#I literally focused on fixing up this blog than school work oh well

[koqabear]

oshdkfj HELP? we're seriously telepathic at this point it's kind of scary... even more so because i've noticed this is Constantly happening to me and it's like, i'll tell someone we're telepathic as a joke at first, and suddenly it's not a joke anymore LMFAOO i think i'm the problem 😞 (fun fact: i'm really good at accidentally manifesting it's like midas touch but with words)

i've been well for the most part though n i hope you have too! i've just been preoccupied with school, playing the sims 4, or decorating toploaders...! i will literally do anything and everything except write; which sucks because i was really excited about this idea and i wanted to finish it by this month, but i haven't made any real progress with writing the storyline or mundane scenes so i don't think that's happening unless i suddenly get a burst of inspiration turned motivation. also, i know some people say that if you get stuck you should work on something else entirely or write a different scene, so i did both of those and here i am again... with two unfinished fics but complete ideas.

the ideas never stopping but the motivation does is actually so real and True though like omfg? i think with myself and my writing style in particular, i absolutely can't let myself get distracted, otherwise my source or motivation is entirely lost and difficult to get back again. i'll constantly get super immersed in a story, outline every last detail and write bits and pieces here and there, but actually writing/finishing and posting it seems to always end up being my problem and . idk how to fix it ?! like i have way too many story outlines in my notes that at this point i think i should just rebrand my blog and make it an idea bank for writers seeing how my own writing does Not want to see the light of day Ever

anyways, sorry i didn't really mean to talk so much about myself but i hope you find your motivation soon! you honestly have a lot more perseverance than i do when it comes to writing and getting your drafts done, so i don't doubt for a second that you'll get over this block soon and tackle all four...? fics 🙏🏼 boxer tae and loser gyu are here to stay ! – ml

We literally share one mind at this point bc it’s like we summoned each other or smth 💀

I’ve been well also! Life’s been a bit busy these past few weeks, but I’m finally getting some free time again,, hopefully this means I’ll have more time to write too

but omg I totally understand what you mean! Sometimes writers block is so intense that nothing helps, and now I’m stuck with so many more drafts it’s actually driving me insane..

And yes!! Mundane scenes are soooo hard to write!! It’s literally whats keeping me from my boxer tae and loser gyu fics, like they need to be there for character development but oh lord is it getting boring for me to write ! I’m also the same way with writing— I need to stay in one place and remain focused or else that fic is not getting touched again 😭 and if I don’t stop writing at an interesting scene it’s over for me

I usually avoid outline my stories in detail it’s insane 💀 the only one I’ve done a full outline on was OYD, and most of it was a voice recording of me incoherently throwing ideas out; after that I took the key points and wrote them down (then I added important details i needed to remember as I wrote)

I always wing my stories which is why I always have to go back and add stuff in LMAO it’s not the best method but it works most of the time…! Then when I’m about to stop a writing session I leave a vague checklist of stuff I wanna write (like scenes and stuff) and hope I touch it again </3

Making ur account an idea bank is such a mood I have so many good stories that are just gathering dust bc my inspiration is dried out 😭 I also hope you’re able to find motivation and inspiration for your stories, it’s such a frustrating feeling to have writers block and I’d love to see your stories !

[denimwrites-archive]

J’s Ideas

A/N: So this is the original story I had to write for my high school English class. It’s written in the second person, but it isn’t a reader insert. It’s a mystery (kind of? idk how mysterious it really is). I am going to try and write more fanfiction during the fall semester since I don’t have any English classes, but I don’t really know how much time I’ll have with as a full time college student. I will try though. In the meantime have this thing that is months old.

