#I'm kind of broke this month but here is my tiny contribution

[hummelinski]

My teeny, tiny contribution to the cause for @alliwantforchristmasislou Following wikiangela's example decided to contribute to Stonewall group which is doing amazing work in Poland.

I was off fandom life and off Tumblr for a couple of years and 911 is what got me back here. This fandom was great reprieve for me and I know it's always there when I need a bit of pick me up. I also started out as a lowkey buddie shipper but what got me really hooked to endless scrolling and binge reading is bucktommy and Lou's return to show.

Fun fact: when he first showed up in throwback episodes I didn't know him but when he returned in season 7 I already knew and loved him as Rocker since I was up to date with watching swat 🥰

[amnevitahwritesstuff]

Feyre is invited to her ex’s wedding. She decides the best way to deal with this is to bring his rival as her plus one. 

Fandom: A Court of Thorns and Roses

Pairing: Feyre/Rhysand

Rating: Explicit

Triggers: Typical Toxic Ex Stuff

Chapters: 2 (WIP)

AO3 Link

Part of my contribution to the 2024 @acotargiftexchange 🎁

[Hello my lovely @millennium-queen! It is I, your Super Secret Santa (well, technically it’s my main blog @sajirah but shhhhh)!

I know I said this would come out on the 21st but honestly I just couldn't wait anymore (and @reverie-tales is a bad influence).

I had an absolute blast making this for you the past couple months and I'm thrilled to say that this fic is only half your present! I actually drew a couple art pieces to go along with it and you can find them both integrated into this fic as well as featured alone on my art blog. I hope you enjoy them all and have a wonderful holiday season!

And a special shoutout to @starfall-spirit for combing over this for me! You’re the beeessst! 💜]

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Part One

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Feyre stared at the invitation as if it were a live grenade.

Of course he would do this. 

Of course. 

Just when her life had finally begun to return to normal. When she had clawed back her mental health and self worth Tamlin had to go and do this. 

It wasn’t enough for him that he and his shitty family had to go and make her feel like the dirt under the soles of their designer shoes. It wasn’t enough that he had traded her in almost immediately for someone ‘more appropriate’ to his station. Someone familiar with the world of old money and fancy silverware who could talk about the tax benefits of some tiny country in the Mediterranean (or had it been in the Caribbean?). 

“You just don’t fit in Feyre,” he had told her as they had driven away from his parent’s house for the final time. 

He broke up with her less than 24 hours later. 

Through a text message. 

Like a fucking coward. 

That had been six months ago. 

And now here she was, staring at a wedding invitation to the wedding of her ex and his new bride. 

It was so…cruel. 

She wouldn’t have thought him capable of such cruelty, but that was before she had received a break up text and all of her belongings sitting outside her locked apartment after work. There had been no warning. No backup plan. No other apartment she had just happened to be paying the lease on in case of something like this happening. 

He had seen to that. 

He had made sure to keep her vulnerable and dependent upon him until he could discard her at his leisure. If not for Mor and her exceptionally comfortable couch, Feyre would have likely spent those tumultuous first few post-break up months on the street. 

And yet, after all that, here she was back at square one. Feeling almost exactly as she had upon arriving upon Mor’s doorstep. 

Lost. Alone. Utterly betrayed. 

Fuck Tamlin. 

He didn’t need to do this. He could have easily pretended she ceased to exist the moment she was out of sight and just gotten married with her none the wiser. But no. It couldn’t be that easy. He had to rub her face in it. Show off her replacement and force her to smile and pretend to be happy for them. 

What kind of game was he playing?

Because whatever it was…she didn’t want to play. 

“Fuck you,” she told the invitation. 

Feyre decided now was as good a time as any to get drunk. If she was lucky, she’d black this whole thing out of her memory and forget about the invitation entirely. 

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“I texted Rhys.”

Feyre groaned. 

They had just settling in for their weekly date of Pride and Prejudice and enough chocolate to make Feyre’s doctor squint at her with disapproval. It had become their ritual of sorts after she had landed herself on Mor’s couch after the whole Tamlin fiasco. Because nothing was as healing to the soul as watching longing looks across a ballroom and stuffing one’s faces with an ill-advised amount of sugar. 

“I thought you were kidding about that.”

“Why would I joke about that?” 

“I’m not bothering your cousin with my bullshit.”

Mor waved away her concern with the kind of casual arrogance only achieved through a lifetime of privilege and a healthy dollop of nosiness. 

“Well that’s too bad, because he lives for this kind of bullshit. I think it’s what powers him through those boring ass business meetings with his dad.” 

“I thought that was spite?”

“That too.”

Feyre pursed her lips skeptically before popping another piece of chocolate into her mouth. 

“He says he’ll do it.”

Feyre nearly choked. 

“What?! Why?!!” 

“He said he couldn’t leave a damsel in distress.” 

“But…why would he even care?” She asked, bewildered. “He’s never even met me.” 

“No,” Mor agreed with a smile. “But he does know Tammy.”

Feyre jolted like she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket. 

