#What Kind of Dog Food Helps With Shedding

[androgynouscomputerthing]

this post is a repost of an amazing reddit post by u/throwaway6372801 on the r/MoDaoZuShi subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MoDaoZuShi/s/GeHsDKCFON

Growing up in a Chinese brothel and how it may relate to Jin Guangyao/Meng Yao as a character

Just to start off I would like to preface that I’m not excusing his crimes, only putting in perspective parts of his character that I personally resonate with based on similarities. I will start off discussing how brothels and debts tend to work, especially involving children.

I will not be releasing where I grew up nor my name due to privacy reasons as I have somewhat personal information about myself on this account, despite its name.

But in short, I grew up in a brothel in China with my mother. She worked as a prostitute out of desperation and debt, which I ended up also helping with.

Debt was accumulated through food, housing, water, electricity, makeup, clothes, anything that we were unable to pay for ourselves and had to ‘take out a loan’ for. Things necessary for my mother to work, such as makeup, also fell into this category. This is not to mention baby items which were even more expensive and often times couldn’t be stretched out to last as long as other items.

Your co-workers are not your friends. You may both be in this situation, you may both have children, but if you cannot afford it, kindness is not an option. You have to be callous to survive.

On the same subject, politeness is a sought after commodity. If you can have a convincing smile, laugh, anything of the sort. Lying as well, if you can’t convince the man about to rape your child that they can’t because you would be ‘jealous’, you and your child are cooked.

Selling a child isn’t uncommon either. If someone has a particularly low-paying client who happens to be ugly or undesirable, they may offer the nearest person to them, not uncommonly a child that’s either their or one of their co-workers’.

Being a woman in a brothel is not a ‘women supporting women’ place. It is survival. And yes, some people are just evil, and will try and sell the child of a better paid co-worker than work themselves.

It doesn’t matter how pitiful you look, though it can help, you cannot stop it.

Onto Meng Yao. I will be calling him that since at this point in his life, he was indeed called Meng Yao.

We see when Wei Wuxian performs Empathy, that he goes into the body of Anxin. We as the readers get a glimpse into Meng Yao’s childhood at the brothel. It’s brief, and mostly focuses on the event of his mother, Meng Shi, being dragged naked into the streets, with himself after (fully dressed). Sisi comes to their defence.

But what I think that most people forget is that earlier, Anxin tries to sell Meng Yao to a customer. Not an uncommon thing to see in a brothel sadly.

We as the readers also are aware of Meng Yao’s signature ‘customer service smile’. This is pretty common with people in the customer service industry. Where you have to keep people happy to keep them from screaming at you. I have no doubt that this is likely a learned behaviour from his childhood at the brothel. All my fellow brothel brats, as well as myself, default to it as well.

Another response is possibly immediate lying/not taking fault in a situation where you are obviously at fault or have been caught red-handed. Think the scene of Meng Yao stabbing the Jin Captain and being caught be Nie Mingjue. Reading this scene, it always felt more like when a child drops a plate and immediately points to the dog to avoid punishment. While the child was clearly at fault, they took the blame off of themselves in an act of self-preservation. I’m not claiming that he was right here, just that his response makes sense to me. I have found myself and many others with a similar background doing it as well.

Well, that was definitely long. I don’t want to come off like I’m ridding Meng Yao of all his faults. I’m only trying to shed light on how some of his responses to things make sense given his upbringing, as well as maybe give people an insight as to how horrible brothels can be, especially to children.

If your mother is the only kind person to you, she is your whole world.

In addition, prostitution is often called ‘the first profession’ or ‘the oldest job’. I think this rings very true. Much of the practices mentioned have been practiced for centuries and likely will continue to be practiced for centuries to come.

If anyone decided to sit through and read everything, thank you. I would also like to apologise in advance for any grammatical or spelling mistakes, English is not my first language. I’m pretty all over the place here so apologies for that as well.

Edit: I forgot to mention the disgust and prejudice that people hold to this day. Meng Yao serving tea and it being seen as ‘tainted’ is a sentiment still somewhat held to this day. Same with him not being allowed to hold Jin Ling due to his perceived ‘dirtiness’. It’s something that is sad but true, and follows people for their entire lives. You will never be clean, due only to the circumstances of your birth and childhood, as well as a desperate attempt to survive. Prostitution is not something people aspire to achieve generally. If they do, they likely don’t understand the long term effects and social stigma that isn’t just limited to you.

Edit 2: Safety is another huge thing, especially for formal brothel brats. Safety comes with power. I’m not excusing Meng Yao’s use of getting power, he definitely used certain means that I don’t agree with. But especially growing up in that setting safety = power. I was given the advice many times growing up to cling to a powerful man in hopes that I become his wife, as that would grant me safety and stability. Many of the children I grew up with ended up working alongside their mothers or turning to drug dealing and criminal activity, which in turn gave them power. I think that what we learn growing up has a huge impact on people as adults. It can be very difficult to unlearn these associations.

Last edit, more of an update: I would like to thank everyone and extend that thanks on behalf of my mother. We are both doing well now. We have both come to America and I have started my own family in the past few months. She has a new job and recently moved. She’s very happy and has many friends here. Thank you all for your kindness and well wishes. Have a lovely day!

screenshots of the original post as well as my messages. cut off, but she did approve this post.

[echoingbirdsofprey]

Delicate (Jake's Version)

2 - Cold Enough To Chill My Bones

Pairing: Jake 'Hangman' Seresin x OFC Samantha Kazansky

Rating: Explicit (MDNI!)

Warnings: swearing, Sam being mean to Jake again, Jake being exceedingly arrogant, blink and you miss the mention of Jake masturbating to a picture of Sam

WC: 3.1k

A/N: Jake is a simp. That is all.

Playlist

Sam was going to make Jake sweat a bit. She had accidentally pressed the follow button that night, and then in the morning she unfollowed him. He hadn’t liked any of her pictures yet, assuming he’d seen his notifications. She was sure he had but maybe he decided not to like anything. There was a lot. Something like five thousand posts. On Sam's end, shed found Neil, as he had been a suggested follow, and then found many of the other pilots she’d seen last night. She was going to wait to follow the rest of them until she met them, though a couple of them hadn’t hesitated to request to follow her. 

4 new follow requests

bob.floydWSO, hotcoyote, foghornleghorn, and paybackfitch

She spent the first hour of her morning in bed, just scrolling through all their pictures like a creep, but they did follow her first and they hadn’t even met her, except Rueben. Once she got bored of that she decided to get up and get breakfast. She let Rocco, her little red dachshund puppy out while she checked to see if her father was up. It was so odd to see his and her mother’s filled with medical supplies. The ventilator and heart rate monitors sat unused since his first occurrence of the cancer. She walked toward the bed and saw that he was still sleeping and she elected not to disturb him. She decided to take a stroll down the beach with Rocco. 

By the time she got back, he had gotten up and was just making his way into the kitchen. His health had been declining and it had been hard for him to make it to her graduation, but by the grace of God and with the help of all of the people around him, they’d made it possible. 

He sat down at the kitchen island. He’d gotten up and gotten dressed in his normal attire, and her mother Sarah had made breakfast earlier, leaving some leftovers in the fridge for Sam. It was difficult for him to eat solid foods as his cancer had destroyed his esophagus so he normally had something he could sip through a straw. Sarah had gotten creative with all kinds of smoothies and shakes and adding protein powders and such to keep him going. 

Sam took Rocco’s leash off and set him free before crossing the kitchen and hugging her father from behind. They’d developed a language, a silent one, that had become unique to them, but this morning, Sam had a little more than their silence could express.

“Do you know a Jake Seresin ?” She asked and he nodded and smiled. He gave her a thumbs up and then grabbed his phone and pulled up his notes app. He typed something and then showed it to her.

Good pilot. Big ego.

Sam smirked and chuckled before hugging Ice again. He typed out something else.

What are you doing today?

“I’m going to go sit on the beach and read, might bring my laptop and get ahead on some of next week's work. I’ll take Rocco too.” She said and he smiled and hugged her as he stood, ready to head to his office. They’d set up a spot in the house that he could stay and work from. He typed out a response and showed it to her.

Enjoy. Don’t work too hard.

She smiled up at him and he rubbed his hand over the back of her neck as he pressed a kiss to the top of her hair, and then he walked slowly to his office. She went back up to her room and took her time, putting her bikini on, a cute little lime green number with a push up bra top and the bottom with gold rings at her hip bones. She then added a sheer black cover up, and the same flip flops from last night. She put her laptop in her bag, and her phone. She packed a few water bottles for herself and one for Rocco, as well as his folding dog bowl. She clipped his leash on and he excitedly leapt out the door. She put her sunglasses on. She slung a beach blanket over her shoulder and headed toward the beach. The morning air was warm and the breeze smelled wonderfully like the sea. There was a faint hint of jet fuel in the air as well, to be expected being near the naval aviation base. 

She picked a great spot in the middle of the beach, where there was no one around for at least a mile each way. She laid her blanket out and put her bag down as she got comfortable. Rocco sat comfortably next to her, just watching the seagulls go by. When he was bored of that, he whined and laid down. Sam scratched his head and then his long back and he wagged his tail. She put some sunscreen on. She opened her laptop and opened up her work email. She replied to some emails that she’d gotten and worked on a spreadsheet for next week’s numbers. Her phone vibrated.

1 new follow request

jseresin90

She smirked. She knew he couldn’t resist. She decided to sit on his request for a couple of hours. She got a head start on a report for next week, and then closed her laptop. She took a tennis ball out of her bag and threw it for a bit for Rocco. He liked to rip the fuzz off of them, so when he got tired of running back and forth, he just took it to the edge of the blanket and ripped the fuzzy bits off. She felt her phone vibrate again. She took her headphones from her bag and popped one in one ear, leaving the other free just to be safe. She didn’t think anyone was going to kidnap or kill her, especially here, but it didn’t hurt to be careful anyway.

Message request

jseresin90: hey

Sam shook her head. He was persistent, she’d give him that. She accepted his follow and message request and then re-requested to follow him. Of course, he accepted almost immediately.

whitehotkazansky: you must really want something from me

jseresin90: just wanna buy you dinner, pretty girl

whitehotkazansky: not interested

jseresin90: your dad is a big deal around here

whitehotkazansky: 🙃

She opened her Audible app and put on a romance book that she’d been trying to finish. The narrator's voice filled her headphones, talking about the main character and how quickly they’d fallen in love with the ranch hand. The notification bell dinged on her phone, interrupting the book. Four fucking times.

jseresin90: whats the harm in one dinner? 

jseresin90: or lunch?

jseresin90: breakfast?

jseresin90: maybe a snack?????

jseresin90: you could be my snack 😏

whitehotkazansky: jake i will strangle you if you dont leave me tf alone rn

jseresin90: whatchadoin?

whitehotkazansky: none of your business

jseresin90: where do you work? Do you work???? Do you just hang out at home and refuse dates from hot guys?

whitehotkazansky: bye jake 😘

She turned her notifications off, finding bliss as she closed her eyes and listened to the book in the warmth of the morning sun. She had fallen asleep at some point and woke up to Rocco growling next to her head.

“What’s up, Rocco?” She asked as she yawned and rolled over. There was a tall man in athletic shorts and a t-shirt standing above her, looking down at her from beneath his aviators. 

“What the fuck.” She rasped, pulling her legs up and sitting cross legged. The man squatted and pulled his sunglasses off.

“Hi.” He said with a wide smile.

“How the fuck did you find me.” She demanded and he blew air from his pursed lips.

“Your best friend is one of my co-pilots...she said you asked about me...and I asked about you, and I’m really fuckin’ intrigued that your dad is thee Iceman Kazansky. ” He explained, putting one of the temples of his sunglasses between his teeth. Rocco decided to waddle his cute little dachshund butt over to Jake, wagging his tail and Jake reached down to gently scratch the little dog's long back. 

“So much betrayal.” Sam joked and Jake smirked. 

“So, about dinner.” He asked, chewing on the earpiece of his sunglasses. Sam sighed heavily but she smiled up at him. A few of the other pilots had followed him, and she assumed they’d gone for a run or something together. 

“C’mon, Bagman, leave the poor girl alone.” She heard another male voice and recognized Bradley Bradshaw immediately. She’d met Bradley a long time ago, when he’d first entered the Top Gun program. They’d flirted, they’d even hooked up once, but Bradley was not the man for Sam. Bradley didn’t even like women. Nonetheless, he always had a soft spot for Sam. He smiled at her and introduced her to Bob Floyd, who had decided to go with them. 

“Nice to meet you.” Sam said and then she looked at Jake with a satisfied grin. “Bagman, huh?”

“ Hangman . But Jake to you, pretty girl .” He said and Rooster pulled him up out of his squat.

“Seriously, Hangman, leave her be .” Rooster said and began to drag him away. Jake saluted her and turned with slumped shoulders. 

Sam laughed and watched him as he was pulled away. He was quite good looking. But his attitude was unreal. Who did he think he was? The arrogance had Sam both horny and annoyed, a very bad combination for keeping promises to one's self.