Word Count: 4,720

~~~

It had been a hard night. Damn you, General What and your glorious adventures, you silently cursed. You just had to rewatch the whole series in anticipation for the new season that was premiering in two weeks. You trudged your way up the library stairs in muted excitement, not awake enough to start the day, but needing to anyway. Getting less than four hours sleep before your first day of volunteering for the summer wasn't the best idea, but you really wanted to finish the first season. The three books you were carrying didn't make it any easier, and you concentrated on not dropping them in your sleepy state.

Thankfully you made it up the steps with only a little wobbling, and as you stepped through the front door the hushed atmosphere greeted you. You took a deep breath, relishing the smell of the old books, new books, and the slight lavender scent of the long faded floor polish. You walked up to the return desk and set your books down, quickly greeting the librarian at the front desk, before moving towards the conference room where you were to have a brief orientation. You doubted there was going to be anything new, but it was mandatory whether you were a volunteer veteran, like yourself, or new to the library.

You walked in to see quite a few new faces. You didn't expect to see people you knew, but you also didn't think there would be so many. When you had volunteered in the past there was really only you and your friend, Thumper, but four faces greeted you as you made your way into the room. They looked at you expectantly and you hesitantly took a seat in the chair closest to you. They seemed surprised that you weren't telling them what to do and where to go, but you were used to being mistaken for someone who worked at the library. Your thick glasses and grown-up style gave others the impression that you were older than your seventeen years, and carrying books everywhere didn't help the stereotype of your appearance. Nor the fact that you were quite the regular at the library during the school year as well.

You twiddled your thumbs as you looked around and waited for Mary to come and give the tour of the library and explain your schedules. You saw two of the kids on the other side of the table whispering and every once and awhile they would exclaim something and laugh. Just as you were about to get up and look for her, Mary appeared and apologized for being late, with a signature mug in hand. "That coffee machine needs a serious tune up," she joked holding up the mug with the saying Coffee!!! Because crack isn't allowed at work.

"Okay, so let's get started! I see we have quite a few new faces this year, don't we Bambie?" Mary said turning to you with a big smile, you nodded and glanced at the other kids with an awkward smile. "Yes, well the more the merrier! So let's introduce ourselves, shall we? I'm Mary Mendoza, the head of the Young Adult section, which is my favorite genre to read. And my favorite color is red. Bambie, you next."

You took a deep breath before saying, "My name is Bambie Watts. Yes, like the Disney movie. I've volunteered at the library over the summer for the past 3 years, and I love science-fiction and fantasy books. Purple is my favorite color."

"Okay, next?" Mary asked, and so the introductions went.

"My name is Angela Moritz, this is for my community service hours. Um, I'm not really a book person, but I like manga, which I guess qualifies for a graphic novel? And my favorite color is green."

"Hi, I'm June Lark. I love poetry, especially Emily Dickinson and Katheryn Nicolas, and my favorite color is pink." It really must be, you thought as you noticed her entire outfit was different shades of the pigment. She was covered in frilly bows and had a sweater tied around her shoulders with her long golden hair pulled up in a tight ponytail.

"James Scott. I'm here because I have nowhere else to be. I like sci-fi and magical stuff. I guess my favorite color is blue? I don't really think about it that much," the boy shrugged. He looked slightly bored, but that was justified given the situation. He had shaggy hair and the chair seemed too big for his wiry frame.

"The name's Jones, Ash Jones," the last person began their introduction. Your interest was piqued and you studied the freckled person. "I'll read pretty much anything, but I like fiction and poetry best. And all colors are pretty cool, so I'll say my favorite is the rainbow," they said with a wink and ruffle of their short red hair. "Oh, and I use they/them pronouns."

"Well, it's lovely to meet you all. I hope you all will get to know each other better over the course of the next several weeks and that you all have fun! Now, I'll take you all on a brief little tour and explain a few of the things you may be assigned to do. If you'll follow me, please?" Mary walked out of the room and the ragtag group followed her lead. You hung towards the back, already knowing the library like the back of your hand. You trailed after the party as they moved through the first floor and its movie section and children's area, and as they made their way upstairs you couldn't help but notice their reactions to the decorations in the YA section.

You had helped make them last year with Thumper. That wasn't really her name, but it stuck when you two became inseparable. You had worked for weeks on the swarms of butterflies that hung from the ceiling and the literal bird nests of your favorite series and authors. You tuned back into the tour when you heard Mary say your name, "Bambie and Thumper did a tremendous job, didn't they? I hope we can add to their project this year with quote posters and more."

"'Thumper'? Is she your sister?" you heard June ask.

"No," you responded, "my best friend. She moved to the other side of the country at the end of the summer last year. She was energetic, excitable, and we always hung out, like the bunny, and so the nickname stuck," you shrugged.

"That's cool. Maybe I could help you make a fake tree for there to be like a beehive or something about what 'the buzz' is at the library," June said with a smile. You smiled back and nodded enthusiastically, the thoughts of the new project already filling your mind. Mary beckoned the others to follow her to the reference section, but you hung back, looking over your work from the previous year. You remembered getting covered in paint, and coming in on Saturdays to make sure everything was ready before Thump moved.

You wandered the stacks of books, eventually finding yourself in front of your favorite series. You pulled out the first book and flipped through it, reminiscing the first time you read it when you happened upon a folded slip of paper. Confused, you grabbed it and opened it to reveal a block of text. Quickly scanning the page you notice a large "J" signed at the bottom. You notice Mary waving at you and motions that they're heading back downstairs. Nodding, you place the paper in your pocket and follow the group back to the first floor.

"Well, I hope you all enjoyed the tour. I'm sure you all are going to be a big help this summer. Now, I want you all to follow me behind the front desk. You can choose from sorting books into their sections and putting them on a cart, or taking the carts with books already sorted and returning them to the shelves. I'll let you all decide amongst yourselves, and if you need me I'll be in my office upstairs." And then Mary was gone. You looked at the others, standing in awkward silence, until you decided to speak up.

"I'll sort the returned books, I've gotten pretty good at it over the last couple years. You guys can choose who goes to which section to reshelve them yourselves. But I recommend you don't pick a section you like if you're a big reader, cause you can get lost in the titles." You said, in a slightly teasing manner. You weren't really kidding though, the first day you reshelved books it took you over two hours to get through a cart because you kept finding interesting stories and taking "breaks" to read them. Soon enough you were ready to check out half the cart.

You turned away from the group and got started putting books into different piles by genre, and when you turned around to grab a cart you found yourself alone. Taking a breath, you started with the genre with the most books and started placing them in the cart alphabetically by author. June and James came back for their next stacks soon enough and you were pretty much done with the current pile by lunch. Ash still hadn't come back for more books, so you wandered around the library until you found them in the YA section leant against the back of a bookcase, their cart forgotten, with books strewn about the carpet around them.

You couldn't help but smile at the engrossed look their face held. You glanced at the title of the book to see that it was one of your favorites. You were unsure if you should say something, so you tried to take the cart without disturbing their reading, but Ash's head snapped up the second your hand touched the dolly, You flushed slightly under their gaze, but retracted your hand nonetheless.

"I didn't want to interrupt your reading. That's one of my favorites," you pointed to the book in their hands,"so I know how hard it is to put down. The author didn't continue the series due to lack of feedback, so they moved on to other, more cliché ideas just so they could pay the bills. It's a shame."

"No way! This book is awesome, the characters are so unique and the fact that it has so much representation is really refreshing. The action is equally balanced with the romance, and the fact that the romance isn't even the main point and can be taken as a platonic thing is really cool. Plus the way it puts you in all of the characters' shoes and really lets you see how hard it is to be that minority is so interesting," Ash gushed. You smiled even more upon hearing their excited review. "How did this not get attention?"

"I think it was just too ahead of its time." You glanced at how far they'd gotten and realized that they were close to the best part of the book. "I'm glad you're liking it, but the best part is coming up, so I'll leave you to it. I can finish your stack, and then we can go get lunch with the others. It's tradition to go to the McDonwalds down the street for your first day."

Ash thanked you and quickly stuffed their nose back into the book. You grabbed their cart and was able to return the titles in no time, knowing the YA section like the back of your hand. When you returned you saw that Ash had made a pile of the previously strewn about books, with your favorite on top. "Is there somewhere I can put these so no one takes them?" Ash asked as you approached.

"Yeah. Mary would be okay if you kept them in her office, just make sure to put a sticky note on them to let her know you're the one who wants to check them out." You helped Ash carry their books to Mary's office and waited as they filled out a note and placed it on top. Then you two walked downstairs to see the others in your group waiting with Mary.

She looked at you excitedly and exclaimed, "Time for McDonwalds!" before bouncing out of the library. You chuckled at Mary's actions and followed as the others traipsed after her. You all ordered and ate lunch, discussing how your first day had gone so far. Mary talked about her days of volunteering and how it had led her to get her Master's in library science and put you into the position of explaining how that was your plan as well.

Soon enough, it was time to get back to work and you couldn't wait to get back to the ritualistic returns. You decided to show Angela your process of sorting books, and the most efficient way you'd found to do book returns was taking the extra step of sorting the authors on the cart rather than having the reshelver run throughout a section looking for the right place. She took to it quickly and so you moved upstairs and helped one of the other librarians put reference books away.

The day soon ends and you return to the first floor for the end of the day meeting. It's nothing special, the conference is pretty much a runthrough of what happened that day and what needs to be done in the morning before the official opening. You had to go in early a couple times last summer, but you don't think you'll have to come in early with all the extra help this year. You nod to Mary on your way out. She has her regular end of the day coffee in hand, with another funny mug with the saying Dear Naps I'm Sorry I was A Jerk to You As a Kid. As you make your way home, you remember the note you stuffed into your pocket.

You take it out and read the slanting script. The ink is smudged to the left and as you scan the lines you can tell that whoever wrote it was good. Even though it was barely two paragraphs, the characters seemed to come to life. It left you wanting more. You saw the 'J' at the bottom of the page again and you could tell you wouldn't let this go until you found this mysterious 'J' character.

The rest of the week wasn't very eventful, the books came and went, the note still on your mind. But Friday brought an unexpected surprise. You went to return books in the YA section and had gotten one of your favorite sections, science-fiction. You got to work and couldn't help but remark to yourself about the selections. They were all good choices, some you had even been meaning to read yourself. You flipped through one of the newer releases and were surprised to see a slip of paper. You quickly read it and realized that it was the same 'J' as in the last note. You glanced at the cart suspiciously. Could it hold more of these intriguing pieces?

You found your answer as you quickly made your way through the books, flipping through their many pages, hoping to find more of the secret author. Your quest was rewarded as you found six more notes. You decided to put the books aside to look at further when you took your break.

Twenty minutes later you were at the front desk's computer looking up the titles of the stories that the papers were found in. You saw that the last person to check out each of the books were different. You slumped in your seat, puzzled by this new development. You furrowed your brow and bit your thumb, lost in thought, until Angela came up behind you to ask what you were doing. You were unsure of how much to tell her, but you decided to just come out with what you had discovered.

"I found these notes in a few different books and I wanted to see if there was a connection in the people who last checked the books out. Unfortunately, no dice."

"Wait, were they signed with a 'J'?" Angela asked.

"Yeah. How did you know?" you asked curiously.

"When I was reshelving the poetry section I found a whole bunch in the classic collection book when I had to move it to make room for the other books," Angela shrugged slightly, "I left them up on the shelf just in case someone just forgot they put them there."

You got up and made your way up to the poetry section and quickly found the stack of notes Angela had discovered. You scanned them and noticed that these weren't original ideas, but quoted passages, with the author's name where the 'J' would usually be. You could tell it was the same person by the familiar handwriting style and smudges.

You collected the notes and put them in your pocket, intending to look at them further over lunch. But a school trip visit to the library prevented you from doing so, and you had to wait until you got home that night. You read over the passages and saw that they were all from the same author. You looked up a few of their books and vowed to take a closer look at their poetry on Monday when you returned to the library.

A 'ping' drew you from your thoughts as you realized that Thumper sent you a message. You hadn't had found time to message her this week, and were happy to hear from her.

ThumperIsNotMyName: How'd your first week go? Any new people?

BambieWattsIsMine: Good. Four new helpers. What have you been up to?

ThumperIsNotMyName: Not much. The library out here doesn't have a volunteer program :(

BambieWattsIsMine: Why not?

ThumperIsNotMyName: Cause a few people ended up stealing some expensive reference books so now it's ruined for everyone.

BambieWattsIsMine: That sucks! :/

ThumperIsNotMyName: Yeah. They won't even let me design some decorations for the YA section. It looks like a prison library it's so drab!

BambieWattsIsMine: Well what about volunteering at the park like you wanted to do last year?

ThumperIsNotMyName: I thought about that, but they don't take volunteers either. Too many people were just hanging out and not doing anything.

BambieWattsIsMine: Well it looks like your summer's a bust lol

ThumperIsNotMyName: Thanks. Tell me about what's happening there. Let me live vicariously through you.

BambieWattsIsMine: Well one of the new people wants to build off of your nature themed YA section. She wants to add a tree and a beehive of what's "buzzing" at the library.

ThumperIsNotMyName: That sounds cool! I wish I was there to help.

BambieWattsIsMine: That's not the best part though! I found these notes in the sci-fi section, and then more popped up in the poetry section. The writing is awesome, and they keep quoting Katheryn Nicolas.

ThumperIsNotMyName: WHAT? I LEAVE FOR ONE YEAR AND YOU GET A MYSTERY? NOT FAIR!!! >:(

BambieWattsIsMine: Chill Thumps! It's not that cool, especially since I've kind of hit a brick wall. I looked at the books' checkout history and there was no connection, plus no one had checked them out in the past two weeks.

ThumperIsNotMyName: Well... one of the volunteers could have borrowed them for the night. You know how lax Mary is when it comes to booklovers who help out at the library and checkout policy.

BambieWattsIsMine: Hmmm. You've got a point.

ThumperIsNotMyName: You know I do. What are the notes about?

BambieWattsIsMine: Mostly just drabbles of fiction which are all signed with a 'J' and poetry.

ThumperIsNotMyName: Any of the volunteers have an initial starting with 'J'?

BambieWattsIsMine: OMG THREE OF THEM DO

ThumperIsNotMyName: Elementary, my dear Watts-on. ;)

BambieWattsIsMine: Thump, you're the best! (Nice pun btw)

ThumperIsNotMyName: Thank you. Any other information that my genius brain could connect?

BambieWattsIsMine: Um, they're left handed? And their writing can get kind of graphic? But not in like a violent way, like in a theoretical sense. One character they like to write about continuously goes 'too far' with their ideas which makes it funny, you know? I don't know how any of that helps, but what do you make of it Detective Thumper?

ThumperIsNotMyName: Well... Lots of recent sci-fi is like post-apocalyptic. What if they're reading all of those stories to plan the end of the world? Like they're seeing the common ways the world ends in literature so that they can have any kind of plan. And that character you keep seeing is the voice that's telling them to prepare? That would be messed up O.O

BambieWattsIsMine: I kind of doubt that because the passages they quote from Katheryn Nicolas are all about romance and love, and the books I found the notes in are all pretty romantic as well. Plus it's fiction, so I doubt they'd believe the books are a guide.

ThumperIsNotMyName: You never know! Aliens are also a pretty common sci-fi trope. Maybe they want to be abducted and so they're looking for the best way to 'woo' an alien 👽

BambieWattsIsMine: THUMP! Take this seriously!

ThumperIsNotMyName: Well, you're supposed to be the detective in this story! I already gave you a hint, so figure the rest out yourself. I have to go eat dinner. I want an update by Tuesday!

BambieWattsIsMine: Will do, Thump. And thanks for the help.

Monday comes and you are ready to find this elusive 'J'. The first thing you do when you enter the library is go to the poetry section and find Katheryn Nicolas. You grab the single book left on the shelf and make your way back to the sorting room to grab a cart. Every spare minute of the day is spent with your nose in the book. You were even reading during lunch, which isn't that special, but James decided to sit with you so you felt compelled to converse with him.

It was then that you remembered that James' favorite genre was sci-fi. Maybe he was lonely and liked the space romances where the guy always got the girl? He was geeky enough that he probably didn't have a girlfriend. He didn't seem the type to read poetry, but you didn't know for sure and you weren't one to judge a book by its cover. You tried to turn the discussion towards books, but he did it for you, commenting on your author choice.

"So you like Nicolas, huh? I'm more of a Rothenberg guy myself. I always thought that Nicolas' style was a little too mushy for me," James said. "I like the action and deep messages Rothenberg has. Nicolas seems to only be obsessed with romance and 'wooing the girl'." He scoffs, and upon seeing my blank face backtracks saying, "There's nothing wrong with that kind of story, I mean, to each their own, it's just not the type of stuff I like." He flushes, embarrassed that he was rambling.

You had your reason that James wasn't the 'J' you were looking for. He could be lying about how he felt about Nicolas, but you don't think so. "To each their own. I'll have to try Rothenberg sometime," you said with a smile, realizing you were slowly narrowing down your suspects. You excused yourself and got up, deciding to put back the book after determining there were no real clues in its pages.

You spent the rest of the day sorting books for carts and talking to Mary who was trying to come up with a list of new choices for the YA section. You gave her the few you were looking forward to, but also said that she should ask the other volunteers to get better options. She nodded before taking a sip of her coffee, this mug saying Yeah? Well maybe coffee is addicted to me. Ever think of that??

At the end of the day meeting Mary brought up the list of new books and asked for others to give at least two titles that they were also looking forward to. She made notes while sipping coffee from yet another mug, this one stating I drink coffee for your protection. The volunteers' choices were especially paid attention to since the library was trying to make more teenagers interested in reading. Everyone gave at least two different genres, except for June. She only mentioned a new volume of poetry that was set to come out in July.

You decided to ask her about it tomorrow, and found your opportunity when she was reshelving in the poetry section the next morning. After pleasantries about how she liked volunteering and how her summer was going, you got to the reason why you wanted to talk to her.

"Hey, I wanted to ask you, why didn't you recommend any fiction books? I know you like poetry," you said while gesturing to the section, "but do you not read any other genre?"

"I've just never been able to really relate to fiction," June responded. "It just seems so out of the realm of possibility that it makes it hard for me to immerse myself in the story. Even realistic fiction is hard for me because life isn't a book. It doesn't have extraordinary coincidences or black and white heroes and villains like most stories do. I know that books are entertainment, but I like poetry because it entertains and opens a window to the past. You can see the world from a hundred years ago through someone else's eyes. And the language makes it even better. The authors choose the words with such care to create a rhythm that transcends boundaries."

From the way June described it, you could understand the appeal of prose, and you had your answer as to why she only talked about one book. "I never thought of it that way. I grew up with fantasy and it really inspired my imagination, so I guess I was closed off to more realistic forms of literature. I'll have to take a closer look at it sometime."

"My dad got me into poetry. He would read it to me every night, starting with Sheldon Bronze. Such a classic," she was smiling at the memory. You remembered hating Bronze due to his scary portrait that was on the back of all of his books. You just nodded before saying you should get back to work and that you would see her at lunch. She waved goodbye before going back to the task at hand.

It was then that you realized that you only had one suspect left. You looked around the library, looking for Ash, but could not find them anywhere. Eventually you found them where the book return counter connected to the sorting room.

You made your way to the counter and noticed that they were scribbling in a notebook with their left-hand. The side of their hand smeared with ink, smudges covering the page. You took in their furrowed brow as they wrote and couldn't help but realize how absorbed they were with what they were doing, pausing every so often to think of the right word to use.

Carefully approaching the counter you say, "What's up 'J'?"

Ash looks up at you with a surprised face, which quickly transforms into a smile. They set down their pen and close the notebook before giving their full attention to you. "I was wondering who had been finding my notes. When I heard Angela say she found the notes and just left them on the shelf I was kind of disappointed. But I'm glad someone appreciated them enough to find out who they were from."

"Are you kidding me? Your writing is amazing! The only reason I didn't find you sooner was because I had other stories to deal with," you joked.

"Thanks. Well, I should probably get back to the books," Ash jested back with a smirk.

"I'd love to read more of your writing if you'd let me, it was better than quite a few of the books we have."

"I don't think I'm that good, but I'd definitely let you read them. Are you any good at editing?"

[jamespotterthefirst]

Queen Bree HC please for dad Ethan and literally everyone drooling for him. And of course, Lilac, too.

Anon, thank you so much for this! I hope I did okay!

First Grade Field Trip (Headcanons)

It's ridiculous how many PTA parents and teachers try to persuade him to chaperone the field trip to the kids' museum

The morning of, Lilac teases him and tells him it's because he's too good looking for his own good

Ethan has gotten better about teasing her back throughout the years so he pulls her to him from behind and kisses her neck. Then, he tells her, "I'd ask you to go instead but some of those parents are just as crazy about you."

Lilac rolls her eyes and teases, "So you're taking the bullet for me? What a gentleman."

But little Dolores, nicknamed Lolly, is at the table, eating the pancakes her mother made (because her father is good at a lot of things but NOT making pancakes.) She hears her father suggest that her mom go to the field trip instead

And no offense to her mom but she prefers it so much better when her dad goes

"You have to come with us, Dad!" she protests. "No one explains the science displays better than you."

Lilac feigns offense but she gets it. Ethan used to take her on museum dates all the time and whenever she wasn't trying to distract him with very passionate make-out sessions, she did find his insight interesting.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," Ethan assures her, ruffling her hair slightly. "If I'm not there to explain the difference in Upper Jurassic rock formations, then who? Noah's dad?"

Father and daughter snort at that ridiculous notion.

They spend the next fifteen minutes fixing and packing their lunch (brie cheese, baguetta, crackers, prosciutto, cashews, cucumbers, grapes, dried apricots, and chocolate-covered cherries. Ethan calls it a charcuterie to-go. Lilac calls it grown-up Lunchables.)

While Lilac drops the twins off at day care and heads into work, Ethan, Jonah, and Dolores set off to school.

The effect is immediate when they arrive.

Ethan rarely drops the kids off but when he does, he attracts attention.

Jonah is used to it and only sighs

Dolores wonders why everyone looks at her Dad with such interest.

Ethan is lasered focused on dropping his son off at his classroom before he meets Lolly's class by the buses.

Jonah's teacher actually chokes on her coffee when she sees Ethan. She recovers hastily, though her face is bright red and she stumbles on her words.

Lolly's teacher is much older, and as such, much subtler. Though Ethan has caught her quietly assessing him with approval.

They board the bus and Ethan is way too tall for it. He would have preferred to drive to the museum but his daughter insisted they go on the bus. And who can say no to the face?

Lolly sits with her friend, Charlotte, and Ethan has to find a seat nearby.

Several of the single moms look up hopefully.

One even makes her kid find a different seat.

Ethan finds an empty row and much to his relief, another parent (Noah's dad) comes to his rescue by sitting next to him. It turns out the guy is actually pretty decent.

But Ethan's worries are far from over.

The single moms follow him like vultures, feigning interest as he explains the Muscular System in the rock climbing section.

“It was awful nice of you to help us chaperone,” one of them says when she manages to get his attention at lunch.

Ethan doesn't smile, merely nods once. “My wife was busy today, otherwise it would have been her.”

The woman bristles slightly at the mention of his wife. Which is ridiculous because the gossip among the parents is widespread. Everyone knows Lilac and Ethan are happily married.

“There's nothing that comes before my children. I have to ensure their safety during field trips.”

Ethan doesn't miss the implication.

“I understand,” he returns dryly. “But then again, you're not a world renowned doctor who has to meet a deadline for her upcoming book.”

“Yeah,” Dolores adds cheerfully from a seat nearby. “Mommy is famous!”

The PTA mom, whose name Ethan did not bother to catch, gives them a forced, almost pained smile before getting lost.

Despite the speed at which gossip travels, some of his admirers are not deterred by the less than pleasant encounter.

One of them catches Ethan by surprise when she compliments his hair.

Ethan doesn't breathe a sigh of relief until later that day, when they're finally back at home recounting their day to Lilac.

“Oh!” Dolores adds as the excited conversation draws to a lull. “Jenny's mom told Daddy she liked his hair.”

