#actually surprised a wrote 13 things

[carlos-in-glasses]

Rhythms

124k, 17 chapters, E, complete and on Ao3.

TK swoons when he discovers a sentimental scrapbook full of notes he and Carlos have left for each other – but he also unearths a book of poems that closeted teen-Carlos wrote about his struggles, including a few dedicated to his high school crush. An adorably mortified Carlos recalls the stir he caused when he was published anonymously in the high school paper, and everything he went through to write his wedding vows for TK years later. With TK as a hype-man, maybe Carlos can embrace his creative side again.

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Chapter 1 - Love Heart: The day after TK and Carlos’ first wedding anniversary, TK is sent home from work sick. Back at the loft unexpectedly, he makes a surprising discovery about Carlos.

Chapter 2 - Club Can't Handle Me: In 2011, sixteen-year-old Carlos is both in the closet and in his high school’s wrestling team – and it’s all a bit too much. Perhaps against his better judgment, he turns to poetry and makes a decision that will change his life.

Chapter 3 - Crossroads: Daydreaming about his wedding vows mid-drive, Carlos gets pulled over for a traffic violation – and Gabriel isn’t happy. Reunited with TK, Carlos might be lost for words, but he finds another way to express his love and desire.

Chapter 4 - The Wrestler: Carlos’ poems are published – and he quickly learns there’s no putting the genie back into the bottle.

Chapter 5 - A Gay Fantasia: In the aftermath of being abducted by a serial killer, Carlos reflects on recent events and resumes work on his wedding vows.

Chapter 6 - La Tormenta: Carlos is devastated when Scott gets a girlfriend, and he finds himself in another snowballing situation.

Chapter 7 - Soulmates: When TK has a Huntington’s disease scare, Carlos finds he knows exactly what to say. But will it help him with his writer’s block when it comes to his wedding vows?

Chapter 8 - Man of Mystery: It’s the day of the Lake View High School Talent Show – and will the real Shadow Poet please stand up?

Chapter 9 - Crush: In 2011, it’s make or break for sixteen year old Carlos at the talent show. In 2024, TK becomes the hype man Carlos had needed over a decade ago.

Chapter 10 - From Behind: A couple of weeks before the wedding, Carlos is still working on his vows when a deeper rift develops between him and his dad. In 2012, seventeen year-old Carlos is spiraling after coming out to his parents.

Chapter 11 - The Other Wrestler: TK decides to lift Carlos’ spirits by learning how to wrestle.

Chapter 12 - Carlos Reyes Will Be Okay: At Gabriel’s funeral, Carlos regrets saying no to reading a poem in tribute – but during the wake, he finds himself under a whole new pressure. Later that night, he realizes the vows he’s worked so hard on for TK cannot be spoken yet.

Chapter 13 - The Closet: Despite some good news, Carlos ends up in the doghouse with his mom and with TK.

Chapter 14 - Once in a Blue Moon: Reeling from his confrontation with Andrea, Carlos seeks advice and admits a secret.

Chapter 15 - Raining on Prom Night: In May 2012, chaos erupts at Carlos’ senior prom.

Chapter 16 - Tyler Kennedy Strand: The wedding day arrives, and Carlos finally gets to recite his vows to TK.

Chapter 17 - Shadow Poet: Carlos attends his poetry reading with TK by his side and some important people in the audience – but will he actually perform this time?

“I was just remembering–” Carlos says, “The first time you stayed for a while after one of our hookups. It was, like, the third time we hooked up, I think. I asked if you wanted tea and cookies and you looked at me like I’d said the weirdest thing ever.”

TK’s exhausted, puffy face breaks into a dazzling grin. “You were being such a Boy Scout.”

“But then you said yes and you ate half the cookie jar.”

“You called me the Cookie Monster.”

“That was the first time I really made you laugh.”

“Tea came out my nose.”

“It was beautiful,” Carlos says, pausing then to qualify: “Your laugh.”

TK gazes up at him, his clear green eyes large and shining. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

“The first time you made me laugh was when we were dancing at the honky-tonk.”

“Hey!” TK swats his arm. “I was trying my best!”

“You were so goofy,” Carlos chides. “I just loved it. I loved you.”

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[mythicmanuscripts]

Hiiii <3 i absolutely adore your works, I have been SEARCHING for someone who appreciates the sub!hotd boys

I saw that you recently wrote this for Jace, but I've been thinking so so hard about taking care of sub!Aemond when he's not feeling good/sick, the way he would absolutely install all of his trust into his beloved, and completely melt away in their arms! Especially if he has a stomach bug or something like that.

We know how he feels about people in his space, so he definitely doesn't want the maesters or servants near him, so all of his care is basically through his lover 😵‍💫😭

I love this idea! I also think it's very funny how much we all love torturing these characters.

There's nothing NSFW in this answer but the vibes are definitely sub!aemond and also I do make reference to what happened at the brothel when he was 13 so I'm gonna hide it behind a cut just in case.

Firstly, Aemond trust is very VERY hard to get. You are the only person he actually trusts. Sure there are some others he trusts to certain extents, but you are the only one with his full trust. A big part about why you have that level of trust is because of how you protect him and his vulnerabilities? You will never ever let anyone else see him in a vulnerable position. Plenty of people have tried to get you to reveal things about Aemond to them and of course you always tell them to get lost and then tell Aemond about it later. There are no secrets between the two of you, ever.

(And I really do mean ever, not even white lies, not even a lie that sets up a surprise for him, nothing. In fact you go out of your way to always ensure he knows what's going on with you and letting him tell you what's happening with him. It's this constant, open communication that really solidifies the relationship for Aemond. You become his safe space, and he becomes yours)

So when Aemond gets sick, his first reaction is absolutely to find you and ask for support. In fact, he probably doesn't been realise it? He just feels bad and before he knows what's going on he's wondering around the keep trying to find you.

It's because he always feels better when he's in the same space as you? He just feels so much more secure when he's with you, when he knows he has someone who is 100% on his side and have his back.

You know something is wrong the moment you spot him because he doesn't actually come to you and join the conversation you're having, instead he just stands there watching you. He looks even paler than normal. You quickly excuse yourself from the conversation and go to him.

The first thing you do is ask what's wrong and he actually doesn't answer the first time. There are too many people around and he doesn't want anyone else hearing that he's not feeling well. So you take him to your shared chambers and only then does he confess about how bad he feels. You try to convince him to call a maester, but needless to say that doesn't work.

You arent too surprised with that refusal, considering how reserved he is and how much he hates seeming weak in front of others. You're just glad he's come to you. You don't even consider calling a maester anyway. It doesn't matter how sick he is, you won't break his trust like that. He came to you for help.

You help him get undressed and then help him into a wam bath to get him feeling a little better. Only once he's in the bath do you ask if you can remove his eye patch, and part of you think he'll say no because of how clearly vulnerable he is. But he nods and asks you to do it for him. You, of course, gently taking it off him and then help him wash himself. Aemond absolutely ADORES when you wash his hair, so when you make the offer to do that he agrees immediately.