Later that day, after Sam had gone home and taken a nap. She woke up to more messages from Jake.

jseresin90: I looked through your entire insta

jseresin90: youre really pretty

jseresin90: you've been all over the world that's nuts

jseresin90: I mean I've been a lot of places for active duty but damn

jseresin90: just give me a chance you won't regret it

She really was amazed. The set of balls it took to keep at this...

whitehotkazansky: where would you take me if I said yes?

He was quick to respond.

jseresin90: the nicest restaurant I could

whitehotkazansky: and where would that be 🤨

jseresin90: place on the waterfront called the Marine Room

whitehotkazansky: that where you take all your one night stands?

jseresin90: I don't take anyone there unless they're really special 

Sam left the conversation there for the night. Every time she was on a base with her father, this happened. Some guy fell for her, she'd let him take her out on a few dates, and then she'd find out that they just wanted to get in her pants, or rather up her skirt. It drove her insane. She would play it all the same way too. Rude and callous to try to deter them but there was always one. And Jake was apparently the one here.

🛩🛩🛩

Jake laid in his bed that night, listening to Nat, Bob, Bradley, and Javy watching some football game. Javy wanted to catch up and he’d invited Rueben and Neil too, but they’d left early. Jake still couldn’t believe Javy kept the place here, but it was good that he did, otherwise they'd be staying on base in barracks and that would suck. Jake needed his own space. He wanted his own space, where he could have quiet moments to himself. He kept checking his phone, willing Sam to message him back, but she never did. Usually girls fell head over heels for him. Usually girls fawned over him. Usually it only took him one ask before they were begging him to be in their bed or his. 

This girl was different though. It was like she had no time for his shit, no time for his games and his flirting. She didn’t want to give him the time of day. It didn’t even bother him that Iceman was her father. Jake was a highly decorated Lieutenant. Ice knew he was a good pilot. Jake had even been compared to Ice more than once. So why would Ice have any problem with his daughter dating the Lieutenant? He shouldn’t. And Jake wasn’t a fucking pussy like all the rest of these guys, who were afraid of getting kicked out of the Navy for dating the Fleet Commander’s daughter. Fuck that. Jake was going to go after what he wanted, and that was Iceman Kazansky’s daughter. 

But for right now, all he had was the pictures on her Instagram, so he picked one where she was in the same pretty little lime green bikini as today, and had a date with his hand and some lube for the night. He needed release and it was the only way he was going to get it right now.

🛩🛩🛩

In the morning, Sam headed downstairs to find her father sitting at the kitchen island again. He was staring down at his phone. She kissed him on the cheek and said good morning, then went in the fridge and grabbed some fruit. Her mother had already been in and through with breakfast for him, and had taken Mark and Alexandra on a road trip for the day. They were out of school for the summer, and Alex was trying to tour colleges. Too much travel stressed Ice’s body, so he had to stay home, but today, he wanted to go to the base. That was about as far as he could go, every once in a while, without getting too exhausted. He let Sam eat a bit and then held his phone up.

Would you drive me to the base today? Want to meet all the pilots for the special detachment. Miss the jets too.

“Sure, dad. Let me just go get a little cleaned up.” Sam said as she chuckled to herself, finishing her fruit quickly. She knew he wasn’t in a rush, and the nice thing was that time stood still when he was in the room. His time was valuable to everyone, so whenever he got there, everything stopped for him. That didn’t mean she didn’t respect his time though. She knew he only had so much energy, so the quicker she got ready, the more time he had for what he wanted and she wanted to give him that. 

She decided on a dress, a cotton material that was a light dusty rose type of pink. It had long sleeves and stopped just at the top of her knees. The neck was a shallow v and it had a string that tied around her midsection, just for accent purposes. She put a necklace on and a few bracelets on each wrist. Nothing special or terribly fancy, just random ones all matching rose gold. She also added a few rings on both hands, mostly on her pinkies and pointer fingers, again all rose gold. She carried a small purse, a light brown in color that would fit her phone, keys, and a chapstick. She did simple makeup, just black eyeliner and a little mascara to bring out the pretty chocolate brown of her eyes. 

He walked slowly and she helped him navigate the stairs and the step up into the truck. She liked driving his big ass Ford King Ranch around. Her mother did not and since he didn’t drive anymore, he’d given it to Sam. Her brother would get the other Ford, an F-150, and Alex would get the Mustang because that’s what she wanted. 

When they arrived at the base, she followed her dad to the main building that overlooked all the jets, neatly parked, and the tarmac. All this time when she’d gone with her father to work in all different places and different bases, and she’s still never been up in one of the jets. Only regular airplanes. She assumed it was a much different experience. They met Rear Admiral Solomon ‘Warlock’ Bates, and then the Vice Admiral Beau ‘Cyclone’ Simpson at the entrance to the building and they both hugged her and shook her father’s hand. They knew he couldn’t speak much.

As they walked along the corridors, Sam glanced out the windows and saw pilots standing around on the tarmac. Some of them looked like they were warming up for a run, a couple of them were doing push ups, and the rest stood around. She thought she saw Jake. She knew it was inevitable but she was kind of hoping they weren’t going out there. But they did.

When they got down to the airstrip, Maverick was there to greet them. He hugged Ice and then Sam. He took over from there, introducing his company of Top Gun pilots to her and her dad. Ice knew most of them, but reintroductions were necessary anyway. He introduced everyone by their callsigns only and when he got to Hangman, Sam nodded and folded her arms across her chest.

“Bagman, isn’t it?” She mused, gaining surprised looks from the Admirals and a look of satisfaction from her father. He watched with pride as his daughter gave the cocky pilot the business. 

“C’mon, pretty girl, don’t do me like that.” Jake sighed. The rest of the pilots all stood stone faced. They couldn’t believe what had come out of his mouth.

“Not planning on doing you at all, Jake .” She said with a smirk, and he stepped closer to her, attempting to save himself from further embarrassment. 

“I’m not askin’ for that. I’m just askin’ for a chance, sweetheart. Just dinner. Just one time.” He said, his voice low, his pretty sage green eyes pleading with her. Her eyes darted to all of the other pilots, all standing in stunned silence, and she decided she couldn’t be cruel any longer, especially with Maverick staring at her, as if he was the one expecting resolution, not Jake. But before she responded, she gave her father a quick look. He nodded and smiled. 

“Fine. Pick me up at 5.” Sam said, as she rolled her eyes and turned to walk away. She’d worn flats, but she was wishing she’d gone through the pain of putting on heels because she would’ve given her life to see Jake’s face as she walked away. 

“Wear something fancy for me!” He yelled after her and she heard the cheers and the sound of bodies shuffling and hands patting Jake’s flight suit. She glanced back and saw that even though he was being bombarded with hugs and rough congratulations, he was still staring after her. 

As she continued on with her father and the two Admirals, he bumped her arm with his. He typed out something on his notes app and showed it to her.

I used to be that arrogant. I like him. But he better not hurt my girl.

She smiled wide and put an arm around her father. He did the same, his arm around her shoulders as they walked. She could tell he was getting tired, so they headed to a room upstairs where he could sit and watch the jets for a bit before they headed home. As they entered and he sat, Sam had a little chuckle to herself and touched Ice on his shoulder. He glanced up and she said, “Dad, I think I could do more damage to him than he could to me.” And they both laughed.

[steddieas-shegoes]

Request: steve having 4 rabbits (all male) as pets bc he loves them. They are super rambunctious aside from his last one which he recently adopted from a shelter. But HE SPOILS THEM??? He refers to them as his kids???? The party doesn't know what kids he is referring to until they see him with his babies. Thats all just pure flufff

First of all, title on AO3 is from Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter because Steve loved that story as a child and that was the inspiration behind most of this. Second of all, this is ridiculous and fun. It's so very unserious. I cannot stress enough how much this is just absolutely silly. As with any of the stuff I write, there's some emotions and discussions of Steve's shitty childhood, but the rest is just some hilarity between Steve, Eddie, and Robin with a guest appearance of the party. - Mickala ❤️

---------------------------------------------------------------

Steve’s parents had never bothered with a pet, had never even thought about the fact that most kids got to have a dog or a cat or a turtle when they were young.

They didn’t think about how much Steve needed a companion of some kind.

It didn’t stop him from always playing with his friends’ pets, or stopping at the pet store after work sometimes to show some love to the ferrets nobody seemed to want. He volunteered at the animal shelter when he had time, always getting too attached to the dogs coming and going.

When he moved into a house with Eddie and Robin, they all agreed he could and should get a pet, as long as they could all agree on what it was beforehand.

The problem was, he knew he didn’t have time to commit to a dog, not with how often he was working and taking the kids where they needed to go and helping Eddie with his band. He knew Robin wouldn’t admit it, but being around cats for more than a few minutes left her stuffed up and teary-eyed. He didn’t really want fish, or anything that he couldn’t hold or cuddle with. Birds were out because they were loud and on his migraine days, even the tiniest hint of sound would make him nauseous.

He’d never even considered rabbits.

But on his way home from work on his birthday of all days, he passed a truck with a cage full of bunnies in the back.

He pulled over, not thinking about what he was doing, just knowing that he wanted to hold one.

Robin, who was in one psychology course at the community college, called it healing his inner child.

Eddie, who liked to get on Robin’s nerves as frequently as possible, called it being his inner child.

Steve, who loved them both very much, thought they were maybe both right.

“Can I hold one?” Steve asked the older woman who was sitting on the tailgate of her truck.

“Sure. You have any rabbits?” she asked as she grabbed one from the cage.

“No ma’am.”

“Lovely pets. Unfortunately, we didn’t know one of ours was a male and now we have about 22 of these suckers to get rid of. You got room for one?” she watched him carefully as he held the baby rabbit to his chest.

All of the rabbits were gray except for four, which were an off-white color with speckles of brown. Steve didn’t know how genetics worked, especially not for rabbits, but he knew they were unique.

“I got room for four.”

He didn’t.

Not really.

But he would make room.

The woman only charged him for two, said he was doing her a favor by taking four anyway. She gave him a bag full of some food pellets, but told him they would probably still prefer to get lettuce and other vegetables often.

“I guess I should think of some names,” Steve said out loud on the way home. “I should probably also warn you that I didn’t talk to Robin and your other dad about this yet. But they won’t mind. I can build you guys a home in the backyard! And during the winter, you can stay in the shed.”

He had it all planned out in his mind, and nothing would ruin it.

—------------

“How many?!” Robin exclaimed.

“Rabbits?” Eddie asked, surprised, but not quite as shocked as Robin.

“It’s four males. They’re still babies, but they grow quick. They’re pretty low maintenance, and they can live outside so you won’t have to worry about allergies or noise or anything. And they can eat a lot of vegetables and some fruit so I won’t have to spend tons of money on special food.”

Eddie cupped his cheek in his palm and smiled.

“You don’t have to defend your choice to us, sweetheart. If you’re happy, I’m happy,” he kissed him on the lips quickly before pulling away and giving Robin a look that said she better agree.

“I’m happy you found pets?” Robin said, still clearly unsure about it, but giving a genuine smile.

“Okay, now names!”

It only took five minutes for Eddie to excuse himself from that conversation to start working on their enclosure.

“Steve, you cannot name a rabbit Edward.”

“There are no rules when it comes to naming rabbits. If I want to name the one who doesn’t stand still after my boyfriend, then I will!”

It went on like that for nearly an hour as Steve took turns holding each of the rabbits, keeping them close to his chest and petting them, giving them all a little kiss on the head before he put them back in the box they were temporarily in.

Eddie came in not long after they finally settled on names, giving Steve a kiss on the cheek and grabbing a glass of water.

“So? What are their names?”

Steve picked them up one by one, showing them off as he spoke.

“This one is Marty, and this one is Hobbit, and this one is Bard, and this tiny little guy is Pierre. Robin insisted on it because the speckle on his face looks like a mustache and goatee.”

“I hate to say it, Stevie, but I don’t think I’m the father,” Eddie teased as he rubbed Pierre’s head.

Steve gently pushed Eddie’s chest, but smirked at him.

“Despite your best efforts, I don’t think actual children will be biologically possible for us,” he said as he put Pierre back in the box and picked the entire thing up. “Now, show me their home!”

—----------------

Steve was a natural caregiver, had always been one even when he was alone.

Everyone knew it, everyone loved it about him.

But no one had expected him to treat his new pets as his actual children, not even Eddie.

He knitted them sweaters.

“They have fur already, Steve,” Robin said.

“But they’re so cute in them!”

Robin and Eddie shared a glance as Steve handfed them some lettuce.

—----------------

No one expected him to also come home with a fifth one right before Christmas.

He was holding it against his chest, under his jacket, whispering to it.

“Stevie? Whatcha got?”

“Don’t be mad. He was dropped off at the shelter with a few puppies and they said that they couldn’t keep him. I couldn’t-” Steve’s sharp intake of breath made Eddie drop what he was doing and get closer. “We have room or I can make room. He’ll fit right in! I think he looks like a Frodo, don’t you?”

Steve unzipped his jacket and a completely white rabbit shuffled around so it’s head was nestled further in his shirt.

“Sure, Stevie. Hi Frodo, welcome to our home. Rent’s due on the first, lettuce is available for free, and bath days are every other Saturday,” Eddie said quietly as he petted the rabbit’s back.