Lilac raises an eyebrow. “Did she now?”

Ethan blushes.

“Yeah! She said it like you say it sometimes.”

Seductively. But Lolly is too young to know that.

Lilac lifts her gaze to meet Ethan's.

“And what did Daddy say?”

“He said 'thank you!'” Lolly supplies.

Ethan opens his mouth to explain under Lilac's expectant gaze.

“I was... not expecting that. It caught me off guard.”

Lilac's eyebrows only climb higher up her forehead.

Later when Lolly goes off to play with her siblings, Lilac says, “Jenny's mom is desperate.”

“It was—”

“And a liar.”

“Pardon?”

“Your hair is ridiculous.”

Ethan blinks.

Then he smirks.

He can tell she's joking, but despite the jest, she is still a tiny bit jealous. With a laugh, he pulls her close, her back against his chest. “That’s not what you said last night.”

“I say a lot of things when my mind is elsewhere.”

“Namely on my mouth and what it had the pleasure of doing.”

She turns in his embrace, finally joining in his laughter.

 He kisses her because she's crazy if she thinks there'd ever be anyone else

Notes: LMAO this might as well have been a fic. Oh well. I don’t know how to do HC and that this point I’m afraid to ask.

Thank you for reading if you made it this far!

___________________

Perma Tags (All Works/Edits)

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[twst-campos13]

ah hello!! i'm literally so excited to see a blog for enby and male readers sodjfoijf,,could i maybe request a scenario where male reader is a staff member (idk?? like a librarian?? a nurse??? do they need nurses over there???) and is crushing on crewel but is too scared to confess because he's both Too Dense to pick up any signs of potential reciprocation and also just isn't sure if crewel likes men??? maybe. maybe with a happy ending though because i am a fool,, thank you very much!!

One hopelessly cheesy scenario coming up!! Thank you for requesting! I hope you don’t mind I made reader a librarian who may or may not be a bit of a romantic because i listened to a particular playlist while writing this- (commentary in notes!)

Warnings: none! Tags: male!reader, fluff!

A simple man such as you live a simple life. As simple as life can be in Night Raven College, that is. A prestigious school that holds a student body that can barely tolerate each other. It would be typical for a librarian to be the observer than the observed, but hey, if it means getting out of trivial matters of the school and enjoying the show in your personal bubble, then you have no complaints.

This attitude of yours did come to have its own consequences. You were seen as timid by most students as you were quite closed-off, taking it as a reason to poke fun at you sometimes. You proved them wrong when they step out of line with their fun. Most of the time you choose to ignore them. However, you lived up to your introverted nature, especially when it comes to him.

Tall, dark, and handsome. Approachable but also not at the same time. Sharply dressed and sharp attitude. This man that visits the library ever so often had become your daily motivation to keep on working at this school despite the wage that Crowley gives you.

Divus Crewel, feared and admired by staff and students—also known as the man who stole your heart.

You feel so small compared to him. That would not be so farfetched. He is a remarkable man, and what about you? You are just a librarian at this school. You are like mere dust to him.

Yet, despite this, you continued yearning for him no matter how ridiculous it seems. Perhaps you have fallen too deep in romantic fiction that you make hopeless wishes. You are known to be excellent in reading people but for some reason, you find it hard to read Divus. His perfect posture whenever he would scan the Applied Sciences aisle showed that he is focused on his reading. However, it is his expression you find hard to decipher. He looks dashing as ever, of course, but his thin lips and neutral gaze makes it hard for you to know what he is thinking.

If your life is a novel it would be so easy to know what runs in his mind. What he feels for you. Maybe he could even know what you feel for him. In a story, what makes characters likable is knowing what their emotions, their feelings, their ambitions, and their dreams are, for they are already laid out in ink on pages. Implicit or explicit information, simple or complex structure of personality, it does not matter. You would easily know about them for they are just sentences away from understanding.

And in romance novels…oh, how dreamy they are. How easy they make it seem to fall in love, to confess, and to achieve a happy ending. However, as a librarian, you know the reality of your situation. Your relationship with Crewel is a professional. Strictly, if you were to add an adjective. Is it really strictly professional? Your right brain points out the moments in your life where you interacted with him. At faculty meetings, reunions, at the library…moments like those just feel surreal you almost believed that you made those up on your own. Probably because you initiated each of those interactions yourself.

The only time, where Crewel would come to you himself, are rare. One time he came to the library and checked out a book to read in his spare time. His voice distracted you. It was like cherry wine. Sweet, smooth, enough to make your throat dry and your cheeks flushed. Oh, you could listen to him talk for hours in that tone of his, and he could even make you do anything he pleases.

You greet each other good morning or good afternoon when you pass by each other, and he would smile a teasing one at you as if you two shared a secret with each other. Well, technically you did, for one time you bought him coffee under the pouring rain, and he repaid you for your kindness. Soon enough your coffee exchange became a routine for both of you. It was sweeter than the cream in his coffee. It was more refreshing than the rainy day you shared with each other.

His gaze. His posture. His voice. His smile. Despite those small interactions with each other you are still troubled by what he thinks of you. A friend? A colleague? A special someone? Why is this so hard? Why was it so easy to fall in love? And when things could not get worse for you, your left brain argued that he might not be interested to mingle with a man.

Well, you could find out for yourself, but that would be creepy. Your workspace is in the library! You could not just leave when you please just so you can observe him. You could not use the staff files to your advantage—that is being a borderline stalker. Whatever Crewel’s orientation is, is his to keep and his to disclose to you. Oh, but still. If this were a novel, you could easily analyze the situations that give off evidence of him liking men. Or liking someone like you.

If that were the case you would not have a hard time trying to decipher his words, his gaze, his tone, and his actions towards you. If that were the case…if that were the case…then…well, there’s no then. Divus Crewel is not a fictional character to analyze. He is your coworker, your colleague.

It is hard to know what he thinks of you, at all. You really wished that you could…but the thought of knowing what he thinks to scare you, as well.

Rejection is not that far from reality. Who are you compared to him again? A nobody. A simple, ‘timid’, librarian that enjoys reading romantic and fiction novels and inserts himself in scenarios he makes up for himself just so he can…find the happiness he wishes to have.

But Divus is your happiness. Became your source of happiness. Ironic how he colors the muted floor of the library with his monochromatic appearance. Maybe it is better that you keep your feelings to yourself. You avoid the risk of rejection and humiliation as well as ruining whatever it is your current relationship with Crewel is.

You barely registered the visitor in front of your desk until a familiar red leathery gloved hand rested atop of yours. The contact of the leather sent a spark of electricity through you that you snapped your head up to meet alluring silvery blue eyes. There is only one person in this college that owns those distinct, beautiful, silvery blue eyes.

Divus.

“Have I interrupted your moment of peace, sir?” He asked in that cherry wine voice of his. It made your throat dry up and your face warm. “N-No—no!” You squeaked, shaking your head to brush off the embarrassment. Quickly, you fixed your composure and appeared presentable. As presentable as you could be under his stare that is. You just hope that he found some amusement in your haste. “D-Div—Mr. Crewel, what can I do for you?” You smiled as you speak in a professional tone. The edge of his lips curled into a familiar smirk and still you could not determine what was running through his mind at the moment.  

“I came to return the book I borrowed last week,” he said, placing down the novel on your desk. Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen. Right, he borrowed that last week. It is not your place to judge whatever it is he desires to read. “Of course,” you nodded, “did you enjoy reading it?” You started on a small talk as you take out your logbook for the check-ins and outs of books. “Somewhat,” Crewel shrugged, “I had my eyes set on another book I would like to borrow.”

“Oh? What is it? I’ll go get it for you.” You stood up after sliding the logbook back to its drawer. Crewel did not leave from where he was standing. His eyes were simply on you. You had to hide your nervousness under his gaze. “I had my eyes on it ever since that rainy day, when you offered me shelter in the library until the rain passes,” he mused. “General fiction, I believe, was the genre.”

“If that’s the case then you better tell me the title,” you joked, taking a stool to the genre’s aisle. “Are you certain you can find it?” Crewel coolly challenged. You almost laughed but did not fight the smile on your lips. “Mr. Crewel, I spend most of my time in this library. I know every book and I still have the Dewey Decimal system memorized…” You kept your eyes distracted by scanning the spines of the books on the shelves. You are aware that he is still looking at you that is why you refused to look back at him. You are not sure what will happen if you look back at him while conversing.  

“If that is the case—” why does he suddenly sound a bit close? “—may you find ‘How to Ask your Dense Colleague Out to Dinner?’”

What a lengthy title. It sounds very basic and almost like a rule book than a novel. Well, that is General Fiction for you. Though you are quite unsure if such a book exists in the library. “Hm…” you hummed, a finger on your chin, as your eyes scanned the shelves. “I don’t think I have that here…Crowley pays me enough to support my rent and meals, but not enough to buy new books. Plus, the students…”

You heard him chuckle beside you and fought the urge to turn to him. “I believe I was not frank enough. Ah, well, I will put all subtleties aside, then…”

His warm breath tickling your skin was what made you finally turn to him. The proximity of your noses startled you that you nearly stumbled out of your stool if it were not for Divus’ hand grabbing yours to pull you to him. You gasped, shocked, as you landed close to his chest. His other hand supported your waist, and your eyes widened his silvery blues. You can feel your heart hammering against his. Your legs feel like putty when he gave you that teasing smirk. Your name—your first name—sounds surreal from his lips. Your entire world was a confusing mix of vertigo and bright lights.

“Will you go to dinner with me?”

You stared. You stammered. You are flabbergasted and flustered. You were unsure how to react to such a forward question that your brain completely shut down. But you cannot embarrass yourself—you must not. Not when…not when…not when…!

Oh, he will he stop saying your name with such sentiment?

“Is your silence a rejection or a consideration?” He rose a brow and your face flushed even more. “No! I mean yes—I mean—no, it isn’t a rejection—”

“Then you have been anticipating this?”

“Divus!”

He laughed. He laughed at your state. He laughed at your awkwardness. But most importantly his laugh sounds so pleasant. Like he was teasing you and you liked him teasing. You grew shy, averting your gaze from his and fidgeting with your fingers. “I mean…I mean…why?”

Crewel stopped laughing and looked at you. “Why what?”

“Why…me? Out of all people?” You asked as fear and denial keep you from grasping the fact that this is all real and not another scenario you made up during rainy days. Crewel’s face remained passive. Neutral. It was eating at your heart and you just wish what is going through his mind.

“Is it not obvious, puppy?” He raised a brow at you. The hand holding your wrist now tilted your chin in his direction. “It is not by fate or destiny, but a mere law that dictates the gravitational pull of similar atoms that is programmed by the need to chemically bind together.”

You suddenly felt stumped. “W—What?”

“I like you, puppy,” Crewel clarified, adoring the way your confusion turned to pure surprise, “and I would like to have dinner with you. Perhaps another, if the first went well.”

You need some time to process this. Your head felt so light you might pass out in his arms. Actually, you would not mind that in the slightest. His coat is just so soft it feels like heaven. A proper response of agreement failed to come to your mind so instead, you asked him again, “And what if the first does not end well?”

Crewel smiled at you. “Then we shall try again with the next dinner. Mind you, puppy, as a man of science, I am not afraid of failure if trying means more chances of perfecting my goal.”

“And what’s that goal?” You asked and physically stopped yourself from combusting when he leaned closer to you that your noses touch and you smell his cologne, and his bold scent.

“The goal to become yours.”

[crowstan]

Sanders Sides post except I haven't seen it before

Ok this post is inspired by an absolute flood of Patton and Logan in a skirt, on my Instagram, which was not anything related to any of the dnd or homestuck tags but whatever. That whole mess that happened yesterday inspired this, because as y'all know: I love analyzing things weirdly and what is blogging but analyzing your own thoughts in an odd way? Anyway, spoilers ahead because this is what I've unfortunately been leaked, which means I got this stuff via spoilers.

What is Sanders Sides? So, I actually have no idea and I want to go in bare bones because. I never get to go in with little info. All i know is that it's by Thomas Sanders (he apparently does have a tumblr, I did not look up what it was because, once again, trying to get the barest and best experience I can and I worry that may taint it in some way). All I know about Thomas is that he did vines that I really like and that he has his pronouns in all of his bio's, which so far makes him very ok in my books because I have not met one person who is in any way harmful to others who has their pronouns in their bio. Then again i don't see it often anyway but regardless. And that's literally all I know about him and Sanders Sides, so. Stuff that I have worked together with the unhealthy amount of spoilers I didn't willing get that made me want to make this. -They are all symbolic or are humanoid versions of like, different parts of someone? They're also color coded which my little color coding heart loves sm! There's morality, creativity, creativity #2: electric boogaloo, logic, anxiety, and deciet which may also be denial? not sure about the last bit. -Morality's (moralities?) name is Patton, and his color is light blue. He is the dad character and is bad with any "negative" feelings, which, mood. He is one of the sides i saw in a skirt and may be my favorite possibly, simply bc I Do Not Have Good Male Figures and he's a dad character. Name a better duo than good dad characters and my lack of any positive guys in my life that aren't my age. He's part of the "core four", whatever that means. Really likes animals? I mean that does make sense bc, morality, but also that's different for each person. overall conclusion: now my dad. (/j) -Next up: Anxiety. Name is Virgil (?), color is a shade of purple. Don't know what one bc purple is one of those colors i can't remember too well. Seems like how I imagine my anxiety but a little less focused on death. I would befriend him were in not for the fact I Cannot approach people unless I'm actually dying and even then I can't. Apparently was a "dark side" at some point but now isn't? Redemption ark ig, idk what a dark side is or if it would be equivalent enough with "evil" to have that be a redemption ark. Final conclusion: wait, is that me but cis and let loose in a hot topic? -Creativity #1. Name is Roman, color is red I think. A prince character, and I'm not sure what else to add. I think he is a theatre fan, amd also I would avoid him at all costs because as friendly as he is, we don't have the same vibes and i would panic. Definitely drinks his "respect women" juice, and it's actually "respect women" juice n not whatever the hecc it is that people who /say/ the drink "respect women" juice drinks. he'd go out of his way to make sure your drink doesn't get spiked. this man is hella good, 10/10, would trust but not talk to. -Creativity #2, apparently the brother of Roman? His name is Remus, color is green, and i say this with my full heart: I love him. he seems like the kind of person who barked at people in middle school bc he thought he was a werewolf. who drank an entire bottle of glue in kindergarten at had to go to the hospital and did it again. he's the kind of person who would offer you up a worm and tell you disturbing facts about animals and then go off and play his little games he made up with twisted scenarios. and you know what? that's amazing and i absolutely love that so much. I know nothing about him except he eats deodorant and is the embodiment of intrusive thoughts and "oh god /why/" scenarios you thought of for some reason. -Logic. Name is Logan, ah, really similar to what he represents but I mean, still a very good name. His color is dark blue, aka my favorite color besides dark grey. Really likes jam? I feel like this man has read the dictionary and has "different vocabularies" he uses for different events and people, which may be a self projection but. Def Ravenclaw vibes bc!! hear me out!! not stereotypes!! I feel this man, the literal *embodiment* of logic, would value learning and knowledge which is part of what makes a ravenclaw! so it is not self projection, it is *knowledge* (/hj). that's it, i would absolutely love to debate him sm but i feel like that would be similar to that time i talked about Quadrants with a friend for an hour and they had no idea what was going on at all.

-Last one, deceit/denial. I don't know if he's denial as i got that from a little comic that i thought was funny because it had a pun. His name is Janus (don't know how to pronounce it, been saying it like Jay-Nuhss), and his color is yellow. apparently part snake or something and!! I love snakes. Apparently was in a courtroom at one point, and we all know those are fae territory, so possibly a fae (hj). apparently has multiple arms!! which does not fit in with the snake bit, as snakes have zero arms, but regardless still cool! I know the least about him, and I'm definitely looking forward to watching him!! i love snakes sm.-

moving on from the sides slightly, apparently there's another one, who's color is orange! from someone who vaguely knows about colors but knows enough that each side more or less relates to their color, i have no idea what this side could be! best guess is it's just Thomas in a top hat. I never learned about orange because orange, yellow, some reds, and some blues are very stabby to my eyes and i will get a headache so I just. never learned it. why would i learn about a color i literally can't look at without my eyes hurting? I do know orange is a caution color, and in nature it cam be found on dangerous stuff as a "stay away!" color, and pared with black it doesn't kill my eyes and those are the Halloween colors. So maybe caution? Or some dangerous thing? It doesn't make sense, as those aren't really "sides" in the traditional sense, nor with anxiety being a sort of "caution" thing. Anyway, I would need more info on orange and, depending on how the orange color is, i may react more negatively. Like with blue Christmas lights.

-there are lots of puns!! i love puns!! i don't take the opportunity to make many, but i love them sm. just like snakes! and cats! in fact i actually know a lot about cat behavior

lmao that's literally all i have, I'll go watch the whole series and also talk about that later in smaller posts, each post being one or two episodes depending on how long it is

(ah jeez it got all messed up again, under maintenance!! sorry about that!! the tags got all mixed around too!!)

(update #2: still messed up but I'll need to not use my tablet to fix it, which i can't do rn! sorry y'all :(!! )

[s1utspeare]

Get To Know Me!

@foxofninetales tagged me in this ask game and since I LOVE HER i will now be doing it (i mean i’d do it anyway but now it will be filled with love for FOX i am not accepting CRITICISM ON THIS POINT)

Part I

name: Brigid! I’m named after the Irish goddess of like, poetry, healing, smithcraft, and protection, or the Irish saint (they’re both pretty similar it’s just whether or not you’re talking about Celtic religion or Catholicism). She’s very cool, and I think it’s a very fitting name for who I turned out to be!

pronouns: she/her

star sign: i’m an insufferable theatre kid of course I’m a Leo

height: 5'8″ babeeeyyy (172 cm). I’m not short like, at all, but all of my family members are over six foot, so I’m like. tiny in comparison. they all make fun of me all the time for it :(

time: 8:49pm! A delightful time of evening!!! 

birthday: July 31st, same day as Harry Potter lol.

nationality: american :P

fave bands/groups/solo artists: hnnnngggghhhh why would u ask me this I don’t KNOW jk i just have a lot uhhhhh all time faves would be Bastille and Mumford and Sons, but I’m SUPER into kpop right now, so my top groups are BTS, Stray Kids, and One OK Rock (who are technically jpop but I really like their stuff). I also am a Broadway BITCH (hello, theatre kid) so before this year all of my Spotify library was basically just show tunes. 

song stuck in your head: Get Away by VeriVery. I think they’re a pretty new group? idk i saw them on one of those tumblr promotional things and checked out the music video which is like??? really interesting conceptually? so I’ve just been listening to the song for a while lol. 

last movie you watched: Train to Busan! I’m gearing up to write a dmbj zombie apocalypse AU and so I was like “this is a popular zombie film! I’ll watch it for inspiration! :)” holy shit. holy shit i was so wrong. It’s one of the most viscerally affecting films I think I’ve ever seen, I was like. On the verge of an anxiety attack the entire time but in like the best possible way?? it’s a mastery of character introduction and action/horror and I cried for like the last ten minutes straight. SO affecting. I do NOT RECOMMEND IT if u are already made anxious by zombie apocalypse scenarios, blood, violence, and a Lot of Death. 

last show you binged: hmmm uh like I’m currently watching Mystic Nine but at like a normal pace, so the last show I probably binge watched was maybeeee The Uncanny Counter on Netflix? HIGHLY recommend that one, I made @cross-d-a watch it and I’m living for her liveblog reactions lmao. Idk most of my free time has been spent writing the past few months which. After months of only having the energy to watch shows is kind of really invigorating? the things u can do when u fix ur health I’ll tell you what

when you created your blog: in 2012 asldighalsdkfjladskjga i came on here to like burdge’s pjo fanart :)

the last thing you googled: "is it bad not to have an air cap on your tire” ALSDIGHALKDFJLADFJA FUCK ME (i learned that it’s not necessarily bad but it can get dirt and stuff built up in there so I went to the store after work today and replaced it)

other blogs: everything is here bc i am too lazy to create a sideblog! so sorry to everyone who does not follow me for cdrama content bc this is all I am now. 

why i chose my url: cause it’s my ao3 username and i wanted people to be able to find me more easily on tumblr! :) the long answer is because i love shakespeare and also i think that slut is a really funny word and concept for me especially because i am one of the most sexless people u will ever meet in ur life so slutspeare is like. an aggressively ace joke that only I think is funny. 

how many people are you following: 588

how many followers do you have: ah just over 200?!??!!? which is like. a lot for me. I think it was like 75 up until like last year omg 

average hours of sleep: my sleep app says I average around eight! which is very good for me! I do have to get enough sleep consistently or I will Have A Bad Time so my sleep schedule is pretty good and luckily I don’t have the Insomnia depression I have the Sleep Lots one which I am glad for bc idk what I’d do if I couldn’t Be Unconscious regularly. Die probably. 

lucky numbers: I don’t think I have lucky numbers?? my favorite number is 21 for no reason other than the vibes alone. 

instruments: i’ve played the piano for uhhhh.... eighteen years now? and I can play the ukulele and am surprisingly good with the recorder since I’ve had to play it in Multiple Theatre Performances. I was also an honor choir singer back in high school so I’ve done a lot of select ensemble stuff which was super fun! 

what i'm currently wearing: a Life Is Good long-sleeved t-shirt that says “Not All Who Wander Are Lost” that I got in a military surplus store like a million years ago and red Adidas athletic shorts that I found at the thrift store a couple weeks back

dream job: playwright! I just wanna be a playwright! playwriting is like drugs i literally go nuts for it

dream trip: I don’t know??? I don’t really like traveling tbh aslidhalkfdj umm I do want to see the grand canyon sometime before I die tho so maybe a road trip down there? I definitely like traveling solo so I’d probably just hang out with myself and drive and go to whatever places I want and see dumb tourist attractions and sing loudly in the car

fave food: CURRY i know i said eggs the last time it asked me this but I miss my local Indian restaurant I want to eat literal Platefuls of tikka masala at 12pm at the Indian buffet after my physics class again :(

top three fictional universe you'd like to live in: hmmm i don’t know, actually! probably one where I have Powers and could do Cool Hand Motions and make Lights Appear. If I were anywhere with like. An Actual World-Dooming problem tho I would not be helpful at all. I would just die. Besides, I already live in fictional universes half the time, I’m a writer! 

Part II

last song: Basquiat by Pentagon! The music video is like. Very whumpy. So if you’re into that... the song’s also a bop

last stream: i don't watch streams very often, I just watch clips from them, cause those usually just give the best parts lol 

currently reading: mmmmmbbbaaaaahhhhh literally nothing? I’m trying to get caught up on the backlog of dmbj fic I haven’t gotten around to so Binding by @vishcount is next on that list! oh I guess I’m also reading Johnny Tremain with my kids (one of them SPOILED THE END and I forgot how it ended and now I’m big sad). 

currently watching: Mystic Niiiiinnnneeeeee! love those gay history bitches. everyone in that show is so funny. I just finished the Fuba Side Plot tho and now we’re back to Politics so i’m like >:( someone give zhang baby rishan a hug (and then i write angst about him what is wrong with me)

what is antipoetry to you: antipoetry??? what the heck is antipoetry hold on... uhhhh that’s just poetry. who came up with this term. i guess like lyrical fiction would be the technical correct definition but idk I consider anything to be poetry! like that’s the whole point! poetry is poetry is poetry as long as it’s focused on intensity and emotions it’s poetry! a haiku? poetry. the random one-lined mess of words on my phone? poetry. a literal drawing of a cardinal with the word “bird” written next to it? poetry. idk I’ve been trying to teach my kids that there are no wrong ways to write creatively; if you’re expressing yourself and making emotions, then you’re writing! also like half of my work could be considered antipoetry lmao. I love emotionally supercharging the mundane.

currently craving: i have noooo ideaaaasssss i’m literally just vibing. uh. water? ok i took care of that one my water bottle was right next to me. 

AH IF YOU READ THIS MUCH THANK YOU???? i love u 

uhhhh no pressure tags for @xia-xueyi, @nope4ever, @bookjoyworm, @elletromil, and @gaiahenshin, as well as anyone else who would like to give the full-rundown on themselves! :D

[daddy-socrates]

okay I'm curious Why did you mention salior uranus in your thesis?

THANK you for asking because i love to talk about it hehe >:3c buckle up

back in undergrad, i was invited to do a senior thesis. i wanted to do mine on language and gender because my (problematique fave) professor whose class got me into the field at the start just... wouldn't use my pronouns. she's very bad at using pronouns and frankly i think she does not understand limits. a philosophy of language class does not mean you get to just say ~whatever.~

basically, this project was borne out of "hey! use my fucking pronouns :))" i had (have) pretty severe "i can fix her" disease :// i....... was not a really great student in undergrad. people who have followed me since then can probably attest to that through my personal ramblings. my advisor (a different professor) was disappointed in me like the whole way through and i live in constant fear that she will find this blog and go "oh! thats why you didnt pay attention in class, dumbass :)" (though maybe she would see this post and say "oh.... growth :)" who's to say)

