it. Maybe even fighting against himself when he gets those perverted thoughts. You moved into the house next door, your bedroom window even facing his. He would meet you when you were bringing in a box to the house but dropping it. He helped you pick it up, and offered to help bring the rest in, which you agree. At first he would fine, helping you and you helping him, becoming close very quickly. But when he saw you getting changed in your room, blinds wide open so he got the full view. He just couldn’t help himself but get off. Feeling guilty instantly afterwards, but now his brain is flooded with images and scenes of you. Even going to the lengths of when he’s over at your place for dinner, to go to your bathroom and rub one out when he sees you in your lounge wear. Revealing so much skin, and when you sat down on the couch to watch a movie, he felt he was going to burst when your tank strap fell off your shoulder. Reaching out to push it back up, his body burning when he touched your skin and not being able to tear his eyes away from your chest. 

Nicholas-

Another who makes it obvious that he’s a perv. He became friends with you via another friend, he just loved the way you look and needed you. He has a photo album dedicated to photos of you, some of you smiling or having fun when at get togethers. But others are of you bending down, and maybe even some pantie shots. He always gets off to them at night, just imagining you spread wide taking his dick like a good girl. When you spend the night he always offers his bed for you, even sleeping with you saying it’s okay, that you’re friends. But he really just wants you to lay next to him, maybe even cuddle up and press your ass against him. Maybe even grinding against you, he would have to sneak off to the bathroom to masturbate. He even goes on websites to just talk about all the filthy things he wants to do to you. 

Euijoo-

The pervert of perverts but secret about it. Being childhood friends with him and growing up in church together. Your parents never being able to separate you two, Euijoo has such a big crush on you growing up. And when you became adults his crush got so bad, his thoughts spiraling. You were the perfect little Christian girl, always going to Bible study, and attending every church meeting, even helping out in outside of Church activities. Your parents are also being super strict and wanting to keep you pure, going to the extent of even opting you out of sex ed in school because you were too young to learn about those things. So in adulthood you still had no idea about anything sex related. Euijoo loved this about you, but wanting to corrupt you so badly, he just can’t get the images of you sucking him off, and how you would take his dick for the very first time. Slowly losing your innocence to him, what helped him keep by was stealing your panties, even maybe coping a feel accidentally. He feels guilty about it, but he really can’t help it. 

Yuma-

Sooo perverted and let’s you know it too, you being coworkers at a restaurant. Both having to wear uniforms but yours being a cute little skirt. When no one is looking he always lifts your skirt up and touches you. Melts the way you always react to his touches, he always whispers dirty things in your ear, telling you what he wants to do to you. How he just wants to bend you over and take you right there in front of everyone. Even though you always get flustered and yell at him, you never report him because you secretly love it and wish he would do something. Especially when you’re in the back grabbing some more seasoning since the kitchen ran out. Yuma follows you and pinning you against the wall, pressing his knee against your sensitive spot. Getting so close to where he’s about to kiss you, but never doing so and just letting you go and walk away like nothing ever happened. 

Jo-

The quiet guy in your lectures, always coming off as an elite and intelligent student, even being the top of his major. No one would take him as a pervert, but he is especially you. The bimbo of the school, being on the cheerleading team and always wearing such tight and revealing clothes. He always fantasizes about having his way with you, but is too scared to even approach you, so he just decides to stay to himself. But when his Calculus professor asks him if he can tutor you he would agree so fast. Going over to your place and entering your room, he’d have to fight back his boner just by the scent of your room. Getting to the tutoring part he’d be distracted, mostly because you always tried to change the subject, but also because he was so close to you and could feel your leg up against his. Wearing such tiny shorts that left barely nothing to the imagination. He would steal your underwear when you excused yourself to the bathroom. Even taking pictures of your bras and lingerie sets. 

Harua-

You were his sister's friend from college, always over and hanging out. He had a crush on you the moment you walked in the house. He would start off shy and introverted, but when you spoke to him and was so nice he fell so hard. Whenever you spent the night he couldn’t keep his eyes off of you, watching how you walked around so comfortably. And when it was summertime and you came over, bringing your swimsuit because they had a pool. He would lock himself in his room, just the sight of you in such a thing made him go into overdrive. So when you eventually moved in with them because you couldn’t afford your own place anymore, and his parents agreed. I swear his pervert tendencies grew ever more, always sneaking into your room when you weren’t in it. Just to lay on your bed and hump your pillow, imagining it was you instead, even hearing your moans when you masturbated thinking no one was home. He would also ‘accidentally’ walk into the bathroom when you were showering, saying he knocked and didn’t know you were in there. 

Taki-

Being besties with you was so hard for Taki, especially since he had a secret crush on you. But what didn’t help was when you opened up an onlyfans, he knew this because well you were best friends and told each other everything. He would never tell you but he was one of your highest paying subscribers, and the most loyal, always logging in for your every video and live streams. You would eventually start calling out his username, even moaning it when you played with yourself. When you announce you’ll have a special event going on, that you'll randomly choose one of your followers to have a private video chat with. And when you announced his name he got so excited but worried, he won’t show you his face hoping you won’t recognize him or his voice. Luckily you didn’t, but when you came over the following day and told him about it he felt some sense of pride when you told him you keep thinking about the anonymous fan. 

Maki-

He was your new roommate, moving in with you he didn’t think it would be an issue. But boy was he wrong. When he barged into your room, catching you off guard as you were mid-changing, pants already off and shirt halfway off. He would apologize and leave, but he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it. Every single thing you did now had an effect on him, he couldn’t even stand next to you without catching himself peering down your shirt. You would think he’s being so weird, but not really minding his nervous demeanor towards you. He would even start touching himself when he saw your door slightly open as you touched yourself, moaning so loudly not thinking he was there. He would think he was such a pervert (he was) but he would also blame you for having that kind of effect on him. 

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

It's Time To Face Reality

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Princess!Reader

Word Count: ~2.7k

Warnings: kidnapping, angst

Summary: You find the courage and strength inside yourself to be the hero for once. With everything over and done with, you have no choice but to go back to your old life and leave the one person who made you feel so alive.

Play Pretend Masterlist

Square Filled: physical toll for @mfbingo

Author’s Note: any and all comments are greatly appreciated <3

x

“Whatever move you’re going to make, follow through with it. If you’re ever in a situation where you don’t feel safe, the best thing you can do is follow through. If you give them a single spark of weakness, they will strike where it hurts.”

“Ben, I got it. Now punch me,” you grin.

“You’re trouble,” he chuckles.

Ben continues to teach you how to defend yourself if you ever find yourself in a situation where your life is threatened and Ben isn’t there to protect you.

You roll your head to the right and crack what you can to work out the kinks. James had you moved to one of the back bedrooms while they figure out what to do with you. The clock ticking is the only thing you can hear inside the room, reminding you that you have five more hours until they cut off one of your limbs. You’re not sure if they’ll really do that but Ryder is eager to cut into something.

Your arm is getting numb from the way they’ve tied both behind your back. If you don’t escape now, you’re going to suffer a lot. Fuck this. I’m not going to be a damsel in distress. You’re not going to wait to be rescued when you can do it yourself.

Ben taught you better.

Calliope and Elliot arrived in America as soon as they could. They traveled with Kylen and two other guards for their own protection. Spencer tries not to let their presence scare him but it’s intimidating to know the girl he likes has such high security. Calliope hasn’t stopped crying which is understandable while Elliot holds a hard look in his eyes.

“Tell me you know where our daughter is,” Elliot says to Hotch.

“Your Majesty--”

“Please, Elliot. We’ll be spending a lot of time together.”

“Elliot, we’re doing everything we can to find your daughter before anything bad happens. We’re the very best team and we’re working hard.”

“I never wanted this for her,” Calliope cries.

“Your Majesty, James Volkov is the one who took Y/N,” Ben says.

“What can you tell me about him?” Hotch asks.

“His hatred for the Richmond bloodline goes deeper than Y/N. He broke into the palace when she was barely a year old and then again when she was six. It’s why we hired Ben to look after her. Even before I was Queen, he was obsessed with stealing from my family. He’s money and power hungry.”

“My mother was thinking of marrying James’ father even though he wasn’t from a royal bloodline. Our tradition that we’ve upheld for centuries is to marry another from a royal bloodline. He manipulated her into giving him more money than he deserved. Then, she met my father who made her realize what a disgusting person James’ family was,” Elliot explains.

Hotch sighs and looks at the table in thought. They hadn’t wanted to put James’ picture in fear that he’d hurt you earlier than he said he would.

You’re not going to give them the chance to.

After an incredible amount of patience and strength, you were able to get out of your binds. You might have bruising on your wrists from how hard the ropes were digging into your skin but that’s a price you’re willing to pay. You open the door slightly and see everyone huddled together in the living room. Macy is furiously typing on her laptop while the men are talking over one another, trying to keep their voices down.

“What are we going to do if they don’t send it? Are we really going to kill her?” Kellen asks.

“Whatever we have to do,” James says.

“They have our pictures,” Macy says. She turns the laptop to show all five of their pictures on the FBI website. “This changes things.”

“This changes nothing. Do you know how long I’ve evaded the law? We’re going to be fine. The Richmond family does not scare me.”

You’re not going to give them the opportunity to hurt you. You have to escape now. You close the bedroom door slowly and quietly before taking stock of what you have. What would Ben do if he was here? Ben. Spencer. Oh, Spencer. I hope you’re alright.

Spencer comes in with two water bottles and hands them both to the King and Queen of Yacleira.

“Are you going to pay the ransom?” Rossi asks.

“That bastard will not get a penny of my money,” Elliot says angrily.

“He has Y/N, honey,” Calliope says with tears in her eyes.

Elliot sighs as his resolve crumbles away.

“We’ll send them whatever they want.”

Penelope pulls up the email chain that James had used to send them a picture of you along with their ransom demand. Since there is an email attached to it, she can use this as a direct line to them.

“Do you think they’ll take cash? We could schedule a meetup,” Spencer says. “Make them bring Y/N as proof of life.”

Penelope sends the email off, getting another one minutes later.

“They refuse to meet up. They expect the entire thing to be deposited.”

“It’s not going to be easy sending that kind of money in a lump sum,” Hotch sighs.

“Ask them if they’ll take it in payments,” Rossi says.

Penelope sends the email and it’s not long until she gets one back. The emails are projected onto the big screen so that everyone can see their reply.

Only if you want your daughter’s fingers sent to the FBI as punishment.

“Hotch, we need to look at the area where her phone was last.”

“You’re right. Take Morgan, Ben, and Prentiss with you.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll bring her home to you,” Ben promises.

The four of them take a sleek black SUV over to the gas station where your phone was last pinged in. The gas station is on a desolate road heading out of town so it’s not busy. Whoever is working would have to remember you or the people you were with. Derek and Emily go inside to talk to the attendant while Ben and Spencer stay outside.

“You love her, don’t you?” Ben asks.

“I don’t know about love,” Spencer sighs. “All I know is that she’s the first girl in a long time to make me feel so… alive.”

“Yeah, I get it. I had that.”

“What happened?”

“I wasn’t quick enough.”

Spencer doesn’t pry knowing it must hurt to think about not being able to save the person he loved. Derek approaches the attendant who puts her phone down when she notices them.

“Hi, we’re agents Prentiss and Morgan with the FBI. We’re looking for someone we believe came through here.” He takes out a picture of you and shows her. “Have you seen this woman?”

“No.”

“They might have kept her in the car to prevent people from seeing her,” Emily whispers to Derek.

Derek takes out the pictures of Jacob and James and shows her.

“Have you seen these men?”

“Yeah, they came through late last night. They were with two other men and a woman. The woman stayed outside and got gas but the four men came in.”

“Can you describe any of them?” Emily asks, taking out her notepad.

“The woman had short, cropped hair. Red, I think. One of the men had a Justin Beiber haircut with piercings on his lip and eyebrow, and another man had tattoos up and down his arms. Big muscles.”

“Did you notice anything strange about them?”

Spencer walks inside with Ben as the attendant is talking to Derek and Emily.

“They were talking in a language I didn’t recognize. Clearly, they were pissed about something. They practically threw the cash at me when they paid.”

Emily notices a camera placed on the ceiling behind the young woman facing toward the front door and the cash register.

“Does that camera work?”

“Yeah. The owner wanted to get one after the fifth time someone came in trying to steal something.”

“May we look at the footage from last night?”

“Be my guest.”

She moves out of the way so that Spencer can work the cameras. The TV is small and grainy but the camera is good quality so the picture is clearer than the normal CCTVs. Late last night, a large SUV pulls into the gas station and pulls up to one of the pumps. The car is obstructed due to the pump they pulled into and the way the camera is angled. However, the passenger window is shown just enough to see you resting your head against the glass with your eyes closed. They must have drugged you to prevent you from getting away.

The woman gets out of the car and starts pumping gas but she is out of view of the entire frame. Four men walk inside the gas station and try their best not to show their faces on the camera. Either they knew this place only had one camera or they’re paranoid at every place because they might have cameras.

Like the attendant says, they throw the money in her face and leave as fast as possible just as the woman with the red hair finishes with the gas. They all get into the car and peel out as fast as possible. The camera isn’t wide enough to see past the road for a few feet, but Spencer sees the direction they went in.

“Do you have any idea where these guys might have gone?” Derek asks.

“I’m not sure. Like I said, they didn’t speak any English.”

“Is there anything out here?”

“Yeah, the old Garrison farm a few miles up the road. Take a right out of here and it’s literally the first road you see off to the right. It’s a dirt road. They didn’t like many people visiting but the property is a hundred acres give or take a few.”

“Thanks.” They leave the gas station and head back to the car. “Do you think they took her there?”

“Only one way to find out.”

“You don’t think… You don’t think they hurt her, do you?” Ben asks.

“Only one way to find out,” Spencer answers regretfully.

He hopes you’re okay and if you’re not, alive.

You go to the window that’s not boarded up and open it only to be met with a mesh screen. You push on it but there isn’t any give. They might have glued it or did something to prevent it from being kicked out. You look around the room and see clothes hung up in the closet. Clothes that are on wire hangers. You take one of the hangers and bend it until the metal snaps in two. Now you have a sharp side.