—---------------------

The first time the kids held the rabbits, Steve hovered like a worried parent.

“Just relax, love. They’re being careful,” Eddie whispered in his ear.

“I know. I just don’t want one to get loose and end up hurt or stuck somewhere,” Steve said, keeping his eyes on a constant rotation between all five rabbits.

“Can we feed them?” El asked with a beaming smile.

“Yeah, please!” Will said excitedly.

“Sure. But everyone only gets to pick one thing so they don’t overeat and get sick,” Steve agreed.

Eddie watched as Steve continued to hover, physically biting back comments about the way the kids were feeding them.

Eddie could sense his anxiety getting to a boiling point, knew he would probably explode in a minute if he didn’t intervene.

“Alright kids! Time for us to put the rabbits up for the night. They like to cuddle before they sleep,” Eddie said, reaching for the closest one to him, Bard.

They slowly put them all back into their enclosure, and Steve stood outside of it for a moment making sure they were all okay.

They were still a bit over excited from being out of the cage, all except Frodo, who had never been excited about anything.

“I’ll take the kids home,” Eddie said as he kissed Steve’s shoulder. “Staying out here for a bit?”

“Yeah, just until they calm down a little. Tell the kids I’ll see them tomorrow.”

Eddie nodded once and made his way back inside.

“Steve isn’t coming?” Max asked.

“Nah, he’s making sure the little ones behave. Everyone ready?”

The kids looked at each other, then back at Eddie.

“He’s making sure the rabbits behave? What are they gonna do, steal a carrot from the fridge?” Mike asked.

“Tone, Wheeler,” Eddie reprimanded. “And everyone leaves Steve alone about this, got it? He’s being his inner child.”

“Healing his inner child,” Robin said from the couch, focused on her word search.

“Right, that’s what I said,” Eddie clapped his hands. “Kids in the van or you have to scoop the rabbit poop!”

A chorus of “ew, gross!” rang out as the kids scrambled to run out the front door and to his van.

“Can you make sure he comes in in a few minutes?” Eddie asked Robin. “He doesn’t have a jacket on.”

“Are you his boyfriend or his mom?” Robin asked, still not looking up from her word search.

“I’m gonna be your problem if he gets sick from sitting out there in the cold too long.”

“Fine,” Robin rolled her eyes. “But if he makes me bottle feed Hobbit again because he ‘won’t eat the pellets and he has to eat something’ I am locking him out there to become one of them.”

“Fine.”

Eddie glanced out the window of the back door, smiling to himself as he watched Steve talking to the rabbits, like he did every night.

Whatever they called it, Eddie was just glad Steve was getting something he’d always wanted.

[lint-beetle4]

shadowpeach. I am giving you free rein here. Just shadowpeach.

Pick A Flower (ShadowPeach)

This one is hella cheesy ngl, gotta hide it out of some slight embarrassment. I kind of liked how it turned out, but it's pretty short. Hope you enjoy!

“Who’re you?” 

“Oh. You look just like me.”

“Friends? Why?”

Macaque was loyal once the King had found him. The monkey himself knew of his abilities, but he–like the king–was young, uncontrolled with his abilities. Greeted with the sight of demons, now brothers, Macaque made a promise to himself to watch over his companion. In his quest for immortality, Macaque joined him, staying behind and orbiting the sun to ensure his safety.

“You won’t stand a chance against us. Why not bow down to your king already?”

“Heaven won’t be able to ignore you after this. You’ll shine among the other gods!”

“Do you really need to head up there? You already proved your worth, Wukong, why not just stay here and enjoy the life we have?”

They defeated countless monsters and demons, letting the Sage prove his worth to heaven as his shadow watched from the ground, tending to their, now shared, subjects. Centuries passed as the Sage toiled in heaven, meaningless task after task before he came back, ready to battle the gods. Macaque joined him, ready for the fight, but against all of heaven, Wukong was captured, and several brothers had been taken or imprisoned already. Macaque lingered, effectively hiding in his shadows and away from the glares and mocking words of his brothers. They never liked him, choosing to spit at his wise cowardice.

“I’ll keep waiting for you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We should head back to the waterfall. I hear no other heartbeats on the island.”

So, Macaque became the one to regroup his subjects, caring for the younger ones who had been forced to shed blood before they could even grow tall. It had been centuries since Macaque had seen Wukong, their last interaction being a parting of ways from the mountain.

“I’ll protect you. I won’t leave you like your king did.”

“I would’ve helped if I could.”

“You did it for yourself.”

Macaque’s home was no longer his, but even then, he couldn’t help but aid in their efforts once the ruthless Erlang set fire to the mountain, hunters claiming subjects as food and mere entertainment. Macaque retrieved the subjects he could find, the waterfall becoming their shelter as Macaque tried to collect who had been taken away. In his search, Macaque was met with the most disgusting, almost hilarious sight.

“I’ll find them. All of them. No one will bother this island after I’m through with those monsters.”

“The fires have stopped. Do not leave the waterfall unless you need food or water. Be wary of what remains about there.”

“So this is where the Great Sage lurked off to?”

There he was, Sun Wukong, Great Sage Equalling Heaven, leashed like a dog to some mortal with a foolish quest. Macaque watched as the Sage was sent away, his heart softening at the speed in which Wukong fled home. Macaque set on his quest, choosing to pocket his observation for later. With newly learned portals and a greater ability in his magic, Macaque had returned lost monkeys back home.

It was then that the dark monkey could enact his revenge, to free his partner from the muzzle that trapped him with such a lowly group.

“I won’t allow anyone to make a mockery of him.”

“Go off now. I have business to attend to with some people.”

“He’ll be freed from this mess once and for all.”

It was easy really, to be Wukong. Macaque found comfort in his stories, learning how to act and perform various characters and personalities. It lightened up darker days without their sun where ash would cover the skies and rain would fall black as tar. No, to Macaque, it was a game, seeing how far he could go while staying under the radar. Those foolish men saw nothing but Wukong acting more subdued, something sparking like a flame that flickers wildly in the wind yet still remains in the pit it burns, and that is exactly what Macaque needed. 

In the dead of night, Macaque laid in his disguise, his plan so close to completion.

Macaque had gained the trust of Wukong’s captors, and they slept thinking they were protected. Yet, the moon’s light hid away this week, casting the night in shadows. Macaque released his form, glad to feel the comfort of his body.

Yet, before he knew it, Wukong had done more than get captured. He had betrayed his kingdom and his brothers. He had betrayed the gentle love between both celestial primates, and Macaque laid on the ground, screaming to his angered lover.

“Wukong! Stop! Please, stop, I–!”

But, the sun’s light had risen, casting away the moon for eons to come.

[malwaredykes]

leigh and cat rambles

thinking about. the fact that leigh was NOT used to being treated kindly or gently, or being looked after, or being cared for. shed just never gotten much warmth from anyone all her life, didnt really have friends or anyone who appreciated her presence more than in very fleeting superficial ways. she had been generally just left alone to figure things out on her own (which definitely contributed to a lot of her idiosyncrasies and her ways of assessing situations or her own behaviors). she had a very shaky idea of who she was or who she couldve been to other people, aside from like. someone to get things done when asked, someone who makes themselves useful.

and im thinking about how much it sucked for her to have to travel from goodsprings to primm to the mojave outpost to nipton to novac all alone--its not that she wasnt used to traveling by herself, after all she was a courier, but like. she had just been Shot In The Head. she was sore and confused and Torn Away From Her Own Sense Of Self and basically got a free partial lobotomy and a bunch of symptoms she had trouble dealing with (especially the seizures, scary stuff, knowing it could happen at any moment and there wouldnt be anyone to make sure she was okay). she was sleep deprived and broke and had to painstakingly remind herself how to do stuff like mend her gear, make food, use her weapon properly etc. she knew she couldve stayed in goodsprings for a while longer to recover, or stopped in primm or at the outpost, but she just didn't feel welcome. regardless of how people actually reacted to her presence, she just felt that she wasn't wanted or welcome, and the only ways she could exercise the degree of "selfishness" thats necessary for survival was to, yknow, steal shit. the vast majority of what she had on her by the time she got to novac she'd stolen lol. change of clothes, personal hygiene items, first aid essentials, the damn pot to cook things in, etc. obviously most of it was stuff that people wouldve shared with her if she'd asked, but You Try Getting Her To Ask.

thing is despite all of that sort of life experience she wasnt ever the, yknow, Hrngh Everyone Has To Survive On Their Own, Its A Dog-Eat-Dog World, Cant Rely On Others type. she always believed it was all about community and helping one another and contributing to the collective good. not even in a We Instinctively Need One Another As Human Beings way, just that its sensible and effective. its just that she didnt really get to have that like most others did. she watched it all from a distance. she contributed if she could, but knew not to expect much in return. at some point it became something of a self-fulfilling prophecy really, but like, it was just How Things Were to her, it hardly even registered as anything irregular. it was just sort of obvious. she wasnt getting much of anything from people and it was wrong of her to ask

all that is to say it was kind of crazy to her when boone was just like. nice to her. not outwardly warm or anything obviously (i mean its boone. specifically freshly widowed pre-transition boone), and she did ask leigh for help with something, but leigh did pick up on that it was at that point out of sheer desperation and helplessness and having no one around to turn to. which, i mean, Leigh Was Familiar With The Experience. but with that out of the way boone was. nice to her. didnt do pleasantries, just like. made her some food. gave her clothes a wash (washing machine privilege...). and then decided to travel with her, and turned out to be eager to keep leigh safe and for them to have each others back. crazy stuff for leigh. like Whats going on. This Rules.

leigh got kind of overly excited there actually akdhncksfhdj like it made her a little bit hyper initially. high on Nice To Her. omg omg boone lets check out gibsons scrap yard omg can you show me how to use a rifle omg whats your favorite food!! bit too intense for boone, You Are Overstimulated And Cannot Hang. leigh quickly settled down and apologized a bunch but boone was like Why are you apologizing its fine im just not good at this kinda stuff and im Still Not In A Great Mood Due To Recent Events. that too was crazy to leigh like Wait so im not irritating and off-putting and Too Much? you Dont want me to shut up and leave you alone?? and boone was like What. No.

so yeah. it was significant, it felt significant. and clearly it was mutual, cuz boone was ride or die for her pretty much from the beginning. Boone Will Now Die For You. but yeah, it was a Connection. something nice and unexpected and kind of weird to process at first, but they both felt secure in it and quickly grew to be very comfortable around each other. Warriors Bond. leigh just felt really tender about the whole thing. I Really Like You, I Really Trust You. even when they discovered some uhh disagreeable things about each other, that didnt change.

also i mean theres the fact that leigh was the first out trans woman boone had ever even spoken to. so boone was like Waow.... Something About Her Makes Me Feel Like If I Follow Her I Will End Up Where Im Supposed To Be. Which Could Mean Nothing

[buttonbuckfarm]

hey! Sorry if this is a bad time for asks, I was just really curious about your turkeys and had some questions about how they are raised. How much space do they need, and how do you make sure they aren’t eaten by wild animals? Is it different than raising other animals? Also, is there a distinction between turkeys who are raised for meat and turkeys who aren’t? Thanks, I’m kind of a noob when it comes to birds

never a bad time for asks, it just might take me ages to get to ya lol

my birds free range around maybe a half acre of land? technically they have access to more but the brush gets really thick and dense so they aren’t particularly motivated to a spread out, and in general they don’t like to get too far from their food/water/coop area unless they’re finding a hiding spot for nesting. turkeys are pretty big birds and they like to roost as high as they can, so access to vertical space is something to consider (mine have a willow grove that they perch in, but building some perches is just fine also).

predators are a pretty wide topic. it depends on where you live and what your predator pressure is like. I used to live in a suburb and the only problem we ever had was a raccoon that was wayy too acclimated to the presence of people. now we have eagles, hawks, mountain lions, coyotes, raccoons, opossums… basically everything. the main problem I have is that hens will completely fuck off and hide and be very difficult to find, and then if I can’t get them in the coop at night something will eventually eat them, but if they aren’t free ranging, that’s not necessarily a problem. I’m looking into getting them ankle tag trackers for next season, lol. aerial predators can be a serious problem; a friend of mine has had eagles go for full size turkey toms. I don’t leave babies / poults out without a person around until they’re big enough to not be an easy target for ravens or other overhead birds (they stay in a covered dog run until they’re larger). for the amount of raptors I see everywhere, we’ve done surprisingly well to avoid aerial predator problems. for one, we have over a dozen geese that scream their heads off at any bird going overhead too close, so that might help. but they also have access to the willow grove and the rabbit shed to be under cover, and they will alert each other if they notice something overhead. cooping them up to roost at night is absolutely essential, unless you have the ability to built like 20 foot roosts that aren’t climable and they all use them. not much different from protecting chickens; they’re bigger, but still prey animals.

then this last bit is kind of a layered question that I love talking about lol. I raise heritage turkeys. If you buy turkey meat at the grocery store, you’re getting broad breasted turkey. they are fundamentally genetically the same - there’s only one species / breed of turkey - but their physical structure is verrrryyy different. heritage turkeys are built more similarly to wild turkeys, though bred with a wide range of color variations. broad breasted turkeys are, like broiler chickens, bred to produce the most meat the most efficiently. they might have the poorest welfare of any meat animal. like chickens, they’re bred to produce an excess of meat on their breast. they cannot move well because they have too much meat on their bodies; heritage and wild turkeys are a lot of bone with less meat layers on. broad breasted turkeys cannot live very long as they were bred to be killed as soon as they’re at harvest weight and do not have much longevity. even before that, they will topple over from the weight of the meat on their breasts and break their own toes and be unable to walk. their growth is exponential to an unsustainable point. they are incapable of breeding themselves and have to be artificially inseminated.

heritage turkeys are for more robust, healthy, and long-lived. they can also be raised for meat, but you’re going to get half as much meat if that, and it’ll take longer to reach butcher weight. so they’re a LOT more expensive to buy, hence why it’s pretty rare to find people raising heritage turkeys for meat. some people are doing it for the sake of more humane and ethical turkey meat production, but it’s just not popular when the alternative is cheaper and gets you more food. here’s one of my previous hens, Adelaide (RIP my lil lady, love you always) and a broad breasted turkey about the same age as her.

feel free to let me know if you have any other questions, I love an opportunity to go off about turkeys.