but see, though i struggled to get myself to stay engaged in my advisor's class, both she and that problematique fave had assigned texts that would lend themselves beautifully to my dream project - even though i just..... had a terrible habit of misunderstanding readings to basically an absolute inverse degree. like it's a chronic issue. maybe i should have figured out "this is what im understanding so the opposite is probably more correct." i'm working on it, though, and i'm better at getting it the second time around now that im in grad school. ^^;;

SO this brings me back to my thesis: basically, why does language matter? one of my chapters was about representation. i talked about janet in the good place reminding people every day, "not a girl." i talked about haruhi fujioka from ouran high school host club, "i don't care if people see me as a guy or a girl. it's what's on the inside that's important." i talked about stevonnie from steven universe, being the first fusion to be addressed with they/them pronouns. i talked about jesse and james from pokemon and their frequent "gender swapped" costumes. and, at last, i talked about sailor uranus - tenou haruka - using both masculine and feminine self-referential language and presentation.

the thesis statement of my tragically mediocre thesis paper is basically "when you have access to language, you can better describe your experience and understand the experiences of others." you can come to a stronger self-understanding, form connections with others who share some traits, discover community, come into support, enact change, and so on.

the paper im writing "writing" right now for my epistemology class is pretty much an elevated version of that, though i'm focusing less on gender identity and discussing like.... more like the "concept of identity" itself. one of my first grad classes was hermeneutics - the study of meaning, where it comes from and where it leads - and there is so much ~delicious~ overlap between the texts for that class, those from the undergrad class on language, the undergrad class on gender and intersectionality, and my current class. my current paper is on "epistemic injustice;" that is, lack of access to language (whether deliberately or unconsciously through systems that no single individual person had set up) puts people at disadvantage for the huge sector of life that they otherwise could understand.

ALL THIS to say, i was a snarky asshole in undergrad but i have very real investment in media representation. if i had watched she-ra before i presented my paper, i would have included double trouble (my beloved), and i have yet to watch owl house but i see there's another they/them? we love they/thems <33 i am always thinking back on when korrasami became canon, how that was a huge moment of positive bisexual representation. i think about sophia in orange is the new black, introducing to a more adult audience different layers and kinds of violences that she and other trans women, especially she as a black trans woman, are uniquely at risk for.

my graduate school thesis is going to diverge a bit from the language of justice and of personal and group understanding to an even broader scale, though i am going to have a lengthy chapter on the matter. (literally like one hour ago i emailed my county representatives to say "hey, the training material for my substitute teaching agency Fucking Sucks, how can i help bring appropriate language and subsequent recognition of mentally ill, neurodivergent, and disabled folks to the stage?")

the many forms of the philosophy of language is what sparked my passion for the field, and i want to give language to those who may have difficulty understanding texts like i do. i want to take all that i am learning and share it as best i can with others, or at the very least, use it to aid my interactions with others. that's why i have this stupid tongue-in-cheek blog in the first place! academic shitposts and some current social and political events are so important to share.

i do have a side blog for fandom shit since i wasnt smart enough to make that the main and this the side, so fan artists see @/daddy-socrates liking their posts and i am So Sorry About That but like... i don't want to take everything in life so, so, gravely seriously. OBVIOUSLY there are subjects and scenarios that are not to be joked about, but i think we get so bogged down in the severity of all the global problems that we forget to play around a bit. purposely putting a handful of anime characters into my undergrad thesis was my way of being both playful and highlighting how fun is a critical social learning tool. it may well have been the only really solid thing about that project, honestly. i hope that in the future i can revamp it, using what i have now.

so............. that was WAY more than you asked for, but there you have it, my whole raison d'être. :'^) thanks for asking, hope i made sense

[kingjasnah]

actually. actually let’s talk about diversity in fantasy let’s give that a go. im mad and im gonna be that way for a while

don’t want to read all this? fair. tldr: fantasy writers who rely not only on the medieval europe model but also hide behind historical accuracy in 2020 (fuck it, from ‘95 onwards) are lazy and unimaginative and should be held accountable no matter how many white 20 year old dudes jerk off to whatever power fantasy is embedded in the plot. so lets chat about that lads. (slightly) drunk rant under the cut

now prelim shit: we know fantasy is used both as escapism and as a way to deal with various traumas via magical metaphor. staples of the genre. even if jk rowling busted out the laziest and at times offensive metaphor for ww2 and racism ive ever seen, she still adhered to time and true tropes. whatever.

so why have we, in this post game of thrones era, become insanely obsessed with realism? i can hear sixty 20-something year old men crying at me rn like oh ohh oh its based off the war of roses oh wahh all medieval fantasy fiction is based off england and the crusades anyway so women should get raped and people of color should be demonized its not racism its xenophobia and also gay people dont exist and disabled people are systematically killed off and if we stretch the magic fixes mental illness thing a LITTLE further we have straight up eugenics.

we all know where the england but myth thing came from. now the thing about tolkien is that while i will always absolutely love lotr, looking at the LAZY state of fantasy? damn i kinda wish he hadn’t revolutionized the genre. the bitch was still racist. he still didnt give a shit abt women (eowyn was just a vehicle to show how much he fucking hated macbeth anyone holding jrrt up as a feminist icon for that needs to sit the fuck down and explain to me why i can count the woman speaking roles in lotr, a story with a name and fleshed out backstory for every minor character, on one hand but thats! another post). he had something to say abt class with sam i’ll give him that but he is still 100% NOT what we need to hold our standards to in 2020. 

i dont want to talk about old school fantasy, like 80s early 90s cause theres literally no point. its sexist, racist, ableist for sure, this we know. david eddings (not even that old school tbh) can rise from the grave and explain himself to me personally and i still wont forgive him for ehlana. 

so let’s talk historical accuracy. quick question. who the FUCK gives a shit? WHO is this elusive got fan who’s out here like blehh actually??? this method of iron production is TOTALLY anachronistic of the time. ummm these vegetables in this fictional world were NOT native to english soil so how are they here? cause i know this is the classic argument but ive never actually met someone who cared about the lack of dysentery as much as they care abt the women getting raped on screen/page. 

god forbid you have to worldbuild for a second god forbid you can’t rely on the idea of fantasy readers already have in their head god forbid you have an original idea god forbid you spend more than two seconds thinking about ur setting (oh i should mention i dont....really blame GoT for its setting cause of how long ago it was og written but trust me i sure as hell blame grrm for writing a 13 yr old giving ‘consent’ to sex with a grown man within the first couple of chapters) 

If we accept the basic premise of fantasy as escapism, and i AM drunk so i will NOT be finding fuckin. quotes and shit for this but come on tolkien said it himself and as much as i’ll drag him he crafted the simplest and most powerful fantasy metaphors on the board rn. But if we know its escapism. If we know. then who is it escapism for? certainly not for me, the gay brown woman who busted through all of GoT in 10th grade. 

modern fantasy lit used as an excuse for that white male power fantasy is literally disgusting. calling historical accuracy is so fucking dumb ESPECIALLY cause we, as ppl in the 21st  century, KNOW women have been consistently written out of the story. poc ppl, gay and trans ppl, anyone with a god forbid disability has been WRITTEN out of history as we know it, INCLUDING the fucking war of the roses so HOW can we hold up testimony we know is flawed to support our FICTIONAL. STORY. just to??? support the white power fantasy?? literally noah fence but if you are a white guy who felt really empowered by every time jim butcher described a woman tell me: how do you think that’ll hold up in classic HisToRiCaL fantasy. you think thats a fucking noble pursuit? or are you grima wormtongue out here. 

(side note: jim butcher stop writing challenge i dont need to know abt every woman on page’s nipples. anyone who hides behind subgenre like that? ‘ohhh its a noir story thats why hes sexualizing everyone’ shut the fuck up an author isnt possessed by a fuckin muse and compelled to bust out 500k they have agency and they have choice and they MADE the choice to reserve said will for none of their female characters)

which brings me to point 2: target audience and BOY is the alcohol hitting me rn but WHO is this for? this isnt the fucking 80s we know poc and other marginalized folk read fantasy FOR the escapism. on god ive had a cosmere focused blog for nearly three years and. im just gonna say it im interacted with A LOT of yall and ive managed to talk to VERY few white straight ppl as compared to everyone else. 

like....who deserves to see the metaphor on homophobia or racism. joanne rowling? the bitch who literally tried to sell us happy slaves and the disgusting aids metaphor and the worst case of antisemitic stereotypes i ever saw in an nyt bestseller? yall think that was for US? or was it for the white guilt crowd. 

literally white people can find any book about them that they can relate to. but hmmm maybe theres a reason gay women care so much about stormlight archive’s jasnah kholin, a brown woman who’s heavily coded as wlw. or kaladin, the FIRST fantasy protag ive ever seen with clinical depression. hmm i wonder why a bunch of millennials are vibing all of a sudden. im not saying sanderson is perfect--but its the best ive seen from a white author tbh

maybe theres a reason a lot of poc vibe with a literary way to express trauma, and maybe thats why i specifically get so pissed when its not done well. theres a REASON books about outcasts pushing through and claiming their own lives are popular with people who arent white and straight and able bodied. Junot Diaz had a point. maybe lets STOP catering to those assholes who think theyre joseph campbell’s wet dream personified. ive lost respect SO many authors who are objectively talented. pat rothfuss can write so beautifully that ive cried to bits of name of the wind but literally i will never pick that series up again (not just because of the felurian. women in general tbh. mostly the felurian ngl) cause 1) i personally KNEW men whod jerk off to that shit and 2) there was no need for it there was no plot reason for ANY of that shit 

so like obviously thers an issue with authors of color specifically not getting recognized for fantasy and genre work but on god??????? im still mostly mad at the legions of white authors churning out the same medieval england chosen one books year after fucking year. have an original thought maybe. also im sorry that you as an author lack the basic empathy needed to examine the way that women? or any group of people that youre explicitly writing about see the world and would specifically see YOUR made up world. 

yes your fantasy should be diverse, but more than that it should be kind. if you as a writer cant respect groups of people who deserve it....what the hell are you doing in a genre that traditionally is about finding ways to express injustice through metaphor? tolkien’s hero was sam. fantasy was NEVER about the privileged. yall know who you are so stop acting so fucking entitled. peace out. 

[haro-whumps]

Box Boy Rescue

(CW: slavery, brainwashing, dehumanization, kidnapping, creepy + intimate whumper, gaslighting)

Tag list: @thatsthewhump @whump-it @ashintheairlikesnow @fairybean101 @finder-of-rings @comfortforthepain @shameless-whumper @that-one-thespian @burtlederp @castielamigos-whump-side-blog @raigash @im-not-rare-im-rarr @spiffythespook @whumps-the-word @frnkieroismydaddy @whumpity--whump--whump @michelleswhumpyreblogs @jo-castle @newandfiguringitout

Masterlist

Soren pressed up against the back wall, legs pulled close to his chest, breath coming out ragged. 

“Please, please give me my collar back, I need it, please, please,” he was begging, an endless, panicked drone. He knew it wouldn’t work, but he couldn’t stop. There was someone in front of him, a woman, but a different woman from the one who he’d woken up to, urging him to calm down, take deep breaths. But he couldn’t breathe, not without his collar on, he couldn’t breathe. 

The door squeaked open and boomed shut. Soren sobbed loudly, panicked begging only paused for the raw sounds, before it was back to an endless stream of “please give me my collar” over and over again.

“Dude, just calm down, you literally do not need it,” the rude man, the one who’d elbowed him, snapped, and Soren let out a high, warbling keen, turning his head away from the man, fingers raising to his neck again.

“Woah, buddy, still not doing that,” the woman said as she pulled his hands away from his own neck for what felt like the dozenth time. 

“Please!” Soren moaned, bloodied fingers twitching. He didn’t struggle against her hold on his wrists, his training didn’t even let him consider it, but he could beg, and cry, so he did.

“Here,” the driver said, creaking door booming shut behind him as he walked down the concrete steps. “Just let him have it, he’s not going to calm down unless we do.”

“Liam, come on!”

“You come on,” the driver, Liam, shot back, kneeling in front of Soren. Soren hiccupped, turning his head up, praying that this wasn’t some sick trick, that he was actually going to--

Soren sobbed again, this time with relief, and Liam fitted the collar on too loose, so it would move and rub and chafe, but that was okay because at least it was on. Soren’s hands closed around it and he immediately felt so, so much better.

“Maybe we should let Liam handle this.”

“He’s my--”

“Not anymore he isn’t! And Liam’s always been good--”

“--some of us leave? This bunker isn’t exactly large.”

“Quiet down; you’re gonna spook him again!”

The voices clamored over each other, volume rising, and Soren just hiccuped and focused on breathing deep. It was always loud and crowded in the facility, he just thought about breathing, calming down. He was--well, he wasn’t okay, but he could get himself under control.

“Soren?” Liam’s voice cut low and soft through the din, close to Soren, and Soren cracked open his eyes. Liam was broad, with soft fat layered over muscle, like he drove tractors or something (Ren had watched some Hallmark movie about a farm, Liam looked like the love interest). He was attractive, and his voice had a sweet tenor to it. 

“Please let me go home,” Soren begged quietly. Liam, out of all the thieves, seemed the most likely to listen to him. He’d given him back his collar. He was treating him gently (Soren was fragile!).

“Buddy, hey, we are, okay? We’re gonna take you home. But I’d like it if you let me explain some things to you first, please?”

Liam stood up off his haunches and sat on the lower bunk of the bunkbed. He patted the old, dusty blanket, indicating Soren should join him. The rest of the bunker had quieted. Soren, not wanting things to get any worse than they already were, did a quick risk analysis. The bed… only Ren… but if he disobeyed, he might get dragged to where they wanted him, so, he got up, and sat down on the hard, lumpy mattress as far away from the rest of them as he could, his back pressed up against the cold and rough concrete.

“Soren,” Liam started, his voice steady and patient in a way that Soren didn’t entirely trust, but he’d proven to be the most trustworthy out of all of them, so Soren maybe could take a little comfort in his tone, “I know you don’t remember us, or, anything, I guess, but we’re friends of yours. You’re in an underground bunker that belongs to Tyler’s uncle. Your name is Soren Greyson and you were kidnapped and forced into being a pet.”

Soren had been kidnapped, alright, but by these people. He knew, in his core, that no one had forced him to be a pet.

“My name is Liam. We met in middle school, we were close friends, even dated for a while. This is Lydia, we also met her in middle school, along with Tyler,” he gestured at the rude man, “and we were also friends with Ren, then.”

Soren couldn’t help but perk up at Ren’s name, his fingers clenching around the collar.

“In high school, we met Emmet, Ingrid, and Nia,” Liam said, gesturing as he said each name, “Then after we graduated, you met Erica in a hardware store and accidentally fell ass backwards into a relationship. You two were dating until very shortly before you were kidnapped.”

The woman he’d allegedly dated, Erica, was the one who’d been trying to get him to breathe while Liam had gotten his collar for him. She was--pretty, Soren guessed, but not as pretty as Ren, and the sight of her stirred no love in him, no memory.

Liam set his palm down on the blanket between him and Soren, looking at Soren with strange and earnest eyes. “We’re going to keep you safe. We’re going to help you regain your memories, somehow, and we’re gonna get your mom over here just as soon as we can get ahold of her.”

Soren grit his teeth, the threat of pain holding his tongue in check. But, well, if these people were such good friends of his, maybe they wouldn’t risk hurting him. “My memories are gone!” he snapped, knuckles white around his collar, “My Processors electrocuted that part of my brain until there wasn’t anything left! Whoever you think I am, he’s gone! And never coming back! Right now, I’m 930-456, a pet, and private property, and you’re all thieves!”

“Soren!” Lydia gasped, the whole room taken aback by his words.

“I don’t have a mom, anymore, I don’t have middle school friends or high school friends or some dumb hardwarestore romance.” The ever present knowledge he’d had, one of the only things that did survive the facility, came forth. “And I know for a fact that even if I did, none of them are looking for me. You’re lying!”

“Soren--” Liam tried, and Soren lifted his hands to his ears, eyes squinting shut. He didn’t want to hear this. Didn’t want to hear any of this.

...Didn’t like how he couldn’t help but feel like they weren’t lying.

There was a hand on his knee. More specifically, just above his knee, the bottom end of his thigh, and it was just… sitting there. And it felt. Not wrong. He liked touch, but this was more than that, this was…

Soren opened his eyes and found Lydia sitting beside him, not looking at him (it was a strange relief, but a big one), her hand just on his knee, oddly and strikingly comforting. Like his body knew the gesture even though his brain had forgotten it. He could feel her callouses against his soft skin.

“Do you… play baseball?” Soren asked, quiet and timid, and felt the heavy weight of everyone’s attention focused on him. But he just looked at Lydia, who turned surprised eyes at him. 

“Yes. Yes! Soren, oh my god, yeah,” she said delightedly, her fingers squeezing into his skin, but not in a way that hurt. “See? See, you do remember things! It’s just, buried deep.” She removed her hand, and he found himself missing it, then took his hand between her own. “And we’ll help you, okay, we’ll help you remember.”

“...” Soren was trembling, tears budding up in his eyes again. “I…” He hiccupped, and Liam’s palm came to rest gently on Lydia’s wrist.

“Maybe we should let him rest, a little bit. This has all been… a lot.”

“Okay, but we’re cleaning the cuts,” Erica stated, and the group around her murmured their assent. Except Soren. But he knew it didn’t matter if he agreed or not. She took Liam’s place on the bed, starting with the cuts on Soren’s feet, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in one hand and a rough, scratchy cloth in the other. It grated against Soren’s skin, against the wounds, and he stared at her. 

Had he really been in love with her? It was hard to tell, just based off looks. What about her had made him love her? What about him had made him worth loving, before he’d been trained and fixed and made perfect, perfect for Ren? What would he even have done with her?

He looked across the room, at Liam. He was my first, said some feeling in his gut. First boyfriend, first sexual encounter, first time he felt love, first something, Soren wasn’t sure what, but he knew, with unfounded certainty, that Liam was his first. 

“I’m gonna clean your neck, okay? Could you hold your collar in your hands, please?” Erica asked, and Soren reached up to unfasten his own collar, which went against every ounce of training he’d ever had and every desire in his body, but he clenched it with his hands in his lap and tilted his chin up all the same, ignoring the sting and examining the other people.

Tyler made him nervous, but that could just be the head injury talking.

He stared at each one of the others, trying to summon something, anything, but they were perfect strangers to him. Emmet evoked some sort of admiration in him, but that wasn’t like a memory, really, that was just. Some dumb feeling.

At the end of the day, he knew Lydia played baseball and Liam was his first-something, and the rest of them meant nothing to him. He shifted uncomfortably as Erica continued applying the peroxide, and shifted again shortly after, an old spring digging into his ass. This bed was supremely uncomfortable, nothing like the bed back home, where he should be. 

He let his thoughts wander, as Erica moved to the other side of his neck. He thought of rushing past these strangers, with their words that made him feel uncertain and unsteady, of running away from this place. In his fantasy, a cop car was parked just outside the little wooded area, and Soren could fling himself at the man (in his mind, the cop was a man, built like Liam, but bigger, heartier, more intimidating) and beg. Tell him that he was stolen property, that he’d been taken in the middle of the night and the thieves were right behind him. He’d radio for backup, like in the movies, and then the strangers would rush out only to realize their mistake, and then they’d be surrounded, and taken away to jail, while Soren would be taken to the police department where his barcoded wrist could be scanned. Ren’s information would be pulled up, and someone would call them, and they’d come get him, and they’d hold him, and pet his hair, and croon over how frightening everything had been and how terrible, and then they’d take him home and he’d never, ever leave again.

Another fantasy, a bad fantasy, warred with it. Of Soren staying here, with these strangers, his life told to him in stories. He’d meet… his mom. Maybe, maybe he’d remember her. And he’d always have to wear long sleeves, but maybe he could go out, and relearn his skills. Move someplace far away and be a regular person, with a family, with friends that he got to talk to. Ren was wonderful to him, but when they weren’t around he did get… lonely…

That was bad, that was bad, all of those were bad thoughts, and he was bad for having them. He’d never had them before! He was good, he was good, he was obedient, in body and mind, in action and in thought, he behaved, he was good, why was his brain going all screwy and bad on him now? He couldn’t know these people, not actually!

Right?

But… they’d said they’d known Ren, that Soren’s melancholy-memory of them could be… real. That they’d known each other in middle school, and that was why Ren’s scent made him, from time to time… feel like he knew them before.

“There, all done,” Erica said, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“Thank you…” Soren said uncertainly, placing his collar back on, tightening it properly, himself. The weight, familiar and comforting, grounded him. It helped keep his mind away from the bad thoughts. He was Ren’s. Nothing else mattered, before was irrelevant. All that mattered was getting home to them. He just had to find the right opportunity.

So he’d play along, until then.

“Can I, rest now?” Soren asked, and Erica smiled sadly at him.

“Yeah, belov--Soren. Yeah, Soren, go to sleep. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

Soren would prefer to wake up in his bed, in his home, to the sound of Ren greeting him, but he didn’t say that. He laid down, still curled tightly in a ball, on the lumpy, musty mattress, and tears stung his eyes again. This was awful. No wonder he’d signed up to be a pet, at least his time at the facility had ended. He couldn’t imagine living like this forever, not after how Ren had treated him.

“I’m gonna head up,” Lydia was saying in hushed tones, “Soren’s mom should be awake now; I want to see if she got my text.”

“I’ll go with,” said one of the other women, and the two ascended the concrete stairs of the bunker. Soren listened to each footstep with three heartbeats in his chest for each. His mom? Coming here? The idea of him having a mom hadn’t impacted him the way the idea of actually seeing her was. He’d meet some woman and she would be his mother. The door, with its creaking metal, unlocked with a shrill screech, and swung open heavily. Soren’s brain immediately switched to wondering how many times he’d have to hear that noise, while he himself remained trapped down here. It made his miserable tears spill over, a soft, muffled sound choked in his throat.

The women shrieked.

Soren curled in on himself as the room exploded into noise, hands over his ears, and squeezed his eyes shut. What new horror was happening now? A monster in the woods? A--

Police man. Grabbing Soren by the wrist and helping him up, bracing his other elbow when he stumbled, starstruck, praying this wasn’t a dream, or if it was, that all of it was. Police were in the bunker, cuffing and dragging out the thieves, and Soren didn’t understand it. He’d hoped--he’d wanted--but he didn’t actually think--how had they found him--so fast???

“S-Sir,” Soren stuttered out, grabbing his sleeve and leaning into him, eyes wide, “Sir, please, I-I’m a pet, please,” Soren lifted his wrist, showing his barcode, “Please, I need to go home, please, please!”

“I know, I know,” the cop said, sounding patiently exasperated. “Come on then, out of the bunker. Your owner’s waiting for you.”

Soren followed eagerly, wishing the cop would move faster, would run, Soren could keep up, he could, he wanted to, anything to get home sooner, to go back to Ren, please, please.

The police cars were flashing bright lights in the fragile light of the dawn, and a news casting van was pulling into the wooded area, too. Soren huddled in close to the man who had a hand on his wrist. He wasn’t like how Soren had fantasized, but that was fine, he was real, and he was going to get Soren home, and he was touching his wrist in a way that was only reassuring, not confusing and maybe-painful like the thieves’. 

Then he saw Ren, glaring like they could murder the strangers, their teeth bared as they stared down the criminals being corralled into the cop cars.

“Ren!” Soren cried, breaking the officer’s surprised grip on his wrist, running to them faster than he knew he could run. Ren’s gaze turned to him, surprised, their hair hanging loosely around their jaw like Soren only rarely saw it, still wearing the sweater they wore to bed.

“Soren!” Ren uncrossed their arms and began walking towards him, only to “oof” quietly when Soren did not slow down, flinging himself into them. “Oh, angel, there now, there, this has been so frightening for you hasn’t it?”

The rude one--Tyler--began struggling harder against the cops forcing him into the car. “Let go of him you fucking freak!” he shouted. “Ren! Ren you hear me!? Fucking don’t touch him you sick bastard!”

Ren tutted, a sound Soren associated with mild disappointment. It was only ever directed at him, and he flinched in their arms. “Pet, did you tell them my name?”

Soren’s head spun a little. “I, I, I was, screaming it, when they, when they kidnapped me, I called for you…”

“Oh,” Ren crooned, their palm caressing his cheek. He leaned into it with a deep ache. “Darling, this has been such a terrifying experience for you. But it’s alright now. You’re back where you belong.”

Soren nodded, turning so he could kiss the heel of their palm. “Exalted?”

“Yes, pet?”

“They, they said… that, they knew me. Before. That they knew you, a-and that’s why they know your name.”

“Is that what they told you?” Ren said derisively, snorting a little. Soren blinked, and then melted. Of course. Of course.

“They were lying,” Soren breathed out, relieved.

“My angel,” Ren murmured, petting at his hair, “Obviously they lied to you. You’re mind is vulnerable, and those nasty thieves took advantage of that the first moment they could.” Ren kissed his forehead, and after Soren pressed his face into their shoulder, blacking out the lights and the dawn and the movement all around him. “They made you confused, told you strange stories while you were disoriented and primed to be taken advantage of. But it’s alright, Soren, I’m here now, I’ll keep your little head on right.” Their fingers carded through his hair, tugging at bloody tangles before the strands slipped through their fingers entirely. “You just listen to me, and no one else. You don’t need to listen to any voice but mine.”