You walk back over to the mesh covering and stab it with the sharp end of the hanger. It takes a bit of strength on your part but if you keep at it, you’ll have created a big enough hole for you to jump through. Thankfully, this farmhouse is only one story so you’re not worried about breaking a leg. You’re so focused on creating the tear that you don’t hear the bedroom door open.

“Hey!”

You look behind you to see Kellen standing there with a shocked look on his face. You toss the metal to the side and tear the rest of the mesh with your hands. Just as you fit your leg through it, he pounces on you.

“Let go of me!” you shout loud enough to alert the others.

You fall forward onto the ground so that the only part of you still in the house is your right leg. Kellen has a death grip on your leg but you’re not giving up.

“Guys! Help! She’s escaping!”

You jerk away from him only to use every ounce of strength you have to kick him in the face. He falls back with a shout of pain, letting go of your leg. You fall to the ground but scramble to your feet as soon as you can. You take off running anywhere that’s not this farmhouse. The front door slams open and all five of them filter out of the house in a panic.

“Find her! Bring her to me!” James yells loudly.

You almost trip over the rocks but you keep running until you can’t see the farmhouse anymore.

“You can run all you want, princess, but we’ll find you. You won’t like what happens when we do!” Jacob shouts.

It’s so dark outside that you’re not sure where you’re going but that’s not going to stop you from running. Thankfully, you can see the trees so you’re not smacking into them. Your heart is racing at the thought of being caught. What if there is nothing around for miles? Are you really going to keep running without knowing what’s out there? What if you’re in their domain and there are more dangerous people out there?

No, don’t think like that. Your lungs are begging to relax and your legs are burning but you won’t stop running. In the distance you see headlights, and being there is a lot better than being with James. You run toward them in hopes that whoever is behind the wheel is friendly. You push through the thick shrubs and fall to the ground right in front of the car. It screeches to a stop before it can hit you, and you put your hand up to block the bright headlights.

“Please, help me.”

“Y/N!”

All four doors open and four people come clambering out of the car. You look up and see two familiar sets of eyes looking back.

“Spencer? Ben?”

“We’re right here. You’re safe now,” Ben says.

“They’re out there looking for me right now. There’s a farmhouse up the road.”

“Come on.”

Spencer and Ben help you into the back of the car just as Emily and Derek get back in the front. They turn the headlights off and lowly trek back to the farmhouse while still staying in the shadows. Derek and Emily get out while Ben and Spencer stay in the back with you. You faintly hear Derek call for immediate backup, and you lean your head on the headrest tiredly.

Spencer looks at you and wants to apologize but nothing comes out. You’ll have time to reconnect later. Backup comes quickly which is enough to arrest all five individuals involved. They’re brought back to the BAU where you discover your parents are. Your mom and dad run over to you, and you run into their arms with tears streaming down your cheeks.

“I’m so sorry for leaving,” you cry. “I didn't mean for all of this to happen.”

“We’re glad you’re okay, baby. You’re safe now,” your mom says.

The paramedics met you at the BAU to assess your injuries which are minor. You were treated for your bruised wrists and the small cuts on your face from the branches. You and Spencer stand off to the side while your parents are with Ben, Kylen, and the rest of the BAU.

“I’d like to take all five of them back to Yacleira if possible. They will face Yacleiran justice,” Elliot says.

“Of course,” Hotch nods. “Interpol will be notified of this as well.”

“I’ll call my contacts,” Emily offers.

You look at your parents and sigh sadly. You know what’s coming next. They know you’re here and it’s not like they will leave without you. You’re old school. They won’t break tradition for you.

“I’m sorry for keeping this a secret from you.”

“No, don’t be. I shouldn’t have left.”

“Spencer, I can’t stay here. My parents will be taking me back to Yacleira where I’m to marry Prince Henry of Vosharia. I thought… well, I thought I was the type of girl who could have what everyone else had. It doesn’t matter anymore, I guess.”

“It’ll always matter.”

“Not to someone like me.” You pull Spencer in to kiss him, and he kisses you back like it’s the last kiss you’ll ever share. Maybe it will be. The thought breaks your heart. “No matter what happens, Spencer, you were the best thing to ever happen to me.”

You look at the briefing room and see both your parents watching you and Spencer. He hates to see you walk out of his life but what can he do when the King and Queen of Yacleira calls back their Princess?

He stands on the side and lets it happen. What’s a man like him going to be able to provide for a woman like you?

x

Want to be tagged? Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[cupidbedsy]

❃ downtown festivities ; flowers

➪ summary: connor and violet visit downtown chicago and their adventure is nothing short of chaotic

➪ warnings: two people rearing their heads into every single thing connor and violet do (lukas and kevin ofc)

➪ word count: 0.9k

➪ file type: 12 days of au's: christmas edition (flowers) blurb

➪ cupid's notes: honestly, whenever i'm in writers block i really just need to write for these two bc this was so easy to write and i don't know why i was dreading doing this in the first place. i still have three more blurbs to work on in order to be caught up but i don't know if those will be out tomorrow or today so yeah

© cupidbedsy ; do not copy, repost, or translate my work and designs on any other website or here

���Are you sure you don’t want another jacket?”

“Connie, I’ll be fine. I promise.” Violet looked up from where she was sitting on the couch, already dressed in her winter coat, UofI beanie on her head and gloves adorning her hands. 

Connor finished putting on his boots, walking over to her, and grabbing her hands to pull her up, “Just making sure.”

She smiled up at him, letting him bring her into a soft kiss. When he pulled away, he leaned his forehead to rest against hers, unable to keep the huge smile that was growing on his face. The smile caused her to blush, looking at him with curious and shy eyes, “What?”

“Nothing.” He stepped back, gripping her hand, “C’mon, we have places to be.”

The two walked out of Connor’s apartment, Violet whispering about all the things she wanted to do and wanted to see. It took everything in Connor to not just say ‘okay’ to everything she was saying, wanting nothing more than to spoil her just as he always did. 

The cold hit them immediately as they stepped out of the building, Violet trying to bury her head further into her coat, “Jesus fuck.”

He laughed, looking down at her, “That’s a new one.”

She clutched tightly onto her boyfriend’s hand as they made their way down the street, eyes wandering as she tried to look at every single Christmas decoration that was out. Once they came to a corner, Violet’s eyes looked around aimlessly until her eyes landed on the store diagonally from them, a hit-eating grin on her face, “Connie.”

“Yeah, pretty girl?” He didn’t look down at her, simply pulling her into his side to keep her warm and away from the other people who were starting to crowd around them as they waited to cross the street. 

“I found a store I want to go to.”

“And what store is that?”

She nodded her head in the direction, waiting for realization to click after he turned his head. He scanned the store, immediately rolling his eyes before looking back at her, “Really?”

“Please.”

“Do you want to go because you want to or do you want to go because you want to see my face everywhere?”

“Well, when you put it like that…” She trailed off, smiling before pulling him in that direction. 

“Careful, Vi. You’re either going to trample someone or get trampled and I am not in the mood to deal with either outcome.”

“Shut up.”

They came to a stop outside the Hawks store, Violet bouncing with anticipation or amusement, he didn’t know, but it made him smile nonetheless. He opened the door, allowing her to talk in first, trailing after her as they climbed up the steps. 

The guy standing there, got ready to greet the two of them when his gaze fell on Connor, cocking his head in confusion to which the boy just grumbled, “Don’t ask.”

The worker laughed and nodded, “Welcome in guys.”

Connor followed her around like a lost puppy the entire time, making mental notes in his head about which things she said she liked and which ones she loved. When they stopped by Winter Classic jerseys, he gave her a look when she took her phone out and took a picture of the sign, “What’re you going?”

Violet gave him an innocent look, “I don’t have this picture of you yet.”

“Obsessed much?”

“Yes.” 

ﾟ+*:୨୧:*﹤

Once Violet finished looking at everything she wanted to, the two made their way back downstairs into the cold of Chicago, trudging through downtown. When they came to a stop at a red light, waiting to cross, she looked over at him, studying the slope of his nose and the slight curve of his jaw. 

As if he could feel her staring, Connor looked over at her, furrowing his eyes with a cocky smirk playing on his lips, “Yes?”

“Can you believe it’s almost been a year since we started dating?”

And she was right, and no, he couldn’t believe it. A year ago today, they were probably texting about something completely random and most of his focus was on playing better and helping the team. A year ago today, they were dancing around their feelings and just basking in their friendship and flirtiness.

In a week, Violet would fly out to Buffalo with the team so they could be together for their anniversary, and then they would fly back home to celebrate New Year’s together. Connor’s head swam with the information, at their plans, at the present that was hiding in the bottom of his backpack. 

His smile softened into one of fondness, leaning down to press a kiss to her temple and bringing her into a huge hug, “I love you.”

Her eyes met his and she grinned, going up on her tip-toes in order to kiss his jaw, “I love you too.”

Some ran into the back of Connor, causing the two of them to stumble slightly, the boy turning around to glare at whoever it was. But instead of some stranger he thought he was going to have to yell at it, he was met with the faces of his two teammates, “What the fuck are you two doing here?”

Lukas and Kevin gave them shit-eating grins, “Fancy meeting the two of you here. What brings you two lovely people out on this very fine day?”

And some things will never change, even if those things include running into Kevin and Lukas when he really didn’t want to.

꒰ FLOWERS TAGLIST ꒱

@winterbarnesblog @rowdyluv @fantillisgirl @macklin-celebrini-71

FLOWERS MASTERLIST ; AU'S ; 12 DAYS OF AU'S

TAGLIST ; NHL MASTERLIST ; NAVIGATION

[fandom-friday]

The goal of Fandom Friday: provide a place where people can shout-out their favorite creators from the week, whether it’s a piece of fan art that made you smile or a fanfic that moved you. Drop a link to your favorite creations this week into my ask box along with what you loved about it, and I will give them a shout! It doesn’t have to be Star Wars either! If it’s on another website (AO3, Twitter, etc.), please be sure to state that as well.

This happens each week, so don’t feel like you’ve got to get out everything in one week. Just keep track of them throughout the week or send me an ask whenever you find something, and I’ll drop them all on Fridays (or throughout the weekend if I get a lot). The cutoff for each week is THURSDAY 12 PM (I’m in the Pacific timezone). Anything received after that will roll to the next week. A summary of the weeks’ recs will be posted at the end of the weekly queue, so check back here for all of the awesome fics and art! And be sure to go give the creations on that list some love (and don’t just share the ask responses I put out).

2024 Fandom Friday Weekly Summary Master List

Rules and additional details under the cut! PLEASE make sure you read the rules before sending something in. If your submission violates any of the rules, I will delete it.

Rules:

Please send submissions to my ask box (sending them all to one place makes wrangling them easier each week). In your ask, please include the creator’s handle, a link to their work/post (if links aren’t working for the ask, please DM me them), and what you loved about it!

Please ensure the link is to the creator’s original post and not your own reblog or repost of their work (if they’re on another platform). The idea is to drive people to visit the creator’s page!

The creation does not have to have been posted this week! It can be something older. Also, don’t worry about whether or not a rec is a repeat from a prior week. Just looking to celebrate things that made an impression on you this week, whether you’ve seen it before or not!

NSFW is alright! Just make sure you note it in the ask so I can flag appropriately! Since I’m including 18+ material, minors may not participate. 18+ posts will be tagged with NSFT/lemon/lemony lemon (trying to cover all my bases).

NO incest, underage, cl*necest blogs, master/padawan (or similar power dynamics), dub-con/non-con/rape occurring IN the fic (to include stalker/obsessive behavior fics). Also, no H*rry Potter. There are a few others that I also won’t share due to my discomfort with them (i.e., R*xsoka), so if you’re not sure, ask. Also, many of you submit multiple works at once, and that’s fine, but if one of those works contains something that violates the rules, I will delete the entire ask, so something to be extra careful about when submitting!

Submissions that deal with 18+ material or difficult/triggering topics (pregnancy, abuse, drug use, etc.) MUST BE TAGGED APPROPRIATELY.

If your rec involves spoilers from a show that’s currently running, please include that info in the ask so I can tag it appropriately (I will normally tag a few different ways, but I always use #<show title> spoilers if you need to filter (for example: Andor spoilers will be tagged #Andor Spoilers). I will stop tagging spoilers two weeks after the show stops airing.

You can submit GIF sets or edits, but please ensure you are submitting from the blog that actually created them. Wanted to add that caution since there’s been a lot of people stealing/reposting GIFs and edits in particular recently. So just be cautious.

Try to avoid commentary in your ask that might make others feel bad (“the only person who knows how to write XXX correctly…”). It’s important to be able to appreciate creators without making others feel bad, so let’s try to keep the commentary complimentary without being off-putting for other creators.

Self recommendations are allowed and encouraged! Shout out your own hard work! You deserve the recognition!

*Rules subject to change so PLEASE make sure you read them before sending something in. If your submission violates any of the rules, I will delete it.

**If you have any questions about any of the rules, don’t hesitate to DM me!In addition to sending me asks, I highly encourage you to go either leave a comment on and/or reblog someone’s work (tag me or use the #Fandom Friday tag if you do!). Let’s get the interaction back up on this website and show the creators that work so hard on their stuff some love!

[thats-my-passion-right-there]

Also we could have made it SO MUCH GAYER?!?

I finally saw the mean girls musical (the movie one) I have so many fucking thoughts oh my god

[languageshead]

Special interests are not always good

My goal on this website is not to say that autism is all bad or the worst thing in the world. My goal is to: 

1. Share my experiences and listen to people with higher support needs because we are mostly left out and unheard;

2. Spread awareness. A lot of autism traits are human traits, but in order to be diagnosed with autism your traits must cause you impairment. If they don’t, it’s not autism. 

Now, I have already made a post about one of my special interests (Katy Perry) and how it affects me:

https://www.tumblr.com/languageshead/713712598521118720/about-my-last-post-and-the-severity-of-my-autism?source=share

But I want to get a little bit more into that subject. 