Once he's nice and clean, you help him onto the bed. The moment he's changed into more comfortable clothes he's pulling you into bed with him and turning into your arms. You let him rest against your chest and run your hands through his hair, untangling it with your fingers.

He just lays there for a while, eventually he starts shivering and you pull away to ask what's wrong. That's when you feel his forehead and realise he has a fever. Again you suggest calling a maester and again he refuses, choosing instead to dive back into your chest and cling to you as he shivers.

You wait a little while longer and ask again when you realise he's not getting any better. You then offer to call the maesters but ensure they don't touch him. That's an option he considers, and eventually he agrees. `

You go to fetch the maester on duty, and you give them a very stern talking to because allowing them into the bedroom, making them promise they won't touch Aemond.

Aemond is sitting in the bed when you return, and he immediately holds his hand out to you. You come and sit on the side of bed, taking his hand and then telling the Maester what's going on. The maester tries to say he needs to feel Aemond's forehead, but you stop him mid sentence. Aemond doesn't even need to tell the maester no, you've already stopped him. You can feel how aemond's grip on your hand relaxes when you prevent the maester from touching him.

The maester prescribes some medication and to keep a cool towel on his forehead. You administer his medication and put a damp towel over his forehead as instructed. Aemond doesn't even bother listening to what the Maester said because he knows you would have listened closely and would ensure he follows all instructions.

When aemond is sick is the only time he will actually be openly needy with you. When you try to leave the room he actually whines and begs you to come back. And he's so hostile to anyone else who tries to enter the room, because he mostly just feels so vulnerable and he can't stand the thought of others seeing him that way. You basically have to guard his door for him to be able to relax enough to actually sleep.

Oh and if he made you sick as a result, he'll look after you and lord help anyone who tries to get him to move away from your bedside.

[commandershepardvasfuckit]

An Arranged Marriage, part 29

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28

1.6k words

Zen was back to being Zen, though the affection shared between the two of you was often tinged with frustration from him.

(I am feral over my own character, ask box is always open for talking about my writing or just monster fucking in general!)

--------

You sat next to Zen by the hearth and marveled at his hand while he wrote. Every movement so precise as he penned his letter to his family.

“Making sure I am not leaving anything out?” Zen teased you.

As far as you could tell his handwriting was very tidy, each character perfectly aligned and spaced out evenly. You could not read a word of it but were still enjoying watching him.

“I can’t believe how delicate you are with only three fingers” you said.

“Only three? I cannot understand how you can do anything without your extra fingers getting in the way.”

“No! Five is a good amount to have! Three isn’t enough.”

“I did not hear any complaints about my hand and fingers when I had one in you.”

You buried your face into the side of his arm and he leaned over a bit to nuzzle the top of your head.

“How long will it take for the letter to get there?” you asked.

“It will depend on who I can find to take it. There are some minotaur hunting groups that travel close to my village that I could send it with, but that would probably take weeks. And there are fisherman from my village who sail down this way sometimes to sell anything extra they catch, that is a more direct way to get the letter home, but they only dock here sporadically.”

“And when did you want to go visit?”

“Next month. There is quite an important festival then. Though we may actually get there before the letter then, which would not be ideal” he let out a deep sigh, “I will figure this out, somehow.”

Days flew by much the same way they had for the past week. Zen snuggled up against you whenever he could, lots of your free time spent lounging together while you each did your own thing. It was comfortable.

He made no attempt to initiate anything more than cuddling. His hands lingered on you in the bath, little sighs and whimpers as you felt him half hard against your back, though he often had a nervous and frustrated air about him. You would turn to press the side of your face to his chest and hug on to him, the affection always seeming to settle him down.

Often you caught him looking at you with almost a sad expression, sick of waiting and too worried to start again.

It was still early in the day. Zen was off at the hold, going over supply manifests and trying to figure out how to get what little supplies where scrounged out to the more remote settlements.

Slowly you started helping with the house work more and more. Back at home you never had to do anything, but here it was just you and Zen. You were sweeping up the entryway, Zen did his best to not track dirt in but being that trolls did not wear shoes meant that some always got in anyways.

Usually he would come in and wipe off his feet. Bringing in a bucket of fresh water from the well outside with him and cleaning off with a clean washcloth from the stash of them he kept by the door. Still, dirt or mucky footprints made it in the house and you had taken up the responsibility of dealing with that since Zen really did everything else.

There was a loud knock on the door as you were finishing wiping up a footprint that startled you. You were fairly certain Bira was out of town and you normally did not have other visitors.

Slowly you cracked open the door and were surprised to find Ba’tual looking fairly agitated.

“Oh, what are you-” was all you managed before he cut you off.

“There’s some human at the hold demanding to talk to you right now. He’s refusing to tell Zen or anyone else what it’s about or leave” he told you.

“Did he say his name?”

“Probably, but I wasn’t called in until Zen asked me to come get you, so I don’t know who he is.”

“Yeah, ok, yeah I’ll meet you guys at the hold then. Just let me actually get dressed” you said has you tried to piece it all together and figure out who could be demanding to speak to you.

“Zen specifically told me to escort you there, he doesn’t want you walking alone.”

Ba’tual waited outside while you got dressed and kept a close eye on you as the two of you made your way to the hold. It was a tense walk all the way there, Ba’tual did not seem to have any answers for you besides there was a human there making a scene and demanding to talk to you.

Zen looked visibly agitated when the two of you got to the hold. He was pacing the room with a annoyed expression on his face, nearly a snarl until he saw you. Immediately his expression softened and he rush over to you, placing a large hand on the back of your head as he crouched down to be eye level with you and nuzzled your forehead.

“Hey, what’s going on?” you asked as you nuzzled him back.

“Him” Zen nearly spat.

You peered around Zen to see a human man standing at the edge of the room dressed in your kingdom’s navy uniform. You recognized the man, a petty officer who served under your father and unfortunately someone you knew besides just that.

“What are you doing here?” you asked as the man approached.

“Call off your attack dogs” he sneered and motioned to both Zen and Ba’tual, “I’m here to take you home. And what are you wearing?”

You looked to Zen and Ba’tual who were both hovering close to you, “I can handle him, just give me a little space?”

Neither seemed to like this, but both took a few steps back.

You looked down at your outfit, it was pretty typical clothing for here. A knee length skirt tied around your hips and simple halter top style shirt, both in a soft forest green.

“Home? I am home. And this is perfectly normal for here” you defended.

“It is not suitable or appropriate for a lady of your status to be dressed like that, a poor representation of your family. Not that it matters, we’re leaving now.”

“No” you said firmly, “This is my home, my husband is here. This is where I belong.”