“Thank you, Exalted, thank you,” Soren murmured. And with his face pressed to Ren’s chest, the smell of their sweater in his nose, he felt again that strange melancholy. “E-Exalted?”

“Yes, baby?”

“They, I--a-after they told me, about, um, th-the lies, I got… weird. Um, memories?”

Ren clicked their tongue. “Didn’t those fools at the training facility warn you that you’d get false memories from time to time?”

Oh! “O-oh, yes, they, they did. I, I forgot, s-since, I n-never got them, before.”

Ren chuckled beneath his face, and he looked up at them, then closed his eyes while Ren pet the side of his face, the half that hadn’t been elbowed, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “You’re such a perfect pet, Soren.” The hand on his face suddenly gripped him by the ear, making him flinch and whine. “You didn’t go with them willingly, did you? Even when they lied to you?”

“No!” Soren cried, gripping their sweater desperately, tears stinging his eyes anew. “No Exalted, no, never, never, I never would have run, please, no, never, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t!”

Just as quickly, Ren returned to petting him. “That’s right. You’re my good little Soren, you’d never leave me,” Ren murmured, almost as though to themself.

Soren nodded. “C-can I, ask for reassurance, on, on one more thing, that confuses me?”

“Ask as many questions as you like, angel, I’m right here to tell you everything you need to know,” Ren crooned, placid as still waters.

“I, I get, f-f-fake memories, of, um, you, too. Sometimes, it, it feels like I did know you, b--”

“Excuse me! Excuse me, ma’am!” a newslady called, jogging over to Ren and Soren, microphone in her hand.

“Not a ma’am,” Ren said idly, arms slipping easily around Soren’s back as they turned to face her, pulling him in close to their chest. He pressed up against them, eyeing this new threat.

Next

[daily-dose-of-imagines]

𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝔽𝕚𝕣𝕤𝕥 𝔻𝕒𝕪

. ⋅ ˚̣- : ✧ : – ⭒ ⊹ ⭒ – : ✧ : -˚̣⋅ .

Heyo this is my first time writing on the blog so be kind. I just got obsessed with the idea of Aizawa being an elementary school teacher 

>> Admin B̷r̷a̷n̷d̷o̷

. ⋅ ˚̣- : ✧ : – ⭒ ⊹ ⭒ – : ✧ : -˚̣⋅ .

Ok, maybe this won’t be so bad? 

He put on a fake smile and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. The bags under his eyes were somehow more apparent then usual. His face quickly faded into his trademark apathetic scowl. 

Who am I kidding? This is the worst possible situation. 

Aizawa sneered at the thought of his current situation. Of how his pristine English classroom was being taken from him because they needed “fresh blood”. Of how he was not only being forced into a new school, but also a new grade. He sighed (heavier than usual), leaving his dim apartment early, to beat traffic and give him time to dwell further on his current situation.

As he drove, his brain on went on auto pilot and all his worries and thoughts crossed his mind once again. Aizawa had never taught anything lower than 6th grade, and he never wanted to. It’s not that he didn’t like kids, it’s that he didn’t love kids. High schoolers were almost adults, so he didn’t have to sugar coat anything. No snack time, no name calling, no bullshit. The sudden unemployment was truly a wake-up call (not just because he would fall asleep in class), telling him that he needed to get his shit together. He was thankful that his good friend Nezu happened to have a job opening, he just wished it were at any other school.

Arriving at the school made him sick. The bright colors. The intricately hand painted signs reading “Welcome To The New Year!” and “Start the school year with a smile.” The line of staff waiting outside the school to welcome him. The line of staff? Jesus.

His wish to quietly slip into his new classroom vanished before his eyes. There was no way he could avoid meeting his new colleagues now. Hopefully, he thought, I can get through this without too much headache.

“SHOUTAAAAAAAAA!!!!”

And the headache began.

“Oh my god, Shouta! It’s been so long! And you never returned my texts?? I can’t believe we’re working together again! I thought you didn’t like elementary school?? Anyway, c’mon we need to get you all settled!! I heard you got fired?? What’s up with that? Did you- “

Before he could even fully get out of his car, Hizashi was pulling him toward the crowd of faculty almost against his will. The crowd was full of smiling faces, kind waves, and judging glances.

 Ugh

“Welcome Mr. Aizawa! I am glad that Mr. Yamada was telling the truth that he was a close friend. Well I know that our little pocket of perfect isn’t quite the high school setting you’re used to but believe me that you’ll love it soon enough.” Principal Nezu smiled happily and gestured to the quaint little school.

“Starting in the middle of the school year isn’t easy, but I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it,” he added with a wink.

Aizawa glanced briefly at the bright marquee reading “U. A. Elementary School”, then back to the group of hopeful faces. He put on his best “I’m totally not wishing I was somewhere else right now” face, and /reluctantly/ expressed his joy to be there. 

With his seemingly pleasant response, the evaluative air cleared somewhat, and the gossipier teachers left the gathering, no longer interested.

Taking Aizawa’s arm, Nemuri pressed her chest against him, “Hate to interrupt but Shouta- Mr. Aizawa, really needs to get to his classroom.” With that, the tall woman, along with Hizashi, practically dragged the poor man away, though he was internally grateful to be away from the crowd.

They arrived at Aizawa’s new classroom, still full of the previous teachers’ belongings. He pulled himself away from the others, brushing himself off.

“Thanks Midnight.”

“Oh, stop with that,” Nemuri responded, fixing her immaculate hair in the reflection from the window, “I haven’t gone by that since college. No one here needs to know the escapades of Ms. Midnight.”

Aizawa chuckled lightly, “At least I have some familiar faces here, aside from Nezu.” He peered over to the other two, seeing their “trying to be respectful but insanely curious” faces. “Fine, I’ll address the elephant in the room. Yes, I was fired. No, it was not for selling drugs to the kids, Hizashi. I just… had trouble staying awake, apparently a few times too many.”

Hizashi sighed in defeat and pulled a twenty out of his pocket, handing it sadly to Nemuri.

“Good thing there was an opening here for you,” Hizashi replied, almost like a whine as he mourned his loss, “Too bad it came at the loss of Yagi. Poor guy having to be stuck at home after that dumb injury.”

Nemuri chuckled, “It’s his own fault for jumping out of the second story window to give one of his students the lunchbox they forgot.”

“He’ll be back next year, and I’ll be long gone. hopefully.” Aizawa interrupted, tying his long hair back. “Now can you two leave? I have kids coming in less than an hour to a teacher that could care less about them right now.”

Nemuri exhaled sharply through her nose, a smirk crossing her face, “You need a better attitude, my friend, or they will eat you alive.” She pushed herself off the desk, pulling Hizashi along.

“Good luck!” He called out, “let me know if I can help! The music room is always open for you!”

As the door slowly closed, Aizawa turned back to his new classroom. The desks were arranged in neat rows and columns, small pieces of tape on the carpeted floor to ensure that they remained in their neat arrangement. He was appalled by the disorganized mess that was Yagi’s previous desk arrangement.

Aizawa sat at his new desk, dropping his head into his hands. He had never taught 2nd grade before. Sure, he was certified to teach it, but that was more of a trophy to him than an actual career choice. Like when someone minors in art history. What made it especially difficult was that he was taking over a class run by the one and only Yagi Toshinori, legendary his teaching. He was the “symbol of peace” for teachers, doing interviews for local news stations and giving presentations for the school district.

The four of them (Yagi, Hizashi, Nemuri, and himself) had gone through college together, but lost touch as they all chose their path. Yagi with younger kids, Aizawa with teens, Hizashi with music, and Nemuri with administration. Aizawa knew that Yagi was a better teacher than him, and that he had big shoes to fill, literally.

Aizawa broke from his lamentation as the morning bell rang. He opened his door to be greeted with the cacophonous sound of 20 children itching the get into their classroom. He was nearly knocked over by the force of almost two dozen children running into inspect what the new teacher had done. Surprisingly, the new layout did not stop the wave of children, they all quickly found their name tags and sat down, most of them loudly complaining.

Aizawa moved to the front of the room and cleared his throat. Twenty small faces focused on him. “Good morning students. As you may know, Mr. Toshinori is injured and will not be able to continue teaching this year. My name is Mr. Aizawa and I’m going to be your teacher for the remainder of the school year-” A series of small hands shot up in front of him. He sighed, “Yes, you,” pointing to the small girl sitting politely in the front row.

“Excuse me, but why can’t Mr. Toshinori come back?” she asked, cocking her head.

Before he could answer, another young girl, this one with pink hair, jumped up, “Momo, he broke his butt, that’s why he can’t come back!”

“He didn’t break his butt! He broke his feet, stupid.” A blonde boy in the back stood up and pointed at her.

“Who are you calling stupid? I saw it, you buttface.” She stuck her tongue out at him. Seeing her mocking face, the boy began throwing his pencils at her, to which she started throwing her pencils. Momo began crying at the violence, while the other students began cheering for one of the other two students.

This was going to be a long day.

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰

As Nemuri entered the teacher’s lounge, she was greeted with the sight of Aizawa looking… well, dead. “Well, I was expecting this.” She commented, setting her stack of papers down and sitting on the table in front of him. “Rough day?” Aizawa merely groaned in response. She patted his head lightly, “You know what they say about kids, it’s like wrangling kittens.”

“I’ve never heard that.” He replied, lifting his head up to a more alive position. “I don’t know how he did it. Those kids just don’t listen.”

“How did you deal with your high schoolers?”

“None of us wanted to be there so we respected each other’s time and got shit done.”

Nemuri clicked her tongue, “It’s a wonder why you’re a teacher at all. You used to have passion for teaching, Shouta. Try to tap into some of that.” With that, Nemuri hopped off the desk, scooping up her papers, “If you need advice on how to deal with them, we’re here for you, all three of us.”

The door to the lounge closed softly behind, and he was once again alone. Aizawa hesitated at the thought of asking any of them for help. He had not spoken to any of them for years. While he enjoyed their company, Aizawa knew he did not belong. Nemuri, Hizashi, and of course Yagi, all had this passion and fire for education that Aizawa himself had lost years ago. It felt wrong to him to be there.

The soft chime of the lunch bell reminded Aizawa that he had to return to his classroom. Which he really did not want to do. The kids barely got along with each other, who they have known for months, how were they supposed to cooperate with him, a total stranger? He trudged back to his classroom, just as the students began pouring in. As they took their seats, he stood, and began writing their next lesson on the board. Once all were seated, he turned around to address them.

 “I am very disappointed with how the morning went.” At this remark, half the students rolled their eyes, while the other half looked like they were going to burst into tears. Aizawa stopped and began thinking. What would Yagi do in this situation? He would be cheery and upbeat and overly personal with the students. Well, he thought, nothing would hurt to try at this point.

He sighed, sitting down on his desk, “Listen guys, I know this is hard for you, its hard for me two. The only way we can make this work is if we give each other a chance and get to know each other. So..” he looked at the confused faces of the kids, “Let’s go outside.”

The students all filed outside behind Aizawa, confused yet intrigued. He turned to face them, “Now I have a task for you, we’re going to go on a hike around the school, and you’re going to tell me about everything interesting you see.” The students collectively gasped and nodded excitedly.

As the class walked around the school, Aizawa learned many things about the kids. Like how Tenya liked to walk this path with his brother, or how Shoto would take trips through the woods when he wanted to get away from his family, or how Yuga collect only “the prettiest and shiniest” rocks. Although this was far more effort than he usually put into teaching, Aizawa was having fun.

The week from that point on went… surprisingly well. The students slowly warmed up to Aizawa, and even began enjoying his teaching. They continued setting time aside for a class hike and decided that they would start a nature journal to write about what they saw on their hikes. Aizawa, even though he would never admit it, even started smiling more in class. Before he knew it, the end of the week had already come.

As the students filed out of the room, several waved goodbyes to Aizawa. He smiled and waved back, eyes wandering to the small boy standing shyly next to him. “Hey Midoriya, do you need something? You should be heading home.”

“I am going home! But I made you something to celebrate how much fun we are having! I still like Mr. Toshinori more, but you’re really fun!” The boy shoved a piece of paper into Aizawa’s hands. “Ok my mom is waiting, bye Mr. Aizawa! See you next week!” Before Aizawa could respond, the boy ran out of the room. He looked at the paper. On it was a crudely drawn picture of him and the class on one of their hikes. He chuckled lightly, pinning the picture to the wall. 

He was pulled away from his thoughts by the sudden vibrations of his phone. Without checking, he answered, “Aizawa speaking.”

“Um, hey! It’s been a while.”

“…Yagi?”

“Yeah! Hizashi told me you were taking over for me, and I, uh, wanted to say thanks!”

“I should be thanking you,” Aizawa commented, amusement crossing his face upon hearing the familiar voice again, “I needed a job and you had some broken bones.” They both chuckled awkwardly.

After a moment of thick silence, Aizawa sighed, “Its good time hear from you, Yagi. I’m sorry it’s been so long.”

Yagi chuckled, “We should catch up soon. You know, when I can walk again that is.” he paused, “So I, uh actually called to... uh, How are the kids?”

Aizawa laughed at how the blonde could barely hide his intentions. “They’re doing fine, no need to worry.”

“Are you handling them alright? I know they can be a handful.”

Aizawa looked fondly at the drawing Midoriya had handed him, “It’s an adjustment, but I think we’ll be able to get through the year.

[toothpastecanyon]

We Walk Like Humans Do, Chapter 1

The Transcendence has been, on the whole, a good thing for magical creatures... for the ones that walked on two legs and fit in doorways, at least. Lacie has other problems to overcome before she can live in the big city.

Inspired by @marshmellowextract‘s ideas on the TAU Discord.

See most updated version on Archive of Our Own.

________________________________________________________________

               The Transcendence has been, on the whole, a good thing for magical creatures. True, there’s been no shortage of misunderstandings and pro-nat sentiments over the years, but all those centuries of hiding away from humans had been just as harmful.

               Humans are everywhere, after all. Avoiding them means avoiding most places on Earth, holing yourself away in dwindling forests and as-of-yet unexplored cave systems. Some could pass as human and live in their cities, but pre-Transcendence accounts of disguised elves or vampires often spoke of the burden of carrying such an immense secret, the disconnect they felt with any humans they befriended. They could never truly live as themselves.

               For some magical creatures, the Transcendence changed that. The Transcendence let them live freely amongst the humans, let them attend their schools and work alongside them to better the world.

               For some magical creatures, the Transcendence was the single best thing that had ever happened to them.

               For others?

               Well… for the less humanoid ones, they didn’t notice so much of a difference. For Lacie, she was still hanging out in the same old sewers she’d been hatched in.

               After all, when you’re a giant basilisk several bus-lengths long and capable of killing a man with a single glance, there are more obstacles to living in the city than ‘not feeling like you can be true to yourself.’

________________________________________________________________

               A snore rumbles through the depths of London’s sewers. Deep, deep underground, somewhere in a maze of rank-smelling tunnels sloshing with wastewater, there lies a hidden door, and behind that door slumbers a vicious, terrible monster guarding a tome of forbidden knowledge.

               That’s how the treasure hunters always describe Lacie’s home on the forums, and honestly, she finds it a little insulting. They’ll go on and on about how much the place stinks and how loudly she snores; it’s like they expect her to fix it or something, and… no? This is a sewer, it’s going to smell bad. And she needs to sleep, so it’s going to be noisy, too.

               If they’re gonna come down here to try and slay her and steal her shit, the least they can do is stop being so goddamn whiny about it.

               Like, look at these bozos coming in now. Lacie was having such a peaceful nap until they started messing around with the hidden door.

               She cracks a tired eye open, and glares at the sound of their voices.

               “No, it’s this one!” A rock shudders on the wall. “Didn’t you read the riddle? You touch the symbols clockwise!”

               “How did you get clockwise from the riddle? It’s way more complicated than that; the cipher clearly states-”

               “A-B-C-D. Clockwise.”

               “No, that’s- ABCD? Where on earth did you get ABCD?”

               Lacie lets out a rumbling sigh. Incompetent treasure hunters, oh joy. She shifts a little bit on her pile of gold, and waits for them to bumble their way into a solution so she can go back to  sleep.

               “Look, I don’t know how you’re getting ABCD, so why don’t we try my way first, and if mine doesn’t work-”

               “It’s absolutely not going to work.”

               “It will! I took a class in cryptography once, I know how this works.”

               “Ooo, aren’t you special.”

               “Look, just let me work, will you?”

               “Do it fast. Ugh, it smells like death down here.”

               At least it’s more bearable than your voice, Lacie thinks. She snorts at her own joke before hooking her tail around a wooden sign and dragging it in closer. She’ll need this later - quite a while later, most likely, but it’s good to be prepared.

               “That didn’t work?”

               “Of course it didn’t work, you idiot. I’ll open it-”

               “Hey, wait, maybe I did that wrong! Let me try that again!”

               “No, you had your chance!”

               “Just let- hey, get off me!”

               “No, you get off me!”

               “Come on dude, just let me try-”

               After listening to the treasure hunters scuffle and shout at each other for what felt like forever, Lacie hears a click in the door’s opening mechanism. The whole thing starts to rumble and dust loosens from the ceiling as it opens inwards, revealing… well, she doesn’t look at them directly in case they’re dumb enough not to bring basilisk protection, but she makes out two human figures with rifle-shaped sticks, which they immediately point at her face.

               “There it is!” The first man ushers the other back. “Stay behind me!”

               “Stay behind you? Dude, I’m a way better shot.”

               “What? No way, you are not!”

               “I totally am. Don’t you remember back at the range-”

               Lacie lets out a hiss before they can get into another stupid argument. She points the end of her tail at the sign, and it takes them a second to notice.

               “It’s doing something weird.”

               “Quick, let’s shoot it!”

               “No, look, that’s a sign it’s holding!” The second guy peers at the message. “Says ‘Fighting not needed, can’t let you take the physical book but am posting all chapters online at https- wait, you have a website?”

               She nods. A blog, actually.

               “Don’t be stupid.” The other guy gives him a shove. “There’s no way it has a website; this is some sort of trick!”

               “Yeah… yeah, you’re right! Wait, how is it a trick?”

               “Obviously it’s to confuse us and distract us from getting the treasure!” He cocks his rifle. “We have to stay focused! Stay behind me, I’ll get this thing right between the eyes-”

               Lacie finally looks down at the guy. Their gazes meet, the guy’s eyes widen; he yelps and staggers back, dropping his rifle and slapping a hand over his face… but he doesn’t drop dead. A second later, he peeks out behind his fingers.

               “I’m… still alive!” He cackles. “These contact lenses really do work!” Ha! Take that, you dumb lizard!”

               The other guy high fives him. “Yeah, take that! Now let’s kill this thing!”

               Huh, they’re slightly more prepared than she thought. Lacie stares at his smug smile a moment longer, then swings her tail around and dashes both of them against the right wall.

               There are no contact lenses that protect against blunt force trauma. They let out short-lived screams, cut off as soon as their bodies crash against stone; there’s a chorus of splintering cracks, then silence as they crumple to the ground amongst a pile of other shattered skeletons.

               Lacie looks at them now. Listens to all the familiar noises that could be heard in the absence of their voices - the dull roar of running water, the drips that fall from the ceiling and splash in puddles, the tinkling of gold coins as she shifts her weight.

               All the things she could hear, now that they were dead.

               Does she feel bad?

               Eh… sort of.

               She feels... more frustrated than anything else, these days. It’s not like she doesn’t give them a chance to escape, and they are trying to kill her… but still. It’s such a senseless loss of life - especially for such young, stupid humans - and over what? Some useless book?

               She turns and glares at it now, sitting on its little lecturn at the far end of the room. Stupid thing.

               One day, she will be free of it.

               But for now, she’s tired. She lays her head on glittering gold, closes her eyes, and falls asleep to all the quiet, comforting sounds of her home.

               She probably starts snoring, too… fuck, they’ve made her self conscious about it.

________________________________________________________________

               Chapter 7 of Wizard Animago’s Not-So-Secret Spellbook - His Shitty Death Spells and Why They’re Not to Die For, Seriously

               Hey everyone, this is 18Lacie5 back with another chapter overview. I know it’s been a year since I last posted, sorry about that. I’m usually way too tired to work on one of these - the joys of being cold blooded in England. Annnnnyyyyywwwwaaaayyyy, here is the much-anticipated chapter on ol’ Animago’s secret death spells!

               Spoiler alert: it’s gonna disappoint you.

               Now, for anybody new reading this, Sironus Animago was a 19th century English wizard that specialised in the study of animal transmogrification. If you don’t know who he is, that’s because he was a recluse who hated humanity so much he spent half his life trying to turn himself into literally anything else. The only time anybody hears about him is generally in treasure hunting circles, concerning a riddle he left behind for ‘any man worthy enough to learn his secrets.’ It is said that he wrote a spellbook containing all the knowledge he had accumulated over his lifetime, and considered it so dangerous he bound a basilisk into guarding it after his passing.

               Well, I am that basilisk, and I’m here to tell you why Animago’s spellbook is stupid and absolutely not worth dying for.

               This chapter’s an easy one: his death spells suck. Even by pre-Transcendence standards, they suck. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in offensive magic, and I’m pretty sure he threw these ones in here because hey, every spellbook’s gotta have a spooky scary dark magic section, right?

               Let’s examine the first spell of Chapter 7: ‘Planis fugere a mortalis huius’ (a moment of silence for that Latin.) So ‘fly away from this mortal plane(s?)’ sounds pretty and all, but it’s way too poetic to be a reliable spell. Unlike the standard modern equivalent, which is, you know, just ‘Die’, your magic’s gonna have to figure out a whole lot about this sentence before it puts it into action. Fly away, how? Where are they flying to? What could count as our ‘planis’ here? The ground?

               You see how easily this could result in something like giving your enemy a pair of wings instead of killing them. Great. That’s totally what you’d want to happen in battle, right?

               This issue would have come up immediately in testing, which leads me to believe it was a purely theoretical spell of Animago’s, and not a particularly good one (but hey, at least it’s original this time, right?) As with all of them it does come with the minorly unique addition of alternate pronounciations in five different animal forms, but again, unless you’re turning yourself into a chicken, a dog, a hawk, a bear or a snake on a regular basis, when are you ever going to need this?

               All in all, probably the worst chapter in the entire spellbook, with sloppy, overly complex incantations I’d toss away in a heartbeat if not for the fact that I’ve been bound into protecting them. Next post, we tackle chapter 11: turning your furniture into animals!

               (Because that’s what your couch is missing. Teeth and claws and an ability to run away from you.)

               Do s both a favour, and don’t make me kill you over these shitty spells.

               Curled around her favourite pile of gold, Lacie scrolls down her blog, reading its contents with drooping eyes. She uses her tail to move a laptop’s trackpad, which makes it a little difficult to navigate - the frustration she feels whenever the clicker shoots off in random directions is the main reason she’s still awake - but not as much as one might be expecting, as the laptop is not an ordinary laptop.

               It’s gigantic. The screen is bigger than her, and the top almost scratches against the ceiling. Carefully balanced above the wet stone on four smaller gold piles, the charging port is wired up to a truly massive, glowing purple power strip. It hums with magical energy, charging her laptop as she gets to the end of the blog post.

               ‘Do s both a favour ’... ah, typo. Lacie shoves her mouse in the general direction of the edit button for a few seconds before landing on it; now she clicks, adds a u, and struggles her way back to the main page.

               Fixed. That was totally worth the effort.

               She lets out a snort, which turns into a great big yawn and leaves her head resting on top of the laptop. The metal’s got some warmth to it; she feels that against her cheek, and almost immediately starts struggling to keep her eyes open.

               This was a mistake, she thinks. Come on, she literally just got up! She can’t go right back to sleep!

               Just a little more time… to herself… without any… any humans… she was supposed to... to...

               The distant whoosh of water overhead and the steady hum of the power strip lulls her closer and closer to sleep, and she tries one last time to lift up her eyelids-

               And plop.

               A little water droplet lands right in her eye, and she jumps. Rises up, blinks rapidly - first to get the blurriness out of her vision, then to get rid of the sleepiness already creeping its way back in.

               She shakes her head to clear it. Once she’s mostly awake again, she lets out a triumphant little puff of air: not today, sleep! Not when she’s got shit to do!

               With that, Lacie turns back to her laptop and mouses over to another tab, titled ‘List of Craig’ and next to it, ‘(1)’ for one new message.  She’s been waiting for that (1) to show up - hopefully she hasn’t taken too long to respond back.

               The tab opens after she jabs left click a couple times, revealing a short chatbox:

L at 20:25: [is that double length chalk shipment still available?]

M at 20:35: [yes]

L at 20:36: [would be very interested in buying that, are you are ok with teleswitch methods of payment? you don’t have to wheel it anywhere, just let me know where it is in the house]

               Fifteen whole minutes later at 20:51, there’s the much-anticipated reply:

               [k]

               Lacie reads this, and has a sudden urge to smack her head against the keyboard. With a growl rumbling in her throat, she gets typing

L at 20:52: [okay, where is the shipment in your house? what room? the spell i use needs this.]

               She sends it off… and waits, scowling at the chatbox.

               And waits...

               And waits...