A special interest for me is the only way I can connect with the world. I feel like I live on another planet and the only thing that connects me with the rest of the world are special interests. 

But a special interest isn’t always good. I can only and will only speak about my special interest in conversations. I cannot have a conversation with someone who does not understand Linguistics or Katy Perry. I simply don’t know what to say, don’t know how to contribute to the conversation and will not be interested enough to pay attention to it. Often times I am not interested in learning about any other things that is not related to Linguistics and Katy Perry and some other subjects I enjoy. 

Often times, I am unable to have relationships with people that don’t want to hear about my special interest or with people who know nothing about it. Because 90% of my conversations are about my SIs, if you cannot teach me anything about it, I will often lose interest in having any kind of relationship with you. I am genuinely not interested in you if you cannot give me any more information about my SI. That is one of the reasons why I can have better relationships with adults/professors/teachers than with people my age. I like it when people tell me more about my SI. 

When I engage in talking about my SI, I get so excited that I will spend my whole energy talking about it. It comes to a point where I am so excited that my heart is racing and my palms are sweating and I can barely breathe because I am so excited. It drives me to absolute exhaustion and if someone doesn’t stop me, it’s likely that I go into shutdown because of it. This also happens when I am researching or watching videos, I get so excited that I need to stop whatever I am doing to regulate myself from all the emotions I am feelings. Autistics can get overwhelmed by good and bad emotions, which means that even happy feelings can drive me into a meltdown because I feel things so strongly that I can’t control or properly regulate my emotions. 

As some of you might know, I am in Uni in a special program for people with disabilities and sometimes I really need to focus about something I am learning but I can’t. This has gotten me taken out of class because I get so excited I start stimming, breathing hard so I bother other students. A lot of times I need to stop studying for my classes because I get so excited that I simply cannot stay still and continue learning. This really affects my performance as I need to regulate my emotions before going back to my projects and assignments. 

Besides that, specially when special interests occur in people or fictional characters this can cause a lot of suffering to the person. When I was on my early teens, I was obsessed with Lexa from the tv show The 100 and as most of you know she dies. When she died, I had a full blown meltdown in the middle of the night because the show in my country streamed at around 1AM. I mourned the death of a character as if she were a member of my family and I’ve had members of my family die that I definitely did not mourn anywhere near as I mourned for that character. 

As I have already mentioned before, Katy Perry has been my strongest and longest special interest along with Linguistics. And if you read my other post you might understand this better, but I absolutely cannot comprehend Katy Perry is a famous person that simply can’t text me back. My therapist believes this inability has to do with both my autism and language impairment. I am 21 years old now, I understand this better, but not really. When I was on my teens my mom would have to explain to me multiple times a week that Katy wasn’t ignoring me or our letters. She was just famous. This causes suffering to me. This is hard. It’s like trying to make your brain understand a foreign language.

I know there are many other bad experiences about special interest, specially because some people might engage in stalking, difficulties with boundaries and unhealthy behaviors. But I can’t talk about this because this is not my experience. 

I also know there are many good sides to special interests. The joy we feel is really important to me. Small things can make me really happy, like being able to make a small correct sentence in Hebrew. But I am tired of hearing about this because this is always talked about. There is another side to having a SI that people don’t talk about. This is the side I want to show. 

EDIT: forgot to add that not every interest is a special interest. Special interest is usually something that lasts for a long time that helps you cope and understand the world. Autistics can have interests that are not special interests.

[helixtheman]

Dear Yu-Gi-Oh fans, Nobody Cares

Who even cares what you have to say anymore?

We can't stand your inflated egos and the stereotypes you embody. We hate your egos.

You want all Yu-Gi-Oh! shows to have ups and downs but still be united under one regime, like some kind of North Korean dictatorship you admire.

This is what happens when you use mental gymnastics to avoid basic critical thinking. Most fans are right about your egos—you just can’t let one show have its spotlight.

You say Zexal is peak, but what happened to 5D's or GX? You can’t allow them their due respect because, just like assholes, you can’t stand anyone else getting attention.

You blame everything on 4Kids just to justify your own bias and make yourself feel relevant in today’s world. Just admit it—it’s a localized company, for crying out loud!

You prefer the card game over the anime, the same way Hollywood prefers to appear "woke" rather than make smart decisions, especially in the 2024 election.

You like to call Yu-Gi-Oh! silly and stupid as a card game anime, yet every single word you've said is even sillier and stupider. People are clearly fed up with this nonsense.

You want to gatekeep the fandom and make it a constant "happy place," but when the sledgehammer of truth breaks it down, it will ensure it never gets reconstructed again.

You say Yu-Gi-Oh! girls were mistreated in the Gallop anime, and you demand that they be strong and independent. But the moment you see the Rush girls in the current era, you get furious—like a woke liberal losing it over a Trump tweet about why America failed.

It’s almost as ridiculous as laughing at the Los Angeles fires while claiming you hate God, only to turn around and give Him zero points at the Emmys.

You claim you can’t watch Yu-Gi-Oh! on Netflix but refuse to use pirate websites because it would make you look weak or because you think it’s supporting illegal activity. Meanwhile, there’s no other alternative. Do you also hate European fans who have their own way of watching and chilling with Yu-Gi-Oh! just because you can’t stand their egos either?

Show some humility before trying to make me feel like I’m the victim here. I’ve been happily watching Yu-Gi-Oh! without being a negative Nancy like MangaClown was to 5D’s and GX in the past. That guy is just another American obsessed with media and literacy instead of being a casual fan like the rest of us.

Nobody cares about media or literacy; we just want to chill. But Yu-Gi-Oh! fans love to act like dirty pigs, tearing everything apart. If Trump had created Yu-Gi-Oh!, you fans would shred him until the end of time. Let’s face it: Yu-Gi-Oh! fans are some of the most toxic and negative towards each other. And yes, I’m no exception. I’m not standing out—I’m just pointing out the truth.

I’ve always been smarter and more advanced because I never cared about fandom purity groups. I’m more macho than you because I don’t need a textbook to tell me how to watch the anime or play the card game. I’ve always been my own person.

YouTube fans of Yu-Gi-Oh! love to analyze what made the game broken or bad, but they forget the bigger picture. What really bugs me is that people still think Yu-Gi-Oh! is just about the cards and not about the story. You pigs forgot to even read it. The whole "Yu-Gi-Oh! fans can’t read" joke feels symbolic of how behind this community is—not by 20 years, but maybe even 5,000 years. We can’t evolve when new things come and go.

I won’t bend the knee or ask for forgiveness for something like this. Back in 2015, people sent me death threats just because I bashed Zexal. I hated Yuma and called Zexal II a living nightmare of bad writing. But that’s on you, not me.

I’ve always hated Zexal because it felt more like a mixed bag than a true anime or original product. People keep trying to mislead others by lumping Zexal in with the original trilogy (DM, GX, and 5D’s), but it’s not part of that legacy. Zexal was just a modern Duel Monsters knockoff that nobody liked.

Meanwhile, fans of Arc-V, VRAINS, and the Rush era are still furious their shows don’t get the same hype in America, even though Japan loves them. Honestly, it’s no loss for Americans, who just care more about action movies than watching a good cartoon once in a while.

And if fans claim I have divided opinions about an anime, it just means they’re triggered—just like how Trump triggered the Democratic Party back in 2015.

If you prefer mainstream media in America over quality shows in my world, then you’re just an average consumer more focused on binge-watching than actually learning anything.

You claim the humility in Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal is peak writing, but that show is entirely based on cringe and LGBTQ+ propaganda. And when you tell people to stop overanalyzing and not call The Dark Side of Dimensions bad, that’s exactly why I’m here to roast this fandom.

Anyway, that’s all I have to say.

[aeori-o]

Happy New Year!

Another year gone by! This one really felt like it flew. It has been an entire decade since I started doing these on tumblr! My first one was posted January 1, 2015! It’s wild to go back and see how little I tracked and talked about back then.

Let’s see if tumblr lets me make this into one post this year! I was so busy in the lead up to New Years that I am scrambling to try to get this posted on the first, let’s see if I make it! (I didn't, for the first year ever this is posting January 2nd, boo.)

So here’s what happened this year. I finally got to start playing D&D again with some friends and some new folks, and I very quickly became obsessed. I think the majority of my free time this year was spent on either making things for D&D (that nobody asked me to make, I’m just intensely into it) or wrapping my sister’s new car (the car I wrapped last year? Died.) So…

This year is the year I have read the least amount of books since I have been tracking reading books. The second lowest is the first year I was tracking, 2011, where I read 11 books total (that’s kind of funny, matched the last two digits of the year). I read 9 entire books this year, and technically have three on the go: House of Leaves, A Court of Mist and Fury, and Guilty Pleasures. Since 2019 the amount of books I’ve been reading each year has been steadily decreasing: 78 in 2019, then 65 the following year, then 43, 37, 26, and now… 9. With graphic novels (which I read 5) that number jumps to 14 but still, all time low.

I think across all the things I track I’m down this year, honestly, and that makes sense since, as mentioned, almost all my time was taken up by D&D and car-wrapping. If anything this year was an experiment in realizing I (we) really only ever have so much time, and it is finite, and we must choose where we spend it. (But that’s so hard.) I’m not upset by the lack of reading. I do wish I had read more, but I don’t wish I had done anything else less at the same time. I am extremely over being stressed out trying to reach certain goals so while I will very loosely hold the idea that I want to read more next year I’m not going to stress it.

The bright side is that I can really clearly remember every single book I read this year even though I read most of them toward the beginning of the year. This might also be because I have changed the way I journal about them. I used to just dump all my thoughts at once when I had finished the book. Now, because that really sucks to do with lengthier books, whenever I pause my reading I do a recap of what I read and my thoughts on the section. Gives me more to look back at later! And might be helping my memory of books but that will prove out better in a year where I read more books.

Before I talk about the good books I read this year let’s look at the stats! I am going to try to squash things into as few images as possible this year! Due to the entire Experience I had last year. (Thanks tumblr.)

Goodreads used to do this wonderful grid of books that made it easy to sort them into a nice little image but this year they just made a list with no option for alternate views. Awful. I had to arrange all those silly little icons myself.

Anyway it is wild to me how popular ACOTAR is. The fanbase seems to not even like the first book so I don’t think it’s controversial to say that having almost 6 million people, on one website, having read it is just… mind blowing. Last year I read another really popular book, The Summer I Turned Pretty, and despite being very popular, very ‘buzzy’, and even having a TV show made based on it, it had 5 million less readers. About 700,000 “shelved” instead of 5.7 million. It really is totally random what gets popular and what doesn’t. I wish there was a way to see the trajectory, see the point at which this book went from being just another YA book I could walk into the library and pull off the shelf (which I did, easily, years ago) to being a book you have to put on hold at the library to maybe get a chance at a copy in a few months. I’m not terribly interested in talking about ACOTAR as a book or series, I’ll be trying to read the rest of it faster but I have a lot of thoughts to write up on the first book still so who knows when I’ll get to it. But of the books I did read this year I’d like to highlight:

What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon

This book is surprisingly short for how much it talks about. Aubrey Gordon talks facts about fat while also weaving in anecdotes from her own life to bring in that human element that makes the narrative compelling and sympathetic as well as fact-based. I also listen to the podcast ‘Maintenance Phase’ on which the author is a host so most of this wasn’t new information but it’s still clear and concise here which is nice. Spoilers: Fatness is often out of a person’s control and Aubrey Gordon gets into why. Fantastic book, would recommend as long as it’s safe for you to engage with.

Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann

A really sweet book about a young woman trying to find herself and make space for herself as an asexual person and someone who wants to go against her family’s wishes. Lots of little dramas between friends and dynamics shifting as she becomes interested romantically but not sexually in someone and it makes her best friend jealous. The love interest is stupid sweet, I really enjoyed him, and the frictions in the friend group felt very real. It all turns out in the end and overall felt very cozy. I think maybe the most jarring thing was the opening chapter where the protagonist gets broken up with and gets like every weird asexual assumption thrown in her face by her soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. Might be a great hook for people who have been through that, for me I almost stopped reading but I’m glad I continued because the rest was a delight.

The Empyrean Series by Rebecca Yarros

I read the first book, Fourth Wing, and the second, Iron Flame, this year and the third comes out within a month I think. These books were massive but overall really fun, which I didn’t really expect from a stupid popular book series. I’m a huge sucker for dragons and I always respect a person who’s out there creating something they just think is cool. There’s a lot of things that are stupid-obvious for where the plot is going, and some things that feel cheap or undercooked (the jealous ex could have been handled in a more interesting way, I feel), some things are tropes that show up constantly in this genre (the protagonist, a woman, is just so thin and delicate but also cool and badass!) that your mileage may vary, but overall: Was a fun time. Nothing was ever egregious enough to make me not want to keep reading. And I think my biggest gripe with the book is that while the love interest goes down on and sates the female protagonist’s pleasure plenty of times she never once, despite being outrageously horny for the man, goes down on him. Is dick sucking a bridge too far? I have no clue but she doesn’t do it. Thumbs down. (But I also understand a lot of readers who are interested in men might really like the fantasy of having a man who will eat you out and never expect you to return the favor, so I can’t fault it too much for delivering the fantasy of Guy Who’s So Into You That Getting You Off Is Enough For Him.) The second major complaint I have is not with the book but with the fanbase, it’s so big, like ACOTAR’s, that only the most generically attractive art of the characters is what rises to the surface and becomes the only thing findable. Me squinting at fanart out here where I can’t tell any of the characters apart because they’re all Muscular Ambiguously Tan Men With Crew Cuts And Chiseled Jawlines. And again I get it, but it’s not really what I’m here for. Oh well, whatever.

Last year I mentioned it would be fun to re-read something from a decade ago every year. Totally dropped the ball on that this year, but if I can remember I’d like to do that this upcoming year. I might just set my goodreads goal to 10 and if I go over I go over and if I don’t I don’t. I am hoping to better balance my time in the coming year but my theme will give me a lot to work with.