[hbyrde36]

The Crawl

Part 1 of 5

AO3

Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson | WC: 3340

Will Byers is only 12 years old when he learns that monsters are real, and is taken far away to another world that looks like his home, but isn't. The only thing they know for sure about the other dimension is that it does not play by the rules of the real world, and that, as the newest member of the party comes to realize, has possibilities. Time travel stories love to play with the idea that one small act can have an incredible impact on the future. What if, in a weird twist of fate, Will is found in the Upside-Down by a friendly face that just can't keep his mouth shut and is sent home safely with a warning of what's to come. Will it be enough to change everything?

Inspired by the VERY little information we have about the Stranger Things writer's plans for season 5

-Will-

Will Byers was only 12 years old when he learned that monsters were real. 

The party had just finished up a marathon gaming session at Mike’s house. None of them wanted to leave, but they'd been playing for hours and it was a school night. Everything was fine until he and Dustin split up, the other boy taking the turn that would get him home, while Will kept going towards his own house. It was dark out and the old light on the front of his bicycle had started flickering again when some thing suddenly appeared in the middle of the street. 

He only got a glimpse of it as he crashed his bike, but it was horrifying. Taller than a man and made sounds that sent chills running up and down his spine.

Sounds no human mouth could produce. 

Will left his bike where it lay and ran. Home wasn’t far, he could make it. His Mom would be there. Jonathan would be there. He’d be safe. 

Except the house was empty when he arrived save for Tucker, who wouldn't stop barking. Dogs always seem to be able to sense when something is wrong. Will peeked out the window to see if the coast was clear, but the creature had followed him and was still lurking around outside. 

He tried the phone, dialing 911 just like he was taught to do in an emergency, but it was no use. Something was wrong with the line. All he could hear on the other end was static and a distant screeching.

It didn’t matter, it was too late for anyone to help him anyway. 

The monster was at the front door. 

Will took off through the back door and headed straight to the shed where they kept Lonny’s old shotgun. If no one was coming to save him, he’d have to try and save himself. 

He loaded the gun with shaking hands, aiming it at the door where the monster would undoubtedly be coming from. Little did he know, this creature didn’t play by the rules of Will’s world. 

It was so cold in this place. This world that looked like Hawkins, but wasn’t. The monster had brought Will here, taken him through some kind of portal that had opened up in the wall. 

He was confused, to say the least, but he knew instantly that he’d been transported somewhere else. 

The sky was wrong and the air was thick and there was this weird ash falling all around him. It was harder to breathe here.

But he was small and quick and somehow he managed to escape the monster and hid in and around the wrong version of his house for a long time. 

He tried so many different ways to talk to his mom, but it seemed like everytime he got close to her the monster would sense it and reappear. Eventually it got so bad that he had to abandon the house altogether, for his own safety and for his mom’s. 

He didn’t want to risk that thing crossing back into his Hawkins and hurting her or Jonathan, or any of his friends.

Will went to the only other place he could think of that felt safe. A place where maybe the monsters wouldn’t find him. Castle Byers, his fort in the middle of the woods, his home away from home.

It took a lot out of him, getting there. Will didn’t know how long he’d been in this Wrong Hawkins, days at least, but he hadn’t had any food or water in all that time, and it was starting to take its toll. He shivered constantly now, and it wasn’t long before he could scarcely do more than lay on the makeshift cot in his hut made of branches and sing to himself for company. 

“Should I stay or should I go now?

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go, there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

So come on and let me know”

He wondered if he’d ever get to see his family again. If his loved ones would know what happened to him. 

Will stopped singing as he heard a twig snap outside only a few yards away. Then another, and another. 

The monster had found him. 

He didn’t run this time. Not that he wasn’t scared anymore, he was petrified. He didn’t want to die. He was just too tired, too weak to get away again. 

He stayed where he was and braced himself for the claws and teeth, squeezing his eyes shut thinking that maybe if he didn’t see it coming it wouldn’t hurt so much. 

“Baby Byers? Is that you?”

Will’s eyes snapped back open. He couldn’t believe it. It wasn't the monster with the flower petal mouth peeking in through the door. It was another boy, a much older boy. 

The boy stepped cautiously inside the fort and crouched down next to where Will was laying. 

Up close he could see the older boy a little better. He had long dark curly hair hanging down from under a bandana that was wrapped around his head. He was ghostly pale, with big brown eyes that were tinged with just the slightest bit of red, and ruined clothes that were splattered with dried blood. 

In any other circumstances the boy would have been a terrifying sight, but when you’ve been faced with nothing but actual monsters for so long, seeing another person even in this condition felt like hope.

“Yeah, I’m Will.” He managed to answer.

The boy grinned widely. “No shit? Hah! It really is you! This is wild, man. I mean, it was a crazy theory , right? But I thought, shit , if this place is stuck in 1983, and just between you and me I think time is a little screwy here all around, I figured- I don’t have anything better to do, let me see if I can find the Baby Byers from back when all this started, and here you are!”

Will had absolutely no idea what this guy was going on about, but he sounded happy about it, and now Will wasn’t alone anymore. 

He had help.

“Who are you?” He asked.

The strange boy’s face screwed up in thought. Will couldn’t help but be amused at how dramatic his movements were. How expressive he was even in this bleak wasteland of a world. 

“Listen, I don’t want to make a creepy situation even creepier, but I don’t know if I should tell you my name. I don’t know how all this works or what kind of effect it might have on future events, y'know?”

Will didn’t know. 

None of what the other boy said was making any sense to him. He tried to respond, to ask the boy to slow down or explain what he meant, but the words got caught in his throat as he began to have a coughing fit. 

The boy rested the back of his hand on Will’s forehead, just like his mom always did when checking him for a fever. 

“Jesus, kid. You’re freezing.”

The boy shucked off his green vest and let it fall to the floor before removing the black leather jacket he had on beneath it and laid it down over Will like a blanket. 

When his chattering teeth slowed a bit and the cough had stopped, Will asked, “Won’t you get cold?”

The boy waved a hand through the air dismissively. “I’ll be fine. I don’t really feel the cold anymore.”

It was an ominous admission that when coupled with everything else Will couldn’t ignore. 

“ What are you?” Will asked, almost more curious than anything, really. He probably should have been more afraid of the boy than he was, but he was being so kind that it was hard to care that he might not be completely human.

The boy shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the question. “I’m… just a guy who got mixed up in this place because of a monster, same as you.”

Will narrowed his eyes. It felt like the truth, just maybe not the whole truth. “And you're sure you can’t tell me your name?” He pushed.

“You are persistent, kid. I’ll give you that.” The boy said with a laugh. “ Now I understand why you and Mike get along so well.”

“You know Mike?!” Will said excitedly.

“Shit.” The boy cursed as if he’d said more than he meant to. He looked nervous suddenly but recovered quickly. “Not important. What is important is getting you out of here. Can you walk if I help you?”

“I think so.”

“Good!” He said, reaching out to help Will shrug his arms into the sleeves of the oversized jacket. “Because I think I know how to get you out of here. Let’s get going, Will the Wise.” 

Will stared up at the other boy, mouth dropped open a little in surprise. “How do you know that ?”

“I know a lot of things…” The strange boy mumbled to himself, trailing off and staring into space a little as they stepped out of the fort and started walking. He kept one hand resting on Will’s back, ready to help if he stumbled or got too tired. He hadn’t felt this safe in days.  

“Oh.” The boy gasped suddenly, and out of nowhere. “Okay, yea. This could work!” He grinned down at Will and patted his back gently. “We’re going to do it your way.”

“You know you're not making any sense, right?” Will asked, giving him a little sideways look.  

The boy cackled, eyes shining with amusement. “Right, yeah. Okay, let’s start over.” 

He halted their steps and turned to Will, offering his hand to shake. “Hi, my name is Eddie and I'm from the future.” He tilted his head. “Sort of”

Will cracked a smile, letting out a soft laugh of his own.

“What? No gasp in awe? No sounds of surprise?” Eddie asked.

Will shook his head, still grinning as they resumed walking.

“Jeez, you throw a kid into another dimension for half a week and he goes all cynical on ya.”

“Another dimension?”

“Oh yeah. You guys call it the Upside Down, I think Mike, Lucas, and Dustin came up with it while you were in here. They also named all the monsters and shit after things from D&D.” Eddie started ticking things off on his fingers. “The tall humanoid thing is the demogorgon.”

“But-” Will began.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s not what the demogorgon looks like . I said the same thing, just go with it. Then there's Demodogs, the one’s kinda self explanatory. Demobats too, and the Mind Flayer. But– here’s the thing, what you don’t know, at least not yet, is that it’s all connected to one guy. He’s controlling them.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Will was doing his best to keep up. He made a point to remember every word Eddie said in case it was important, even if he didn’t understand what any of it meant now. Eddie said he was from the future, if that was true maybe it would all make sense later.

“I know, kid, I know.” Eddie shook his head. “There's so much that hasn’t happened to you yet. It’s hard to explain, even I don’t get it all, and we don’t have much time. I think the sooner we get you out of here the better.”

Will wanted to ask why Eddie kept talking like he was the only one getting out of here. Surely Eddie would come along too, right? He couldn’t want to stay here. He looked like he needed a hospital.

“Okay let me think, some of it’s a little fuzzy, but maybe I can just rattle off what I do remember. Uh, 1984, next year, Halloween. The shit’s gonna hit the fan again with all this stuff. You’ll… hell, you’ll just have to be careful and keep an eye out because I don’t know much about that one except that there were demodogs involved. I think Dustin actually kept one as a pet for a while or something.”

“What?!”

“It’s Dustin! Would you expect any less?”

Will shrugged. “I guess not.”

“It’ll be fine. Stick with Steve, he’ll keep you guys safe.”

“Oh. Who’s Steve?” Will asked. 

“In 1983? He’s Nancy Wheeler’s boyfriend, or about to be. Don't worry about it right now, you’ll meet him eventually.” Eddie tapped his own chin, thinking. “What else, um, 1985. Something definitely happens at the mall.”

“What mall?”

“Oh right, they didn’t start building it until ‘84. It’ll be there. Anyway, there’s a fire, but it’s not a fire and somehow there were Russians involved and Steve and Robin got tortured and– Oh! And Hopper died!”

Eddie grimaced at his own tone. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, good to know I guess. What should we do then?”

“I”m gonna go with the same advice as before and say stick with Steve. He always seems to manage to keep you brats safe, although honestly for that one you kids should probably be keeping an eye on him . Just, uh… don’t let him or Robin go near any elevators.”

Will nodded along as if that made any sense. Maybe it would one day, or maybe this was all a hallucination. “So is that it? Is it over after that?”

Eddie looked away. Face going carefully blank which was a stark contrast to the way he’d been up until now. “No, after that it… We call him Vecna… He started picking kids off. Chrissy Cunningham, she’s his first victim. She…” Eddie trailed off, a faraway look in his eye.

As they approached some kind of facility Eddie stopped walking abruptly and squatting down so he and Will were eye to eye. They had reached a tall chain link fence that surrounded a huge building. The sign outside indicated that it was Hawkins Lab. Will had heard of the place but he’d never been there before. 

“I don’t think I can take you any farther than this.” Eddie said. “You’ll have to walk in there on your own, but from what I understand that’s where your mom and Hopper came in and out from when they rescued you.”

“My mom found me?” It was crazy how easily he was starting to believe all the things Eddie was saying, but it was all a little too weird for it to be a lie 

Eddie nodded. “She sure did. Your mom is a total badass. I might not have known what was going on back then, but even I remember how everyone in town tried to tell her you were dead. She refused to believe it, and she was right.”

Eddie got quiet for a moment. He looked back up at the massive building for a long minute before bringing his attention back to Will.