               And is still waiting. Stars, maybe she could’ve taken a nap.

               Speaking of that, her eyelids are starting to droop again. She huffs and shakes her head in a couple quick, flicking movements; that jolts her back awake, and she clicks back to her blog page.

               The latest post on chapter 7 stares back at her. In the dim-lit room, it’s glaring down on her, almost accusingly.

               Next post, it reads, we tackle chapter 11: turning your furniture into animals!

Post updated: less than two minutes ago

Post uploaded: more than two years ago

               Lacie sighs. This is what happens now when she takes a nap.

               Years, they’ve begun to pass her by like nothing . All she remembers of the past two are groggy hazes, half-recalled dreams; the only times she’d wake would be to fend off the occasional treasure hunter, then back to her slumber she’d go, like that was her only purpose in life.

               It didn’t used to be this way. She didn’t used to feel so tired all the time. Why?

               ...She’s getting too big for her home. The magic that sustains her, it isn’t enough anymore.

               That’s got to be the explanation.

               Which means she’s got to get out of here. She’s got to break that damn binding that tethers her to the spellbook…

               Lacie shoots a look at it now. Glares at the stony grey lectern it rests on, and everything piled around the base of that. The wax candles. The incense burners. The unholy artefacts. The tomes upon tomes of academic research, summoning circle references, nonstandard incantation guides…

               She has to break it.

               By any means necessary.

               …

               She’s got a new message from the human.

M at 21:13: [I put it outside for you. Its in the back yard. Your welcome.]

               With an eyeroll, Lacie wraps her tail around the lectern’s pole and brings it in closer. The spellbook slides precariously around the surface it’s resting on, but with a bit of care she places it down in front of her without anything falling off the edges.

               Now, the book - she peers at it now.

               As always, it looks like a mess; its leather binding had been handmade by Wizard Animago himself, but only because the guy was too paranoid to have anybody else do it. He did a sloppy job, and over the centuries it had fallen to pieces until the only thing holding it together anymore was a couple remaining strings and a headache-inducing cocktail of protection charms.

               For Lacie, it’s tiny, making it incredibly hard to flip through. She can’t help but wonder if it had seemed this tiny the last time she’d opened it… maybe she’d grown a little bigger since then.

               Stuffing that thought down, she keeps flipping; past Chapter 2 on transfiguration, past Chapter 3 on general transmutation, Chapter 4 on alchemy… Chapter 5, there it is.

               And bingo bongo, there’s the spell she wants: ‘Sironus Animago’s Telekinetic Switch’... and Lacie can’t help but snort at that name, because it isn’t actually a spell he invented.

               Like many less-than-reputable wizards of his time, he had a habit of stealing spells from contemporaries in other fields of magic, slapping his name in front of them and trying to pass them off as his own to pad out the number of chapters in his spellbook.

               (The internet was a terrible invention for guys like him. Lacie had a lot of fun ripping into this practice when she wrote about Chapter 5.)

               Anyway, while she could find the original spell anywhere on the internet, there is something Animago added to every entry he wrote down in his book - that something is off to the far right, almost obscured by the yellowing and curling of the page.

               Here, next to five simple illustrations of a chicken, a dog, a hawk, a bear, and a snake, are the alternate pronounciations of the spell.

               Lacie squints at the last line - her mouth moves as she refamiliarises herself with the incantation - then she nods to herself, and scoops up a generous portion of gold coins, and closes her eyes.

               Pictures a backyard, with a crate full of summoning chalk, just waiting for her to pick them up.

               And with that in mind, she speaks.

               Not in words. Not in a language. She speaks in hisses and spits, in a string of meaningless noises that fit better in her mouth than any human tongue. At the end of it, though, that specific arrangement of sounds triggers an enchantment, which triggers the telekinetic switch.

               The coins in her grasp blink out of existence. A second later, they’re replaced by a crate of summoning chalk. It rattles when she picks it up; the sound echoes around her room until she puts it down by the rest of her demon supplies.

               There’s a lot piled up there now, Lacie thinks. Enough to summon a demon, and at that, she grimaces. Suppresses a yawn.

               She’d better get on with it, then.

________________________________________________________________

               Lacie is starting to think that maybe demons don’t design their summoning rituals with basilisks in mind.

               She’s cleared a space in her room for the circle - has shrunk her laptop back down to normal size with one of Animago’s spells - and now that it’s time to draw the thing, she’s encountered a problem.

               Have you ever tried to draw a chalk circle on wet stone tiles? Have you ever tried to do it without hands?

               It is, in a word, difficult.

               Fortunately, she’d seen this issue coming from day one. She bought a shape template from some website selling school supplies, and blew it up with the same sizing spell she uses on her laptop. She put that over a stone slab she pulled off a drier part of the wall, traced the circle, and voila! A summoning circle.

               (She still needed to decorate it, but she’d rather intentionally chosen a demon with a simpler design. It didn’t take too long to replicate, all things considered.)

               Now onto the candles. To Lacie’s eternal disappointment, there’s no spell on the books for fire, or heat, or anything like that; she has to get creative. While rifling through the backpacks of some ex-treasure hunters, she comes across a portable gas cooker. The ignition is a simple switch she can flip - tick tick tick fwoom , it goes, then fire.

               She keeps that close to her, ready to use.

               After that… The incantation. She physically can’t pronounce the Latin chants needed to perform a sufficiently compelling summoning, which is a big problem. Most powerful demons - ones powerful enough to break bindings - tend to be rather picky about how they’re summoned. Unless it’s done exactly right, they won’t bother showing up for her.

               She needs a demon that’ll be a little more forgiving, and after pouring through textbooks, how-to guides, summoning lists, there’s only one name that seems to fit the bill.

               Lacie lights the candles, one by one, and watches as the circle of Alcor the Dreambender begins to glow.

               Strange things begin to happen. Shadows lengthen. The air gets colder - she feels that like a punch in the gut. In the centre of the chalk lines, a wispy black smoke forms, and golden eyes open from within the darkness.

               Those eyes… Lacie isn’t used to being scared of things, but she stares into those eyes and knows, suddenly, definitively, that she isn’t the monster in the room anymore.

               They turn to look at her now, and-

               “Ow!” The void-black being winces back, rubbing its forehead. “What the heck? It’s like a migraine… what is this?”

               She blinks. Huh, her stare works on demons. They didn’t mention that the summoning guides.

               The demon’s straightening again. “Is this a binding? Because guys, I’m gonna be real annoyed if you tried… to… to bind me with..? Guys?”

               It looks around the circle in confusion… then up, up, following the line of her body to meet her eyes again.

               “Oh.” It gives a hard blink. “Ow, okay. You know you’re supposed to give me a sacrifice before you sic me on the big scary snake monster, right?”

               Shit, it doesn’t see the sign. She holds it up higher.

               “Like, at least a little bit of candy for starters, y’know? Just to be like ‘Hey, I appreciate you for coming all this way’ and I’ll be like ‘Thanks! Now I actually feel motivated to save you from-’” It notices the sign, and pauses. “Um. Hang on a second, I’m missing something.”

               Lacie watches the demon read over the sign: BOUND TO SPELLBOOK, it reads, DEAL TO BREAK BINDING IN EXCHANGE FOR HUMAN SACRIFICES? Its glowing eyes steadily widen, and it glances back up at her.

               “Wait, you summoned- agh!” It blocks her stare with a hand. “You summoned me?”

               She nods.

               “Okay, that’s… new. What did you want again… spellbook... break binding to spellbook- human sacrifice?” Its eyes narrow. “Where are these humans you’re talking about?”

               Putting down the sign, she points at the pile next to the door. Most of them are bones by now, but hey, apparently some demons like that. She watches this one inspect them.

               “Oh, they’re… not fresh. Where did they all come fr- ow ! Okay, please stop with the staring, that’s not gonna work for me!” When she obligingly averts her gaze, he lets out a sigh. “Thank you. Now, uh, I kinda wanna know where you got all these bones from?”

               He sounds way more bothered about that than Lacie thought he would. A little panic fluttering in her chest, she flips the sign over and grabs her carving rock.

               “What are you…? Oh, you can’t talk, can you. Alright.” It shuffles its feet. “You wanted me to break a binding… I can see it now. Connected to that book over there?”

               Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Alcor float closer to it. Closer, closer, too close - it tiggers something in her, and she has to stop writing to block it with her tail. Has to let out a hiss at the literal demon; thank the stars its eyes widen in understanding instead of darkening in anger.

               “Oh, you’ve been bound to guard it,” it says, stepping back. “I see. Sorry. So, those bones - they’re from people who tried to take it, right?”

               Thank the stars again that it realises, because she isn’t even halfway done with the message. She nods.

               “That makes sense. Wow, that must be some important spellbook you’re guarding, huh?”

               An important spellbook - Lacie can’t muffle a snort as she shakes her head. Alcor laughs too, though he sounds a little bit uncomfortable.

               “Oh, that, that’s gotta suck. I’m sorry, uh… What’s your name? If you have one- oh stars what am I saying, ‘if you have one’ that sounds so rude -”

               With another snort, she points at a welcome mat she’s carved just in front of the hidden door.

               “‘Welcome to Lacie’s home. You found the way in, now’ - heh - ‘find the way out.’ I like that, it’s funny!” He grins up at her. “I guess these guys didn’t- ow . Agh, sorry, I was gonna say, I guess these guys didn’t see the sign when they came in, huh?”

               A head shake; they did not. They certainly didn’t laugh at it either.

               (To be fair, they were generally too busy gaping at the giant basilisk in the room to give an opinion on her decorations, but it was nice to finally get a little validation. She is funny sometimes, isn’t she?)

               “Didn’t think so.” Alcor straightens his cufflinks. “Well, Lacie, while I don’t think I can technically count this as a human sacrifice, it should still be more than enough to break any basic bond. So ,”

               She watches him extend a hand wreathed in blue fire, hears him speak with a voice that brings back a little of that initial fear, reminds her that as friendly as he may seem…

               “D̵̜͍͖̘o̱͖̙̰̪̥̹͜ w̹͖̝̩͢e ̵̲͓̖h͇̹͖̞̦̠̮͘a̤̰v̹͔͚̭̦͜e̻ ̻̘̭̫a̩ ͈̳̯̯̰̣̪d̕e͇̪͍̜̻̪͘a̙̻̬̦͔ͅl̲̝͓͔?”

               She’s still dealing with a demon.

               “Wait, uh… you don’t have to shake.” He retracts his hand, demonic reverb gone as suddenly as it showed up, but the memory of it is hard to shake. “You can just, you know, nod or something, that’s fine.”

               Lacie thinks hard on that for a moment. She glances back at the spellbook, the stupid, useless spellbook she’s been bound to, sitting on a lecturn in a room she’s been trapped in her whole life, a room that’s getting smaller and smaller as the years go by.

               She’s outgrown this, she thinks. It’s time to move on.

               “Hang on a second.”

               Alcor’s voice makes her turn. He’s closed his eyes, and there’s a frown on his face that Lacie doesn’t like the look of. She leans in closer, listening to him mutter to himself.

               “This isn’t- now how did he do this…? Oh. Oh , that’s not… dammit, that’s not good.” He opens his eyes. “Uh, Lacie? Got some bad news: I, uh, can’t break the binding.”

               ...What? Why not?

               She blinks, watches him struggle to explain.

               “I-I mean I can, technically! But not with this deal - not that I don’t want to help you, but… it’s complicated. Demon deals are complicated, there’s got to be a give and a take and it sucks, it’s...”

               She watches him sigh. Frowns, as he looks away.

               “Look, uh, I was going on the impression that this was a simple guardian bond, but it’s not. I didn’t think - you know, you were laughing when I said it was an important spellbook or something - I didn’t think it was gonna be some high-level magic… but it is.” He clenches his fists. “He’s managed to bind it to your soul , and that gets tricky for demons. There’s got to be a give and a take, right? And if I give a soul freedom…”

               … he has to take another’s , Lacie thinks, and narrows her eyes. Is this heading where she thinks this is heading?

               “I have to take freedom too, which… well, you don’t feel like selling your soul to me, do you?”

               No no no, that’s the one thing all the manuals said never ever to do! She shakes her head vigourously, and he gives a quiet chuckle.

               “Yeah, didn’t think so… I really did want to help you with the binding, but I can’t. Not without enough payment in return.” The most powerful demon in the world just shrugs helplessly. “I’m sorry. It’s a stupid rule and I’m always trying to bend it if I can, but I can’t outright break it.”

               Lacie looks back at the spellbook. She knows a thing or two about stupid rules she can’t break. She really can’t, apparently.

               Apparently, she’s going to be stuck with this thing for the rest of her life. Well. This… this sucks.

               What is she going to do now?

               “Um, listen,” Alcor clears his throat. “I can’t- uh, I may not be able to break the binding, but if there’s anything else I can do… well, you’ve got a lot of stuff you can sacrifice to me, I can probably do just about anything - anything that’s not soul-related, anyway.”

               Lacie blinks. Just about anything... she could still get out of this room before it starves her. Yes, if he was able to teleport both her and the book outside-

               But what would she do after that? The book’s tiny ; she’d need some way to lug it around, and she’d need to do that while finding food for herself, and oh stars all the guides on demon deals were screaming at her to be specific right now-

               “Do you need some time to decide?”

               She looks down at Alcor, and nods. He floats back towards the summoning circle.

               “Alright, well, call me up again when you’ve got a deal in mind...” Glancing around the circle, at the crispy candles and the shaky drawings of his symbols, he blinks, then he glances back at her. “Uh… how long did this take you to do?”

               A while, Lacie thinks, and snorts. He seems to get the message.

               “Right, well, I’ll leave my calling card with you, so you don’t have to do that all over again.” He fishes the card out of his pocket; somehow, it comes out almost as big as him. “When you’re ready to make a deal, just prick your fing… uh, just hold it, okay? I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

               She takes it, and nods. Tries for a smile, like the humans do to show gratitude.

               “What are you-? Ow.” He squints away from her stare. “Um, well, it was nice meeting you, Lacie! I’m sorry I couldn’t help more.”

               Alcor seems like he wants to say more, but after a moment of hesitation he gives a quick wave and disappears in a puff of smoke. The candles go out with him - remembering the sheer effort it took to light them in the first place, she cringes at that.

               Well, at least she doesn’t have to summon him again. She looks from the smoke wisping off the wicks, down to the business card in her grasp.

               It’s glossy and black; on one side, there’s a white circle around Alcor’s golden symbol; presumably that’s the place you’re supposed to prick your finger on. There’s a little note up top that says, ‘Need help? Summon Alcor the Dreambender today!’ and she snorts at that.

               What a strange little creature… strangely endearing. She can hear how crazy she sounds thinking about it, but that demon was actually kind of a decent guy? She isn’t about to go selling her soul to him any time soon, but it felt like he genuinely wanted to help and that’s… refreshing.

               It’s certainly a change of pace from the treasure hunters she usually encounters.

               With that in mind, Lacie grips the card. It feels sturdier than it looks, but she still takes care tucking it underneath her. Once she’s done that, she turns back to face the circle again.

               She sighs. Blinks, slowly. After something like that, all she wants to do is take a nice long nap, but...

               Well, she’d better get cracking with that deal.

________________________________________________________________

Showing comments for Chapter 7 of Wizard Animago’s Not-So-Secret Spellbook - His Shitty Death Spells and Why They’re Not to Die For, Seriously

EdgyTwedgy666: [fake lol]

               Sometimes, Lacie really doesn’t like humanity. She likes reading their writings, she likes looking at the photos they take of their world, she even likes the occasional specific human, but as a whole?

Rey_hunter: [can you tell me how to solve animagos riddle?? plz]

JarrSlayer8: [I dont get it. Author keeps calling himself a battlisk? Is this a joke account, because he needs to say its a joke so people don’t get confused.]

Foundit_56: [hehe nice try dude… im coming for that spellbook even if your to scared to…]

               If this is what humans are like, she can understand why Animago hated being one so much. I mean seriously, she’s telling people what’s in the spellbook so they’ll leave her alone, and these are the kind of comments she gets?

Pyrocandro: [ummm, you know planis fugere a mortalis huius doesn’t translate to fly away from this mortal plane right? It looks more like go away to me… jus sayin. Maybe you should take a latin class? ;)]

               Lacie narrows her eyes.

               Maybe the non-treasure hunting humans are nicer.

               Maybe up on the surface, humans are actually cool and not smugly correcting her Latin on every post.

               Maybe, but it’s a shame a human trapped her down here to guard his shitty book, so she might never find out.

               A sigh, long and tired. She’s been brainstorming deals ever since Alcor left, but with her still lugging around the spellbook they all seemed… unfeasible. The thing is falling apart already - how’s she supposed to keep it safe out there? Call it a lack of imagination, but she’s exhausted and the only thing she can think of is to keep holing up in her room, ask Alcor to boost the energy of Animago’s old sustaining spells so it can support her again.

               That would work. It would, but it feels…

               Lacie grimaces.

               It feels like there’s more than this. There’s a whole world out there beyond her room, beyond guarding some spellbook; she’s been looking at it ever since she took a laptop off a treasure hunter’s body. She’s been looking, she’s been reading, she’s been writing, and, just as she was about to make that deal with Alcor, she suddenly realised she’s been wanting .

               Wanting to go out there. Wanting to explore, wanting to leave this place. She’s outgrown it, in more ways than one, and now the thought of staying here, forever...

               It feels like she’ll regret not making a better deal when she had the chance.

               But what is a better deal? Maybe she’s just too tired to think, but her mind is blank and now she’s just scrolling through stupid human comments, thinking this is what I’ll have to deal with for the rest of my life...

woodzarcor4lyfe: [how does a bastlisk type lol theyve got no arms]

               Oh, god. Oh, no.

SheldonHunts: [Actually, basilisks are classified as supernatural BEASTS instead of supernatural BEINGS. They’re non-sentient, so I’m preeetty sure you’re not a basilisk dude... cool post tho, was fun to read :)]

               Fucking. Humans. Why are they like this?

Epicbl00dhound: [looooool i bet there’s so many dumbasses in the comments fallin for this………. your not a bastlicks buddy i bet you made this up to feel special………  i bet your just some guy in your moms basement pretending…… dont pretend cuz humans are THE BEST we beat all other spacies (watch pronatpat he has the TRUTH) so get out of there….. be a human!]

               Ugggghhhhhhhh, why is this her life? Why can’t she-

               Wait.

               Lacie reads that last comment again. Through all the weird grammar and the pro-nat grossness and everything else she doesn’t even want to unpack… it’s giving her an idea.

               Be a human...

               A strange, strange idea - but it might just actually work.

[emsartwork]

ask dump! Separated loosely by topic 

Questions and Comments

1. is this a homestuck thing. this is a homestuck thing isnt it  2. lol i love doing both!!! i love world building but i also like trying my hand at redesigning the mess that is canon fashion. @theoretical-artist​ 3. thank you!!! oritel and marion are in this post! 4. ayyyyy inginio hit me up (thank you lol) 5. Thank you! 6. maybe? i’ll see if i get around to it, i still have a few characters to get to so the school fairies and the last two selkies might show up with them 7. probably not.... it would be super fun but unless it was a commission i don’t feel like i have time haha 8. I’ve seen their blog around!! i can’t remember if i follow or not but i know who ur talking about and they cool @winxy-writing @winxys-written-world

Character and Worlbuilding

1. My brilliant nerd daughter!!! She sometimes gets so into coding or a video game she forgets to eat or drink so the girls watch out for her. She’s prone to dissociating, especially if the situation is emotional. Her hair is really soft. she actually loves sappy romantic things but has trouble accepting them or vocalizing that she wants them because they’re impractical/illogical. she discovered romcoms when she got to alfea and they are her ultimate guilty pleasure(only flora knows abt this and is always slipping recs to her) 2. They’re weirdly one of my fav couples??? like maybe its because i relate to and have projected onto both of them lmao. but any ways. Daphne and Thoren actually met when they were kids, but didn’t spend much time together because it was at a formal event. Daphne is technically 20 years older than Thoren(only a few years older than Sky), but they’re the same physical age because Daphne spent so long as a spirit. They probably wouldn’t get married as quickly in my version, especially with Daphne’s trauma. Daphne will have nightmares sometimes and Thoren has a whole routine for comforting her and helping her feel safe and grounded. Thoren gets anxious easily, and Daphne will use her magic to subtly change the environment so he feels more comfortable. they like to watch reality tv together and yell at dramatic people. 3. omg yes. this was the most frustrating thing i was watching through winx with my dad like a month ago and every time bloom called her adoptive parents by their first names i yelled at her lol. she would call Vanessa mama and Mike daddy(if you make a kink joke i will eat your liver). She would call Marion and Oritel mom and dad.  4. Yeah kind of! part of her exhaustion in Dowlland was the fact that she had been in fairy mode for so long, hiking underground, and tossed around in a river like??? anybody would need a pick me up after that. She (and all solarians) do have to live where there’s a lot of natural light as they require a high amount of vitamin d(or the equivalent of it for solarians). short trips usually aren’t a problem, Stella is just hella unlucky in the second season lmao. @moonpeachblossom 5. the short answer as to why she’s a blond (scottish??? in one of the dubs???) in an asian inspired culture/planet is because racism (or not so short bcus its a lot to unpack honestly). the answer in my version however is a pretty simple fix. She bleaches her hair. she’s paler than musa but she aint white.  6. I haven’t really yet!! Helia is struggling with his two fairly opposed cultural influences, trying to figure what he wants and whats right for him. He was raised on Lynphea but had frequent trips to Vaonaa. Lynphea is very grounded, they’re slow and steady and stubborn. Vaonaa is much more flexible, they’re flighty and spontaneous and easily adaptable. Helia’s dads love eachother and helia very much but they are VERY different people and both want different things from Helia(they try not to pressure too much but the expectations are still there). Helia’s Vaonaaj dad wants him to pursue magic, specifically wind or air magic. Helia’s Lynphean dad wants him to become a warrior. Helia feels like he’s kind of a misfit in both Vaonaaj and Lynphean culture. It took a while, but he did finally confide his feelings in Flora and she encouraged him to talk with his dads about finding his niche.  7. oooooooh fun fun relationshipsssss Bloom and Sky: so bloom and sky aren’t the most stable couple, and in my version it would take bloom a little longer to be ok with dating a prince. Bloom is fairly insecure in her relationships because of self worth issues, and tend to run away from problems instead of dealing with them. Sky on the other hand is confident but doesn’t really know how to handle people’s feelings and tends to push confrontation. I do believe that with better writing Sky and bloom could be a dope couple but as is in canon they’re VERY problematic.  Stella and Brandon: babies. they love each other so much its the best omg. Stella finds her worth in her appearance but she always seems to take brandon’s complements in a less.... arrogant way? if that makes sense? like she truly appreciates them and wants his support. i wish we knew more about Brandon but he’s legit such a good boyfriend. I think they fight mostly when Stella is being a little selfish, or when Brandon is too busy to meet her emotional needs. Flora and Helia: MORE BABIES. so Helia is more of a drama queen in the comics but we’ll ignore that for right now lol. Flora and Helia are probably the least problematic couple in the entire show. They met. Flirted a little. Confessed. and started dating with out any major problems. if i can remember correctly they don’t even really fight??? unless icy has frozen helia’s heart or something lol. I think both Helia and Flora’s love language is quality time so they’re fairly low key and just like to be in the same space and each other.   Musa and Riven: boy oh boy. Ok so, ignoring the several times Riven was LITERALLY MIND CONTROLLED his character is still difficult to deal with. I think Musa and Riven are both very intense people, and while that can be super fun and develop into a good relationship, it can also lead to LOTS of problems. I think my major problem with how they broke up was that Musa didn’t support Riven’s training? like i understand being upset you can’t see ur person often, or if they’re really busy, but Riven supported Musa’s music several times in the previous seasons it just seemed weird Musa was so unfairly demanding of him? Tecna and Timmy: nerd babies. They’re super cute honestly. I think Timmy was probably the one to instigate the relationship and bonded with Tecna over technology since she wasn’t super emotionally available at first. They have issues when Tecna is unable to voice her emotions and timmy needs to know what she’s feeling mostly, but after the first few times they’ve both learned to give the other space to figure their stuff out. Aisha and Nabu: ugh perfect couple. minus the kind of sketchy beginning lol. Aisha and Nabu generally don’t fight once they get used to each other. Nabu is a focal point that aisha is kind of bungee corded to if that makes sense? like obvi not in a restricting way. its just Aisha is hella active and needs her own space to explore and grow, but Nabu is her solid ground that she relies on.  Aisha and Nex: i actually don’t hate nex as much as the rest of the fandom lol. so like i said Aisha is an active, independent woman, and if Nabu was a separate, stationary, focal point for her, I think Nex is related, moving, counter point. So like Nex can actually keep up with Aisha, and push her and challenge her. Which isn’t a bad thing in relationships so long as a mutual respect is there.   