I wrote this first section a few days in advance of New Years and couldn’t figure out where the storygraph wrap up data is. I can find the 2023 one but the 2024 one I guess wasn’t posted yet? Which is annoying but considering I read so little this year it probably won’t deliver much that’s interesting anyway, so I am not going back to look for it now that it is the New Year.

I watched 43 things this year! Which is also lower than last year, by a little, by 3. I’ve been slowly working on expanding my spreadsheet of things read and watched and so on so I should have even more stats for next year. Like I’ve started tracking release dates! Of films and shows released 2020 and 2024 I’ve watched 90, and 11 of the 42 things I watched this year were released this year! I love spreadsheets so much.

That side blog I made at the end of 2023 is paying off. Now I can easily make little graphics of everything I’ve watched (and played, and so on). There’s all the film-based-media I watched this year. For TV shows they only make it onto my category for a year if I finished them. So there’s some things I’m watching where I haven’t finished yet so they’ll make it onto next year’s (just in case anyone reading this is wondering where Game of Thrones is).

I think the biggest stand-outs have been older films that I just never got around to watching. Terminator, Alien, Singin’ In The Rain, and Scream were all fantastic films (or film series) that I had just never made time for. Scream I was particularly surprised by—I thought I had seen it but I think I had seen Scary Movie as a kid, not Scream, and somehow miraculously have never been spoiled for who the killer was so was still delightfully surprised at the end of the film.

Steph’s had us watch some weirder horror movies: Strange Darling, Lake Mungo, and Caveat and they were all really interesting, really weird little films. Great recommendations from Steph.

Looking at my image it’s occurring to me that only two things up there I watched on my own: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Fool Me Once everything else I watched with at least one other person but more often a group of people. Puss In Boots was a genuine surprise. I don’t think I’ve really enjoyed any of the Shrek Franchise movies since Shrek 2, including the other Puss In Boots movie I saw but I kept hearing good things about The Last Wish and it was genuinely incredible. I think I cried.

The classics I had previously seen all hold up: A Goofy Movie, A Knight’s Tale, The Princess Bride, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Kingdom of Heaven. Always fun to revisit something you’ve seen before and have it be at least as good as you remember it being. And the film Interview With The Vampire was just was wild and silly as I remembered, made all the more apparent because we had just finished watching the TV show which was incredible.

Almost all of the shows this year that I watched were incredible. Arcane we re-watched the first season (which is basically perfect as a show) and the second season was way messier than the first, there’s more to pick apart, but I think that’s only in contrast to the first season. And it is somehow more visually impressive than the first season. House of the Dragon season two got a lot of rough critical reviews for being ‘boring’ but I found it extremely engaging and interesting and I’m excited for the third season. Interview With The Vampire seasons one and two were both fantastic interpretations of the book. Loved watching those. Blue Eye Samurai fucking ruled. Beautiful show with a very cool protagonist. I am a little worried about how season 2 is going to go but only time will tell. I bounced off of the manga Delicious in Dungeon but watching the show with friends was an absolute delight and I want to give the manga another shot as a result.

Film is never a thing I really have any goals around watching more or less of, and I’m now wondering if part of why it winds up being such a weirdly consistent number year after year is because it’s largely a social activity for me. That does make me happy though! It’s nice to be able to look at all the stuff I watched and be able to recognize that it was (almost) all stuff I watched with friends or family. We just watched the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy yesterday (as a last day of the year activity) and those movies still rule and it was fun to have so many people hanging out to watch.

Okay so I played my PS4 so little this year Sony slash the Playstation Network will not give me a yearly recap. Which I think is very funny because apparently you need to just play ten hours to reach them giving you a recap. Yeah I… I didn’t finish Horizon Forbidden West this year. Or Pokemon Arceus. Or Pokemon Scarlet. Whoops. (Or Hades or Tears of the Kingdom but to be fair I didn’t start that one.) As mentioned above, though, this isn’t super surprising. Most of my time was taken up by car wrapping and making five billion documents for D&D.

So despite not finishing the games I highlighted (except for Folklore) at the end of last year I did start 21  games this year, finished 15, and reached 100% on 5. So I finished three quarters of what I started and I think that’s still a win. Finished fewer games overall (last year I finished 32) but a huge part of that is going to be because I didn’t play many of the Edutainment Point And Click Games. Here’s the games I completed:

But wait! That’s 12, not 15! I count slash track seasons of Fortnite if I participate in them even a little. So I have some seasons of Fortnite that I played but didn’t play much so it felt silly to make a graphic for it (all of the marvel-focused seasons are so boring) but because they’re time-based they just kinda end on their own so basically if I played it enough to put a “started” date on my tracking spreadsheet I still counted them when the season ended as ‘finishing’ but don’t put them onto that sideblog unless I felt I really participated in it. So far I’ve tracked 14 seasons of Fortnite that I have participated in enough that I counted a ‘start’ date. Wild!

Didn’t finish a lot of games overall I guess but did enjoy the ones I did. And it feels really strange to have finished more video games than books.

Zelda I and Zelda II are both really difficult. Playing on an emulator on a modern console at least allows a person to essentially have a rewind time ability which is not a part of the intended experience but I also do not care, those games are hard. Zelda II especially so. I cannot honestly say I enjoyed playing Zelda II and at this point I feel like it’s really rare that I play a game I just… don’t like. Most games have something good about them, it’s hard to make a game these days without some aspect of it being good, running into a game that was actively aggravating was surprising. I know a lot of people get really frustrated at games but I feel like I largely don’t so running into a game that was making me frustrated in a not-fun way was an interesting experience. (And this is different from a game being frustrating in a “supposed to be hard” way, there’s a huge difference in the frustration I felt playing Zelda II than the frustration I felt playing the secret boss in Splatoon 2 to get the hairstick cosmetic item.)

I did start The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and while I have yet to finish it it’s incredible how fun it is and how they really settled into that “Zelda” pattern so early. The first game obviously has a lot of the ground work for the entire franchise (and the second game… doesn’t) but the third installment feels like a modern Zelda game—it just has the same overall feel and beats as the majority of the other entries in the series. It feels like Zelda even though there’s so many games following it. It really feels like the first to realize the ‘language’ (I’m not sure how to describe it) that the Zelda franchise still has to this day. It was just really interesting to play two games that are Zelda games but don’t “feel” like it and then have no real transition period, it went from two games where yeah the aesthetics and title are Zelda but they don’t “feel” like Zelda games to suddenly have “oh this game feels exactly like a Zelda game”. Hopefully that makes sense!

100%ing Plate Up! was a fun challenge which I mostly had done by the end of last year and finished up at the beginning of this year. Great little game with some really fun modes with some challenging but fun to get achievements.

Firewatch, Folklore, Resident Evil 5, and Rule of Rose are all games I’ve played before, but not for a long time and they were all fun to revisit. Firewatch is still a wonderful game, though it did leave me reflecting a lot on game preservation as some aspects of the game were weirdly buggy. Not unplayable but some things just didn’t work quite right anymore (the main one was the protagonist having issues moving at all on some terrain, I guess the camera or character model was getting stuck on something). I love my PC, and I love PC gaming, but there’s something depressing about knowing some games can’t or won’t be preserved in a way that lets them be played indefinitely. And while console allows games to be preserved to an extent because they’re no longer in print without a means of replicating and preserving them a game becoming totally unplayable is kind of inevitable. (Especially given that things like emulation aren’t strictly legal.) Consoles will break down over time, as the technology advances some pieces to repair might become totally unavailable or prohibitively expensive and the games themselves can wear down or break or warp over time. It doesn’t help that even with modern consoles online stores will eventually go offline making a digital library that hasn’t been downloaded inaccessible, and if a game was deleted from a modern console to make space reinstalling it later may not guarantee it has all the files necessary to run correctly as the disc data will be missing the day one and beyond patches. We’re in an era of gaming where our current (and recent) generation of games feel more prone to failure or being lost in the future than the older games are simply because eventually those servers and storefronts that host all the updates and patches will be turned offline. At some point the only method to play a game you bought at some point may to be to risk piracy. (And I am all on board with piracy but I am lamenting the fact that preserving a complicated form of art is basically illegal, unless you are the holder of the copyright but those who do seem largely uninterested in preserving these things. If the game was popular enough they’ll just re-release a remaster later!) Didn’t mean to start babbling about that but I am leaving it here because it’s something I think about pretty regularly so may as well put it in the New Years Post Time Capsule.

But on that note Folklore is a game that gets me particularly stressed out on this concept and was another game that made me think about game preservation. I still have a massive soft spot for the game, visually it’s impressive for the time, the combat is interesting if a little strange at times. It can also be a massive slog, and the story makes no sense and for the life of me I have no idea if that’s because it was translated poorly or just made no sense to begin with. I do think it’s interesting enough to be preserved, but the game is only available on PS3. PS3’s are, currently, cheap, as are their games, but the lack of love for the console has made emulation for it scarce if not entirely nonexistent. I genuinely do not know if emulators for it exist—I know of emulators for basically every other console with the exception of our more modern ones (excluding the Switch) probably because 99% of the games on them are cross-platform so it makes more sense to just crack the PC version than emulate the console one. PS3’s are basically worthless right now, but games that were stuck on that console and not popular enough to get upgraded and remastered out to PC or PS4 are eventually going to get lost in limbo and almost already are.

Anyway! Folklore was weird as fuck and made no sense at all but I still kind of love it? And the OST still fucking slaps. Rule of Rose also has an OST that rules so hard some youtubers out there use it as background music in their videos and it throws me off every time. I re-played it just to get a grasp on all the things I needed to warn my friends for before I streamed it to them (the game is real weird and messed up) (and to get the optional cosmetics, of course, because I could not find my save on the 8 different memory cards I have) and it got me reflecting on how before stable, fast internet connections were guaranteed for most people games just wouldn’t get finished, but would be polished—unfinished content being cut in favour of releasing the game in a functional state. Extremely interesting in a totally different way to the current landscape of endless patches. I will not get as into that, but there’s so much to reflect on in the gaming industry! I can’t play a video game out here without ruminating upon the context in which it exists in the real world apparently. Speaking of the real world, a few months ago a sealed container or shipment of the PAL version of Rule of Rose were found significantly dropping the price in that market, which is neat because due to a lot of fear around the game being basically Evil (it’s a game about childhood trauma and bullying) it never got officially released in Europe.

Resident Evil 5 I played with Steph! It was fun and exactly as nonsensical as I remembered it being, but it was fun and has its moments. The PC version luckily lets you completely turn off cutscene QTEs and defaults to them being off which is wonderful because the QTEs were brutal especially playing co-op.

I played through and fully completed the Splatoon 3: Side Order DLC and I was really pleasantly surprised! It’s a rogue lite and at first I was feeling a little ‘ugh’ about it (not sure why, guess I just wasn’t in the mood for that style of game) but Nintendo is really good at taking a concept and making a really fun, really functional version of it.

And finally The Case of the Golden Idol I think is the only game I started and finished this year which was just, completely new. Like technically the Splatoon DLC is new, I hadn’t played it before, but I had played the base game’s campaign and plenty of multiplayer, Zelda I and II I hadn’t played before but I’ve played plenty of Zelda games before. Plate Up! I started last year. Fortnite is ongoing and never changes that much. And the rest were all replays. The Case of the Golden Idol was the first fully new game I played, not familiar to my brain at all.

And it was really freaking good. I was playing it with friends but it was really scratching an itch for me. It’s a really satisfying puzzle game with a wild but very fun story. After we played it it got an update with a version that had different menus which I think were supposed to be controller friendly but were way less friendly for connecting the pieces, it obfuscated things in a really weird way which made it a little more difficult to play when I was showing it to some other people after my friends and I played it. If you like figuring things out, solving things in a ‘narrative’ way I would absolutely recommend this game. Haven’t played the second one yet (it just came out recently) but I am very much looking forward to it.

I might not have played much of my PS4 but I did play on CurseBreaker (my PC) plenty so my steam recap is still fun to look at and includes the games I started but didn’t finish.

As you can see, Phasmophobia has basically taken over my life. I feel like I have pretty quickly gone from having zero fucking clue how to play the game and barely understanding how it works to being able to identify ghosts reasonably well with no evidence. I’m working on levelling up and the more challenging modes right now. I am maybe a little bit worried that getting so aggressively into the game has made me mildly to moderately annoying to play the game with but people are still willing to play it with me so hopefully that’s just in my head! Really hoping to 100% this one I’m having a blast with it. Included the graph for it because I think on steam it’s the only game I played on my PC in December (on steam, anyway) and I find that amusing.

Started Dead by Daylight this year which is a game I never really thought I’d get around to playing. I’ve had a few friends who played it over the years and for the most part those who played it seemed largely pretty ‘meh’ on it? Like, played it a lot, or at least frequently, but never actively recommended it. Finally got into it and was enjoying it! Unfortunately then Phasmophobia came along and I basically haven’t touched DBD since. Ah well I’ll get back to it eventually.

And I have finally been playing Control with Vin. Been one of those games I’ve been meaning to play for ages, and Vin really likes it so we’ve been playing! We kind of dropped off in December just due to December being the month of things always happening at all times but we’ll pick it back up soon. I am really excited to play more we kinda stopped at a really interesting point in the plot.

Oh, and there is the Nintendo recap but it feels a little weirder since I basically only played the NES emulator and the Splatoon 3 DLC with a little bit of Splatoon 3 multiplayer, and then Fortnite is there because I use my switch to idle-grind levels. But here it is anyway:

The 134 hours in Fortnite is wild that was all just, idling for levels. And I didn’t even bother with like two of the seasons this year at all.

Overall good year for gaming for me, I think. I didn’t really touch any of the goals I had at the end of last year for it but like I said I am over being stressed about not meeting arbitrary goals. Especially for things that are supposed to be fun.