“What?!”

“Oh yeah, he and Tamlin go way back. Their fathers used to work at Goldman together and both got shunted off to some boarding school upstate. They basically spent every waking moment together when they were kids.”

“So…” Feyre said with a sinking feeling roiling in her stomach. “They’re friends.”

Mor’s smile widened. “Oh no. They despise each other.” 

“…Why?” She was still trying to grapple with the fact that this man had even agreed to this at all. 

Mor’s expression hardened. “Something about his sister. I never got the full details but it was enough for him to go nuclear on Tamlin. He hasn’t spoken to him since.” 

“I see…” 

And she did. Here was a man who hated Tamlin as much as she did, offering to be her date to his wedding just to stick it to her ex. It was petty. It was mean. 

It was perfect. 

Before she could think better of it, Feyre came to a decision. 

“Give him my number.”

Mor smiled. 

“I already did.” 

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Feyre began regretting agreeing to this meeting the moment she entered the cafe. 

She had been texting with him for the last week. 

Rhys. 

Most of it was the usual ‘I just want to make sure you’re not a psycho’ smalltalk. Lots of ‘So where do you work?’ and ‘If you turn out to be an imposter I just want you to know that Mor has the DA on speed dial’. But eventually, once they were both satisfied the other wasn’t a serial killer, they set up a meeting. 

To plot. 

And plan. 

Feyre glanced at her phone again, checking the time for the twentieth time in the last fifteen minutes. 

What if he didn’t show up? What if he was just humoring her? What if this was all just some elaborate joke Tamlin had somehow orchestrated to make her look like an idiot?

(Okay, maybe that last one was just her catastrophizing a bit.)

She was just…nervous. 

What did she even really know about this guy?

That he was Mor’s cousin? That he worked for his (very rich) father’s cutthroat investment firm? That he grew up in the same old money circles as Tamlin?

It was…not a lot to go on now that she really thought about it. 

Why was she agreeing to this again?

She saw an image of herself arriving at Tamlin’s wedding. Alone. Pitied and condescended to while she watched the man she had loved marry someone else. 

Ah. Yes. Now she remembered. 

“Fucking asshole,” she muttered. 

“Feyre?” 

She glanced up, expecting some random acquaintance…and blinked. 

And then blinked again. 

Rhysand Knight stared back at her with a cheeky smile. 

Huh. 

His photos on Mor’s instagram didn’t do him justice. 

At all. 

Feyre felt her brain try to make sense of what was in front of her. It felt a bit like meeting a Calvin Klein model in real life and realizing that not only did they look as good as they did in the pictures, but they looked better. 

“Hello. It is Feyre, right?” He smiled, flashing a set of perfectly white, perfectly straight teeth at her in a way that left her feeling a little dazed. 

“Umm, yeah,” she said, blinking up at him. 

God, why couldn’t she stop blinking?

He slid smoothly into the seat across from her, smiling pleasantly as if they did this every Tuesday. 

“Sooo…” she said, glancing about for something to stare at that wasn’t his stupidly pretty face. She settled on his coffee cup, reading the girlish script scrawled across the front. She couldn’t help noticing that the barista had spelled his name wrong. 

“So.” Rhys agreed. 

“I…umm, I got your texts.”

God, she sounded like a moron. Idly, Feyre wondered if someone could die of embarrassment. 

“Oh I know,” he said happily. “Apple has this wonderful feature that tells me exactly when you’ve read my text messages. Very handy.” 

She scowled. 

“Mor never told me you were a smart ass.”

Rhys grinned like a shark. “Really? I would’ve thought that would be the first thing she’d have brought up.”

“Must’ve slipped her mind.”

“Must have,” he nodded sagely.

An awkward silence set in then before Rhys eventually decided to take pity on her. 

“So,” he leaned forward, amused. He thought he was so funny. “I hear you need a date to a wedding.”

For lack of a better response, she nodded stiffly. 

“To Dear old Tammy’s wedding.”

She nodded again. 

“Well then I’d be delighted to accompany you, if you’ll have me.” 

“But…why?” She blurted out. “I thought you hated him?” 

“Oh I’m always up for taking the opportunity to piss Tamlin off. Call it a personal pass time of mine.”

Feyre supposed she sort of understood where he was coming from. Though, personally, she had always preferred to steer clear of her exes after the relationship had run its course. She was only agreeing to this insane plan because Tamlin had thrown down the gauntlet. 

And she had never been one to back down from a challenge. 

No matter how ill-advised. 

“I guess I just don’t really understand why you…care,” she ended lamely. “He isn’t your ex. Why would you bother making him feel bad about dumping some stranger?”

Rhys stared at her with an odd expression. Like he was trying to crack his way into her head and figure out what made her tick. 

“Darling, if I had been stupid enough to fumble a woman like you I would deserve what was coming to me.”

Feyre startled, not really sure how to respond to that. How was she even supposed to take that?

“Umm...thank you?” 

“Beside,” he continued. “If he didn’t want you showing up with his least favorite person he shouldn’t have sent you that invitation.”