“Will, I don’t know if any of this will make a difference, and there is so much more I should probably be telling you, but I don’t know how to explain it so you’ll understand. Just, trust each other, all right? Stick together no matter what. You're gonna meet a girl when you get out of here. A girl with superpowers named Eleven, like the number. I don’t know shit about her story really, but I do know this all comes down to her. Her and Vecna. When the time comes remember that Vecna is Henry Creel, and Henry Creel is One. A number, just like Eleven. He used to be human, they knew each other before, and he’s after her just as much as he’s after a way to get out of this place. That's the key. If you can kill Vecna, then I think all of this will finally be over.“

“Is that what happened, did Vecna do this to you?” It was the first time Will had openly acknowledged Eddie’s odd appearance and all the blood and wounds that were easily visible through the rips in his shirt. 

Eddie offered him a sad smile and dodged the question. “Just because we failed, doesn’t mean you will. Maybe this small change, getting you out of here early, and giving you my admittedly lacking knowledge of the future, will make a difference.”

Will opened his mouth, hesitating before closing it again. There was so much he wanted to say. He wanted to beg Eddie to come with him, to ask if they’d ever see each other again, but somehow he already knew Eddie wouldn’t answer. He wouldn’t leave this place, maybe couldn’t. 

Instead of saying anything he threw his small arms around the strange boy's waist, careful to avoid his wounds, and hugged him tightly. Eddie embraced him in return, patting his back awkwardly as they separated. Then he walked up to the fence and bent down pulling at the bottom of the chainlink until it was curled up enough that Will could crawl underneath it to the other side.

Eddie spoke to him one last time through the fence. “Somewhere in that building is a gate, a portal back home. There should be men monitoring it. Let them find you and bring you home, you’ll be alright.”

Once he was back in the Right-Side-Up, when he was finally home and recovered from his ordeal, Will tried to tell everyone about the strange looking older boy named Eddie who had helped him get out of the Upside Down. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t the type of kid to make up stories, not outside a game of D&D at least. 

No one believed him. 

“Then how did I know you named it the Upside Down? How did I know Eleven’s name or the fact that she had superpowers?” Will had argued. 

Unfortunately, once the men in hazmat suits had come to pull him through the gate, he’d sort of passed out and spent the next few days unconscious in the hospital wing of Hawkins Lab. 

Mike had been there almost the whole time, sometimes joined by Lucas and Dustin as well, and they would talk to Will as he slept about everything that had happened while he’d been gone. When he finally woke up and tried to explain what really happened to him, everyone assumed that he knew these things, the name of the place he’d been, the name of the monsters, and about El and everything else, because he’d heard his friends talking to him as he slept. Even Doctor Owens, the one nice man he’d met who worked for the lab, had said it was a possibility. 

Everyone thought his mind had invented Eddie, that the strange boy had been nothing more than a visual and auditory hallucination to help him deal with what was happening to him. 

It didn't even matter that he had actual physical evidence in the form of a worn black leather jacket. Once again, it was explained away. It was probably one of Lonny’s old jackets that he found and put on because it was so cold, they said. There might not be people in the Upside Down, but there was plenty of stuff. 

Never mind that there was a guitar pick on a length of thin chain shoved in one of the pockets, and Lonny had never played guitar a day in his life.

They all seemed to just want to get over it and move on. Eventually Will stopped trying to convince anyone else that Eddie was real. He believed, and that was good enough for now. They’d all know soon enough if the things Eddie had told him would come to pass.

The truth came to slap them all in the face just under a year later when Dustin, Lucas, and the new girl Max found themselves facing down demodogs in the junkyard with nothing for protection except an old school bus, and Steve Harrington with his nail bat.

It was a little easier to get the others to believe and listen to him after that.

Part 2

Thanks forever to @penny00dreadful for being the best friend, cheerleader, and beta in the whole fucking world 💜 truly could not do it without you.

[stemmmm]

My second entry into this series...

Stem's Thoughts on the Game Design of Harvest Moon 1 for GameBoy

What is a farming game if you take everything away other than the farming? If you whittle the whole thing down to its very core without any distractions? In this case it turns into a paradoxical kind of game that wants nothing more than for you NOT to play it.

Intro –  Memories of the Past

To understand what I mean by that, let’s take a step back to explain exactly what this game is. While I wasn’t overly familiar with this game before I played it for my research purposes, there were certain aspects of it seared into my brain as a child because it was the first Harvest Moon game I’d ever played (and one of the first games I’d played period). I remembered you could farm, and there was some kind of weird cave. I remembered you could have a cat or a dog and that you could play as a boy or a girl. I remembered that the town was just a menu where you could see the girls who run the shops. Most importantly, I remembered that the game autosaved. I remembered all of this because I had borrowed my friend’s copy of the game before going on a family trip where my mom made me share my games with my toddler cousin. He promptly destroyed my friend’s save file and I spent that trip in a 6-year-old panic trying to cover up that anything happened by making the file look the same as I remembered it being, in a desperate hope my new friend would still talk to me after I returned her game. (Everything was fine but she was mad.)

Returning to the game over 20 years later, I discovered that it’s pretty much a port of the SNES game, though not a good one, but I felt forgiving because it was on the dinky GameBoy. Instead of leaving home to take on a random farm, the game opens on the ghost of your grandpa pleading to you to become a MASTER RANCHER! He tells you that he’ll come back at the end of winter to see how you’ve been doing before he floats back up to heaven and leaves you with a video tutorial of how to farm, which existed in the SNES version but as an option on the title screen, so it was a bit less intrusive. 

So, similarities with SNES: the farm layout is generally the same, with all the same buildings like house, barn, coop, and shed, and the fence is still there too. Details like the well and the stumps that you’d originally find Harvest Sprites in are gone, and the flowerbox that keeps track of your power berry progress has been moved inside your house, which means that your fields have a lot less random stuff blocking off spaces, and that there’s actual room for crops inside your starting fence! The tool shed is the same, holding all of your working equipment, plus one of each kind of spring seed to help you get started. The shed is a more mandatory part of your daily routine than it was previously, because the lack of buttons on the GameBoy means there’s nothing you can press to swap out your tools, so swapping just isn’t an option. This doesn’t end up being as painful as it sounds because you’ll want to go to the shed every day anyway to see the Harvest Sprites who live in the cave in the back. The cave has four rooms, a main room where you can harvest mushrooms that grow every day, which makes up for the lack of forest to forage in, then there are three side rooms with a hot spring, a river which starts blocked off by a giant rock, and a room full of impassable stone pillars. The last two rooms don’t come into play until much later in the game.

Inside your house, there’s a note on the dining table that lists your animals, money, and also how much food and drink you have stocked. This is, in my opinion, part of the most interesting mechanic this game introduces, which is having to buy food to eat. There’s no cooking mechanic, so you’re forced to spend your money to buy meals and beverages at the restaurant and bar in town. Every morning, noon, and night, your character will automatically eat something, which restores a little bit of energy and indicates to you what time it is in the day. This mechanic existed in the SNES version too, but you never had to buy food. Having food in this game helps keep your happiness score up which is required for good endings, and it gives you something to spend your money on, though food and drink don’t really cost enough for it to be noticeable.

The town is, of course, a menu. You get to choose between the flower shop, bar, carpenter, church, tool shop, restaurant, and animal shop. Each place is manned by one character from the SNES version, mostly the marriageable girls, with the carpenter and animal shop manned by the two men who owned them in the other version since they ran out of girls. You have the ability to buy things, but that’s it. I won’t keep you waiting to know if there’s anything more to their stuff in this game because I already knew it going in. There’s no relationship mechanics with any of them, no marriage (after all, you can play as a girl and this game is old). You can't even talk to them. There’s a couple random events with the girls but they trigger based on the day more than anything else.

And that’s it! That’s the whole game! Get farming! 

I won’t lie, I was actually kind of excited at this point. From any reasonable angle, a farming game where the only thing to do is farm and farm and farm with no other real goal or progression outside of that is very obviously a red flag for what is at best an extremely boring game, but I was in something of a mood I guess. I was riding the high of SNES and at the time, I was interested in playing farming sims in the worst possible way– spending every last cent I ever made on crops, whether I could sustain all of them or not. It was my way of inserting a challenge into games that were otherwise extremely easy, because I found that once I stopped struggling, the game stopped being fun. By some kind of miracle, I had stumbled into a game that seemed to be designed for me to do exactly that, so I ran with it!

Immediately, I spent every last cent I could scrounge together on seeds, and while I waited for them to grow, I made friends with the Harvest Sprites. They told me that if we became better friends, they would help me on the farm, which was an interesting proposition! They didn’t do much of anything for me in the last game, so I was curious what they could do here. I gave them the mushrooms growing in the cave rather than sell them, to get the sprites’ friendships even higher. My efforts very quickly came to fruition when one offered to take my sickle to upgrade it. It would only take twelve hours, how exciting! One in-game day later and I learned that they meant twelve REAL LIFE HOURS. 

This is where things became concerning. I was trying to avoid wikis at this point because I wanted a genuine-feeling blind playthrough, so I didn’t know if this meant twelve hours of gameplay or twelve hours in general. I also wasn’t even sure if any of it would work right because I wasn’t playing on original hardware, though I expected whoever put it on the 3DS eShop wouldn’t make such a poor oversight that would cause the game to straight up not function… right?

A day of real life later and I noticed a distinct lack of sickle in my toolshed. It was about to become a problem. I managed to finally plant enough grass to buy a chicken, but I wasn’t able to actually cut the grass and the game wouldn’t let me take the chicken outside, so rather than earn money on eggs, I had to spend it all on more feed for it at the animal store. I was also using whatever time I had left in my short days to clear out my field of tree stumps, stones, and weeds to make room for my ever expanding crop empire. While this was happening, I started purposefully leaving the game on and idle whenever I wasn’t playing to make time pass more in hopes that I’d get over the twelve hour mark. By the end of spring, the sprites started to tell me that we were good enough friends that they would help on the farm, but I never noticed them do anything. My greatest saving grace was that when summer came, my unharvested crops didn’t wilt. Rather, they just vanished completely and left their tilled spaces in their wake ready for more planting– a blessing because without a scythe, I would have been completely screwed by having a massive amount of unfarmable land around my house.

On the 2nd of summer there was a typhoon, and that’s when I really started to realize something was wrong. My chickens weren’t fed and grass wasn’t cut after a day of forcibly not being able to do anything, which proved to me that the sprites didn’t help at all. On the flip side, my crops seemed untouched, no tilled land was untilled, no new weeds or debris had shown up in my field. To top it off, after a full season of weather happening, none of my fences had rotted. Could it be the case that these things were also tied to real life hours? If so, why would nothing ever happen? Neither passing time in real life nor manually changing the time of my 3DS clock made any difference.

The Sprite Timer

I couldn’t take it anymore at this point. I gave in and tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with this game, or with the emulation of it at least, if that was the source of my problems. Spoilers didn’t matter if I couldn’t just play the game, and besides, why was I so worried about spoilers? There was barely anything TO be spoiled!

It turns out this game has a nifty feature where if you press “select” twice, not once but twice in a row without backing out of the first menu with the B button, you can find a hidden menu with a setting called “timer”. If you press that, you’re asked if you want to turn on Harvest Sprite Help and can set the speed to fast or slow. This whole time I’d been worried that I’d miss out on parts of the game by not having the little manual that came with every GameBoy game, and my god, I was feeling it now. How on earth is anyone supposed to find this otherwise? This is never indicated anywhere in the game that I could find. Meanwhile in SNES, I was constantly running into signs every two feet explaining the most basic mechanics to me inside the game!

After recovering from that heavy blow, I turned on the timer set to fast and put my game down to do a little more research. In short, time passes inside the game while help is turned on. I tried looking more into some old forums to see if people had anything to say about this, but none of them got even close to bringing it up. I did however find a thread on reddit where someone mentioned having to not just close out, but reset the game to make things work. That actually made sense to me because the virtual console really only seems to do save states. So I reset the game, set my 3ds clock 4 more hours forward, and then got back in. The game was two full days later, my grass was cut, and the sickle was done. I felt sick.

I almost dropped the game then and there because this deranged mechanic freaked me out so much. If I forgot I set the timer and left the game, I could lose entire seasons to this hellish mechanic. Why even have it? Why take the experience of playing the game away from me? The only things that kept me in were the fact that technically, I would never need to use the help mechanic again because it’s only opt-in, and the game honestly felt very good to play. I made sure the timer was turned off, and went back to the daily grind. I harvested my crops, cleared my field, bought some cows, realized that my cows couldn’t be let outside at all (but they could be taken out for walks which triggered a VERY cute animation) so the fence was truly a meaningless entity here… Then things just kind of stopped happening and I started to get bored. 

I finally went and looked up the ending requirements. Ship 4,500 items and have found six power berries. 4,500 items is steep, but I’d been planting a crazy amount and didn’t keep good track so maybe I could surprise myself. Six power berries though? That was literally impossible. Almost all power berries are dug up from your field, and only 5 in total are available until your grandpa magically expands your field at the start of year two. To top it off, if I didn’t find all of the existing ones before that happened, they would be erased. That doesn’t seem like too much of a problem since I still would only need six, but that’s only for the first ending! There are THREE! And each time the requirements increase. So with little time to spare as I was already getting into fall, I started plowing.

And plowing. And plowing. And plowing.