“Husband? That absolute beast? This charade has gone on long enough and served its purpose. Big things are in the works so it’s time to leave. Now.” he took a step towards you and went to grab your wrist.

It always amazed you how fast Zen could move, immediately he was between you and the other man.

“She already told you she was not going with you. You would do well to mind that” Zen’s voice uncharacteristically cold.

The man peered around Zen, “You’re making a massive mistake, this isn’t where you belong.”

“No I think it is” you said.

“Ba” called Zen, “Escort him back to his ship.”

Ba’tual gave him a nodded. Zen stopped him as he passed, placing a hand on his shoulder and telling him something in troll. Ba’tual motioned to several of the guards and they made their way out of the hold.

“You spoke as though you knew him” Zen said.

“Yeah, a while I told you my family promised me to the son of another family if he could make a name for himself in the navy. Well, that was him.”

“He does not seem like a good person. I do not like that an arranged marriage could have stuck you with someone like that.”

“I know, and you don’t have to like it. But it’s how it is where I’m from and it’s not wrong, it’s just different. Plus, we’re in an arranged marriage and it turned out good, didn’t it?”

“That’s different” he muttered.

“How so? Because both of us were told we were getting married and that was that.”

“I believe I am a better person than him.”

“And you are, that’s for sure. But I didn’t know that when I got here. I met a man who was grumpy, didn’t speak to me at all when getting married, left me home alone for hours, and then snapped at me for things I did know.”

“And I have apologized and done better” he interjected.

“You have, but it doesn’t change the fact you were a stranger to me and I didn’t get a good first impression of you, and everything still turned out well” you tugged him back down to your level to nuzzle him and give him a kiss on the cheek, “And what did you tell Ba’tual?”

“To make sure our visitor goes straight back to his ship, no detours, and to take a few guards to sweep the city for anyone who should not be here.”

“Do you think that was really necessary?”

“You did not see how he was talking and acting before you got here. I do not trust him. I am not taking any chances with keeping you safe. I failed in that once, I will not make the same mistakes again.”

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Part 30

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[maaarine]

The sexual assault of sleeping women: the hidden, horrifying rape crisis in our bedrooms (Anna Moore, The Guardian, June 15 2021)

"Naming specific acts, rather than using broad – and loaded – terms such as “abuse” or “rape”, her survey asked more than 22,000 women if, for example, they had ever been spat at, or strangled, kicked or bitten.

It also asked respondents if they had ever woken to their male partner having sex with them or performing sex acts on them while they slept.

To this question, 51% answered yes.

This was not randomised sampling – the survey was widely shared online and participants were self-selected. For this reason, it’s hard to extrapolate from the findings.

The results sparked a predictably polarised online response. “This was extremely validating for me after years of thinking, ‘Am I being raped?’ I’m not alone”, tweeted one woman.

“It’s why I now jerk awake if someone even gently brushes against me while I’m sleeping, 13 years later,” wrote another.

Other comments included, “Only chance I get!” and “the other half was OK with it!”

Katie Russell, spokesperson for Rape Crisis, says she was “not massively surprised” by the findings.

“There isn’t a lot of research into the multiple ways women experience violence from known men, but we do know the numbers are so much higher than any official statistics,” she says.

“Rape myths are still incredibly pervasive. It’s commonly believed that if it’s your boyfriend or your spouse, if you’re sharing a bed, if you’re naked, if you consented earlier, then it can’t be rape.

There is a really big difference between gently waking your partner and initiating sexual activity and actually doing something sexual or penetrating someone while they’re still asleep. (…)

In Martha’s case, the rape happened once, but for some men, seeking sex with a sleeping woman is an active preference, a fetish known as somnophilia.

Svein Overland, a Norwegian psychologist, is one of the few to have studied it – his interest sparked partly by his work in prisons, trying to understand the motivations of sex offenders, and also by his work with victims of what Norwegians call “after-party rapes” – attacks on vulnerable women who were either sleeping or drugged.

Overland believes somnophilia is part of the wider growth of what he calls “one-way sex”.

His research into online porn showed a steep rise over the past decade in categories such as “sleeping sex”, as well as other forms of sex that are based on unresponsiveness, on only meeting your own needs.

(“Flexi dolls” is another example – where women pretend to be sex dolls.)

These preferences overlap with porn itself, says Overland. “With one-way sex, with porn, with masturbation, there’s no dance, no seduction, no interaction and no pressure to perform,” he says.

“The more I looked at this area, the more you see that a lot of men are afraid of having sex.

Society is becoming more pornified but, at the same time, many studies show that people are becoming less sexually active. We have young men buying Viagra, unable to keep an erection.”

A sleeping woman is no threat – she’s absent, an object, a receptacle. (…)

“There seems to be a perception that something like this is a ‘lesser crime’ because it might not be at the hands of a stranger but your partner.

But what would feel worse? Being pickpocketed by a stranger or robbed by someone you love and trust?” she asks.

“The idea that you’re asleep so it didn’t require violence is also very dangerous. Penetrating someone’s body without their permission is an inherently violent act.

“Imagine being asleep and waking to find someone going through your personal things,” she continues. “Now imagine it’s your actual body that has been intruded into.” (…)

“When I first left him, I wouldn’t sleep. I’d lie awake all night and have hallucinations – him raping me.

Those flashbacks, that trauma response, was the mind and body trying to piece things together.

Even now, nine years on, I still wake at two every morning. I don’t even need to check the clock.

We know that the body stores memories of trauma – and I think 2am is when it used to happen.” (…)

In February 2020, she told the jury: “There has never been a part of me that has not been profoundly impacted,” and that in the immediate aftermath, she suffered PTSD and had tried to take her own life.

She said she had felt “unsafe everywhere”, frightened to trust anyone, even her parents."

[sakuraryomen01]

Valentino /Sukuna Ryomen x Fem! Reader/ .12 [Tense, be warned]

warnings: asshole sukuna, college prep. school (aka bitch u at an expensive ass school), former friends to lovers, slow burned love, yuji is sukuna's little brother, OOC Sukuna, a tense morning/ fight with sukuna (there r a lot of swapping povs in the first half i'm so sorry if it's confusing), y/n going on a date-ish with Nickolas, seeing yuji again, make-up attempt by sukuna, falling asleep together on the couch

reader: female reader; 23 years of age, college prep.

plot: It's been years since you've moved from country life, since you've forgotten about all the things you used to love about your hometown and where you grew up from... you didn't think it'd chase you to college in the city after almost a decade..

words: 8.222k

fanfic masterlist: .o1 .o2 .o3 .o4 .o5 .o6 .o7 .o8 .o9 .10 .11 .12 .13 .14 .15 .16 .17 .18 .19 .20

a/n: Hey guys, it's been a while huh? Sorry for the long ass break (literally been a year since I last wrote, I think) but I hope I can make it up to you! I'm currently working on some things in my personal life that I hope will go smoothly, but since it's been so long, I decided to come back!! I hope to finish my Valentino fanfiction sometime soon along with Tiger Twins and Sex Exercise! Thanks for waiting on me, I've just been so busy... @@;

. . .