I have listened to podcasts for years! And because so many of the ones I’ve listened to are serials—they just keep going—it never occurred to me to track them. Then one of my friends recommended an audio drama and I had no idea how to track it. It’s audio-book-esq… but without it being a published book. It’s a story, that I experienced, so I wanted to track it—and so I decided to start tracking podcasts. The end of the year as a time to start tracking this wasn’t the best call because I am currently trying to decide how to track the various serial shows I listen to that don’t make up their own seasons (I’m thinking of doing it as each year is a season since most of them will do different kinds of shows at the end of the year or new years wrap ups so that feels like a clean way to do it, but it also means that suddenly I have a lot of shows to add to my tracking spreadsheet all at once.)

So this tracking segment is kind of a WIP but here’s what I did listen to that I’ve tracked so far this year:

The entire top row there is one series, The White Vault, which so far is very intriguing! I’m excited to listen to more and learn what’s going on. It’s an isolation horror audio drama with weird ancient cult or religion things going on with maybe eldritch beasts or gods or something. Not sure yet, not sure if it’ll get explained, but it’s very cool so far and the voice actors are really good! Badlands Cola is in a similar vein of being a horror audio drama, but it strays more toward that surreal-space kind of horror where there’s eldritch slash unknowable beings affecting the world and people trying to use it to their own ends. Also very neat, and I was totally shocked when pretty early on it was clear it was actually taking place in Alberta’s badlands. I always get really excited when stuff takes place in Canada. Both of those were recommended by the same friend and when I have time I absolutely plan to take more of their recommendations.

The final one there is The Legend of SwordQuest which is a reporting podcast talking about the contest surrounding Atari’s Swordquest series of games released on the Atari 2600 in the ‘80s. It was this massive thing Atari was doing during that early video game boom but the contest fell apart as the industry did and as Atari changed ownership with the final Swordquest game never being released (and possibly never being made) and the prizes that were not given out have long been a mystery. Some things are still left up in the air by the end of the show but it is extremely interesting if you like video game history at all, and even has a bonus episode on the landfill where so many Atari games (not just E.T.) were buried.

Would absolutely recommend any of these, but I haven’t finished The White Vault yet so for something shorter and more digestible, if you’re looking for a podcast, I’d recommend Badlands Cola for fiction and The Legend of Swordquest for non-fiction.

I have never really tracked music in these things before, but with Spotify Wrapped being a thing and the wild amount of new music I got into this year I figured why not. I’ve already really enjoyed occasionally putting on older CDs in the car and being surprised by what songs have remained favourites for months and which songs I haven’t listened to in a hot minute, so why not do it in this recaps, too? My Spotify Wrapped feels weirdly inaccurate, it’s basically entirely from when I was building a playlist for my D&D character and her twin as well as another character playlist I was making for an RP server but WHATEVER HERE IT IS ANYWAY:

I have a suspicion that my “Top Artists” has more to do with how many songs I listened to from an artist (rather than how much I actually listened to that artist) and, as you can see from my songs to artists ratio being almost 2:1 I don’t really listen to a lot of songs from just a few artists. (Like that’s the average, I listen to roughly two songs per artist I listen to.) So because I was going through the entirety of Within Temptation’s and Florence + The Machine’s discography (of which there are many songs) that skewed my top artists. That’s my theory. Anyway I really enjoy spotify’s weird little summaries of the genres or styles of things you listened to. I was particularly delighted by “Cottagecore Ukulele Forest phase” because I am not sure anything I listened to this year even had ukuleles in it. I do wish they’d show what songs made them pick those titles, though.

For the fun of looking back later here’s my current “On Repeat” playlist on Spotify. I am way, way, way too lazy to type these out (and if I did that I would also feel compelled to link to them) so enjoy another giant image.

Most of these I associate with my characters but there’s also a lot of songs I associate with one of my friend’s characters which is also very fun. Will I remember who belongs to who in the future? No clue, guess we’ll see. Or I’ll see. It is also fun how many of these songs are new to me as of this year. Not all of them are, but I think the majority are. This is really weird for me that I have so many new songs to me that I listen to consistently.

For years I was starting to think that the time of finding new music that I like was largely over—just thinking about my parents (and older people in general) and how they’ve been listening to mostly the same tracks over and over again since I was a kid. Was starting to think it was kind of inevitable that your brain ‘sets’ or solidifies around certain songs and then that’s it. For years I’d be lucky if I found maybe a handful of new songs I liked over the course of a year, finding a new artist who I like the majority or even more than two songs in their discography is extremely rare for me so to have found (largely in thanks to one of my friends) so many new songs and artists is just… completely wild to me. And a big factor in why I even thought to include music this year.

Absolutely bonkers year for music for me!

As I mentioned, I started playing D&D again, my last group kind of fell apart a few years ago and I have been craving that table top role play ever since and finally the stars aligned! And I fell into a really wild rabbit hole of making five billion documents for it. (Have I mentioned I love excel?)

For the campaign I’m in I have made: A searchable character & location glossary; Session summaries; Transcripts of scenes; Saved written role-plays; Made a timeline of events on a broad and local scale (which includes a tracker for upcoming events); Made a document for my thoughts, my character’s thoughts, and my conspiracy theories; Made a ciphered letter to another character; Made two massive playlists and then wrote out explanations for every single song and I still am not done and have not shared that; Made my character sheet, of course, but started modifying it to make it easier to use and track things; Session note documents of course (rough and unshared); Made a functional cipher translator that steps through two different ciphers to get the result; Made three supplementary documents to go with said cipher (explaining the ciphers, how they work, how they should work, what it would take to break them, etc.); Our DM’s spouse would sometimes give us trophies so I also made a document to track that because that’s my idea of fun (spreadsheets); and started recording sessions (we were using a bot before but the folks in charge of it were getting swamped by work and my set up I used to us to record our former dnd sessions still works and is easy for me to do so I just kinda took over).

Which is a lot of documents on its face but the cipher required me learning a lot of new things in Sheets (which was delightful and aggravating at the same time) which took me a lot of time and my thoughts, character thoughts, and conspiracies make up over 100 pages of text, and I don’t even want to look at how many pages the session summaries are (I did not write all of them, but have written the majority). I have been thriving but it also takes up a lot of time. I’m currently behind on all of those because work was kicking my entire ass for a while, but that’s okay. I’ll get back into the swing of it. And when I do I will make my DM expire. My DM and two of the guest players cannot believe the shit I manage to guess because of the way in which I put things together, and I still have no clue what things I’ve guessed correctly. My partner, who is one of those guests, has mentioned wanting to throw up several times at this point from the things I have guessed right. Unfortunately my guesses are basically essays so I can’t even use these reactions as confirmation of anything because they’ll say I got something right except I just dropped like ten pages of unhinged rambling so I have no clue what. It has been really fucking fun, though.

I haven’t drawn my character yet for this campaign, and most of the art I’ve done this year has just been little things for my mom, but I have drawn my snakesona Lichen a few times (including the meme redraw above). So there’s that:

And I’ve still been wrapping things! It’s always fun to scroll through photos at the end of the year, I go from “I feel like I did barely anything at all” to “holy shit look at all the stuff I did!” It was so easy to feel like nothing ever happened ever before we had the ability to document every stray little thing we did.

Anyway for wrapping, as I mentioned previously: There’s my sister’s new-used car after the one I wrapped last year died, there’s a PS5 slim I did which I love the colour blue on, there’s the interior of my 3DS XL which I did do last year but wanted to do better since the creases weren’t laying quite right. I also wrapped my two decade old keyboard (as of the new year it is genuinely two decades old, this thing still has a PS/2 plug). Re-wrapped the trunk of an acquaintances vehicle with some spare wrap I had hanging around (the wrap we used before was… shrinking? I’ve never seen car vinyl do that before so we re-did it because the clear coat underneath is looking really rough). Wrapped my sister-in-law’s kobo as well, she chose a really great metallic green for it. Mostly happy with how it turned out but the buttons were tricky. Also made a bunch of vinyl stickers, a bunch of a character from our D&D group (most went to our DM’s house, I kept some though and I don’t remember who else I gave them to) and Vin graciously made me more sticker designs of our goober characters so I was able to make those for our stuff. And for posterity: There’s Button! She still says hoi! (She, and I, had our first ever flat-flat tire this year, wouldn’t pump up, so had to jack her up, put on the spare, and get the tire repaired.)

Did a little of re-shelling and tech repair this year as well! Re-shelled Steph’s Nintendo Switch Pro-Controller, and re-shelled some of my joycons because the ‘soft’ plastic of the shells was getting dirty but more than that they were getting these weird red speckles? Had zero clue what it could be and it wouldn’t come off and it was kind of skeeving me out so I just went for a reshell and while I am sad to not have that seafoam green, sky blue, and white colour combo I do really like the transparent shells for joycons so it worked out. Also reshelled an old DS Lite I had but accidentally mucked up the top screen in the process so had to get a new upper screen and then learn how to solder the speaker wires back into place. (And I did a little clefa decal on it for my friend, too.) 

Not pictured but I also cleaned a friend’s PS5 earlier this year and was utterly mystified when all of the “dust” that came out of it was laundry lint. Like. It smelled like fresh laundry, and was that blueish gray fluffy stuff you so often see in the lint trap of a drying machine. It wasn’t dust. It was clothing fabric. Which really explained why the PS5 kept shutting down on her it basically literally had a blanket on the heat sinks. Wasn’t regular dust, was clothing fibers. Absolutely bizarre. That’s the first and only time I’ve ever seen that before.

And I helped bring TWO computers into the world this year! The first is Moonstone (born Jan 29th, 2024) that I also did decals for, for fun. I built it for one of my best friends so they’d have a PC that could do some more demanding tasks and gaming. She’s not cutting edge but she’s a solid little machine with loads of storage and I’m happy with how she came out. Had a hilarious mishap building though where I just completely failed to plug in the CPU’s power connector on the motherboard and could not figure out why it wouldn’t boot to BIOS. Everything else had power so fans spun to life, LEDs turned on, but CPU had no power so it just hung like that. And you know that CPU power connector is crammed up in a dark corner so it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize I just failed to connect it. Oh well, shit happens and I figured it out.

The second is Vibes! (Born Oct 4th, 2024) So named after the fusion name of my and Vin’s strangest and most unhinged character pairing. I put together the parts list, kept an eye on sales and bundles, and walked Vin through putting it together because I could not be there in person. She turned out beautifully though and I am sooo envious of the little display screen Vin’s got on that case. (Even if CurseBreaker had a screen like that I wouldn’t see it, it’d be facing the wall—unless I reconfigured where my PC sits but who wants to do that.) Supposed to be making a decal for the tempered glass on Vibes at some point but we’ll get to it. The bottom pic is my midwife set up for Vibes—I was on call drawing on pictures of Vin’s motherboard and case for where things were supposed to go (using a rigged up webcam controlled model of Lichen that Steph made for me).

Really happy with both of these! But also when I was looking through photos I could not believe I made Moonstone at the beginning of this year, it feels like ancient history. Time moves in such strange ways.

Also had some nice just, organizing this year. Nothing major but it is something I sort of pick at as time goes on and it makes me happy. This year I realized I could put itty bitty drawers into the cubbies on my desk and while I do not have stuff to put in all the drawers this has greatly increased my happiness with how my desk looks and feels to sit at. I turned one of the drawers into a dice rolling tray by lining the bottom with some foam and felt because the foldable trays I have keep getting wrinkles and making rolls weird, and if I was going to get a bigger dice tray I wanted it to look nice for when it would be stored and the nice ones are expensive. So I very much like my converted mini-drawer solution. It is not the most aesthetic but it is the most neat and tidy which I like very much.

Also figured out some cable management for my TV area, I’ve been doing a lot of streaming things to my computer (since my PS4 is a hideously expensive blu-ray player at this point) so I figured out a way to make it easier to unplug and plug my systems into the TV set up and my computer set up without having to fish around the back of the console for the HDMIs.

This one is so minor but I saw this Tallneck lego set early this year and felt a mighty urge to have it. So I made my first “adult” Lego build. It has not sparked an overall Lego addiction but it was very fun to build, the Lego design works great for the Horizon creatures and I would absolutely buy more if they made more. Luckily they have not so my wallet is safe, but I did enjoy making this one and looking at it makes me happy. Not a full blown hobby, but still!

And this isn’t technically a hobby but dang the solar eclipse was this year it feels like it happened a nebulously long amount of time ago! I was able to drive down into the path of totality it was extremely cool. It went totally dark and then got light again, I have a video that I will cherish forever. (The last photo is not mine, the first two are, but I do not know if the final photo was published anywhere as it was a friend of a relative that took it.)

As always I must show off all the cool art I got from my cool friends.

Which I normally try to condense more than this but I got so much good art this year and there’s MORE that I didn’t include because I didn’t want to stretch the image into forever. I’ve settled into a kind of pattern with the order but first is the @refundtheticket section! They did a bunch of YCHs this year which I fully took advantage of and I adore them all. The 3D model of my sneksona was on my last year one, too, but after Steph got Moonstone they rigged it up for me and now I can control it via webcam and it’s one of my favourite things. I don’t use it often but when I do it brings me joy. They also made me a physical, 3D printed version of one of my favourite drawings of Lelia they’ve done and now it sits on my desk and I look at it every day like :) Steph also does commissions! Their info is here!

Then we get into the @auyamx section which I could have just completely flooded with my character Myosotis but they did so much good art this year. I was absolutely spoiled with pictures of Myosotis, but they also gave me plenty of Lelia, Vai and Bernie, a little Veene and Kohra sticker, some silly Osuna’s even though I haven’t drawn a reference yet (sorry to everyone), and while the other characters are either theirs or our friends (and DM) I love Dove, Aepeiros, Pidge/Harle, Naexidor, and Peirs so fucking much I couldn’t not include them. SO many good, fun drawings this year I go absolutely feral over all of them.

And then the bottom section with the very intense looking green lady is by @mossrotts! I gotta a widdle wewia and a werewolf wewia and a super fucking cute Myosotis and a very intense Osuna (sorry about the lack of ref I love you). He also does commissions which you can find information on here!

I adore all the art I got this year and continue to be lucky to have the coolest and most creative friends in the world.