Well she certainly couldn’t argue with that logic. 

“Honestly, I don’t even know why he invited me in the first place,” she grumbled irritably. 

“Oh it’s more than clear why he’s invited you,” he leaned closer, a conspiratorial smile on his face. “But we’ll make him regret it won’t we?”

Feyre felt a glimmer of hope bloom in her chest. 

“He didn’t deserve you. And we’re going to make him see that.” 

Rhys raised his cup of coffee in a salute. 

“Fuck ‘em.”

Feyre couldn’t help but smile as she raised her own cup. 

“Yeah. Fuck ‘em.”

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She should’ve been expecting it after that conversation. 

And yet Feyre still found herself quite caught by surprise a week later when she arrived home to a giggling Mor standing over a suspiciously large package. 

With her name on it. 

“It’s for you,” Mor sing-songed helpfully. 

Feyre eyed it dubiously before zeroing in on the name of a boutique in the space for the sender. 

“He didn’t…” she groaned. 

“Oh I assure you, he did,” her roommate laughed. 

Feyre grimaced. 

No matter, she thought as she squirreled the box away into Mor’s closet. Out of sight, out of mind. 

Except, she discovered later in the week, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. 

What was in the box?

Well, a dress, obviously. 

But what kind of a dress?

An expensive one, she thought grouchily when she later looked up the name of the boutique during a moment of weakness. Figures. 

Well…it wouldn’t hurt to try it on…right? After all, what were the odds that he had even gotten her size right? 

Very good, it turned out. 

Feyre eyed herself in the mirror later that night with bemused shock and a grudging sort of pleasure. 

It fit perfectly. 

In fact, it felt…tailored. 

But…how? How had he known her size? He’d only met her the once! And she’d been wearing a shapeless sweater that left literally everything to the imagination. And it’s not like she had told him her measurements. In fact, she had very pointedly ignored him when he had tried to get the information out of her in their texts. 

Mor, she thought after a beat. She must’ve given him her measurements. It was the only explanation for how perfectly this fit. 

Yeah. 

That must be it. 

Feyre smoothed her hand down the bodice of the dress thoughtfully. 

It really was a beautiful gown. 

“Well,” she said to herself, admiring the fall of the fabric in her reflection. “He sure knows how to make a statement, I’ll give him that.” 

And what a statement it would make. 

She wondered, idly, what Tamlin would make of it–of her–arriving dressed like…this. Would he be upset? Would he hate it?

The thought made her…lighter. She felt…confident. 

Brave. 

Yes, she thought happily. This’ll do just fine. 

[quirkcodes]

Weekly Progress Update #5

9 August 2022 - 15 August 2022

Well, I was hoping to finish my game by now. During week 3 I kept thinking to myself, "I've gotten very far and I hope to keep going, but I think I might get bored of this project and want to move on." Then at one point during the end of week 4 I thought, "Ugh this is getting kind of boring," and I started questioning if I should keep doing this. You can probably guess what decision I made.

I mentioned all of that because I'm no longer bored. To keep myself motivated, I try not to let my brain associate my project with boredom. Walking away and coming back when the feeling has passed can work if executed right, but you still have to keep the momentum going. I would usually have to consciously redirect myself into something interesting that contributes to the project, but it seems I've done that just by adding something I wanted to add: ui.

I haven't used the control nodes much in Godot, but oh my god they are terrible. Click here to see my entire rant about them.

Anyway, here is what I have accomplished:

Created an end level data screen that displays what types of customers you've served.

Began coding a next level scene changer. It’s currently really broken and I might need to reformat the nodes of my game a couple times

Here’s why I didn’t do much this week:

MY LAPTOP BROKE*

For 3 days I couldn’t use my computer without it randomly shutting down. Then, it gets stuck in a loop of shutting down and rebooting again. On the third day I had a successful reboot and in the diagnostics it said something about the fan and the internal temperature.

The laptop has tiny air vent holes on the bottom, which leads to poorly designed airflow. I’ve sat down in my back with the computer on my legs in a sit-up position and there is airflow between my legs, so I don’t know how it was overheating from just running godot. And airflow wasn’t a problem when my computer barely ran Overwatch and sounded like an airplane, so I think maybe the fan broke or something.

To preserve my files, especially my game files, I stopped using my computer. I can still access it for short periods of time, but I’m not going to risk it. If I risk it, I could lose access to the files forever. There was some warnings about the hard drive disk as well and I’d hate to lose so much.

The good news is I’m getting a new computer. It’s a beefy desktop that can run high intensity programs. It’s my dream computer that I’ve wanted for over a decade and I’m so lucky to be able to say I’m about to get it.

I’m also going to use the last two months of my warranty to try and get my laptop serviced. That will take about a month, but before then, I will try to move my files out of the laptop in case something happens when it’s getting serviced.

The next weekly update likely won’t include any game development as I’m setting up my computer and getting ready for the semester. It’s unfortunate that I lost my chance to try and get the minimum viable product done before I get back to school, but I might still have time to get back on the project.