Thank you for reading this! Enjoy!

↞↞↞ ♡ ↠↠↠

Sukuna couldn’t remember much from the night before. Just some late night drinking, a few annoyed shouts in his dorm. And then blank. But, that didn’t explain what he was doing on someone else’s couch right now.

Your couch, specifically.

Not on it either, on the floor next to it. 

A cooking pot for curry or big stews rested next to his head. Smelling of vomit and the alcohol he had consumed prior to even making his way over to your place. His brow was covered in a cold sweat as he tried to move a few of his fingers, all of them asleep either under his warm cheek or on the carpet next to him.

What the fuck happened?

“Morning.”

Sukuna’s body ached at the meer tone of your voice, struggling just to roll over and see you standing over him. Hands on your hips, pj’s wrinkled and messy, hair done up in the messiest bun he’s ever seen before.

Competing even with a side hoe’s messy handlebar…

“You gonna eat breakfast or what?” You say, voice stern and annoyed. “I’m not going to wait for you all day, y’know? Got classes.”

“....what..?”

“Haa.. Say what again and you’ll end up outside.”

Now, while you seemed royally pissed off, Sukuna was surprised that you hadn’t kicked him out the moment he had… touched you. It was hard to really compute the situation from his spot on the floor, seeing as seeing the melons on your chest filled your top pretty good. Wonderful sight actually, he should probably stay on the floor.

“Up in five minutes.” With a stomp, you and your melons walked back into the kitchen. The smell of sizzling bacon, eggs and toast wafted throughout the dorm room. The warm aroma of waffles cooking in a fryer made Sukuna’s stomach churn.

From hunger or the hangover, he chose not to dwell on which.

Taking a good few minutes to actually sit up, clutching his veiny hand onto the couch’s seat for dear life, the fluffy haired punk took a good deep breath. His lungs filled with the sweet smell of a home cooked meal and instantly he began to drool. Salivating at what your cooking could possibly taste like. 

Probably bad, Sukuna thought to himself, eyes barely able to open.

“The omelet and waffles are ready!” The sounds of clinking silverware and plates followed made Sukuna’s stomach growl even louder. Pain developed from the intensity of the churning in his gut, forcing him to stand to his feet and trudge ever so slowly to the kitchen. 

The shuffling sound of his socks alerting you rather quickly to the ever nearing male that has entered into your dorm. His tall frame nearly towered over you, thankfully it wasn’t like Gojo. Spatula scraping against the skillet as you put four strips of thick bacon on the plates between the eggs, waffles and slabs of sausage patties. Both plates next to two large cups of OJ. Grease and grizzle dribbling down the sides of the meat and mixing with the oil from the skillet and egg.

“Grab one and sit,” You usher Sukuna over to the small coffee table, putting away the cooking supplies and grabbing your own plate. “I’m gonna put on some news.”

“Don’t put that on,” Sukuna retorts, following after you and resting himself on the couch with you. Muttering to himself as you flipped between channels, justifying that you only needed to see the weather for the next few days.

While it wasn’t what it used to be, the meal reminded Sukuna of back home. Days when you, him and Yuji would be waking up the morning after a sleepover at your house. The glaring but gentle glow of the sunlight pouring between the blankets of a poorly built fort by you with the help of your father.

Sukuna remembered the soft feeling of plush animals on his cheeks, the warmth of the rays beating down through the blanket that hung overhead. He remembered the feelings he had when he was young– how his head never felt like it sat right on his shoulders when he sat up, the way his chest ached when he looked down at your sleeping form. Always with your hair a mess and your face littered with wrinkle marks. 

That irritating throb he’d feel just by seeing you so calm and relaxed..

You were always the second one up, no matter which brother woke up first, you were always there to bug the other into an early wake. While your habits were always strange, Sukuna found them endearing. Following in your steps silently as you wandered about the large home you used to roam with your small hands clasped around a stuffed animal. The sight of small, yawning, eye rubbing you was too cute. Making Sukuna laugh to himself at how you contrasted during the day when you were full of energy; always wanting to talk to him about different flowers and the garden while he liked to annoy you with beetles he found.

I tell her to let go of the past and here I am reminiscing on it.

“Sukuna? Are you even listening to me?” You shout with your lips in a tight pout. Hair slowly falling from your frazzled bun, gracing across your shoulders and back. Sukuna’s maroon orbs trailed over your figure as his brows began to furrow. Strange, you did change a lot since your previous encounter.

Did you get a haircut recently? Maybe a new body wash.

“Sorry,” Sukuna replied with a flat tone, rubbing morning crust from his eyes and turning his attention to the television. Once displayed news was now playing some random sitcom, something you often watched back home with your folks. “I was thinking of something– it’s not important though.”

“You always think of something else when I’m talking to you!”

When you didn’t get a reply, you let out a strained sigh and continued scarfing down the remnants of your breakfast. Piling waffle, sausage and egg into a small sandwich-like bite, covered in syrup and butter. Like a starved animal you devoured every morsel that remained on your plate. Only stopping to take a sip from your cup of OJ every few minutes or so; it was a miracle that you hadn’t begun choking yet.

Surprisingly, Sukuna was taking his time to eat. Maybe he was too tired to be how he normally is around food: ravenous. 

After you had finished gorging on your meal, you stole a glance at your watch and stood abruptly face, startling the man on your couch. “What are you doing now?”

“I am gonna be late for my meet-up with Nick,” You start, hurrying to wash off the plate and fork in the kitchen, quickly drying your hands off on a rag. “We have to go over our project ideas again before finalizing one.”

Sukuna’s brow twitches up slightly, his gaze watching you as you rush around the apartment gathering your things. That Nickolas guy, right? Yeah.

Did you have to bring that guy up now?

“I’m busy eating, y’know?” He utters under his breath, currently chewing the length of a sausage link. Pressing his dark brows together in a mixture of a pout and glare. “Don’t try to ruin my appetite. Your food tastes good, for once.”

You let out a strained sigh as you make your way to the bedroom, grabbing your bag and shifting through your previous notes into a binder. Making sure to pack some additional pens, pencils and erasers coupled with some notepads. While normally you always rushed out to study, you were in a rather big hurry today.

To try and escape a talk about the previous night..

Last night flashed through your mind over and over. From the hot and steamy breaths to the harsh, yet gentle caresses across your body. It was hard to pretend, to ignore the events. Acting as if nothing happened between you both. Did he even remember what he did? With how wasted he was, you guessed not. How irritating.

“I don’t get him,” You mutter to yourself, pausing your movements. A million and one thoughts continued to flash through your mind. All that time, all his annoyance with you. Just to turn around and pull a crazy stunt like that. And for what? To lure you back in?

To make you think of only him? What kind of an idiot does he take you for?