I was pretty over the game now. The shock of the timer mechanic was a pretty big blow, and learning the requirements for the endings, mixed with the fact that it would take years of in-game time before I’d get to use any of the rewards associated with them, had worn my enthusiasm down pretty completely. My only hope was that just maybe, if I got everything but the power berries, the game would decide that my efforts were good enough and would give me a good ending anyways. Unlike SNES, this game at least has crops for fall and winter so I wasn’t completely out of things to do when those seasons came around, but still, by the end of the first winter, I was broken. I knew I had only gotten half the crops I'd needed and was short by at least 50 happiness. My options were either to throw the game in the garbage or push through another year trying to make up for it and get the genuine experience myself. I wasn’t on a hard deadline like in the previous game anyways, so I had infinite time. The years were going to keep rolling. I should have stopped playing. Instead, I learned why the sprite timer exists.

Winning Through Inaction

Come spring of year 2, Grandpa upgraded my fields to be twice as big for absolutely no reason, since it was already a pretty unusable size to start with. I got to work spending all the money I could on all the crops I could, and covered my field in them. I did my best to manage them myself, but I was exhausted by the game at this point. One day when I was done playing, I set the timer to slow and turned the game off. When I returned and reset the virtual console, the game presented me with a screen telling me the day, time, and how much the sprites had done to help me while I was gone. The numbers were pretty meager but this made time pass faster in a game that I was truly beginning to hate, so I started doing it more. I started being more purposeful in my actions and would try to make sure my fields were freshly sown before I left so there was less chance of days where the sprites would have nothing to do, and I would get more crops out of the deal, but even that didn’t seem like enough.

So in fall and winter, I stepped it up a notch. I bought 100 seed bags at the start of each season and then went into my system settings to change the date by a few days while the sprite timer was on. It wasn’t an exact science, something didn’t go to plan pretty much every single time I did it, but the result was that by the end of winter, I’d actually shipped twice as many things as I needed to somehow, despite having only shipped half of what was needed before and working my ass off for it. But we take what we get!

I thought I was short 20 happiness by the end of year 2, but grandpa was forgiving and he gave me a fishing rod that almost exclusively pulls garbage. This item is the exclusive purpose of that one room in the cave that has a river in it. It’s useless and adds absolutely nothing to the game at a point where it’s already boring as sin to get through.

To get to the next winter, knowing I didn’t need anything else, I switched the help to fast and skipped days that way, which felt very pathetic and like a waste of time and effort, but I finally got my pickax and went to town on the last room in the cave, the one filled with pillars. There’s actually two of those rooms, and they're just wall to wall pillars that I could smash for nothing but a couple of power berries to get myself to full completion.

By the way, the last completion item you can get is an umbrella that makes it rain the next day. I don’t remember accurately, I don't think I made it to the end of the next year to pick that one up, because why would I. I didn’t actually farm anything in that last year I played because the requirements to reach the level of “Master Rancher” were already attained when I got the first special item. There was truly absolutely nothing else to do. There were no more house upgrades to get, no more fields left to clear or plow, no more money I needed– good god no, I couldn't get rid of all the money I’d made by this point if I tried. Therefore there was no reason to fish either when I’d gotten that rod; I can’t cook it, there’s not a compendium of collectable fish (foreshadowing), all I can do is sell it, so why bother? The pickax gets you power berries which are useless at this point beyond giving you a completion percentage because all they give you otherwise is more energy, and since you aren’t farming, you aren’t burning that anyways. The only unique things that can come up at this point in the game are single, random events with each of the girls that I couldn’t even get to trigger for half of them. I don’t know if they got missed because I was sleeping away entire years or if I just needed to keep playing random days until they hit, but for a couple seconds of content, is it really worth it when I’m already this sick of the game?

Don’t Play This Game

It was really, really disappointing coming from the exhilaration I felt after finishing SNES to be met with… this travesty. The game has nothing in it and gives you nothing for your time, in fact it’s so baffled at the thought that you would spend time playing it that it encourages you not to. The one good thing about this game is the fact that since the 3DS eShop closed down, there’s no legal means of easily obtaining it anymore (as far as I’m aware).

[azucar-skull]

Shedding some light on my situation:

Yesterday, I opened up emergency commissions out of the blue with a very brief explanation on the current crisis at home. As promised, here are some more details on the situation.

Last Thanksgiving, I got disowned by half of my family on my mother's side after I exposed my abusers for what they are. Ever since I got home, it's one thing after another.

Recovery (physically from injuries too), chronic illness diagnosis, Grandpa having a hospital emergency (where I had to clean up his blood), Green Eyed Mask going on hiatus due to stress, finally finishing GEM...then my dad broke the TV.

It was so unlike him to be shouting at my mom for no reason, in my gut, I knew there was a bigger picture.

Dad getting upset, my aunts and uncles coming to visit more often, telling everyone to not say "Happy birthday" to Grandpa because he's too far gone, my abuela bringing out Grandpa's antiques from his time in military.

Last week, I was let out of class early and arrived home to everyone huddled in the kitchen with paperwork. While no one was looking, I saw that the paperwork was for Grandpa's will.

My grandpa is now 88 years old, the youngest sibling in his immediate family. His older brothers and father died at war, his sister and mother of old age. It was a given that this year is his last, he'll be lucky if he makes it to July.

A long anticipated death causes stress on the entire family. I've noticed that my body is out of balance, sobbing at random intervals all day even if I'm feeling fine. It's messing up my sleep, appetite, even my fucking periods which were already a bitch in the first place.

I avoided telling you guys because art is what kept me going. I would hide in my room and draw all day, the rest of the world fading. That's all I do now, hide.

But everyone else in my family is suffering too. My dad broke the TV 2 months ago and home is falling apart by the day. My brother opted to stealing food from the grocery store and living off of chicken tenders and fries from the deli. Mom is never seen, absorbed in her own work as much as I am. The house is a mess, the fridge is empty, bills piling up, riding pay check to paycheck.

It's not that we are poor or losing financial stability (I think), if we were I could turn to my community college for help but I'm not eligible. It's the fact that everyone is so down and busy that we forget the basics like food, long overdue haircuts, doctor appointments, taking care of the dogs, etc.

It's an "every man for themselves" kind of situation. And as a disabled person, I'm unable to work a stable job. So that's why I opened commissions. Money that I can hold of my own should there be a situation like now where I had to buy food the second I got my first order.

But this also means I am going to be more busy taking care of myself and my family. Comic production will be delayed a bit, and I unfortunately can't say for sure if Feral Casey AU will be ready by the end of May.

All I ask is for your support and patience. Reblogging my commission post helps a lot more than you think. And thank you again for everything.

Commission Post

[encorific]

what the dog doin???

more about him below break!!! :]

this is my stupid dog he's a workaholic and plays bonescape on the job at HQ

art is a bit old, ham looks kinda different than i draw him now, and i wanna change the spider logo on his back, but dogg..

he and ham have that coworker love-hate-but-usually-hate dynamic because i say so‼️

stupidly long dog infodump incoming vv

-his entire dimension is populated by silly dogs !!

-chased a frisbee thrown by his Uncle Bernard during a game of fetch into a bush with a spiderweb in it. this is when he was bit by his spider

-hes a medical journalist/intern at the Daily Beagle in his dimension. he got a veterinary degree since he wanted to learn more about his abilities on that level, and had always been interested in the concept, but ended up being stuck with an internship instead of a vet job. he uses his Spider-Hound battles to get photos of rare injuries and the like.

-speaking of the Daily Beagle, Spider-Ham physically attacked him once, accusing him of plagiarism.

-he juggles his internship with also being the head of the medical wing at HQ. most work he does is logging information about the various Spider-People that come and go, so he and anyone else there can more easily treat them in the future. he's gained a lot of dumb jokes and weird looks when a dog steps out to treat wounds, though, and every time he does he's gotten used to saying 'i don't shed' before anything else.

-he will sleep in his office under his desk on a dog bed a lot, just so he can go right back to work easily the next day.

-while his world has a somewhat cartoony appearance, toon force is a lot less significant than in universes such as Ham's.

-he has heightened hearing and smell because he's a dog, but it was heightened further after the spider bite. he often wears earplugs, only taking them out when in his office, so he can hear when someone walks into his wing.

-organic webbing, but it usually doesn't hold well since he's always exhausted.

-he can run on all fours, able to outrun most Spider-People like this.

-he's weaker than other Spider-People, and while the toon force's resilience provides some protection, he still struggles to physically fight your usual, non-dog villains.

-he hates any kind of smoke.

-he is 100% the guy to tell you to sleep and drink water and then stay awake for 5 days straight only drinking room temperature pepsi.

-he made a translation collar for hq so that he could talk to others. otherwise, he just makes huffs, gruffs, and woofs. (100% inspired by dug)

-he can be understood by standard quardopedal dogs without the collar on, and can understand them regardless. they don't usually have much to say that anyone would find interesting. food! squirrel!

-if someone is rude to him about being a dog and their ailment is minor, he'll refuse care until they own up to their actions. he's been reprimanded for this before, but knows he won't get fired.

-he's kind of on Miguel's side, but only because he's put his entire life into HQ and wouldn't risk losing it. once he's attached to something, he's locked down, loving like a dog.

-he loves great pyrenese (his gwen was one, named gizmo)

-when miguel came to recruit him, he had to write down 'give me a dictionary and come back in 48 hours' on a notepad, and made his translation collar within that time. miguel was a bit impressed by his dedication, which helped him get his position.

canon events: vv

-a rabid dog broke into his home, still somewhat conscious of decisions and continuing his life of crime in his haze. Pawter had let the man go earlier that day, before the furious rabies had set in, and Pawter had thought the guy was just a bit strange. the rabid dog bit his Uncle Bernard, leaving him to not die then and there, but slowly, with nothing to do to help. this both encouraged him to become Spider-Hound, and encouraged his medical interest onwards.

-lost Gizmo Stacy and Harry Pawsborn in a similar way to the classic 616 Peter Parker

-when his Aunt May's health began to deteriorate, after he'd lost his uncle and closest friends, he began to work at HQ more than back at home, ashamed of it, but too scared to watch as his aunt faded away too.

[cannibalisticskittles]

OC + Random Associations

tagged by @fiendpact, thank youuuuuu <3

Animal: i always waver between a dog and a cat with her – she's got the teeth and claws of a cat, the propensity for sleeping in and laying around in random bits of sunlight, and her mouth has a bit of that catlike :3 curve, but she is also extremely full of love in a way that radiates out from her much like a dog enthusiastically wagging its tail around exciting new people. either way tho – house pets that will love you deeply and also grievously wound someone who tries to harm you.

Colors: gold + vibrant blues and greens

Month: september?? i will be honest, i hadn’t had a month association before 

Songs: make the grade - jack conte, i won't hurt you - the west coast pop art experimental band, my dog’s eyes - zammuto, existential crisis hour - kilo kish, birdsong - regina spektor.

Number: 1 because she always feels lonely maybe, haha

Plants: asphodel – and I always think of strawberry blossoms when I think about what flower would best fit her, even though she is Very Allergic To Strawberries. sorry babe, but the imagery of the humble little strawberry flower is just too fitting.

Scents: ash, sulfur, whatever the hell bat guano smells like bc of all her spell components – but also something pleasantly warm and earthy, like rocks in a hot spring

Gemstone: i feel like i’ve got to go with amethyst bc. purble. 

Time of day: late late late at night, creeping into the very early morning, when the world is quiet and you can’t help but hear your thoughts (or your worries) clearer than ever before 

Season: autumn – the warm colors and dry crackle of shed leaves for her well, and even more so because she’s recently accepted the patronage of equinox, an autumn eladrin-flavored archfey

Places: caves with bioluminescent plants/fungi, places with strange and magical flora like the feywild, but also busy, crowded city streets where it's easy to get lost in the noise 

Food:  stew! and traveling rations like hardtack or jerky or dry, aged cheeses – things that would keep for a long time on the road. she’s an obligate carnivore, but she does try to pad her diet with as much non-meat as she can.

Drinks: really shit ale that you can buy in bulk at the local tavern as you daydrink with your adventuring party and discuss what steps to take next to fulfill your quest as you also take turns sneakily refilling your friend’s mug so that he remains convinced that it’s magically self-sustaining. (and also, a shitload of water. to wash down the dry ass jerky and hardtack.)

Element: fire

Seasonings: cinnamon and clove! also maybe saffron because she spent so much of her life traveling with trading caravans and saffron seems like the kind of coveted shit that would justify long-ass journeys by guarded caravan.

Sky: night, somewhere in the wilderness where it's so dark that the stars fill the sky everywhere you look

Weather:  hot, dry, windless summer days – if faerûn had wildfire watch levels, it would be stuck on extreme 

Magical power: fireball babyyyyyy (+ a dash of hellish rebuke)

Weapons: daggers. and more daggers, hidden in various places on her body. and teeth. so many sharp teeth. 

Candy/Sweets: honey candy, soft caramels – and pop rocks. she would be delighted by pop rocks.

Method of long distance travel: walking. just… long slogs on foot. walking across distances that are truly miserable to traverse – the sort where you’re ready to give up halfway through but can’t, because turning back would take as long as soldiering on, so you soldier on anyway? that. 