8. well. canon is a little..... messy. My version of the girls definitely retain their individualism. for other differences... they’re just a little more fleshed out? i guess? like Bloom’s moody behavior in the show i think is because of her insecurity issues, so that plays a part in how i draw her and think of her.  9. ok wow this is gonna be tough well here we go Sky: I think sky is an ESTJ he’s not super emotional(inf Fe) but can lean toward controlling(dom Te). he seems to like tradition and think social promises are important(Si). Brandon: ESFJ. Brandon is the mom friend of the boys ok. He goes along with sky’s crazy plans, tries to subtly set Riven up with musa(season 1 i think?), some how managed to land a social butterfly like Stella and seems to just navigate social situations REALLY easily(dom Fe). he also seems to hate being disrespected or taken for granted(Si) stella does this occasionally.  Timmy: ISFJ???? thats the vibe i get hear me out ok so in season 2 Timmy gets tecna the exact computer part she needs because 1. He knows they both like things to be practical(Si) 2. He knows and remembered the part she was talking about and filed it away in his brain(Ti) and 3. He and Tecna bonded over tech (Fe) Riven: honestly he’s a tough one.... Maybe a really stunted and angry ISFJ? (speaking from personal experience i am an ISFJ) i don’t have a real reason why but riven’s behavior is really confusing in the show so it makes typing tough..... possibly INTJ as well....... Helia: ISFP. Lmao I might be basing this entirely off of stereotypes but helia has a strong pacifist belief and can be moody(Fi, and more in the comics lol) is attuned to his surroundings(Se) seems pretty focused??(Ni) and i can’t think of his Te showing up be it is an inferior  Nabu: ISTJ weirdly a good fit with Aisha(ESTP) tho?? even though he’s an Si dom, he doesn’t go along with the arranged marriage because its not what he believes(Fi) and he’s stubborn about it(Te). Roy: ENFJ honestly just a cutie. He’s personable(Fe), focused for the most part(Ni), and is comfortable in his environment(Se).  Nex: ENTP? maybe?? He’s pretty impulsive and has that “work around” mentality I associate with ENTPs.... idk this one doesn’t seem to fit super well...  Thoren: Maybe INFJ?? i mean thoren honestly doesn’t have a lot of screen time but he’s attentive(Ni), and tries to take care of people(Fe). most of the infj’s i know are fun but weird lol, but i think thoren has anxiety so that could play into him being less “out there” in his behavior.  if any of yall have input on this feel free to let me know. 10. ooooooh good question. So I’m basing these on their parent’s name and the names of people from their planet. Bloom: Hestia or Enya, i also think she got sent to earth with an article of clothing or a blanket that had her name on it, which is why her name is the same lmao Stella: Stella is actually named pretty appropriately considering the other names we have are Luna, Radius, Nova, Chimera, and Casandra, all of those are fairly latin/roman based names.  but she could also be called Clara, Aura, Venus etc. Musa: Her mom and dad have very asian sounding names but the princess of melody is named Galatea, so honestly anything is on the table. Aulos, Hee-Young, Jia Li, Kaida, etc. Tecna: lol everybody on Zenith has ridiculous names so im just loosely basing them off of sciencey stuff. Nobelia, Xenon, Titania. Aisha: I actually really like Aisha’s name! Ayize, Sizani, Mehrbano would work tho. Flora: what even is the naming system of Lynphea i don’t understand it. Im gonna make them vaguely naturey and European-ish?? Calla, Terra, Rowan, Willow, I could go on and on there are so many plant names. 11. Hmmm yeah, so basically in my world a person with TOO MUCH magic gets overwhelmed and kinda goes a little crazy(the ancestral witches) the same thing happens with tritannus when he gets the emperor's throne power. He’s loyal to icy and she to him until he looses his ability to think clearly and turns on icy, icy gets freaked out and leaves with her sisters when they swoop in to rescue her. they don’t so much “break up” as they are “broken up” by the circumstances. In general Tritannus does really like Icy, hes attracted to her ambition and powerful personality. Icy started out just manipulating Tritannus but caught feelings oops 12. Yeah so, humans in general can withstand a lot of wild magic as their body “metabolizes” it quickly. Kalshara(the cat lady you don’t know the name of) used extremely concentrated samples, combined with other spells to keep the wild magic in her body permanently. If a human with out a properly developed magic biome (a lot of earthians only have a low functioning one) get exposed to a wild magic source they would probably gain some aspects of fairy animals, probably not like, fur, or anything but eye and hair color changes, maybe some patterns on the skin. but there’s also the chance that they would just.... die..... cus that happens with animals too lmao sry. @weirdghostly

[mic-and-cheese]

Please info dump about your husband...I wish to know more about him!

AAAAA OK I DIDN’T THINK I’D GET THIS FAR 

Idk where to start so I’m just gonna ramble?? I guess??? Puttin it under a readmore bc it’s long as FUCK

I think one of the most interesting things about Buddy is his backstory? Like he used to love supers but now hates them because his idol rejected him? I’ve seen a lot of different interpretations of his past, and I apologize for starting off on this note but Buddy comes off to me as someone who was neglected as a child, so he has trouble with empathy, other social skills, and doesn’t really have a way to healthily deal with stress, which lead him to go down the path he did. I think he was born in a small southern town, but moved to Metroville and became enamored with superheroes because he’s now living somewhere where he can see and meet them personally. He views Mr. Incredible as a father figure because of a lack of a father or other male role model in his life and he probably feels like maybe his life would be better or that he’d be more loved if he had powers, and he’s been constantly told and lead to believe that he can’t be a hero without powers, so telling him that is a sore spot for him.He started messing with machines and learning how to fix them because his family didn’t have enough money to fix or replace things around the house when they broke and he found that he really had a passion for building and creating. Of course, he’s a really smart kid, he loves to read and loves math and science and did well in school, but some adults kinda thought he was a nightmare to be around cuz he’s a lil bit bratty and tries to get attention, but he got along well with teachers and other adults who recognized that he was talented and gave him the attention he needed. Buddy is really used to having to cause a lot of trouble to get what he wants or to be listened to, which is a trait he still kept into adulthood. His first real invention that wasn’t just him tinkering around with whatever he could find was his rocket boots, and he made them with spare parts he found or bought. He’s met Mr. Incredible a few times before, but he was hoping that being able to show off his talent would impress him enough to let him be his sidekick.Ever since he was young he’s always been an entrepreneur, making money by fixing stuff for neighbors and taking other odd jobs.Even after he was rejected he still loves superheroes, or at least the idea of them, even though he doesn’t really like them as people anymore but I’ll get to that later.The interesting thing about him really is just how much I can estimate about him just from what little info we know about him in canon, and how many ways there are to interpret him. I’ve seen him be interpreted as a kid who was spoiled and didn’t know how to deal with rejection, and while I can’t say I like that interpretation, but it is possible. Even though his backstory is interesting, his personality is just…??? Lovely??? I mean it’s really not but I think it is. He’s just??? so geeky and adorable and I love seeing him get so excited over superheroes even though he has a love-hate relationship with them, and he’s just fearless and probably a bit of a dare devil? He really seems like the sort of person who would try anything at least once and doesn’t get embarrassed easily. I mean it’s just so amazing how he’s an evil mastermind but like, he’s still Buddy ya know? Like he still has his excitable, nerdy, funny personality, but he can also be downright terrifying? It’s interesting from a character writing standpoint of course but like, just? On a personal level??? I mean his personality alone flusters me because everything about him (save for uh, the murder) is something I find obviously given the subject of the blog, really attractive. Like he’s not afraid to be himself or play around and he embraces self-insert esqe enjoyment so like??? How cool is it to have an f/o who may also have f/os or at least be supportive of self inserting!!Of course even though theres a lot about his personality that’s cute, there are a lot of things that aren’t, so he’s not really the best with empathy, and he can be pretty cruel, petty, selfish, and he has difficulty opening up to people but I do think that he’s open to learning and changing with someone he trusts, and can be really sweet when he wants to, even if it is a little awkward.One thing I really love about him is how you can tell that he’s got a life and interests outside of Kronos. Like yeah he’s really focused on his plan obviously, but his personality is just so strong in the things around him and the things he does and says that make him feel so much more dimensional. For example, a lot of his tech is integrated with or inspired by nature, so I really think he likes biomimicry, probably because he’s learning how to one up nature, aka basically what his entire motivation is. I love that he’s obviously just got cute little tics like how his eye twitches in the lego games or how much he likes to gesture and hum and whistle. (also his humming is so cute oh my god)And I’m just constantly in awe of how smart and resourceful he is. I mean my love of tropical islands aside, Nomanisan is just… impressive. Like its so ingenious to build his base literally into the island in a way that makes use of its natural features, such as the underwater landing pad, secret exits, underground passageways, and of course the lava wall, and I just can’t help but wonder how he came up with all of that and how long and how much money it took? And thats just taking about the things on the island that are canon. I mean, from my own speculations I figure that the island not only has that amazing lava wall, but is built to redirect the flow of lava to prevent any volcanic activity on the island, keep lava and ash away from expensive tech (the rocket and mantajet for example) and provide power to the island via geothermal energy. Maybe even a little use of wave energy too if necessary since it’s a pretty good option for a place surrounded by water. I assume Buddy chose the island for its resources, (namely a metal alloy that one of the books mentioned) considering he’s made it pretty self sustaining with what it already has after implementing all his tech. The location, being far from any other place, really, and outside of any governmental jurisdiction is good too, so when you really think about it, he probably could have gotten away with a lot of the things that he did, which is, uh, pretty impressive to say the least, not to mention the real world location of Nomanisan (Easter Island) doesn’t face the sorts of hurricanes and harsh weather you’d expect for a small island in the middle of no where.And I mean??? He’s a genius inventor villain who is still extremely in tune with nature to the point that it inspires some of his inventions??? How cool and unique is that??? I’m sure the island must be an amazing place to be, I mean the beaches and caves, rivers, waterfalls… it must be such a joy to explore. And I dunno, I’ve always imagined that working for Syndrome could be kinda fun sometimes. I mean, he is a pretty funny guy with a good sense or humor, and surely guarding and what not all day must get boring, so I’m sure he’s not opposed to having some fun every now and then.And he’s certainly not ashamed of what he considers fun either! I have a feeling he’d like scale models and collectibles and would go to the ends of the earth for a rare one that he particularly likes, especially if they’re ones he gets to build himself. I’m sure he’s a huge fandom geek as well, like name any 50’s-60’s sci fi movie and he knows it by heart. And with all his animal inspired inventions, I’m sure he loves going out in nature and watching the unique wildlife of Nomanisan. Given Easter Island’s own wildlife, I’m sure sharks and whales, and even some really interesting lizards would be pretty common around there. (And given how much forest it has in comparison to Easter Island, I’m sure there’s A LOT more than that. Maybe even rare species only native to the island.) I also really see Buddy as the sort of guy who just loves new and exciting experiences, no matter what it is. Like if it’s something he’s never done before, he’s on board!With all that in mind it’s just so wonderful just how much of a well rounded character he is. I mean he’s happy, nerdy, childish, and excitable, but he’s also bitter, revenge driven, and unempathetic. That being said, his relationships with other people all have such an interesting dynamic to them. He adores Bob for his ingenuity while still hating him enough to try to kill him and his family, and he cares for Mirage but doesn’t really know how to show it. Like I said earlier, I think he was neglected as a kid, so he never really learned how to properly regulate his emotions, so a lot of the time he’s pretty conflicted. He’s an extrovert who wants to be loved and adored, yet he’s too scared to trust after being betrayed. He has a hard time relating to people and thus doesn’t understand how his actions can hurt them when he means well, for example, betting Mirage’s life or saving people from his own robot without proper regard to his surroundings that a truly well meaning hero would have (aka, throwing a tanker truck just to make a spectacle out of saving a mother and child with no regard to what damage the truck could have done).Of course, while his scenes with Mirage can be interpreted as him not really caring for her, I think it’s the opposite. I think he knew that betting her life was the only way he could have saved her (he couldn’t have pulled her away from Bob, shocking Bob could have shocked her, and if he had shown any weakness for her, Bob could have used that as leverage against him, whereas if he shows no remorse, if Bob had killed her he’d just have a dead lady on his hands for pretty much no reason). Granted as well meaning as he was, I don’t think he understands how that hurt Mirage. He sees that he saved her, and doesn’t expect her to be mad about it, but the reality is that she honestly does have a right to be mad about her life being risked, especially when he never clearly communicated that his intent was to save her.Somehow I’ve gone this far without even talking about why I like him??? I mean I don’t even think I’ve ever fully explained why I like him. I’ve tried, sure, but I don’t even think it’s something I can actually convey in words? But I’ll try??? Anyway, he’s literally everything to me, and I don’t just mean that in a sappy romantic way. I’ve always been fascinated with him since I was 6 years old and saw the movie for the first time. He reminds me of happy memories with my dad who passed away some years ago because I saw the movie with him and I remember how much it confused little 6 year old me. Like the fact that the movie started with interviews was the wildest thing to me, and I don’t even think I could even comprehend the plot until much later on. But during that first experience, I don’t know what it was but something about him always stuck with me. Funnily enough one of the things that stuck with me was his joke from Jack Jack Attack and that was the first joke that I knew I didn’t understand but knew I would someday and I literally made a mental note back then telling myself that I knew I’d understand it, and well, thanks for remembering that 6 year old me, because I get the joke now and it’s still funny to me. (I also never actually realized that the guy silhouetted in front of the lava was supposed to be Syndrome until like last summer and I always just thought that was something that was never explained haha.) Anyway after seeing the movie with my dad, he asked me who my favorite character was. I said Violet since I thought saying otherwise would have been weird at the time, but in reality it’s always been Syndrome and that’s just an important memory to me.And now he’s that memory and so many other things to me. He’s what finally helped me recover from a rough couple of years by showing me that people could still create wonderful and impressive things despite being cast away by someone that they once adored and that my success wasn’t based on their approval, which finally helped me shut them out of my life and become so much happier. He helps me manage my anxiety because all the things that make me scared would be nothing to the guy who still wore a cape and rocket boots even after they nearly got him killed. And of course, I love him because he’s nerdy, excitable, brave, and smart, and even because I feel like I can understand his lack of empathy. He’s just such a well rounded, multifaceted character that it’s almost hard to believe he’s fictional haha. With all that combined, he’s one of my my special interests too! I mean it’s hard not to want to know everything about such an interesting guy right?But even if you can’t see the appeal in his personality, it’s no question that he’s just amazing in terms of his accomplishments alone. I mean he can’t be any older than like, 28 max (I consider him 25 though, since the closest we ever get to a canon age is mid 20’s)  and yet he’s a billionaire with his own private island, at least one successful company, and groundbreaking tech that makes today’s tech look simple, but he did all in the EARLY SIXTIES.The mantajet in particular is just awe inspiring to me, mostly because I love planes, but I mean, most planes take 15 years just to be conceptualized. Buddy created a completely automated, uniquely shaped, supersonic, semi-aquatic jet with the ability to hover in under that time. It’s like if the SR-71 Blackbird were a luxury all-terrain vehicle! And I am just so endlessly impressed that it can go underwater, like I’m sure its entire design was based around that ability, since the engines would have to be strong enough to withstand literal tons of water going through them, which is why I suspect they’re placed in those cavities above the wings, to direct air and water to go through them in the right way while also keeping them intact in the impact! (they may be waterproof but they are unfortunately not (or maybe fortunately, depending on how you look at it) uh,,,, Syndrome proof) And the “manta feelers” probably help the plane hover and also serve as the landing gear??? UGH IT’S GENIUS, SUCH RESOURCEFUL GENIUS.Of course I’ve gotta talk about the design of his aero boots too!! He’s come such a long way since the rocket boots!!! I’m so proud of him!!! The new boots are just as genius as the mantajet, really. They have vents in the sole, probably to either keep them from overheating or to draw in oxygen to use for combustion. I love how the metal strip is implemented into the heel and up the back of the boots, that’s probably where the fuel and engines are housed, and man, I can’t imagine how much power they’d both have to generate, those tiny little engines. I’m sure they run on some pretty efficient stuff. And how the soles of the boots look like they can come off of the main boot itself, I’m sure that makes for easy maintenance! I also love how the animators added the detail of the screw in the arch of the boot so that it articulates properly, rather than just saying “yeah whatever he can walk fine somehow with these half-metal boots.”And then there’s Zero Point Energy??? I mean, ZPE is actually based off a real scientific concept that would essentially harness infinite energy. I think about this on the daily and I still can’t comprehend it. He harnessed infinite energy. In the 60’s. And made a device small and powerful enough to literally generate it in the palm of his hand. Since all of that energy is generated in his gauntlets, it’d have to pass through his hands to reach his fingertips, so not only can he generate it, but he created a suit that can conduct infinite energy around him so that it doesn’t hurt him. Like no wonder he’s so protective of ZPE. (On that note, this is exactly why I think he designed his suit and not Edna or Galbaki. He’d never trust anyone else to design a suit with his most valuable tech built into it)Not to mention, how interesting is it that a ruthless serial killer villain like him chooses a technology that doesn’t harm his target and instead just freezes them in place!Also also can I talk about just how amazing the other features of the gauntlets are? I mean they hold a small bomb that can produce a big enough blast to in theory kill the nearly invincible Mr. Incredible. He’s got a laser powerful enough to make a clean hole through the roof of a house, and those gauntlets can take a hell of a beating too, considering it was thrown all over the city during the final Omnidroid fight with minimal damage. Oh also the little sliding cover over the buttons is cute.Ok ok, next there’s the energy prisons. I assume they work on ZPE since they’re able to suspend victims in mid-air? I literally shouldn’t be so excited about this thing but I can’t even get over how ingeniously HORRIBLE they are. I mean I don’t want to get into any details, cuz if I do I’ll go into scarily gruesome territory but those things are terrifying. They work with almost any sort of super he could possibly be keeping prisoner with such a pretty simple idea really, just by suspending them against their own weight. The only fault in them really is that Violet can get through them, but he may not have necessarily known that beforehand since I doubt he had any force fields to test them on (or at least any “organic” ones).Implementing the monorail system is such a perfect idea too!! It makes it easy to get around, keeps guards from getting lost, works on all terrain, and keeps supers from seeing things they don’t need to see, so long as they stay on the tracks they’re supposed to be on.And speaking of hiding, while not technically tech related, I don’t know if he knows about the KRONOS carved in the cave, but I bet you he does know about that cave and all the other hard to reach areas of the island, since there’s an I2 deleted scene that shows he knows how Gazerbeam died, and the guards know to split up to catch Dash in one of the caves. Also related to Kronos, I like to make fun of his computer room for it’s impractical at best, dangerous at worse design, but listen. The security system. It’s brilliant. He’d have to engineer some sort of substance that stays compact and non-sticky while not in use, but that can quickly expand and maintain its strength to capture intruders. And the victim would still have to be able to breathe through them too?? And like how do they come off?? I’m sure that’s an interesting process too. The “fire randomly” approach is also interesting, since it pretty much leaves no escape. And what about under the walkway??? Like what’s way down there??? I don’t even have a theory for that, really. And and and how does the security system for that room work? Does it recognize unfamiliar noises perhaps, since it was triggered by Bob’s suit tracker, cuz if it were triggered by just random noise, I’m sure Syndrome or Mirage would have accidentally triggered it before. Oh, also also also x3 the computer screen automatically shuts off once the security system is activated, which is a nice touch, so that the enemy can’t get any more info as soon as the system is notified. Having only one way in and out of the room is clever too.I JUST WANNA KNOW MORE ABOUT NOMANISAN’S SECURITY PROTOCAL OKI wish we had seen more of the technology that he used for Mirage’s message too. Like, he obviously uses the voice matching and scanning technology on the island (the security bird and life probe) but what about that illusion effect on the tablet?Also I mean, I’m sure being an arms dealer during the Cold War in itself has got to be extremely lucrative, but that doesn’t even account for how high tech his other weapons that weren’t mentioned must be.Ok, ok I think that covers all of his other inventions. I haven’t talked about the Omnidroid yet because hooo boy do I have some things to say about that beautifully terrifying piece of tech. I love that he used an iterative process on it to build upon its design (also the idea that he respects the strength his self-proclaimed nemesis enough to build up the robot to prepare to fight him), and I’ve actually gone back and tried to figure out the reason behind the changes he made in each iteration. And listen. How long do you think it took him to build and test all those robots? A few years maybe? Nah son, using the movie’s timeline, I’ve calculated that if he were working at a consistent pace throughout the project, it’d take FOUR MONTHS. 10 highly advanced ai robots. Fully drafted, programmed, built, and tested in 4 months. Oh and did I mention HE CREATED AI. LIKE ACTUAL AI.And his control over the Omnidroid (at least Omnidroid 9 anyway) is brilliant too. He’s got perfect control over it, and the reason I bring that up is because Omnidroid 10 tried to kill him. I’ve spent a long time wondering why he had perfect control over 9 but 10 disobeyed him, and my conclusion is that he implemented some new code in 10 that would make it act more destructively, thus making it more difficult to control but he never actually expected it not to listen to him because he didn’t actually test it on the island since, uh, having a 10 story tall rampaging robot on the loose near your base isn’t a good idea. I also headcanon that 10 was built to self destruct when defeated so that no one could trace its origins back to Syndrome had he won and been considered a hero.With that long ass section out of the way I’d finally like to bring up that if Syndrome did indeed create all of these inventions, that’d made him a computer programmer, aerospace engineer, possibly a civil engineer, a chemist, the inventor of harnessing infinite energy and ai, and thats only what I can think of off the top of my head.Another one of my favorite things about Buddy is that I love how easy it is to imagine him as a way more fleshed out character than he really is. On multiple occasions I’ve heard other people say that he seems like someone who would love conventions, or probably be an internet troll, and other things of that nature that relate more to his interests and personal life. I mean sure, anyone can headcanon anything for any character, but the way people headcanon Buddy just feels very… natural? Very fitting? Like, he’s a character that’s very easy to imagine having a life and hobbies outside of his evil schemes.Another little interesting thing is how he’s pretty much his own downfall. I mean sure a lot of his losses can be attributed to the Parrs defeating him in some way, but his most glaring faults are usually things that he could have prevented had he acted a little differently or planned a little differently. I dunno I just think that’s interesting for no particular reason.And one more thing I haven’t really discussed/seen discussed as much as I really think it should because it’s an interesting part of his character is does he see himself as a hero or a villain? And There are some interesting interpretations to that question as well. For example, if he views himself as a hero it’s probably because he doesn’t believe that superheroes are actually good people at heart, and that they just put up a facade of being kind and helpful to the public, which he uses to justify his atrocities. Or perhaps he legitimately does see himself as a hero for wanting to give normal people the opportunity to be super, or maybe he thinks that he’s doing a service to the world by killing off the people who are simply putting up that facade of good, or perhaps he sees himself as a victim deserving of a “redemption.” And if he sees himself as a villain, maybe he doesn’t understand or want to acknowledge the full weight of his actions, because it’s all a game to him, or maybe he does see himself as a bad person beyond redemption, so he decided that being a supervillain was fated or required of him. Regardless of which idea he believes, it’s obvious that Syndrome very much so lives (and has always lived) in his own fantasy world where things do play out exactly like how comic books do, and that his actions have no real weight to him (except when he feels like he’s been wronged, because he views himself as the protagonist or antagonist of the “story” aka making his own emotions relevant “plot points,” even if no one elses’ emotions (except maybe Bob’s) have any importance to him) because it’s all a comic book in his mind.Anyway there’s my nonsense rant

[bfreelancing]

Something new, something borrowed, something...failed?

Hello World,

I can't take it anymore.

I just can't.

I have to tell someone all these stories, or I'm positively going to BURST.

So, this is me, starting a blog that no one will read. A blog basically for myself to chronicle my adventures as a freelance marketer; a blog that I can pretend people are reading so they can share in the hilarity of my adventures.

And I'm doing this anonymously - or as anonymously as one can be on the internet. I'm not going to share client names or locations or anything like that. If I use people's names, they will be changed. BUT, these stories can be crazy and specific so if it sounds like you, then it most likely is. Sorry. (Not really).

My life got a little off track at the beginning of 2021. No, not because of COVID (though that did add to the whole ordeal). I had a personal matter take over my life. I couldn't search for new clients. In fact, I barely managed to hang on to my old clients.