After a few moments of pondering, you brushed it aside. No matter what you did now, Sukuna either didn’t want to talk to you, or pushed you away. What point was there in trying to rekindle something that he didn’t want in return? The thing you should’ve come to terms with long ago.

You finished packing your things before slinging your bag over your shoulder, heading into the living room to see Sukuna huddled over the sink. Washing the dirty dishes, scrubbing mindlessly at the sticky syrup on the plates and juice in the cups. It was an odd sight, and somehow sweet.

“Leaving?” He muttered, lifting a plate up to look over it. Voice low and unusually quiet compared to normal, it sent a shiver down your spine.

“Yes.”

The air became tense at the sound of plates clinking together in the dish holder. Running water turned from a constant stream to a pitter patter of droplets as Sukuna turned the sink’s knob, wiping his hands off on a small hand rag next to it.

“..Don't you,” Slipping a hand into his pocket, Sukuna let out a sharp grunt. His free hand coming up to scratch at his nape, disheveling already messy hair. “Don't you want to talk about.. it?”

“Not particularly.”

Shit, this is harder than he thought.

“I figured you'd wanted to, since you're always going on about wanting to talk to me. Not in the mood? Or is this new guy important now?”

The question was returned with a confused brow lift. “More important?” 

Sukuna never felt so frustrated and annoyed, even after such a good meal right in the morning as a hangover cure. He could tell something was just off. You were avoiding him, barely taking glances at him. Just focusing your eyes forward.

He didn’t understand what happened last night to get you to act like this with him, but frankly it’s irritating. Especially with how big this aching throb going on in his chest was. It was an odd feeling he hasn’t had for a while, and he couldn’t tell if it was just his regular annoyance with you or.. Something else.

“He’s not ‘more important’,” You say, shaking your head, squeezing the strap of your bag before turning to the door. “My education is and I’m trying my best.”

“Stop looking away from me!”

Before Sukuna could blink, his hand was wrapped around your wrist. Squeezing just enough for a numb throb to course through your hand. It was like a blur, one moment he was next to the kitchen counter and the next he was near toe to toe with your smaller frame. Eyes wide and brows furrowed, a small vein pumping across his jugular. Your expression only mirrored his, but with a mix of fear and befuddlement.

Don’t make that face with him.. He hates it.

“What’s gotten into you?” A mumble escaped your lips, your pretty little lips. The cute, plump flesh he’s imagined often recently. Along with your eyes, making him dizzy at how they’d roll like your hips; having him start to wonder what your dazed and blissed out look must’ve been–

 “Sukuna!”

Barely a flinch, just a quick blink of the eyes as his face relaxed, mirroring yours near perfectly. Taking in the moment, Sukuna looked down at his hand. The large, calloused palm and fingers grasped onto a smaller and delicate wrist. His own massive compared to yours, decorated with the black bands of his tattoo. So, so different you’ve become.

Without a word, Sukuna stepped closer. Refusing to release your wrist but instead letting his hand glide down to meet with yours. What was he doing? He doesn’t know. He thought he didn’t need you. He doesn’t. 

“Kid–”

“Don’t start with me!”

His marooned orbs lift from your connected hands, his fingers barely gripping onto yours. Why does he do this? It’s frustrating. Feeling his warm hands, how gentle they contrasted to the night before. How he’s behaving now to when you first reunited. The questions wouldn’t come out, the intensity only building brick by painful brick in your mind.

You can’t take this type of torture, this pain.

“I’ve had to deal with you since I first tried talking to you,” You start, feeling a burning sensation in your eyes, a sharp throb in your chest. Face downcast, your reddening eyes barely able to focus on the small connection between the both of you.

His hand reached for yours, holding your fingers like they were delicate porcelain unlike before. When he didn’t so much as let you care for him when he was sick. Reminding you constantly that every little kiss, gentle caress, it was an accident. That nothing he showed was true, pure.

The mere fact he came wobbling to your door the night before black-out drunk was proof enough that this was the same event all over again.

“You’re telling me not to get attached then turn around and kiss me! Tell me that it means nothing but you hold me close as if I’m going to run away from you! I can’t stand it, I can’t stand you.”

You could feel it, your heart tearing in two. The connection you craved was never there. It fizzled away like bubbles in a tub, gone after enjoyment for a little while. Too different to try, too different to change. If only you realized this sooner. It was only until you lifted your gaze to look up at him that you felt your tears dripping. You probably looked like some child having a fit, but it didn’t matter.

You were tired of it.

“All you’ve done is make me feel confused and upset,” It felt like venom saying these things. Poison. A poison meant to destroy your heart. So tense, it felt like it wasn’t beating at all despite its thunderous beat pumping in your ears. “I’m sick of feeling this. Before I knew you were here, it was easier. I was focused on more than my heart and how it felt all the time.”

“Brat.”

“I was able to pay attention in class, it didn’t feel draining being around people–!!”

“Y/n!”

In an attempt to pull you into his embrace, Sukuna grabbed your hand and brought you to his chest. Hooking his large arm around your nape to press your weeping face into his chest, to try and silence your cries. But you fought back, slipping your hand from his, breaking what little hope Sukuna desired to have between you. To think before he didn’t give even an ounce of a fuck when he first arrived.

That there was no care in the world before, but seeing you now. Seeing this hurt he’s caused, the shameful tears. It was enough to make him want to snap– to scream, to punch a hole through the wall –but he instead opted to bring you into his space. You coddle your head into his chest, trying to rub gentle and therapeutic circles with his thumb into your neck even at the awkward angle.

What does he do? What can he do?

He’s never felt so impulsed before, so inclined. It wasn’t in his nature to feel this petrified, this conflicted.

“Y/n, stop sobbing,” Sukuna muttered into your ear, trying to hold you in place as you continued to fight and squirm against his hold. “You don’t look as pretty when you cry like this.”

“I don’t care how I look to you!” You shot back, managing to push him away from your trembling form. Your hair became a mess before him. Looking more and more deranged by the second as you tried to calm yourself, failing all the while. “It’s not your place to look at me.”

A mix of surprise and shame fell across Sukuna’s brow, a clash against his annoyed gaze. You could tell he was unsure of what to do. He never was sure how to comfort someone, even you when you were a kid. His hands clenching and unclenching into fists be his sides, arms tensing with each flex of his muscles. His mind raced a thousand miles an hour at thoughts of what to say before they were fogged up by your hand on his jaw.

Yanking his face being pulled down to become eye level with you, your fingers digging into the meat of his cheek and forcing his lips to pout. Exposing a few of his teeth along with a sweat droplet on the side of his temple. He looked like a lost cub desperate for his momma to come save him.

Pathetic looking.

“I’m tired,” You repeated, your cheeks beginning to dry as the tears stopped. “I’m tired of the back and forth. Of embarrassing myself for you.”