Artstyle: my memory of art styles has not really been brushed up on since my middle school days, i admit, but i think i lean towards impressionism for her

Fear: being useless, being alone, being Known; and, of course, the combination of those fears combined – having someone get close enough to her that it feels like they really know her and see her for who she is and then reject her as not being worth their time. 

Mythological creature: fairies/fae! they're beautiful, terrible, awful little winged shitheads and she adores them. and, to a lesser degree, unicorns, lmao. an association with and an assumption of goodness while also being fully willing and capable of skewering someone.  

Piece of stationery: an old, old notebook filled with small, cramped notes; various plans and calculations and details about people she comes across (‘naming day is just before the winter solstice; remember, they dislike most sweets and pastries’)

Three Emojis: 🥰🔥✨

Celestial body: stars, but distant and far off – she views herself as one of many, not standing out, and she’s very content with that! (imagining herself as one star in a sea of stars would delight her, actually. would feel a little less lonely.) perhaps she is a sun to someone, but that will never be how she sees it.

tagging @amphyn, @biknuckles, @brekkie-e, @fangmich, @lesbianaloy, @meishuu, @riddlcr, @stellamancer, @wasserpl – no pressure tho, haha

[druidgroves]

Feron backstory under cut !!!! she's long. content warning for kidnapping & abuse bc. hags.

Born in a small druid grove somewhere deep within the Reaching Wood, Feron wasn’t allowed to leave without an adult because of the gnolls and goblins inhabiting the forest, who saw the other inhabitants as nothing more than food.

As a young girl, her mother took her out to hunt during a particularly harsh winter. It was then that they became separated and Feron was unable to find her way back home due to the snow obscuring everything in a freak whiteout.

Cold and shivering, Feron was eventually found by an old woman wrapped in furs with a kindly face and promises that she would help her find her home again. The woman called herself Margaery, appearing to Feron as an elven woman with dark hair and kind eyes.

Margaery insisted that Feron come to her house first, just to warm up and wait ‘til the storm passed. At first, her home appeared a quaint little cottage tucked away in between the trees, a chimney on top pouring smoke and firelight flickering in the windows. Once inside did Margaery reveal her true form.

She immediately put Feron to work and for the next several decades, molded her into what she saw as the perfect guardian for her lair: a humanoid capable of turning into whatever beast she desired, having all the deadly skills of an animal but the sharp wit and mind of a person. She put a curse on Feron that allowed her complete control of her form, shifting her between girl and beast at her whim.

During the days, Feron was kept on a tight leash—literally. A chain around her ankle kept her tethered to the trunk at the center of Mad Margaery’s true home, a gnarled old tree with roots forming her underground lair. Feron did whatever was ordered of her and if she showed any signs of complaint or resistance, Margaery transformed her with the flick of her wrist. Most days, Margaery would complain about Feron, saying she should have eaten her when she had the chance, so that she may be useful.

During the night, Feron was thrown outside in her forced wildshape to guard the house. The first time out she tried to run away, only to come back some days later after having wandered the forest as a wolf and realizing she could not turn back without Margaery’s command. As punishment, she was kept in her wolf form for over a month, being treated like the dog she was, referred to only as “the Beast.” From then on, she was forced to hunt for her own food and to sleep in a tiny shed connected to the house.

After a while, Feron no longer needed to be leashed, for the threat of Margaery’s power was all that was needed to keep her in check. Over the years, she was made to do the hag’s bidding outside the lair, such as luring unsuspecting victims to her and checking traps for would-be adventurers looking to bag a hag.

It was in one of these traps—a pit full of strangling, thorny vines—did Feron find the first victim that hadn’t fallen to them instantly. An elven man had managed to stay alive within the pit, however he was on his last legs when she found him. He begged her for her help, telling her that he could help her too if she just got him out. He could see her for what she was: not a beast, but as a scared girl covered in dirt with fear in her eyes.

Risking both their lives, Feron used her own druidic magic to peel away the vines and told him to never return to this part of the forest unless he wanted to face a hag’s wrath. Cleverly, the man managed to get more information out of her by trading information for food from his pack, including the fact that she was essentially trapped to do Margaery’s bidding. He told her that if she could wait a little longer, he could get her out for good. Taking a lot out on chance, Feron told him all she could about Margaery’s secrets in desperate hope that he could actually help.

The man left her with his name—Salus Reachwood—and promised he would return when he could. It took three more months until Feron ever caught his scent again, along with that of several others; Salus had returned, this time with his old adventuring party.

During the ensuing fight, Feron was forced into her wolf form to attack those trying to help her, resulting in a near fatal swipe at Salus that left him scarred. Despite this, the party managed to kill the hag for good and the curse that was placed on Feron was dissolved.

Afterwards, Salus offered to take Feron in. At first she denied him, wanting to find her parents, and his insisted he help her to the grove she used to live in. When they got there, they found nothing but nature taking over any evidence that the area was once home to a druid circle. After that, Feron took Salus up on his offer to stay with him in Hill’s Edge, where he had been living in retirement until meeting Feron.

A few years after settling in, Feron took on Salus’ surname when she was asked for one after overhearing him telling a friend that she was like a daughter to him. It took a lot of time for Feron to fully trust him, that he wouldn’t throw her out for the smallest slights. Salus proved a kind and understanding man with patience he gladly afforded to the traumatized girl he helped save.

The two would only have so many years together, however, as Salus, a half-elf, was nearing the end of his life. When he finally passed, Feron went to seek out the remaining members of his old adventuring party to let them know. The party’s former cleric, a gnome named Calyn Springweave, lived in Baldur’s Gate and Feron had only just arrived in the city when it was attacked by the illithid and their nautiloid.

[lestcat-de-lioncourt]

Reading list for this month!

(Rb or like if you decide to read one of these titles after seeing this, I love knowing if I’ve inspired anyone to read things I have! It’s fun)

Pond Snail Robber

“The delightful and brutal life of living with a robber! Ji Ho ends up missing the deadline to apply for a dorm due to a slip of carelessness but luckily a sunbae from his major helps him get a room nearby. Unfortunately, not even half a day after moving in he gets attacked by a robber. After managing to get away, Ji Ho later comes back home to see the robber shedding tears over the novel he wrote in high school...But this robber, with the reason of wanting to continue reading his unfinished novel, asks to live with him in exchange for taking care of the house?! The sweet and fierce life of these two has started!”

(I wouldn’t say the description is totally great at describing what’s actually happening but it’s good at hiding spoilers of what the actual circumstances ended up being and it’s kinda a funny joke about the “robber” part once you read it. Also, it has the cutest unique font design ever, a snail!”)

Boyfriends.

“Want a boyfriend? How about 4?! Meet Prep, Jock, Goth and Nerd -four boys with a lot of love to share!

A comic about getting yourself a boyfriend... or multiple boyfriends! Four college students begin a polyamorous relationship and navigate the adventure that is their dating life!”

(I freaking love this, it’s really smooth and fun, and wholesome. As someone who’s poly you don’t get a lot of kind depictions of poly relationships, or there’s only threesome, foursome, or more being writing about for kinks or open relationships that aren’t poly or about polycules. The graphics are great on the eyes with lots of pastels, and each character has their fun personalities, not to mention actually including a trans guy within a gay relationship! It’s grand. 10/10 love Goth or wanna be Goth ahaa. Nerd is too adorable. Really recommend.)

Minmotion Syndrome

"The 600 million that was left to you, I’ll pay it off for you." Seo Taeyoon, who was dragged into the situation because of his father's debt, got angry and sneers at Park Jaein for being an omega after the latter made a sarcastic remark. Although Taeyoon detected Jaein's faint pheromone scent, he was able to identify him as an Omega. Jaein found Taeyoon interesting, as nobody else can really detect his smell, so he offered to pay off his debt in exchange for buying him...! Thus, Taeyoon now wears a leash designed for dogs. How would their dangerous relationship begin and end?”

(So this whole thing is so tongue in cheek so far, and absolutely not digestible for everyone, though I’m only at chapter 9. but the art, is phenomenal and I adore the styles for both characters. And well, it’s nice to see omegas which are characters designed to always submit and be mindless totally being the top dog. I like it when things don’t fit into boxes, it’s kinda like in any nsfw circumstances where someone typically assumed as having to be subservient, isn’t, because it’s not as cut and dry as that nor has to for, for instant when people are like big macho bois can’t “bottom”… if you catch my drift.~ Park Jaein is pretty mentally whomped aha, his “crazy eyes” are spooky hot. I’m so bad. Taeyoon is an omega hating alpha son of a poor drug addicted male omega SW (adult worker). It goes into their stories about why they’re the way they are, and I guess I’m hoping it works out and they don’t hate each other anymore.)

The Pizza Delivery Man and The Gold Palace

“Woowon has spent his entire life repaying debts with his mother as a result of his father's irrational business investments and gambling. When his mother falls unwell, she retreats to the countryside, where she struggles by herself. One day, Woowon is fired from his part-time job, and while searching for a new job, he is introduced to one as a delivery man at a pizza shop in a wealthy area by a friend. Not only was the food delicious, but the staff was also known for being attractive. Woowon, who had a dashing appearance, goes to an interview and immediately passes. Seo-an has spent his entire life being swayed by his father's greed, who would not tolerate even the smallest flaw. That was how he lived, chewing at himself with bursting panic and constant avoidance of people. One day, everything came to a halt and Seo-an locked himself up at home. Then, a person who had done him a tiny favor appeared. After a long time, he was no longer afraid of others. A young love story in which two people who are tired of life fall in love.���

Lover Boy (Jeky)

(I really adore the art here and that a moan character is an artist, it’s a trialing story for both of them!)

Ongoing reading list still reading from month prior:

-

What's with this strange dream?!

“Jungoh was just expecting to take on a part-time job as an assistant. What he didn’t expect was working inside people’s dreams with a cute, but grumpy shaman named Ibeom. And he certainly didn’t expect Ibeom to be cursed by a nightmare seedling!”

(Sorry I had to use this image, it’s hilarious.)

Night by the sea

“Kim Euihyun, who had given up everything due to reaching his limits, ran towards the sea with a child in his arms and was caught by an alpha, Yeo Taejoo. Euihyun, who is left with only debt by his father running away, was given money, a house, by Taejoo and even a job if he gives his body..."

Intoxicated

“Omega Shen Tingwei wakes up after a traffic accident and soon realizes something is very wrong. The people around him have no idea what an omega is, the local pharmacy doesn't carry his heat suppressants, and no one - including the doctor at the nearest hospital - seems to understand the reason he is feverish is because he's going into heat. Enter Lian Jue, a wealthy man with Emotional Deprivation Disorder who is struggling to balance running his company, appeasing his difficult family, and caring for his adopted son, Kangtong. When he encounters the heat-drunk Shen Tingwei staggering around the city and saves him from getting hit by yet another vehicle, the two men soon become entangled in each other's lives. Shen Tingwei is lost and helpless in a world not his own, and Lian Jue can't help but be drawn to the unusual stranger...”

“Shen lived in a place as a lawyer where there are three gender known: alpha, beta and omega however an incident caused him to be transported in a society where there are only two gender recognized: male and female.”

Is there a love at first sight in e-sport

“The Asian champion is free to take the girl to score points in the game. Finally, he brings a girl to Kaimai but finds that the other party is a boy. Mr. Champion left behind the online dating that ended before it started. When he went to train with the club, he accidentally had a little friction with another team. When the opponent's deputy captain showed up, Mr. Champion was instantly tempted to doubt life. When the opponent spoke, it was the "girl" he personally brought that day. Is there love at first sight in e-sports? Exists.”

[fox-daddy]

Christmas but not really.

Thanks for the ask and nope this is the first question I've gotten around my Mc's.

I'm going to write 4 versions for this; 1 where my Mc's all live in the same world and then one each focused on when it's just them as the Mc since I feel all four versions would shed light on how they feel about it properly instead of focusing on one perspective.

(Another note is when making the original I was stupid and forgot Julian and Portia are Jewish. Due to not knowing about their holiday and the fact I like to celebrate Christmas as a pagan holiday rather than a christian one due to liking pagan stuff more. 'the date itself and several of the customs we've come to associate with Christmas actually evolved from pagan traditions celebrating the winter solstice.' For this I decided to edit it so it has nothing to do with Christmas but just a holiday celebrated in Vesuvia. Gift giving is pretty much meant to be reminder how much the person you give gifts means to you. Romantic, platonic, etc it's not you HAVE to give anyone gifts but if you do it's a sign you really appreciate that person. Maybe in the original version of the holiday food was the gift you'd give kind of as a 'don't starve during winter I care about you' but evolved overtime to other items.)

When they all live in the same world;

Kyle in both versions with him in it adore the holidays as a chance to both show appreciation for his friends through gifts and through remembering what the holiday is for, reminding those around us how much we adore them. If it's before the game then he'll spend most of the day with Asra and Hunter. While Hunter has no strong feelings for the holiday good or bad they enjoy being able to spend the day hanging around the shop enjoying holiday treats like gingerbread men and pudding. Who can forget the eggnog. Bluebell my poor workaholic tends to spend their day in their clinic being one of if not the only vet in Vesuvia means even during the holidays they don't tend to take long breaks. With chocolate being shared around more it just means more chocolate poisoning and more work. However, Kyle just takes this as a great opportunity to move the small party to their clinic. Waiting until it's closed before going over with Asra, Hunter and a bowl full with hot or sweet foods. As they both help take over some of the work and get Bluebell to take a proper rest for the night, which usually involves Kyle, Hunter and Asra getting drunk while Bluebell makes food. Theirs nothing quiet like good food, good company and a building filled with dogs, cats and other animals.