All right so! Winding this down with looking toward the new year. Last year was my first time trying out, “yearly themes”. Here’s a video about it. The short version is: Instead of making a ‘resolution’ or a ‘goal’ with a fail state (i.e. Exercise Every Day) you make a broader idea that you’ll work toward which may not wind up as you envisioned it but can change with you and isn’t something you can ‘fail’ at. (Like instead of exercise every day, which if you miss once you then fail, your ‘theme’ can be ‘health’ so then any exercise more than you would have done normally counts, or if you break a leg or suddenly become ill your theme of ‘health’ can still be applicable just addressing the more urgent issue.)

In 2024 my theme was “Enjoying what I have” and I originally envisioned it as not buying new things, not indulging in new hobbies, so that I could focus on catching up on things (books, games, etc.). But then life happens and I’m not going to turn down the opportunity to play D&D when the stars align for it, and my sister’s car broke down and she needed the new one wrapped. So my theme warped from the intended purpose to a broader appreciation (or enjoyment) of my skills and even though I fell head over heels in love with our D&D campaign and made five billion documents for it that was me enjoying and flexing what I have—being my love and skill with spreadsheets and babbling endlessly about characters and connections. The car wrapping, too, got to be an enjoyment and appreciation of a skill I’ve been building for the last few years. It was also my first year trying out a theme and I’m still working out how best to make it work, the fact that I consistently remembered it and thought about it is honestly more than I expected given how resolutions and goals have gone for me in the past. They usually slip my mind entirely and then oops! It’s been six months and I forgot all about it five months ago!

I did start a ‘Theme Tracking’ spreadsheet and wasn’t sure if I would keep up with it but… shockingly I have! I’m becoming a big believer in just… figuring out what works for you. Apparently for me (right now) that’s spreadsheets. I can remember this ‘Theme Tracker’ spreadsheet in a way I have never been able to remember any agenda or planner or notebook or app in my life. (My partner found Notion this year and that seems to be working for them in a similar way.) I already have ideas for how I want to change up that Tracking spreadsheet but since I made it in February I’ve been slowly iterating on it month by month to make it work better for me, just as I think of it, which is maybe the beauty of a spreadsheet for me, personally. I can start with the barebones because I have enough literacy to slap together something simple, and then as I go “it would be nice if…” I can add it.

So! All that said I think 2025’s theme is going to be: Catching Up. I’m going to intend it in much the same spirit as I meant “Enjoying what I have” originally but hopefully the reframing of it will help me focus on it better. I have no illusions that I’ll ever be “caught up” on everything. There’s too much stuff in the world and that’s not really how my brain works, but some things I think I could be caught up on, and some things are okay to remain a “catching up” forever, but I’d like to reduce some of my lists, some of my piles of tasks, et cetera. Books are probably the biggest itch since I have a physical, in person to-be-read pile but it kinda goes for anything. I want to get all my spreadsheets back in order (so many of them, D&D and personal tracking, are in a bizarre half-overhauled limbo), I want to shave down my “on the go” games to just one (excluding social games), I just want to reduce the mental and physical clutter a little. That’s all. So that’s what I’m gonna try!

Overall once again I think it was a pretty good year! We’re ignoring global events in that assessment. In my little corner of the universe things are mostly okay. I went to three weddings this year, which was wild, I have never gone to so many weddings in a year before. I got to see old friends, my partner came up to visit, I got to know some people who have been kind of on the outskirts of my life, just outside my social bubble, for years now and they are a delight. I did do a lot of cool stuff this year! Got to do so much creative writing and role-playing with friends! It’s been pretty good!

I mentioned at the end of my post last year about how different things might have been if I had left the farm sooner, and about a person in a similar situation to me and luckily she has left now! She just did about a month ago and we’re all proud of her and happy for her!

Happy New Year everyone! If you do a similar write up please tag me or link me or drop me a message, seriously I don’t really go on my dashboard in the way any social media platform intends. I use tumblr in the strangest way possible which is likely why I like it so much, but it does mean I’ll miss out on everyone’s new years stuff unless it’s brought to my attention.

Thank you for reading! Here’s a cozy Frunk to see you into the New Year!

[nancydrewwouldnever]

The Infamous Jenny Vulture Interview

So, I keep losing access to the infamous Jenny Vulture interview from March 2017 because of caps on access they have on their website. So, in case anyone else hits the same problem, I'm cut and pasting it here, to have an easier to access copy of it.

The Year of Living Publicly

Jenny Slate’s got two new films and a new home and, oh, by the way, she’s fresh off a breakup with Captain America. 

By Jasa Yuan

Published March 2017

Most pillows are just pillows, but for Jenny Slate, the floral-print puffs arrayed on her pristine white linen couch in her freshly rented apartment in L.A.’s Silver Lake are metaphors. For a bright future. For a new life. For freedom. The Obvious Child star and her bichon frise, Reggie, just moved into this sunny one-bedroom in February, and every time she looks at those pillows, she gets so excited because she remembers how she’d bought them while still married to editor-director Dean Fleischer-Camp, her husband for three years, but had to stow them away because she realized it felt like they were living in a box of tampons. Now she and Reggie don’t have to run their decorating decisions by anyone. “I’ve never lived on my own, because I really did go from one relationship to another my whole life, so I’ve never had a chance to go really girlie,” she says. “And I had my ex-husband over last night and he was like, ‘These flower pillows look great. But they’re just for you.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah! That’s right!’ I love them so much. I just love them for what they represent, which is that all my choices are for me.” She turns around. “I’m gonna pee really quick.”

The bathroom door doesn’t quite close — she’d warned me of this. “You can snoop around if you want,” she shouts. “It’s just a little mouse house. It’s fucking perfect for me.”

I have been in her presence for about two minutes. The first thing she did was offer to loan me a T-shirt because I mentioned I was hot. Slate used to do a stand-up routine about how her mom refused to sew her name into her shirt in elementary school, “because she was like, ‘You’re too friendly, and some stranger would just be like, Jenny! Come into the van!’ ”

There’s an obvious person missing so far from this tale of pillows versus patriarchy, but she’s not hiding anything; we just haven’t gotten to it yet. “When I moved in here, I’d been through my divorce and a breakup,” she says, returning from the bathroom and referring to the ten or so months she spent dating Chris Evans, best known as Captain America, and her much more famous co-star in Gifted an upcoming film about a family struggling with a young girl’s genius affinity for math. The internet went wild over their apples-and-oranges compatibility: a brash Jewish comedienne beloved for oversharing about her bodily functions on talk shows and voicing Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, a tiny stop-motion conch with a single eye and feet who talks about being so small he can hang-glide on a Dorito, in a series of YouTube shorts she made with Fleischer-Camp — and a world-famous Marvel superhero, who also happens to be a Massachusetts momma’s boy with one of the most insanely ripped bodies on the planet. “We used to talk about what kinds of animals we were,” says Slate. “Chris said it’s like I’m a chick riding on a St. Bernard’s head. We’re an odd match.”

Paparazzi tried to snap them, bloggers scrutinized their Instagrams, tabloids obsessively covered their one appearance together on a red carpet. Slate didn’t read the coverage, but it was extremely kind, with most articles praising Slate for taking a chance on Evans, or noting that his coolness factor had jumped several notches because of his proximity to her. Maybe this crazy thing could work out! There was something beautiful, in a year marked by division, to think of these two opposites finding common ground. He was 35; she was 34. They’d grown up half an hour from each other. They were both outspoken liberals. They’d said really adorable things about each other on Anna Faris’s podcast.

And then, a few weeks before I met Slate, news broke that it was over. In her life, though, she’d already spent several months dealing with that loss and having to find a place to live, crashing with friends in Venice Beach in January. “I watched You’ve Got Mail so many times, it was unbelievable,” she says. Was she weeping most of the time? “Yeah, I did it right.” Eventually, she found this new apartment and purged everything she owned except for a few clothes she loves, books, precious objects, and a velvet chair once belonging to her great-grandmother. “I was like, ‘You need all new things. You are a working woman. Maybe this is an indulgence, but just start over,’ ” she says. “It’s like, Fuck.”

The other night, she tells me, she was sitting at a bar by herself, reading a book about the Holocaust, and finally sent an SOS text to her friend Mae Whitman. “I was just like, ‘Can you please help me? I’m so lonely.’ And she came and we got shitbombed, and I woke up the next morning and saw my headphones on my neighbor’s yard. I have no idea how they ended up there.”

As Slate gives me the tour of her place, Reggie trails her every move. “He’s like a little soul mirror of me. We’re a lot the same,” she says. How so? “Needing closeness. Despair when left alone. But also he’s very excited to misbehave when left alone. So he doesn’t know what he wants.”

Ever since she was a pip-squeak at Camp Tapawingo in Sweden, Maine, Slate has known what she wanted to be: an actress, like Amy Irving or Gilda Radner or Madeline Kahn. That or “Jewish Felicity,” taking over Manhattan, like in the TV show. In the aughts, she came up in the alternative-stand-up-comedy scene in New York, where she garnered attention for a one-woman show as different characters eulogizing an eccentric millionaire, got cast on Saturday Night Live, and wasfired one season in after accidentally cursing on-air in her first sketch. That ego blow hurt a little less when she made the awards-circuit rounds for Obvious Child, a low-budget romantic comedy about two people navigating an abortion after a one-night stand, and she’s built a devoted fan base through her outrageous characters on the Kroll Show and Parks and Recreation, not to mention her great voice work with Marcel, Bob’s Burgers, The Secret Life of Pets (as an anxious Pomeranian), and Zootopia (as a villainous sheep). In 2012, she relocated from Brooklyn to L.A. Her relationship with Evans is easily the most Hollywood thing she’s ever done. She shows me a photo of her aura on her fridge, taken in New York’s Chinatown. There’s a thick concentration of “productive energy,” which is good, since she has a lot of work coming up, and a giant cloud of worry and overthinking, which seems to be dissipating. By the sink are potholders she made as a kid on a little loom and a drawing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg that Fleischer-Camp brought her as a housewarming gift. “We’re good friends. That’s why we got divorced,” says Slate. “If we didn’t get divorced, we wouldn’t be able to be friends and we wouldn’t be able to do our work. We had just grown apart, and we love each other. It wasn’t easy, but not bad.” She pauses. “No, it was bad. But not essentially bad.”

Her mother, a ceramicist, and father, a lauded poet, are still married; she wrote a book about her childhood home in Massachusetts with her dad this year. Her younger sister, Stacey, a mental-health counselor in Brooklyn, had come over on the previous weekend and helped her put up pictures. (Her elder sister, Abby, is a nurse-practitioner in Massachusetts, and Slate is convinced her middle-child need for attention is what nudged her toward showbiz.) Covering the top of her dresser are snapshots she hasn’t figured out what to do with, such as the one of her in a revealing tank top at Columbia University, where she went from high-school valedictorian to pothead almost instantly. “This is me when I was a slutty virgin,” she explains. “A virgin but trying to act like I knew what was going on.”

Somewhere beneath a pile of half-read books is her bedside table. She hates computers so much she doesn’t keep one in the house, and she often turns to books when scrolling through Twitter on her phone stresses her out, which it always does. Current favorites include The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, and Emma, a children’s book with Barbara Cooney illustrations that she bought on Etsy and loves so much she put it on display so she could see it when she wakes up. “It’s about an old woman who doesn’t love how she’s alone, and then learns to make herself not alone through art, and draws people into her life through art. It’s the fucking best thing.”

The instinct other young actresses have to keep every interesting thing about themselves under wraps — or the toughness that female comics often give off — wouldn’t be very useful in Slate’s case. Her brand, if you can call it that, is built on vulnerability, whether she’s revealing her innermost insecurities through an animated shell or telling Seth Meyers on TV that she was so stoned in college she accidentally signed up for an astronomy class thinking she’d learn about astrology. Not to mention that she and Evans met while playing love interests in a movie that is now coming out and that she needs to promote. That’s hard to get around.

“I don’t mind talking about him at all. He’s a lovely person,” she says. “I don’t know. It feels like such a huge thing. Last year was a giant, big year for my heart. I’ve never, ever thought to keep anything private because that’s not really what I’m like, and now I’m learning those things, and they’re weird, kind of demented lessons to learn.”

She didn’t set out to have a tabloid-­fodder romance. She’d fought hard for her part in Gifted, as a teacher who falls for Evans’s character, a working-class guy trying to give his prodigy niece (Mckenna Grace) a normal childhood. Slate’s part is not huge, but it’s a big studio picture. It got her in the room with director Marc Webb and Fox Searchlight. She liked the script, but more than that, “I was just like, ‘I want viability as an American film actress. I want to find my own seat at the main dinner table, because I want to do this forever, and I want to show that it doesn’t always have to be a bikini model opposite Captain America.’ ”

Evans and Slate met at her chemistry read — the audition in which it’s determined whether two romantic leads play well together — and they instantly got along. “I remember him saying to me, ‘You’re going to be one of my closest friends.’ I was just like, ‘Man, I fucking hope this isn’t a lie, because I’m going to be devastated if this guy isn’t my friend.’ ” The first time they went out to dinner, as co-workers getting to know each other, she remembers insisting they split the bill over Evans’s strenuous objections. “If you take away my preferences, you take away my freedom,” she says she told him. “Then I was like, Oh, man, is this dude going to be like, ‘Ugh, this bra-burner.’ Instead, he was like, ‘Tell me more.’ ” They drew from that friendship for their flirting on film, but the time when they jump into bed together in the movie felt as awkward as you hear all love scenes do. “It’s one of those scenes where you bust through a door making out. I’ve never done that in my life,” says Slate. “I remember apologizing to him after. I’m pretty sure I kneed him in the balls.”