Sukuna could see your mind begin to ease, to feel reassured with itself. The calm eyes despite the redness. It worried him. He had the right to worry, you wanted to let him go.

You released your grasp on his chin, his hand coming to rub at the pinkish imprints on his cheek, his gaze never leaving yours. Stuck in a stiff silence until you began to reorganize yourself, fixing your hair and wiping your eyes, your sniffles the only sound Sukuna could hear. “You don’t have to leave if you’re still feeling sick, but make sure to keep to yourself.”

Not another word was spared as you turned to the door, no glance back to see his expression as you opened the door like you’ve done before. Just a quiet exit of your home, leaving Sukuna and his muffled thoughts behind. While the ache in your chest was still present, there was no longer a weight on your shoulders. Letting you leave freely, to attempt to go back to your day to day.

Traversing down the hallway, looking for your phone in your pocket to call your classmate for a meet-up. To try and at least calm yourself before having to return to a, hopefully, empty dorm.

Sukuna was speechless, still, quiet.

Staring blankly at the door that blocked his sight from you, to chase after you. It was like an alarm in his head going off, feeling regret. Like the sting of bitter before the sweet, Sukuna wanted to run after you. Yet he stood in his spot, like a lost puppy waiting for his owner. Except it felt like it would be longer than a day, it’d be another 12 years before he could see you.

To see how you’d changed, to talk to you, to hold you in his arms.

Why didn’t he do that at first? Why was he so bitter before again?

“Brat..” He muttered to himself as if you’d hear it and come running back to him. How could he expect you to do that when he’s done nothing but blow you off that whole time. “Y/n.”

All those letters he sent, all of them with no responses. It seems so petty. He held onto that fact for so long, as if it was your fault. For trying to make a life for yourself, he held it on you. And now that he’s seen the extent of what he’s done, he’s left quiet in your home.

The muffle of the TV blasting some random show in the background to mix with the throbbing in his ears.

“..Don't.. leave again.”

↞↞↞ ♡ ↠↠↠

The soft hustle and bustle of the library was mind numbing.

It felt as if you were listening to music that wasn’t really playing, it was a hallucination of a melody. A sweet melody, one that you used to listen to but you didn’t know the name. Or if it was a meal you hadn’t eaten but you desired so bad, had no money to even afford to pay for it at a store you loved. Hard to pinpoint what feelings were swirling in your head, but they weren’t any good.

That’s why, when you heard the soft tap of your partner’s shoes and a small “hey” from behind you, your shoulders relaxed instantly.

“Whoa, are you okay?” Nickolas asked, his head tilted just enough to let a few strands of hair fall gracefully from his shoulder. His slight accent is like a sweet, honey contrast to Sukuna’s from that morning. “If you missed me so much you could’ve called.”

“Nick,” You mumble weakly, trying to hide the fact you had indeed missed him even though you met not so long ago. “It’d be rude of me to, especially when you’re busy.”

In the little time you had shared together you learned quite a lot about your new friend.

He was a part-time employee at his grandfather’s mechanic’s shop, though he did most of the work just to help as his real passion was cooking. Nickolas enjoyed making carne asada fries with sour cream and extra jalapeno on his lunch breaks at work whenever he had the chance. Not only did he love the good smells and the tasteful bites that came with cooking, he loved the math behind it, the science. Always thinking that his next meal could be a perfect equation each time, 

Pastries were a little harder for him, but Nick always loved a good challenge.

“I’m not so busy nowadays,” He said, interrupting your train of thought momentarily as he sat next to you. “Abuelo isn’t at the shop most of the time and I’m not allowed to run the place without him. He got sick.”

“Ah, sorry,” You reply, sitting up in your spot and bringing out your notes. “Is he gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, he’ll be fine. He just pushed himself a little too much one day and needs rest.”

You continued to catch up for a few minutes before Nickolas brought up the night before, leaving a bitter taste in your mouth at the mention of it, but you obliged. Telling him that Sukuna was still resting at your place with a hangover and to not worry too much, it was a common occurrence.

“I hope so,” Nickolas flipped a few pages in his notebook as his laptop sat, booting up for the next hour-long discussion about your shared upcoming project. “When I saw him, he looked pretty out of shape.”

“He’s always out of shape.”

Nickolas was surprised by the retort, quickly turning to scan your face. Instantly noting the frustrated look and red eyes once more. “Something happened, didn’t it.. Was it me?”

The quiet shake of your head worried him, but it’s not like he could pry all that much. He turned his attention from you to the books that were sprawled out in a manner of minutes for the project. All the notes, all the studying. It must’ve been draining for you. So, without a second thought, Nickolas lifted his books and began snapping them closed, much to your surprise.

“What are you doing?”

“We are going out, I’m not in the mood to study right now.”

He left you jaw dropped and mind fumbling for words: What?

Nickolas stood from his seat at the table and began doing the same to your notepads and pulling pencils away from your grasp. Placing your things in your bag and gently resting a soft hand on your shoulder to shake you, to bring you back from whatever land you were visiting and back to Earth.

“Let’s go out today,” He said, a smirk playing on his pierced lips. “I’m really hungry. Missed lunch because of my professor.”

“Uhm,” What were you going to say? No? It’s food. “Sure, let’s.. Let’s get something to eat.”

Nickolas finished packing your things rather quickly, leaving you stunned as you followed behind him out of the library. Walking past a few small groups of friends and lone students studying for classes, leaving the calm atmosphere into the bustling noise of the main entrance area. Brushing aside your confusion, you were actually glad deep down. A break from school, a break from Sukuna, a break in general.

It was a desire you never really got to enjoy since you were so busy trying to make the most of your parent’s sacrifices to even get you into the school.

“I will warn you, my tastes are on the extreme end,” Nickolas blurted, letting his bag hang from his shoulder and he lifted his hair. Tying it up into a tight bun while some loose strands rested behind his ears and some draped across his forehead. “Hope it’s not that big of a problem.”

“Not at all.”

The both of you continued to talk about food as you made your way to the parking lot, chattering like birds on a line about different kinds of BBQ shops that were nearby, along with a large buffet that you visited frequently. Right as you reach the lot, you see a familiar figure walking down the sidewalk with a bike at his side. 

Fluffy pink hair, a jersey hanging over his shoulder and noticeable scars under his bright honey eyes. It was Yuji.

Quickly he spotted you, a smile lifting the corners of his lips as he picked up his pace. Letting his hand temporarily leave its spot on one of the handles to wave at you. “Y/n! It’s been so long since I saw you!”

You could tell that he’s been working out recently, his arms and chest looked more toned than before. It made you giggle at the contrast of the brothers. One was a baby-faced sweetheart and the other was a really dickhead. Somehow, they continued to have similar builds and features (no matter how many tattoos Sukuna got).