For when each of them are the Mc without the other;

Kyle;

If were talking a December holiday then with Vesuvia being in the southern hemisphere it would be summer. Going off a July holiday, every since his first one he's adored the holiday. The bright lights, the snow, the smell of fresh cooking and it being the time of the year where people are more conscious of the people around them. Getting and giving gifts only make it that much better. pre-game he'd spend the beginning of the day waking up early and heading outside wrapped up in as many layers as he can without losing mobility to watch the sunrise and play in the snow. Followed by a hot meal inside with Asra before dragging them outside to play in the snow. Then again given the opportunity Kyle would play in the snow everyday. However, due to mild trauma on Asra's part he's not really allowed to play in the snow too much due to always getting sick the next day even if only mildly. Asra even once tried to bring some snow inside which only proved it was Kyle's magic reacting to snow rather than him actually getting sick. Today is one of the exceptions. Closer to midday they have hot drinks and the classic present exchange as 9/10 Kyle is usually given at least one gift that's either a puzzle, book, game, arts and crafts or just something to do as Kyle will usually spend the rest of the day playing with whatever he was given and after an early warm dinner, watching the sunset before going to bed early as typically by this point Kyle starts to feel slightly sick. Although it's almost always cleared up by tomorrow afternoon if not tomorrow night.

if post route with Asra it's mostly the same except Kyle will spend the early morning cuddling in bed with Asra until breakfast where he'll drag the white haired magician outside and then it's mostly the same.

If Nadia's route then Kyle typically follows what Nadia usually does with the exception of the early morning shenanigans where Kyle will sneakily sneak out of bed and set up both a heartwarming message in the snow and work on snowmen/animals around the message. He's not above using magic to make sure it's perfect as he tends to make it owl themed so Chandra can enjoy it too.

Hunter;

pre routes;

To say their first winter holiday was a surprise is an understatement. At first they had ignored the brighter lights and cheerful mood finding the change unsettling to say the least. While it looked to be a solid 50/50 on if they would enjoy it as for the most part they seemed content to spend the day inside around the oven with the stove salamander. However, as soon as they were given their first present it was pretty clear they would enjoy it if for nothing else but the primal urge to tear colorful paper into shreds, only noticing the actual gift when Asra pointed it out as they were too distracted by their destruction of the paper. Ever since they've grown a soft spot for giving people colorful paper for them to destroy to get to the mystery gift inside. Aside from the gifts they tend to have a pretty neutral feeling for the holiday not overly enjoying it anymore than a normal overly cold day but also doesn't hate it. Spending most of the day like it's a normal day.

post routes;

They tend to have a similar feeling to the holiday as Muriel, a normal cold day with the exception of having to give gifts. To say they were both nervous the first holiday together is understatement, Muriel definitely relaxed more realizing Hunter mainly enjoys just destroying the wrapping paper. Aside from a small picnic and presents they tend to spend the day like most overly cold days, 'cuddling' (aka leaning against each other) with Inanna and relaxing by a fire.

When Julian realized Hunter never really did anything special that changed immediately. Being woken up by Julian dragging them out of bed and outside for a snowball fight. Neither of them are above cheating, as they eventually head inside for some breakfast. Before midday they head over to Mazelinka's to start setting up for dinner with some help from Portia. They open presents before enjoying a hot dinner that slowly turns into some light drinking and a night of celebration and the next day to rest. Which yes means Hunter forcing Julian to rest, which is easier when he's hungover.

The day is pretty similar with Portia as well. A hectic morning of fun, evening of heading over to Mazelinka's to start on dinner, opening presents before having dinner and drinking.

Bluebell;

pre route;

My poor workaholic would prefer to try and work and prove themselves as being able to look after themselves as soon as they can. While this is normally a good thing Asra is proud of their is a point where it becomes not so good. So being forced to keep the shop closed wasn't the best news for them at first. However, Asra took it as a chance to try and remind them it's a good time to rest. So to say Bluebell didn't like winter holiday at first was an understatement, they hated it. It felt like they were being forced to rest when they didn't want to. However, as the day went on Asra made sure to show them that resting can be fun. Doing baking, making cards and more baking.

Post route;

Bluebell still struggles with taking time off but dating Lucio helps with that a lot. As much as Bluebell would love to take a new job and do work, it didn't take too much begging convincing for Lucio to get Bluebell to agree to take the day off with him. As they spent a lot of the day wondering around the city they were in. As they end up buying ingredients and gifts. When they get into an inn Bluebell typically uses the kitchen with permission to make a bunch of treats and cookies and gingerbread men and pudding and other treats. Where they'll eventually wind down cuddling in their room with a bunch of treats (yes Bluebell made Mercedes and Melchior dog treats) where they'll exchange gifts usually not wrapped but it's not the wrapping it's watching Lucio react to the fact Bluebell had saved up to get him that expensive item they didn't have money in the budget for but he really wanted.

[koolkat9]

👀

AU Ask Game

GerEng Werewolf AU

Because I love me some werewolf!Arthur.

Basically, Ludwig used to be a vet, but after a really bad experience or perhaps a chain of bad experiences he decides that maybe being a vet isn't for him. A little lost, he moves into a little cottage just outside of town, right next to the forest. He starts living his best cottage core life with his dog.

He's settled into his new life, but then something comes crashing in to disrupt all that. On the night of a full moon, a huge wolf comes wandering into Ludwig's backyard. The poor thing is injured, looking near death so Ludwig tries to help it. Though he primarily worked with pets, he learned to treat an array of animals, including wildlife. He wraps the now collapsed wolf in a blanket and tends to the wolf's wounds

When done, he gives it shelter in his shed (probably not safe and should not be done, but for plot suspend your disbelief). When he comes to check on the wolf in the morning, he instead finds a naked man who has the exact same injuries as the wolf did. Ludwig is freaking, wondering what he should do, what this means. But the man wakes up, cutting that freak out short.

"Where am I?" the man asks, dazed.

"My shed."

"Wha--I--"

"Are you a werewolf?" Ludwig blurts out.

"How absurd."

"Funny considering I left a wolf here last night in that exact blanket and attended to those exact wounds."

The man concedes that yes he's a werewolf, but Ludwig has to keep it secret. He intoduces himself as Arthur.

Though Ludwig is wary of how much he can trust Arthur he offers to give him breakfast and some clothes. The clothes are bit big, but they'll work. And Arthur is very thankful for the food.

But over breakfast Ludwig tries to squeeze more information out of Arthur, about who Arthur is and about werewolves in general, but Arthur is very secretive and quickly gets annoyed.

"Maybe I should take you to a proper doctor," Ludwig tries to offer, but Arthur shuts him down.

"What do you mean no?" Ludwig asks, "You're hurt and I'm no doctor."

"You did just fine. I can't have them possible picking up on the whole...you know...People finding out is what got me into this mess." Arthur quickly realizes he said a bit too much. But luckily Ludwig let's it go (for now).

"What do you plan on doing now?" Ludwig questions instead.

Arthur is quiet for a moment. "I'm not sure...Maybe look for more of my kind? We're wolves, we like being with others I guess."

"You guess."

"You ask too many questions."

Ludwig decides to drop all the questioning finally and tells Arthur he should stay here until his wounds heal. Arthur reluctantly agrees.

Arthur tries to cook breakfast the next morning to thank Ludwig for his kindness and almost burns the kitchen down. From that day on, Arthur is banned from the kitchen (until Ludwig learns that Arthur can bake then Arthur is only allowed in the kitchen to bake)

Some time goes by, the two settle into a life together, Arthur is getting stronger every day, but neither wants to admit that soon Arthur can set out on his own again.

Originally I had this next part taking place a few days after Arthur and Ludwig met but it didn't fit for how injured I made Arthur and I felt it was a bit rushed. So it's happening more like a month or two later.

Anyway, someone makes a comment about how much meat Ludwig is buying (werewolves need extra meet in their diet) and Ludwig covers by saying he got another dog. And Arthur gets a little offended by this and is pouty for the rest of the day leaving Ludwig confused.

Eventually Ludwig asks what's wrong.

"Don't know why you're asking a dog," Arthur barks.

"So that's what this is all about? It was a cover." Writing this out I just thought of something. What if Ludwig used the cover a few times or Ludwig has said things that compare Arthur to other canines and Arthur gets annoyed each time but Ludwig doesn't really pick up on the signals. So Ludwig goes onto say "Why are you so antsy about that?"

"Shut up. I don't want to talk about it?"

"Don't start getting pissy with me. You can leave any time you want. You're practically good as new."

"Then why haven't you kicked me out?"

"Because I'd miss you." Ludwig immediately regrets letting that slip and both are stunned into silence.

"Miss me?"

Ludwig admits from day one he thought Arthur was beautiful and over the month or two they've lived together, Ludwig loves Arthur deeply and fears losing him and being alone again.

Arthur admits he's grown attached to Ludwig as well and would like to stay if he's allowed.

And it's just two lonely men finding comfort in each other. Arthur learning to accept himself as a werewolf (because he's kind of resentful about that fact) and Ludwig deciding what he wants to do with his life (go back to being a vet or trying something else) (can't decide if I want him to go back to being a vet or try a different path)

And...yeah. That's what I've got for that au so far.

[rosavulpes]

Slipping on multiple layers of clothing in preparation for the harsh wintry conditions that awaited him outside of his cabin home , unlike most others that would be staying indoors for the day , the prospect of the biting cold against his skin was more enticing than it was dissuading . 

Besides , regardless of what it was like outside there was always work that needed to be done no matter what . If he was the only one in the village that could tolerate this kind of cold ? Then it simply meant that most of the work that needed to be done today would fall on his shoulders to do . As was his responsibility to his village and neighbors .  

As he stepped outside , he couldn’t help but smile as dozen of furry , happy faces leapt upwards to greet him . Licking at his face affectionately as he knelt downwards to greet all of his huskies . 

While they might’ve been fine to accompany him out in this type of cold due to their nature , he’d rather not risk their health which was why today he’d be walking on most of his journey . His sled , and most of his tools would be staying behind in his workshop . He didn’t intend to go fishing , hunting , or anything else too cumbersome anyways . Just some harvesting to make sure everyone else in town would have enough to weather out the cold front . 

  “  давай успокойся сейчас “ - ( C’mon , settle down now ) 

After a few moments , he’d walk to his nearby storage shed , pulling out and then propping up a bag of relatively frozen food’s he kept around as their feed . 

He’d read up before that raw food was just as effective in dog’s as processed ... that and due to his current location , processed food was hard to come by in the frozen northern lands of Siberia . 

Walking over to his kennel , he sorted out some generous chunks of raw meat , fish , berries , and an eggs for each empty bowl . Thanks to the kennel being relatively warm compared to the outside , they had drinking water available to them as well . 

With a loud whistle , soon enough the kennel was soon full of hungry huskies that each ran to their individual bowls . The sounds of happy eating filling the air as he watched to make sure they ate well , drank well , and soon laid down to digest their meal . 

With his first errand of the day done , he’d be back later on in the day to feed them once more , and maybe do a bit of brushing to clean their coats . Not that excess fur wasn’t helpful to them this time of the year but he liked knowing that they were as groomed as they could be . 

With plenty of space for them to run around as well once they did get settled in , he knew that he could leave home without having to worry for them . 

Setting out from this gated cabin with an axe , and a few coils of rope hanging off his shoulders he began his trek out into the frost covered wilderness . 

Reaching his destination before long , a lake whose surface had long since frozen over well before the start of the winter season , a place where he intended to harvest fresh water ... by breaking off chunks of ice that could later be melted down into the water of course . 

Setting down his axe into the snow , his gloves would soon follow next . Hands balling into fists as he walked out past the shoreline . Kneeling down , hands wiping away snow , glazing over the cold surface of the ice as he exhaled softly . 

Warm breath leaving his lips like a shroud of mist as he closed his eyes . 

A shroud of silver aura soon enveloping him , sparkling akin to the flakes of snow swirling around him . Fist raised above his head slowly , before he swiftly embedded it into the ice . 

The resulting boom akin to thunder , the small quake that followed afterwards negligible compared to the chorus of splintering , and cracking sounds that came after . 

Shards of ice thrown upwards into the air as great pieces of ice were freed from the surface of the waters . 

With a light smile , the Cygnus Saint retrieved his axe , and began his work of chopping down the great chunks into smaller blocks . Blocks that were easier to manage , easier to melt , and easier for him to carry once all was said and done . 

He didn’t need to do all of this of course , his neighbors were all keen enough to have ice blocks of their own stored away on their properties for use when water was needed but it was a courtesy that was instilled within him by his former master . 

I’ll look out for you in your time of need , and you’ll look out for me in my time .