Slate was in a weird space at the time. Her marriage was dissolving, and she was working only two or three days a week, and spending her days off wandering around Savannah’s many parks and doing yoga and writing that book, About the House, with her dad. (Which, incidentally, the publisher gave away free with any donation to any charity.) Every weekend, Evans would organize a game night for the cast and crew — usually something called “running charades,” which sounds like high-speed pantomime — that she begrudgingly went to, even though all she wanted to do was hang out on the porch and drink beer and smoke cigarettes. “At first I was like, ‘What a fucking nightmare,’ ” she says. “Chris is a different speed than me — I think he really did just jump out of a plane for an interview. And so when he was like, ‘Game nights,’ I was like, ‘This is annoying. This guy’s like a sports guy. He’s the kid that likes P.E.’ ” But finally his enthusiasm won her over. “I first really liked Chris as a person because he is so unpretentious,” she says. “He is a straight-up 35-year-old man who wants to play games. That’s it. I was like, ‘I’d better not discount this, because this is purity.’ ” It also helped that she’s so competitive she constantly won.

As they got to know each other, she learned he’s still close with people from his childhood, and his best friend is a woman. “What’s the same about us is not just that we’re from Massachusetts, which was such a delight, but Chris is truly one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, to the point where sometimes I would look at him and it would kind of break my heart,” she says. “He’s really vulnerable, and he’s really straightforward. He’s like primary colors. He has beautiful, big, strong emotions, and he’s really sure of them. It’s just wonderful to be around. His heart is probably golden-colored, if you could paint it.”

They didn’t fall for each other on set. “To be quite honest, I didn’t think I was his type,” she says. (Evans has dated Jessica Biel and Minka Kelly). “Eventually, when it was like, Oh, you have these feelings for me?, I was looking around like, Is this a prank? I mean, I understand why I think I’m beautiful, but if you’ve had a certain lifestyle and I’m a very, very different type of person — I don’t want to be an experiment.” Evans never made her feel that way, but it was hard to get past how so many people seemed to feel some ownership of him and view her as an interloper. “If you are a woman who really cares about her freedom, her rights, her sense of being an individual, it is confusing to go out with one of the most objectified people in the entire world,” she says. Especially when she’s aware that in Hollywood, she says, “I’m considered some sort of alternative option, even though I know I’m a majorly vibrant sexual being.” And especially when random ladies would come up to her at CVS, “being like, ‘Oh my God, is that Chris Evans? He’s so hot!’ You’re like, ‘How dare you? That’s my boyfriend. But yes, he’s so hot.’ ”

Every time Slate mentions Evans, it keeps coming back to the same thing: As much as they loved being with one another, she says, “we’re really, really different,” with different social circles and different lifestyles. Slate comes from a DIY comedy scene, and most of her friends are fellow comics and gay guys. “Chris is a very, very famous person,” she says. “For him to go to a restaurant is totally different than for me to go. I sit in my window and I say ‘Hi’ to people on the street. I have more freedom because I’m not Captain America. I’m mostly a cartoon.” She kept waiting for everything to feel normal, but it never did. “This is what I needed to do to feel normal. To be alone.”

That meant day-to-day they mostly stayed home, “which was really nice,” she says. But it was also one of the most anxious years of her life. She fretted over the “psychos” on the internet who turned her relationship with Evans into a pissing contest with Fleischer-Camp. And she struggled seeing the person she was in love with deal with the side-effects of fame. “The stress that I saw him be put under, I’ve never seen that before, and he handled that really gracefully,” she says. What she wasn’t taking into account was that he’s used to it. “He’s not stressed,” she says. “I was the person that was stressed.”

She’s also aware in hindsight that she hadn’t processed her separation before she got together with Evans. It wasn’t as scandalous as tabloid reports made it sound — as with any long-term relationship that splinters, they’d been on the rocks long before it was official. But, she says, “When Chris and I started dating, my husband and I had only been separated for a couple of months.” The divorce actually went through while she was at the Sundance Film Festival, after she and Evans broke up. “Even though we had an amicable divorce, I think that’s still something that you need to mourn. When you get separated from somebody that you actually care about, it is the destruction of a belief system. That is really, really sad.” Throughout all of it, the divorce, the new love, she says, “I just didn’t have the tools. And I didn’t think very hard about that, to be honest. I wanted to step into the light. Chris is a sunny, loving, really fun person, and I didn’t really understand why I should be prudent.”

Are she and Evans on good terms? “We’re not on bad terms, but we haven’t really seen each other, spoken a lot,” she says. “I think it’s probably best. I’d love to be his friend one day, but we threw down pretty hard. No regrets, though. Ever.”

Slate introduces me to the mascots of her new home, two cute mice figurines in jaunty outfits who look like they’re off to travel the world. “The way I feel now is I’ve stepped out of the woods and I’m a forest animal and I’m standing on the lawn,” she says. “And if anybody tried to approach me right now, they’re seeing a creature that’s just trying to figure out what the lawn is like. All I’m thinking about is the lawn. I’m not thinking about whether or not they are going to be a fun person to be on the lawn with, because I am just trying to be on the lawn.” And what or where is this lawn? “It’s just where I am,” she says. “I like the lawn. It’s filled with air, freedom, sunlight, and I’m alone.”

Slate wants to step out in the sunlight now, with a walk around the Silver Lake Reservoir. She bids good-bye to Reggie and turns on the TV to keep him company. “I watch Twin Peaks, but Reggie watches Frasier,” she says. That morning, while Slate was walking him, a woman got out of her car and stopped in her tracks. “She was like, ‘Oh, are you Jenny Slate?’ And I said, ‘I am.’ And she said something nice to me and I said, ‘Thank you so much. I need a lot of encouragement,’ which is usually what I say because it’s true.”

Dating Evans actually, weirdly, spurred her to double down on her career, because, she says, “I don’t want people to ask me more about my love life because of him than they ask me about my work,” and in order to ensure that, she’d have to produce a lot of work. She does stand-up in small clubs whenever possible and had two films at Sundance this January, just as the paperwork for her divorce came through: The Polka King, the true story of a polka-world Ponzi scheme, opposite Jack Black; and Landline, a story of two Jewish-Italian sisters and their parents having life and love crises in ’90s New York City, with Obvious Child creators Gillian Robespierre and Elisabeth Holm (out July 21). Soon she’ll be heading to Vancouver for a road-trip movie with Evan Rachel Wood, Alison Pill, and Cynthia Erivo, which is also Wood’s directorial debut. She and Fleischer-Camp are also at work on a feature-length Marcel the Shell movie, which she says will be “a character portrait much like Billy the Kid or Grey Gardens.”

Today, she’s leaning in to International Women’s Day by wearing a sundress covered in red roses and made by a company, Day Space Night, that’s run by women. She even canceled her one meeting with a man, an appearance on Snoop Dogg’s podcast, so she could have an entirely penis-free day. And she’s planning on ending the day by going with her girlfriends to a 90-minute seminar on fertility and reproductive rights.

A vocal supporter of Planned Parenthood, Slate credits Obvious Child not just for allowing her to prove she’s a legitimate actress, but also for turning her into a women’s rights activist. Back when she signed on, she says, “I still felt embarrassed of the word feminist.” Then one day discussing a costume fitting with co-star Gaby Hoffmann, Slate jokingly apologized for showing up with “crazy bush,” she says. “And Gaby did not take it as a joke. She was really serious and she looked at me and she was like, ‘I didn’t know we were supposed to apologize for that.’ I was like, Oh, I’m being a fool. I need to learn this shit right now.”

And now that she’s got a financial cushion from Zootopia and Secret Life of Pets, she can act on what she’s learned and say “no” more often. Specifically, she’s drawing the line at any movie that, she says, “makes it okay to laugh about things like women’s bodies after birth, like when women who’ve just had babies are referring to their vaginas as all ruined. I think it’s really rude for someone to disparage a vagina in the female body after it’s just fucking created and exploded a baby into our world. It makes me furious and I will not change my opinion on that.”

Also a no-go are any roles she’s offered that “seem like a weird stereotype version of me. Like Quirky Best Friend: ‘She doesn’t have a filter! She talks about poop!’ ” She thinks it’s worth it to hold out for roles with nuance, that will allow her to lean into humor and tragedy equally, and get to the heart of the human condition. In the meantime, she has plenty of personal-growth goals. She wants to learn Norwegian this summer. She wants to spend time with her family on Martha’s Vineyard. And she wants to find a farm she can help on so she can be around animals.

Eventually, she’ll try dating again, too. “I am inclined toward partnership,” she says. “I’m like a mallard, definitely looking for my other duck. But I’ve been in love in very strong ways enough times now that there are just some compromises maybe I won’t make.” He has to know who Gloria Steinem is, for one thing. She’s thinking maybe a scientist with a sense of humor. But definitely someone who’s sure enough in who he is to accept that she’s had a past without him. “Whoever is the next person is going to have to respect that I had a husband who I loved and this boyfriend who I loved so much, and I don’t want to have to act like they weren’t important.”

We’re back at the apartment and Slate is overjoyed that Reggie hasn’t peed on anything. Speaking of pasts, she’ll also soon be hitting the press tour for Gifted with Evans. “I feel pretty relaxed about it right now,” she says, sounding not entirely convincing. “That’s because I know Chris and he’s a very nice man. And we’ve gone into our separate lives. But that doesn’t also mean that I’m going to sleep well the night before, you know?”

First, she’s taking her parents to Cabo San Lucas to celebrate her 35th birthday. I suddenly have a horror flashback to a similar trip to Cabo I took years ago and warn her not to drink the water or brush her teeth with it, or to have ice or eat anything raw, or maybe to eat anything at all.

“Oh God,” she says, laughing, “having raging diarrhea is just a real on-brand nightmare for me.”

She thinks for a second. “But, you know, it would be such an icebreaker. If I showed up with, like, a spray tan and a blowout, he’d be like, ‘What happened to Jenny?’ But if I was able to say, ‘Aw, man, I have diarrhea,’ he’d be like, ‘It’s you. I remember you.’ ”

*This article appears in the March 20, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hi! It’s the catholic school maybe ace anon again. I just have one more question.

I want to be open and okay with sexuality and that kind of thing, but from a very young age I’ve been taught it was Not Okay.

Is there anything you can recommend to me (books, blogs, channels, etc.) that might help me.. understand more, ig? I try really hard to keep an open mind, but I don’t actually learn enough to be at a point where I’m chill with it (I try to be, I really do).

hi catholic anon (cathnon, if you will),

I did drop a couple of recommendations in my answer to your last query (shoutout to Lindsey Doe's Sexplanations and Heather Corinna's Scarleteen again, I really can't say enough good things about them!) but let's talk about some more cool resources!

Dr. Nadine Thornhill is an educator doing THE COOLEST work, definitely check her out!

if you want to read about asexuality and aromantic experiences, check out Yasmin Benoit's writing on her website! she's one of the most outspoken aroace figures in the business.

while I have my gripes with Teen Vogue, they write a lot of very accessible articles about sexual topics ranging from abortion info to disability-friendly sex to tips on buying vibrators. give it a look!

Planned Parenthood's website is chock full of useful info that I frequently use as a reference in my work, with a section specifically geared towards teenagers.

for asexual-specific writing you gotta check out Angela Chen's book Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. it's a fantastic piece of writing, and makes me so hopeful for the future of ace and aro scholarship written from within the community.

Sexuality: A Graphic Guide is also a gentle illustrated into to a lot of big ideas about sexuality and orientation, by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele. you may also be interested in another of Barker's books, How to Understand Your Sexuality, written with Alex Iantaffi.

another book I'm very fond of is Jaclyn Friedman's Unscrewed, which looks at ways in which sex can be exploited by patriarchy and capitalism and contrasts that bleak outlook with people doing real, tangible good to advance sexual freedom, queer rights, and reproductive health.

also hey listen I'm going to say one that's a little goofy but a lot of fun: there's a show on Netflix (or elsewhere, if you know how to pirate) called How to Build a Sex Room that's short (only sex episodes, I think?) and nothing but fun, following designer Melanie Rose building her clients' ideal rooms to have sex in. clients range from eager to overshare to adorably awkward, and Rose is always there to encourage them to think about what they really want and how to express that desire. it's very cute and a great way to get cozy around casual convos about sex!

[thatndginger]

Y’all remember that idea I said I might share a little about yesterday? Well hold on to your butts because I’m about to ramble about the latest project spawned of the Shifter!verse.

I’ve been low-key obsessed with interactive fiction/novels (usually just abbreviated to IF) for a long time. If you don’t know what interactive novels are, this website has both a helpful explanation and a bunch of IF you can play :P Anyway, I like IF. A lot. And pretty much since the moment I started writing Shapeshifter, I’ve had the thought in the back of my head about writing an interactive novel for it. However, because IF tends to be high on wordcount and also I’d have to learn how to code and shit, that thought usually gets shoved waaay back in the brain cave until the next time it claws itself back.

But now, thanks to @touloserlautrec I have not only come up with a basic plot idea, I have the beginnings of the npcs too. And since I was a good gremlin and hit my wordcount goals yesterday, I’m gonna talk about it ^.^ Under the cut, of course, to save y’alls dashes.

Ok. So. Basic plot of what I am now calling Shapeshifter: Shadows - 

Player Character is a tourist who comes to visit Moressau for [unspecified but short amount of time]. PC has no idea what they’re actually getting into chasing magic and mystery, and quickly find themselves over their head when a particularly pushy and unpleasant vampire called Soran takes a shine to them. PC manages to escape Soran - temporarily - with the help of a shifter named Aurora who happened to be nearby. Aurora introduces PC to her small cadre of friends who help PC explore Moressau and have a good time - while also protecting them from Soran when it becomes clear Soran is not going to leave PC alone. I’m thinking different branches based on which characters the player chooses to hang out with most. The throughline plot won’t change, but certain scenes could change based on who the player has been favoriting. Obviously there’d be the option to romance certain characters, and that will affect which ending the player gets. The ‘basic’ endings would obviously be either PC escapes Soran and returns to their normal life with some wild stories OR Soran finally makes good on their threat of turning PC into a snack. More endings could include Soran being taken care of and PC deciding to stay in Moressau long-term, being turned into a vampire *without* getting eaten, or deciding to become a witch if they have an affinity with magic. Also, obviously, romantic partner endings.