In moments you were in his arms, his little teases and giggles echoing in your head as you caught up. Leaving Nickolas to get his motorcycle ready to ride, climbing onto the seat and starting up the engine. The roar of it alone sends vibrations into the concrete ground underneath the powerful machine. Its cold, black paint job was decorated with a silver ghost flame design and the rims shining bright to match. 

Yuji took no time to waste as he introduced himself to the rider, giving his same boyishly adorable smile as always. “I’m Itadori Yuji! Are you guys about to go somewhere?”

“Yeah,” Nickolas hummed, leaning forwards on the steering and letting his weight move the heavy machine beneath him slightly. “I’m about to get some BBQ and maybe.. Some boba.”

Yuji smiled even brighter (somehow even beating the sun) before turning his attention back to you. His face turned from real cheerful to a concerned look in seconds, reaching a hand up to trace the line of your jaw. “What’s wrong with your eyes? Tired?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” You mumble, brushing Yuji’s arm away, trying to force a soft smile that’d deter him from prying. But by the look on his face, Yuji wasn’t about to give up.

“I was going to come visit Sukuna for a bit to tell him about my classes, but clearly I need to talk to him about something else.”

“Yuji, really, it’s not that big of a deal.”

Clearly it wasn’t going to work talking Yuji down from a discussion with Sukuna, you eventually gave up. There was no fighting him, not like you really had planned to. You were done with fighting for now, it was draining.

“Other than that,” Yuji said, giving your hair a tussle before giving you a side hug. “I gotta go anyways, I’ll call you tonight once I’m home. They’re letting everyone out on holiday early since our semester tests were so high.”

“That’s good.”

You returned the hug with as much strength as you could muster, earning a back rub and a quick peck on the head. Yuji was gone just as soon as he had arrived, admitting that he was in fact about to run late for another class at the moment anyways and wishing he could join the both of you, before rushing off into the campus. Off to find his misbehaving brother– as he put it– and leaving you alone once again with your Economics partner.

“He’s a go-lucky kinda guy,” Nick’s voice rang from behind you, a smirk on his lips. “I’m assuming that’s your boyfriend or something?”

You pout, folding your arms over your coat. “I couldn’t imagine dating Yuji. He’s much too sweet.”

“I see.”

His hand lifted in offering, nodding to the small seat behind him. “Hop on, it’s gonna get dark before you know it.”

You take a second to glance back at the area Yuji disappeared to, not seeing him anywhere. He must’ve been in quite an actual hurry to disappear so fast. Looking away, you took Nick’s hand. His fingers holding onto yours in a warm squeeze, smooth and strong compared to Sukuna’s thick and rough ones. It was a change that you didn’t think you’d need.

Nick guided you behind him onto the bike, handing you his (much too big) helmet and pushing it down over your hair. He gave it a few pats and lifted the visor. “Make sure that’s on tight, okay? Don’t want a pretty thing like you falling off.”

Your cheeks deepened in color, thankfully it was covered by the helmet’s rim. After checking on your posture and a few things on his bike, Nickolas guided the wheels backwards. Turning ever so slightly to face the exit of the parking area, looking over his shoulder back at you with a smile.

“Might want to hold on, Y/n. Motor’s aren’t exactly a four wheeled tin can.”

There was some hesitation as your arms guided their way around his waist. Your cheeks continued to burn underneath the safety of the helmet, guarding your flustered expression from all eyes. There was a quick tap as Nick closed the visor for you and revved up the engine. Kicking off the bike and turning out to the street, leaving you to your own devices in the passenger seat.

Clinging onto his robust waist in a desperate attempt to keep yourself steady on the moving monster.

The sounds of traffic and the radio started to clash as he drove farther and farther away from campus. The lights dimming in the background as street lights and nearby signs started to fill your sight. In your chest you started to feel lighter, even if you were clinging onto Nickolas to calm yourself and stay steady, the feeling of relief started to wash over you.

You slowly started to lift your head as cars started to pass by you, taking a deep breath and resting your cheek on the driver’s shoulder. The smell of the city made you miss the scent of the Sticks, of your old home and the Willow Tree. Even the old barn that the elders of the village warned not to visit in fear of ‘evil spirits.’

The flashing lights contrasted the millions of stars that would shine so bright in the middle of night. Stars alone in the Sticks felt like a magic show to young you. Your mother had always teased and said that a bunch of fireflies flew too close to try and reach the moon and got stuck in the sky, leaving their lights to help guide others to it in their stead.

“Moths have gotten lost up there too,” She would say, laying next to you in your old backyard. Pointing to different formations that the lights made, giving you tickles and kisses all the while. “They think the moon is like a giant light, they want to be with it so bad they’re willing to fly up towards it no matter the cost.”

Your mind continued to wander, remembering random things you got to do while you were living in that small village. Trees that grew alongside the streets of the road could never quite grow as big as the Willow Tree either.

“There’s magic that keeps it so tall and proud,” Your father’s cool tone always hummed, letting you rest in his lap as he read you another book. “It doesn’t like wilting, even in winter.”

You always loved their stories and tales, and had fun making them with them. 

All the while Sukuna was there too, it was like bliss.

Although he was mostly brooding at his young age, he liked to play pranks on you and Yuji. Always chasing you around and messing with the family cat. Bringing presents for your parents and sitting to listen to the stories in the books they lent to you. 

He was so cute back then..

Compared to now, You thought to yourself, feeling the breeze begin to still as Nick made a turn. Pulling into a somewhat busy parking lot of a buffet restaurant. He’s a different kind.

“Alright, Y/n,” He said, parking in between a truck and some SUV a family must’ve owned before turning back to you. “We’re here.”

↞↞↞ ♡ ↠↠↠

Enchiladas, red beans, rice, and peppers sat on your plate. Warm, covered in cheese and sauce covering the food while Nickolas’s was different. It was carne asada fries, extra peppers and sour cream on the side. Obviously.

“Dig in, my stomach’s growling!” He chuckles, not wasting any time helping himself. Letting you giggle and mess with him about the way he eats, but only returning the jokes as you begin to eat.

It made you forget about the day, about the project, about everything. Letting your head relax and your brain go blank, it’s been so long since you’ve been able to. Getting to know each other more, talking about your favorite topics. You could’ve sworn that that morning was just a bad dream, a small dent in your day. And it was all thanks to Nickolas for trying to cheer you up. You were gonna have to repay him somehow over this, letting him see you in such a state was hard to recover, but it’ll work itself out.

“The food here is better than I thought,” You muffled through a mouthful, chewing quickly as if you were both in the middle of an eating competition. “I’ll have to ask Yuji if he’d like coming here.”

“Mgh, he looks like the type to eat anything as long as it’s good,” Nickolas responded, gulping down some water to combat the spice of the cheese, eating a morsel of bread before continuing his food shoveling.

“You’d be surprised, he’s really picky.”

You and Nickolas continued to talk and eat, standing to grab more food, talking the day away in that little buffet. Splurging and going to get dessert a few times until your stomachs were practically bloating with too much to carry. It was fun, exciting. It felt almost like how home felt.