But that ordeal is now over. And I find myself with more time on my hands. And not nearly enough money to pay off all my debt (we're talking student loans AND credit card debt incurred during COVID trying to keep my family afloat - oh, and not to mention the taxes I owe the government for 2020).

I have once again started the *interesting* journey of reaching out to companies in the hopes of gaining new freelance clients.

What do I do, exactly? Marketing. But really anything a company needs. I once helped a company get a new phone system. I work completely remotely (I've done so for several years before COVID made it the cool thing to do) and never visited their building which was several states away. Did I know anything about phone systems before that? Nope. But I do now.

I try to stick to marketing, though: website design and development, social media management, graphic design, photography, videography, blogging, etc...if companies give me a chance, that is.

I've done this for seven years now. SEVEN. I can't believe it's been that long. Where does the time go? Have y'all seen the movie The Last Holiday with Queen Latifah? There's a line in that which has stuck with me over the years. I can't find the exact quote online (come on, Google, you're letting me down), but it's something like this: You put your head down, and you work, and you work, and you work, until one day you look up and think, how did I get here?

God, if that's not the truth. They told me growing up in school that I could be anything I wanted to be - that I would have the world at my feet, so long as I worked hard.

That was a lie.

I've worked hard. Harder than I ever thought I would have to. And I only have experience to show for it. Experience that still isn't enough. I'll never understand that.

How did I get where I am? In college, I had a family emergency. After I graduated, I moved back home to help my family. I was stunned to discover that my Bachelor of Science in ecological sciences provided me ZERO job opportunities at home. And I mean ZERO. I live in the country, but the city is only an hour away.

I'm in the Midwest. So, it's not like the city is HUGE like New York, but if I told you the city, you would 100% know it. Still, there were no opportunities.

I decided to go a different direction. Yep, you guessed it, MARKETING. Why? Because life threw me two more curve balls when I was in college, and instead of having multiple ecological internships, I had a few of those, but also a few marketing internships. Maybe one day I'll tell you about those.

But for now, you get the gist: I had two years of actual, real world marketing experience. I started applying to local marketing jobs. No one would hire me. When I was able to get feedback - which was few and far between - I was told that while my portfolio from my internships was impressive, the companies didn't like me because I didn't have a degree in marketing. Sure, I had a 4.0 GPA in all my science classes, and I graduated an entire year early. I was an officer in five clubs, a regular member in two others, worked five jobs, and took 21 hours of classes each semester. That wasn't enough. College told me I was well-rounded, but the real world could have cared less.

Thankfully, that didn't matter to the people from my internships. Several businesses I met from there begged me to help with their marketing. I started freelancing while searching for a full time gig elsewhere. Freelancing provided me a little money, but not enough.

I listened to all those people that told me they weren't happy with my degree, and I returned to college to get a master's degree in marketing. I completed it in a year.

With that under my belt, I started applying to places for a full time job - still freelancing on the side. I was barely making any money. But I was getting lots of experience. I can never thank my first clients enough. They would come to me and say things like, "Do you know how to use WordPress?" I would truthfully tell them no, but for a discounted rate I would figure it out for them. They took me up on the offer, and I learned invaluable lessons that way.

But it still wasn't enough. No one would hire me. Why? No idea. No one likes to give feedback these days. I guess too many applicants and not enough real people to respond to them.

So, I turned back to my freelancing and focused heavily on it. But then someone close to me suggested we start a business together. I thought maybe that was my chance, and jumped at it. I did that for three years before throwing in the towel. It took up too much time and the return just wasn't enough. But that same person offered me a job with their other company, and I took it.

Here's the deal about that, though: I went into the office every day. But I didn't work all day. I worked when projects came in and kept track of my time. When there weren't projects, I was allowed to freelance from my desk.

Those projects weren't enough to get me where I wanted to go. This was pre-COVID. This was a world where people didn't want to work remotely with other people. I received a few clients from referrals (thank you, sweet people!), but again, not enough.

When I say enough, I mean enough to pay off all my debt and get a house. That's all I've ever wanted in life: my very own house. That's my goal.

I'm not even close to attaining it at this point.

So, I start reaching out for full time jobs again. This time, I try to see if there are remote jobs available. I find one on the west coast. It seems like a dream, and the salary is great.

It was a complete nightmare. I'll tell you about that sometime too, but not today.

COVID hits, and they tell me my job is secure. They tell me they are going to give me a raise, after a job review. I go in for my job review and come out WITHOUT a job. Don't worry, I promise I'll tell you about that in another post.

What do I do? Go back to my tried and true freelancing. In a post-COVID world, EVERYONE wants to work with you remotely. It's amazing. I get new clients. I think I'm making progress.

Then my life is shattered due to a personal matter. Then tax season hits, and I realize that while I thought I was suffering during COVID with my freelancing, I actually made more money than ever. But didn't make my quarterly tax payments. The government wants an arm and a leg in exchange - literally.

I work out a payment plan with them, and I find that I'm completely broke. Barely able to make those payments, barely able to keep my credit cards UNDER the limit.

My personal matter slowly calms down. And I have a horrible realization: I've been doing this for SEVEN years, and I've gone absolutely nowhere. NOWHERE.

I don't judge my progress based on others. But, I thought by now I would have a house. I don't. I haven't paid off any student debt. My credit cards are now all pretty much maxed out thanks to COVID.

It's time to get my butt in gear, put my nose to the grindstone, and start reaching out to companies again to see if they need a freelancer's help.

Which brings me to my first official freelancer story, which I am sure you all will get a kick out of, if you read this far. Which I doubt you have. If you have, I'll love you forever. Feel free to message me, and I will legitimately tell you I love you. No joke.

So, to set the scene, it's a hot, humid Sunday. I'm inside. My air conditioner is broken, so I'm huddled next to a portable unit I purchased because I'm told that it will be a MONTH before my central air is fixed. I'm not moving a lot, trying to keep cool. The TV is on with old movies I've seen a thousand times playing in the background: old, familiar friends that make me happy, cheering me on while I search job boards for freelancing positions.

I find one for a web designer. It sounds dreamy. A company is looking for someone with a little bit of HTML experience, that they can train to use their brand new web design platform. I would be making templates for them, and their price per hour is exactly what I charge. I'm excited at the thought of learning something new, and I'm excited to find a company that's willing to teach me!

I immediately apply. I receive an automated response back that they want me to take a personality test, which I promptly do.

The questions are simple ones, that I know will reflect my hard-working nature. One question asks: You've had an event planned in your personal life for several weeks. When it comes time to leave work early for the event, your boss says that there's an emergency project they need your help on. What do you do? Do you...A) Stay on after you expected to leave then go to the event later....B) Go to the event....C) Ask a team member to do the project for you...and some other option I can't remember.

I choose A. That's the person I am (except for that nightmare job I mentioned awhile back, but that's REALLY for another post, so I need to stop mentioning it).

Another question asks: Your plate is full, and your time is completely booked, but a team member comes up to you, asking for help on their project. Do you...A) Put aside your work to help your team member...B) Tell your team member you're busy and to go ask someone else...and two other options I don't remember that are basically B, just repeated in different wording.

I choose A. Again, that's who I am. If I'm crazy busy and you come to me for help, I might be a bit cranky and stressed, but I'm going to set aside what I'm doing to help you. I'm not going to kick you to the curb.

But that's not what this company wants, apparently.

Why?

I submit the personality test, and it says that I FAILED it. Yes, it tells me that I FAILED the personality test. I'm still laughing about it. I guess companies want people that don't care about their coworkers and don't want to work? If so, that's definitely not me.

But how do you even fail a personality test? Who even knew that you COULD fail a personality test? Not me. Though I do know now.

What made it funnier? About an hour after being told I failed the test (which, by the way, was the WORST I have ever done on a test, so there ya go), I received a notification that said I was moving onto the next step in the application process. I just had to answer *one* more question: why am I a good fit for this job?

The answer I wanted to give? Because I want it. The answer I actually gave? A real one, full of bull to make everyone feel better about themselves.

Will I get this position? Probably not once a human gets involved and sees I failed. I think right now I'm just in their automated process.

Still funny though. I'm the girl that failed the personality test. I feel like I need to go make a t-shirt about that now.

That's all for now folks, thanks for sticking with me through this long read. Can't wait to see you back for more!

-B

[allisonilluminated]

The Seven Sins of Fanfiction

Hey all,

This blog is primarily focused on helping newer writers (and maybe some older ones) improve their fanfiction and increase their views.  Since that’s the case, it’s important to understand exactly what not to do when you’re writing.

These are the worst things you can do while you’re writing.  I can guarantee everyone reading this post has done at least three of them, and probably all in some shape of form.  This is the sort of thing that makes you want to click away immediately, that you cringe at when it’s in the first paragraph or laugh at how bad it is.  These things that make you stop reading other stories, just think about it for a moment.  What if fewer people are reading your own work because you’re making the same mistakes?

Yeah.  If you want to improve, you gotta know what you’re doing wrong.  Number Seven is the least worst, then the list descends to Number One, the worst thing you can do in fanfiction.

Note: This is a subjective list.  There are people who disagree with some of these points (especially the non-grammar ones), so it’s important to remember that these are the things I find most degrading to the quality of the story being written.  As a writer, you have the creative liberty to write whatever you want.

#7 – Bad Romance

“Wo-o-o-o-o, o-o-o-o, o-o-ah, caught in a bad romance fanfiction but it’s the only 100k fic for my OTP so I’m like contractually obligated to read it.” - Lady Gaga, mostly

We’ve all been here.  You know that moment when two characters meet, then suddenly decide to kiss, and the next thing you know they’re screwing on the patio with some kinky ass BDSM shit.  What about those cringe fics where suddenly Harry is spouting some creepy possessive stuff like “my only” or “softest light of my life” to twelve year old Ginny.  You know what I’m talking about.

Good romance is an art.  It’s about flawed characters (later) coming together in a beautifully intimate way (later) to make something even more beautiful.  There is so much bad romance on FFN and AO3 that it just blows my mind.

Giving tips would take an entire post, so here’s a good article on the absolute basics you need to write a good romance: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/romance-writing-mistakes/

#6 – Bad Dialogue Tags

“No!” he howled.

“Yes,” she growled angrily.

She retorted snarkily, “Well, screw you.”

“Fuck you too,” he scowled sadly, before gratingly mumbling “I still love you though.”

Alternatively:

“No!” “Yes.”  “Well, screw you.”  “Fuck you too.  I still love you though.”

There’s a glorious word in this social construct we call English, and it’s “said.”  Use it.

You don’t need a fancy word for every tag.  You don’t need a fancy word for almost all tags.  Eighty percent of your tags should be said, exclaimed, and asked, and more of said than the others.  Maybe a whispered or a yelled for some flavor.

Adverbs are your enemies.  I struggle with this, but you should use them extremely sparingly.

On the flipside, if your reader doesn’t know who’s talking, your dialogue is meaningless to them.  Also, use line breaks every time there is a new speaker.

The trick is finding some happy medium between the two examples.  A handful of fancy tags, a lot of said, and if there are two people talking back and forth you don’t even need to tag every sentence.

#5 – Bad Messaging

I don’t want to put down an example for this one, because I think writers feel liberated to write some really awful shit in fanfiction because it’s “not a serious medium” or “it’s the internet, I have free speech.”  Let me say this right now:

Stories that make rape a positive thing are not okay.  Stories that portray suicide in a glorified light are not okay.  Stories that show slavery, or torture, or all of the other horrendous things human beings do to each other in a romanticized or glorified manner are not okay.

I don’t care if it’s your fetish.  I don’t care, it’s just not okay to write about these things in a positive light.  The only reason this is so high on this list is because these stories aren’t as common as the rest, and are mostly marked M/Explicit so you can avoid them.

#4 – Overdescription

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). [[I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow – My Immortal

Oh boy.

Writers, let me introduce you to this wonderful thing called your profile.  Assuming you aren’t drowning in copypastas, this is the perfect place for your character descriptions.  Alternatively, have you heard of Tumblr? Literally, stick them anywhere except the middle of your story, and I can guarantee you the readers that actually care will find them if you mention them in your A/N.

Show, don’t tell is one of the fundamental principles of writing. When you’re describing a character, you probably don’t need more than three adjectives and a one sentence description of their outfit. Yes, that applies even if your character has a special non canon outfit.  If we must know, work the details into the story. Info-dumping description is telling, and is one of the worst world building and characterization mistakes you can make.  Period.

#3 – Epithets

The blond girl walked to the door, and started as a burly man opened it.  “May I help you?”

“Yes, I’m here to get a consultation,” the graying businessman said as he ran a hand through his oily hair.

The youthful therapist nodded as she shut the door behind him. Rummaging on her desk, she asked, “Why are you here?”

“Well,” said the jaded economist to the buxom woman.  “This author thinks they’re being clever by not giving out names, but they’re ruining this story.”

The best way to get someone to leave your story is epithets.  

Epithets do not create mystery.  Epithets are not a good substitute for proper nouns.  Epithets will not make a clever opening, or add variety to your dialogue.

Epithets will ruin your story, and should not be used.

They come in varying degrees of horror.

The noun.  You might be able to get away with saying just “the woman” or “the child” under certain circumstances. This is almost an excusable offence.

The noun with one adjective.  This is already unacceptable. If you though you were going to solve Sin #4 by doing this, you’re digging yourself an even deeper hole.

The noun with one modified adjective.  Because they can’t just be sexy, they have to be shockingly sexy.

The noun with multiple adjectives.  This is automatically overdescription on top of being a horrible thing to subject another person to.

The noun followed by a relative clause.  Because there’s always a way to make it worse.  “The girl who was now holding his hand” is absolutely disgusting, and so is “The girl that was sitting across from her” or especially “the girl she knew had a chocolate bar somewhere in her pocket.

The noun followed by a relative clause with adjectives.  Put it together and what have you got?

Compound Epithets.  Oh. My.  God.  This deserves its own sin.  Even if your character has blue hair, you should never ever ever call them a bluenette.  Ever.  Ever ever ever. AAAAAAAAH!

The author has made her point.

#2 – Bad Grammar

I find bad grammar extremely agitating, mostly because there are a lot of great tools and easy fixes to solve the problems.  Most word processors have a built in spell checker, and a lot of them check for grammar as well.  If you need an alternative, grammarly.com has a good free version that’ll catch a lot of mistakes.  Of course, proofreading your work before posting is always a great idea.  Here’s a quick list of some of the most common grammar issues you should be on the lookout for:

A new paragraph for a new idea.

A new paragraph for a new speaker.

Dialogue formatting

Periods

Commas

Run on sentences

Using line breaks

Spelling

Capitalizing starts of sentences

Capitalizing proper nouns

Choosing CONSISTENT capitalization for canon terms (Pokemon vs pokemon, for example)

Repeated words.

Sentence fragments

Tense

#1 – Bad Characterization

“What?” you’re probably asking yourself right now.  “How is bad characterization possibly worse than poor grammar?  Than epithets?”

Allow me to explain.

When an author writes a story, a good story, they are creating characters who act like people.  They have wants, needs, hates, motives, and a concept of who they are, even if they’re only fictional.  The author gives them life, spirit, a spark that keeps you reading and wanting to learn more about them.

That sense of identity is what makes them real to us.  Why you binge a show on Netflix, or read a novel in one night.  Reading is a connection with these characters on a deeper level than you might realize, and this connection brings them to life.

Take that away, and your story is dead.

Your gray OOC Gary Stu overpowered Ravenclaw Harry who grew up with Snape and has a goblin half brother AU is not a story about Harry Potter.  It’s a story about an OC named Harry Potter, and Harry loses any integrity he had as a character in Rowling’s books.

That’s why there are fics with horrible grammar and massive following, alongside fics with incredible grammar and sentence construction but no followings.  Unless you maintain a basic level of your character’s identity, the essence of what makes them empathetic, you’re not writing about that character.  This is the worst sin, because even with all of the others in play, if there is good characterization you can still create an incredible story.

Just by fixing these seven problems, your fic can instantly jump from bad/meh to incredible in the way people perceive it.  Hopefully this list can help you determine things to either go back and revise or work on for future chapters.  When have you committed one of the seven sins?  What other sins do people make all the time in their writings?

Thank you to all of the amazing people who have followed, Allie

Support Me:  Fanfiction.net - Archives of our Own 

[surveysonfleek]

432.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 15

1401. Do you like your movies and books to be more lighthearted or serious? depends on my mood. but usually light hearted. 1402. What's more important, first impressions or lasting impact? first impressions. i kinda lose interest if the first impression sucks. 1403. Order these areas of psychological health from what you need the least improvement in to what you need the most improvement in: physical, emotional, social, intellectual, environmental, spiritual spiritual, environmental, social, intellectual, emotional and physical. 1404. Do you react appropriately to things and control your feelings? i’d say so. 1405. Do you have stable relationships? yes.

1406. Do you need to be in a relationship to feel good about yourself? not at all. but it’s been so long that idk what i’d be like alone. 1407. Which is the most clear and concise, your thoughts, your speech or your writing? Which is the least clear and concise? most clear: thoughts. least: writing coz i never write. 1408. Are you always trying to learn new things? not all the time. 1409. Do you feel at peace? not yet. 1410. Do you have strong morals and ethics that you believe in and adhere to? yeah. 1411. Are you over or under weight? over. 1412. Do you think of the needs of all humanity or just the needs of yourself and those you know? tbh me and those i know. after i fix myself, i can start focusing on the needs of others. 1413. Do you recycle? yes. 1414. Are you active in your community? not at all. 1415. Are you sensitive to the needs of others? not really? 1416. Do you dress up to go to the mall? haha omg no. it used to be a huge thing back in high school, but i couldn’t care less these days. 1417. Have you ever been on anti depressants? nope. 1418. Name a part of your body. Give that part of your body a name. heart. heart lol. 1419. Is fourteen your lucky number? nope. 1420. What could make you lose respect for someone? having them do something unforgivable. 1421. Is ignorance really bliss? i don’t think so. it could lead to a rude awakening. 1422. What can be described as 'even better than the real thing'? not sure. 1423. Are you jealous that dog can lick their own genitals? If you could do that would you ever leave the house? no and yes. 1424. What's in your wallet right now? driver’s license, debit card, credit card, membership cards, receipts and coins. 1425. Do you write letters that you never send? nope. 1426. Do you ever get the feeling people are laughing at you? sometimes. 1427. Who's the one person you'd like to drop a house on? haha idk. 1428. Have you ever been swept off your feet? i guess. 1429. Tell me why you don't like Mondays: because i have work. 1430. In the Harry potter series the books seem to be getting darker and more serious with each new release. Do you like this change or do you prefer the story to be light? i thing the change suits the development of the story. i’d lose interest if the entire series was light hearted. 1431. How often do you update your diary? weekly. 1432. What do you mostly write about in your diary? my schedule. 1433. How many quizzes and/or surveys do you have in your diary as entries? oh, i didn’t know the question was regarding like a blog lol. 1433. How many forwards does your diary contain? - 1434. What is your writing style like? - 1435. How honest are you in your diary? - 1436. Why do you write in your diary? - 1437. Do you have a comet cursor on your diary description? - 1438. Do you ever chat online? only on fb messenger to people i know personally. 1439. Have you ever met someone from online? How'd that go? no. at most i’ve met mutual friends online but they still lived locally. 1440. What's your favorite horror: Movie? umm, i don’t have one. Book? goosebumps haha. 1441. Have you ever caught a mistake in a movie? yes, plenty of times. as a kid moviemistakes.com was my jam haha. 1442. Have you ever seen that munchkin who supposedly hangs himself in the Wizard of Oz? If yes, how/when should someone look for it? only in a buzzfeed post. 1443. If you had to give yourself a letter grade (A, A-, B, B-, C, C-, D, D-, F) for things how would you grade yourself on: Happiness: B- Being a decent human being: B Being serene (calm, peaceful): B- Kindness: B- Anger management: A- Creative thinking: C Modesty: A- Being an original: A- Knowing yourself: A- Being true to yourself: B Getting along with others: C Liking yourself: D Admitting your flaws: B Self improvement: D- 1444. Are you kinky? haha no. 1445. How would you feel if twice a week you could wake up next to the person you love? pretty good! 1446. Out of all the people you know who is most likely to be one of the great minds of our time? hmmm. not sure. 1447. Have you ever been to: Church? yes. Temple? yes. A bar? yes. A house party? yes. A rave? yes. A goth club? no. A punk show? no. A hip hop club? yes. What sounds like the most fun out of that list? a bar. 1448. So far, have you changed around any of the questions on this survey? haha no. what’s the point? 1449. Are you crying on the inside? no. 1450. Are you afraid of the future? kinda. 1451. What will you dress up as this year for Halloween (if you celebrate it)? nothing. 1452. Do you think of some people as not worthy of being your friend? yep. lol. 1453. If you won $1,000 every week until you die, would you still go to school? Would you still get a job? i’m done with school. and yeah i’d still work. 1454. What's the most difficult job you can think of? anything outdoors and strenuous on the body. i couldn’t imagine working outside in the heat during summer. 1455. If you could decorate your room with any theme you wanted what would you pick? i’d leave it the way it is. pretty simple. 1456. Of the following bands which would you be most likely to check out? roxy music (70's glam) the magnetic fields (current indie rock) kraftwerk (experimental electronic rock) <--- this one i guess. 1457. You and your boy/girlfriend have been together 6 months or longer.... One day s/he wants to go to a strip club with his/her friends to hang out. It's guys/girls night out and you aren't invited. Would you be upset by this? tbh if he told me in advance and was completely honest about it i don’t think i’d get upset. but to be fair, my boyfriend has never been to a strip club so idk what i’d feel. 1458. Can a person avoid dying if he or she does not believe in death? um i don’t think so. 1459. If someone sings songs that they don't write and they don't play any instruments or mix the songs or have any creative input at all..Are they a musician? i used to think about this a lot and yeah i guess they’re still a musician. 1460. What do the following stand for: html? something link lol idk. faq? frequently asked questions. fao? no idea. imho? in my humble opinion. hiv? something virus? aids? idk. r&b? rhythm and blues. 1461. What does the world owe you? happiness. then again, i’m in control of that. 1462. Do you read plays and books or just get the cliff notes? when i was in school i did both. 1463. What do you want to get out of life? happiness pretty much. and a family. 1464. Do you know what is really important to you? yes. 1465. What trend has been getting on your nerves lately? idk. 1466. Do you forgive yourself when you make a mistake? yeah, i just consider it as a lesson. 1467. What tiny little very small thing has made you hugely happy? days off work. 1468. Can you read body language well? i think so. 1469. Do you look people in the eye when you talk? yes. 1470. Do you notice if they aren't looking you in the eye? yes. 1471. Are you alert to opportunities? sometimes. 1472. Puppet Yoda or digital Yoda? neither. 1473. Do you look like the person you want to be? no. 1474. Do you behave like the person you want to be? yeah i guess. 1475. Some children were asked 'how would you make your marriage work?' One child, Ricky, age ten, said: 'Tell your wife she looks pretty, even if she looks like a truck.' Is this good advice? no lol. i’d rather my partner be honest with me. 1476. Do you visualize your goals and dreams? yes. 1477. 4x + 3 = 15  What is the value of x? literally haven’t done algebra in years. is it 3? 1478. Do you keep yourself organized? yes. 1479. Does anyone really win an argument? haha only in their minds. 1480. Have you ever had champagne? yes. 1481. Do you strive for perfection? no. i just thrive to be successful. 1482. Name one thing you understand. myself. 1483. Whatever it is are you afraid of it? yes. 1484. Do you dislike being told what to do? yesssss. 1485. If you had a cat would you have it declawed? i’d never get a cat. 1486. Do you prefer lobster, clams, or crab meat? tbh i like them all. 1487. What do you think about guys who don't wear underwear? omg i don’t know any guys who don’t lmao. 1488. What do you think about girls who don't wear bras? it’s fine. 1489. Do you ask for what you want? sometimes. 1490. What are you against? bigots. 1491. How many notes does your diary have? - 1492. Ace of Base or Enya? neither. 1493. What makes you feel awkward? socially awkward situations. 1494. Have you ever been to teenopendiary.com, and if yes, how does it compare to opendiary.com? lol this must be soooooo old. 1495. If you were going to switch to another diary website, which one would you go to? - 1496. Do you believe that certain books should be removed from high school libraries? depends on the contents. 1497. How do you feel about gay and lesbian marriages? i’m all for it. 1498. Can you rearrange the letters in your name to form any other words(check here if you aren't sure http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/)? haha no. 1499. What is the sexiest moment in a movie? idk. 1500. Do you have a favorite stand up comedian? i don’t have a fave.