I thought about making PC a supernatural from the start, but I think it’s more fun - and also easier - to make them a regular human being thrown into the world of the supernatural. I don’t want to make them a shifter because there’d only be a limited number of options for which animal they could turn into and depending on the kind I’d have to completely alter certain scenes and…. It’s just a lot of work. So. No. And turning them into a vampire would defeat the whole point of the plot. A witch might work, but it's more fun to have them discover a magical affinity over the course of the game, I think.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here are the basic sketches for the major characters I’ve figured out so far:

Soran - he/him - a vampire and a complete asshole. Doesn’t take no for an answer because he thinks that being a vampire and having a vampire’s powers lets him do - or have - whatever he wants.  Aurora - she/her - a shifter with no clear allegiances who helps PC escape Soran’s initial advances, then takes it upon herself to show PC around Moressau and introduce them to new people, sights, and experiences. Short, sweet, and utterly terrifying when she wants to be; she refuses to let the bad experiences turn her into just another jaded resident of the smuggler city. David - he/him - a shifter who has a massive chip on his shoulder and a very simple color scheme: black. Jaded and prickly, he doesn’t want to get mixed up with *anyone*, let alone a clueless tourist. But he can’t just let PC stumble blindly into death either. Secretly a bit of a softie beneath all the black and leather and broodiness. Rune - they/them - a witch and friend of Aurora’s. More than happy to help show PC the hidden corners of Moressau and kick some vampire ass. Fairly relaxed and laid back but with a mischievous streak hidden just below the surface. Intelligent but a little clueless emotionally. Celia - she/her - a vampire and acquaintance of Rune’s. Keeps her cards close to her chest and it’s rather unclear why she agrees to help PC with their Soran problem. Playful and teasing, a bit of a thrillseeker, has some *great* stories. Dress style spans like 3 different centuries and you never know what she’ll show up in next.

So... yeah. It’s a thing. I’m gonna shove it back to the far corners of the mind cave now, since my goal is to finish Into the Storm before I start anything else. But I am now significantly more inclined to learn how to code and write IF now than I was.

[f0xgl0v3]

Newest Kleos Rabbit Hole

So, I started stranger things blah blah Kleos I’ll have another CJ post soon because. I might make the re-imagining 3 years after the first arc and that changes so much and I think it’s really interesting and it means I get to give Percy a break. But anyway, we’re talking about the Kleos new background character obsession. The Bryce Lawrence of my Stranger things,

Pure fuel guy. He is in the first part of season 2 of Stranger things, he has no name, nothing to him except he’s iconic and his hold on me rivals Bryce or Lucinus Junius Brutus in how much I think they’re silly. So what is Kleos here to talk about? Headcanonns. I am on the second episode of season four and like just had a breakdown. I have created this man’s life story.

Meet Derek Laurens Galanis. He is a sophomore or a junior, in that 16-17 age range. He does go to Hawkins Highschool and he lives in the trailer park with his mom and their dog. His dad isn’t really around right now but Derek doesn’t really mind too much

Derek has an older sister who goes to UC Berkeley and he wants to go to Berkeley too. He hopes to maybe get a wrestling scholarship and wants to either do like a Arts and Humanities (focusing on Mediterranean stuff- the Ancient Greek and Roman studies one on their website I’m doing my best) thing, a film and media degree, or like. Political sciences if he can’t figure it out

Derek does wrestling and plays on the basketball team during the off season. He likes wrestling a lot actually and wishes he could do it independently but doesn’t really want or know how to join a team

Derek really likes Greece. During elementary school when they were learning about Ancient Greece and the fact he was Greek came up everyone thought he was like the shit during 3rd grade and that never really left.

Does the school musicals. Can my man sing? Oh no Derek obviously can’t but he really likes doing tech work and stage management. But he has to keep it kinda on the down low with his teams

He probably also almost got sucked into Hellfire club before his sister could swoop him up (his freshman year was her senior year). Dawg did used to play DnD before he got really busy with extracurriculars. Probably played as like, one of the.. halflings(?) I don’t know stuff about DnD. He probably has shit luck though and I think that’s endearing

Derek teeters on the fine lines between the ‘freaks’ and ‘cool kids’ of this Highschool. He is on the basketball and wrestling team and is an athlete who had well known friends and a well liked sister to back him up, he gets invited to things like Tina’s Halloween party. On the flip side he does theatre, likes history, and played DnD at one point. He manages to stay in the popular circles but that puts a small strain on his relationship with the drama student body.

Brother also likes making food. Good cooking for the soul and all that stuff. Probably tried to cook something at Tina’s but failed miserably. Never forgets the punch tho/j (that’s a joke I promise)

Derek sees everything like going wild around him from an outside perspective of not knowing anything and wants it to stay that way. The wise one is the naive one

His favorite Greek like myth collection is all the ones where Heracles is just there. That’s probably why he’s dressed up as Dionysus/generic stereotypical media portrayal of Ancient Greek guy

My man, really wants a tarantula as a pet. Thinks it’d be so cool but he barely got his mom to let him name their dog like. Agamemnon or something so he’s already on thin ice

Really bad at science and math. Lil guy just does not think in numbers or absolutes. he’s also really loose on his like remembering historical dates.

Probably pen pals with his sister. She thinks it’s whatever and sweet and writes him back about all the cool stuff in Berkeley and it just makes Derek try harder to get his grades good enough to try and get it

Uhh. That’s Derek, there’s probably more if I think harder but I am also sick. So that’s what we get, also, Bryce Lawerence things to come. Sorry I haven’t made longer posts like this school has been hitting me like a truck and I’ve just been trying to like, figure stuff out but Rick isn’t making my life easier/j

I really just have to look at the actual Ancient Greek myths (not Stevenus and his random Latin translation #739282 where they change stuff/aff) and see what I can draw upon and make actual like. Cohesive stuff. Thinking about looking back on a lot more of the Heracles era because of the Argo stuff but also like, the scrambling of myth references everywhere kinda messes me up a little. Oh well, to the trenches I go :3

[mediocre-eternity]

You have something autistic going on with you (lovingly) <3

I’ve seen this theory about myself roll around this website for some time now. I would be lying if I said I haven’t thought on this… though again— I think the books my coven has published have only served to bring you closer to us and not us closer to you.

I’ll explain.

To you, I am a character in a novel. And I do this, too— relate to characters in novels all of the time. I see myself in many, many people on the TV screen or movie screen. I think “they must get it.” But they are fictional characters. What you need to understand about myself and my cousins in the Blood is that you are first and foremost our prey. And though we may flirt and dance and talk with you, maybe even call you friend, your amazement by who we are is second to our natures as killers. I would not hesitate to rip the throat out of any mortal I see fit. So, I cannot be categorized in a way humans are. Whatever horrific atrocities live in my memories, whatever quirks I may have as a result cannot be conceptualized in a way a human could ever understand.

For example, I have such a mastery of the Mind Gift most humans don’t understand they are dead until I’ve done sucking from them. And even then, most die peacefully in a bed of roses, thinking perhaps they might just take a nap. Then they are gone, without any knowledge of who I was or what I was. And though I may use my real name on this website, you, reader, have no idea who I am and wouldn’t recognize me even if we were standing face to face. Do not look upon me as a human because simply, I am not.

Now, that being said. I do have self awareness. I am not a benign creature lost in their own era because I am hundreds of years old. I can understand things. I see that when other’s dissect my carefully curated novel persona, they tend to write me as a person who has many difficulties grasping what they might be going through in their own minds.

I know I’m not normal. I know I don’t share commonalities with others like me. I don’t see or experience the world they do, even though we are all damned immortals. I understand entirely that I do not speak as much as I think and as much as I’d rather just convey my thoughts to others outright. I am better at lying than most, too…

Oh and I fall into these horrible pits of non-existence where I can tune out rather large swaths of time for myself (which is what I’m trying not to go through now, for Daniel’s sake). If allowed and in good company, it can be extremely hard for me to stop talking (another reason why I’d prefer if I can just exist mind-to-mind). If something catches my imagination, I ruminate and write about it for days, months, sometimes years. I read obsessively…the same book over and over and with music too, until I remember the timing of the notes out of habit. There are episodes of shows on the television that I can recite back to front. And movies. Dune, most recently.

I have a reputation as a hyper-sexual and though I enjoy sex, sex as a tool is something I’ve perfected and there are periods of time where I can completely remove any emotion from the act and use my raw talent at seduction to get what I want. I am such a master at sex, it’s merely a routine characteristic of mine.

Those closest to me become frustrated because it’s so extremely hard for me to understand simple directions. The “packet on the glass” meme has been quoted to me many, many times. I am so well aware of the joke in this. Daniel uses it as a way to torment me when he’s trying to explain how to work something out. I would rather just explore the internet for hours…or ponder a new genre of music than understand the minutiae of tit and tat.

I’ve had to make considerable effort to drone out the horrible, torturous nuisance of modern New York City police cars. No longer is it a deafening alarm, but now a horrific rumble that makes my heart and stomach feel like they’re going to explode. It’s taken years to live comfortably with them and they’ve driven me to intense violence in the past.

“Attenzione! Pickpocket! Attenzione! Borseggiatrici!” Has been on repeat in my head for seven solid nights.

Furthermore, I am friends with many a vampire made within the last few decades. Most notably Benji, who I share many, many commonalities with including our young age in which we came into the Blood. Benji always remarks “oh I have ADHD, I’m ADHD, it’s my ADHD” and he was, truly, given a diagnosis for this before many children were, according to him. He believes this is because he was “in the foster care system” and a refugee so they wanted to give him a label as soon as they could. Whoever they are. (Again, me and Benji even share our beginnings as boys in a family of other boys. Though he had no softness from any Master to aide him).

The most interesting conversations have come from us comparing our lives to each other’s. Benji can get locked into one task or one hobby for hours on end as time passes and passes. We both need to be completely alone on our own terms…

I suppose what I mean to convey is that I’m well aware of these little labels that humans might call each other, or some medical diagnosis that might explain why my humor is off or why others are so terrified by my silence… Why it takes me several attempts to convey a mundane idea verbally or even why I clasp my hands a certain way! If a reader finds a kindred spirit in whatever idea of me that they have, then I’m overjoyed that my novelization has shown some camaraderie to you. And, learning of other’s perceptions and experiences has indeed helped myself, too.

My above warning to you, though, mysterious friend, is to not make a habit of finding commonalities with monsters. My kind feasts upon your kind nightly. In great quantities. And any malady or neurodivergence will not, and cannot, protect you from a very unlucky night.

Autism, ADHD, boarder-line, bipolar… What wonderful new ways science has advanced to help the human race.

But all I care about is your Blood.

[creedslove]

I literally hate deuxmoi with all my heart. They always spread misinformation about celebrities from random people who can easily fake things. Like a while ago a person said to deuxmoi that Pedro was their neighbor and he was living with his girlfriend there cause he was filming something and they said how Pedro was always so rude and called him an as*hole psycho (like bffr) and he always shouted at them for parking near his house. Like what??? What’s the reason for posting things like this when you don’t even know if these are true and putting in the shadow a celebrity, someone like Pedro who has worked his ass off to get where he is after 30 years of acting. Like seriously, what’s the reason? Now this pregnancy rumor and him and Bella not talking to each other??? Wtf is wrong with people cmon now. I personally don’t believe the pregnancy thing either the beef with him and Bella (or whoever the other costar is)

Anon this is gonna be the last ask I reply about gossip about his personal life, just because I don't like this kind of content in my blog, the only reason I replied to that first one it was just TOO bizarre not to

I have no idea where these info come, as deuxmoi states: some of them are real and some are bullshit, just like Hugh Jackman's divorce, if someone had told me he would divorce his wife I would've laughed my ass off but turns out it was true.

These rumors are either true or false, there's no in-between, if they are false that's great if they are true also nothing to be done.

An accidental pregnancy could happen to anyone, regardless of both parts wanting a baby or not, and well, in January I saw some sketchy gossip websites saying Liev Schreiber (my former crush lmao) was going to be a dad again and I just shrugged it off because I was sure he wouldn't have a kid and well, his baby is about two months old now 🥴

The pregnancy thing could honestly fit half of Hollywood, I guess people are projecting too much on it because of the constant speculations of his sexuality; idk if Pedro is queer, honestly, he probably is, my guess is that he is bi so having a girlfriend and going out with men wouldn't be impossible to happen just as accidentally knock someone up

***AGAIN, THIS IS JUST ME AND MY SPECULATION AND I WON'T KEEP TALKING ABOUT IT THIS SO PLS DONT SEND ANY MORE ASKS ABOUT THIS SUBJECT***

idk like, I feel some part of it holds onto this rumor with hope he isn't dating another guy (who's way too ugly for him in my opinion btw lmao) while other people are just so into the idea of him being "gay" they treat it almost as a fetish making up conspiracy theories to prove it obsessively, to the point they can't see him STANDING next to another man they are sure they are together, i mean wtf (yes I'm talking about that ugly bitch from tiktok)

Now, about him and Bella, idk I guess everything is possible, sometimes you get angry with people you love the most and you need a break from them, or sometimes you just drift apart from someone you like when you don't work with them anymore, things just change, your routine changes you know? For example, there's always that one co-worker or classmate whatever you used to like a lot, but once you don't see each other all the time anymore you grow apart, you might still like the person but you aren't on the same vibe anymore so honestly, all these rumors can be true or they cannot be true

and even the neighbor thing could be true because like, everyone is entitled to be angry sometimes and especially at neighbors lmao

what we need to do is to remember that pedro is a human being, apart from being an amazing person he's still got faults like everyone else so yeah, the rumors can be true or not true like I said before, what we really need to think is: does it even matter?

You will be less of a fan if he has a secret girlfriend and got her pregnant or if he has a boyfriend? if he isn't friends with Bella anymore?

Honestly, to me he's is so unproblematic I don't really see why anything around him needs to turn into a fuss, he can date whoever he wants, fight or befriend whoever he wants, it simply doesn't change my life, at the end of the day I still need to bury myself in a job I don't even like to earn enough to survive lmaof that's way more dramatic to me than any of those gossip combined together 🤷🏻‍♀️

And once more: no matter if you besties agree or disagree, please don't send me any more asks about it because I'll not reply to them. Enough with gossip/drama ❤️