Comforting.

“Are you sure we can get boba? I think I’ll vomit!”

“I want strawberry milk tea, Nick. Besides, you offered. It’d be really rude of me to pass up on free boba!”

“Who said it’d be free!?” Nick questioned, holding you by the hip and guiding you towards the restrooms. Offering his arm again as you stumbled all full of food and treats on the way so that you wouldn’t fall and make a fool of yourself. “I’m already paying for the buffet.”

“I’m just kidding, Nickolas! And I would rather split.”

Nickolas managed to get you to the women's restroom, holding you against the wall and waving a hand at you. Dismissing your attempts to pay with mock offence. “My abuelo taught me to pay and treat a woman right, I’d be going against everything I believe in!”

Despite how you wished to stay and continue arguing, Nick guided you into the bathroom and left. Promising to wait nearby for you so that you wouldn’t feel alone, but you saw through a crack in the door that he had pulled out his wallet and begun lifting some money from his pocket. You shook your head and waddled into the nearest open stall, locking the door to use the facilities.

Once you had finished, you heard your notification sound from your purse as you were washing your hands. It was from Yuji, and as promised, he had had a talk with his brother.

The reminder gave you a bit of a clenching in the jaw, but you were fine. You felt better, you were better. Maybe you’d approach the situation with fresh eyes.

↞↞↞ ♡ ↠↠↠

Yuji– 10:59am, Saturday: I got him to talk a lil, so be wary. He’s quiet too, what did u say to him?

You– 1:13pm, Saturday: I said some pretty rude things, I’ll apologize to him later.

Yuji– 1:20pm, Saturday: Don’t tell me the both of you have been fighting!! 😡

You– 1:23pm, Saturday: It was just the one fight, I promise. I’ll make it up with him when I’m home.

↞↞↞ ♡ ↠↠↠

You and Nickolas left the buffet, arms linked as you climbed back onto the motorcycle and made your way to a drive-by boba store. The day felt like a big blur from all the excitement. In between boba and the food you visited little gacha shops and comic stores, geeking out about idols and enjoying some other assorted snacks with each other. A drive that cleared your head and made you forget all about the worry and stress of the last few months.

Feeling more like it was a quick stop rather than a day on the town as you both continued down to this small park. It was clearly a park for small children and their parents, but in the evening, it was free range for anyone. 

The swings creaked from the slightest movement, putting you and Nickolas into a fit of giggles. 

“You got cream on your nose,” He says, reaching over and cleaning the messy cream off your face. Bringing his thumb to his lip and licking it clean, leaning back and washing it down with another sip of his drink. Looking up at the sky and gazing at the little stars that were visible, the rest hidden in the glow of the street lamps. “It’s pretty at night, isn’t it?”

“Mm,” You nod, resting your head against the metal chain and turning your gaze up to the sparkling dots in the sky. The memory of your mother flashed through your mind again, making you smile.

“My mom says that stars are fireflies that got stuck trying to reach the moon, or something like that.”

“Oh? My momma said they’re our family watching over us.”

The both of you hum at the sentimental meanings of the stars, reflecting and enjoying the growing cool of the evening breeze. It gave your arms goosebumps across your skin, making you rub them out of instinct. Your movements of course weren’t avoided from Nick’s eager eye. He placed his cup onto the ground and took off his jacket, wrapping it around your shoulders, patting your back absentmindedly.

“You should’ve told me you were cold,” he muttered, returning to his previous seat on the swing. Letting his heels push him back and forth in the rocky spot. “A small hoodie like yours isn’t gonna keep you warm and toasty, Y/n.”

“Haa, I was fine, Dad.”

“Your papa would say the same thing, no fighting about it.”

You let out a sigh, pulling the jacket over your shoulders and covering your body. The jacket was warm and it smelled nice, like an old cologne some rich business man would wear. Chanel? No, it can’t be that, he doesn’t look the type to use it.

As you pondered the scent, sniffing and nuzzling into its confines, Nickolas redid his bun. Tying up tighter than before so as to not let it blow loosely in the wind and blind you on the way home. His golden gaze moving from the stars to you. Watching you closely as you leaned against the swing’s tether, the jacket draping over you perfectly. It brought a smile to his face seeing you so content, so relaxed in his company.

Down right cute.

“We should head home, yeah?” He said after a while of admiring the area and chatting for another hour or so. Just as the sun went down and the moon was beginning to shine in the sky, you were guided yet again to the bike at the curb after you tossed the empty boba away. Helped up onto the back seat and joined seconds later by your partner.

You reach up, patting a gentle hand on his shoulder and resting your head on it. “Thanks for taking me out, Nickolas. It really helped me.”

There was a silence as the engine came to life once more, probably the last time of the night, before Nick turned to look back at you. His near glowing golden eyes shining with glee, “Not a problem, I’m happy to help any time.”

One final push away from the park and you were back off to campus for the night, and strangely you weren’t all that nervous to see Sukuna again. He had probably left the dormitory already, leaving things clean as they were before and back in his own. Trying to catch up and maybe take space he wanted after the fiery morning the both of you shared.

If he was there, by some wild chance, you’d try and talk to him. For Yuji, of course.

After a twenty or so minute drive, Nickolas parked his bike in the same place it was before. Hoping off the bike and turning to help you off. Letting his teases get the best of him and poking fun at your messy helmet hair, patting it down and rubbing his fingers gently through the strands before linking arms with you again.

Walking the sidewalk to the girl’s dorms, Nick had to hold you up as you had begun feeling tired. That, and you just weren’t used to the amount of attention he was giving you. Making your brain go into a foggy overload and wanting a good night’s rest to process it all.

Nick was forced to take you inside, getting odd whispers from your neighbors as he sheepishly tried to explain the situation only to be teased about it. The scene looked embarrassing enough, but you were indeed just sleepy, and Nickolas was going to go home right after.

“Alright, Y/n,” He says, taking his coat from around your shoulders. “I gotta go now, so go ahead and get some sleep. Try and relax your stomach tomorrow too, it’s stuffed from all the food we had.”

“It’s only ‘cuz you’re a glutton,” You teased, standing up on your own (with the help of the wall) and fitting your key in the slot of the door lock. Looking back at him, you flashed Nickolas a toothy grin. “We should do stuff like that more often, I think you’ve made me a glutton too!”

Nickolas chuckled at this, a pink tint on his cheek as he scratched at his nape. “Oh no, I guess I have to take responsibility for you now? What a shame.”

You both parted ways, giving good nights and best wishes as you entered your dorm and he turned to the hallway. Getting teased by your nosy neighbors along the way as he got to the exit, leaving you alone in your dorm with…

Sukuna?

You had turned once inside to see a big lump of blankets and pillows, that had belonged in your room originally, on the couch. Covering a snoring, messy pink haired mass, a stuffed animal barely poking out from under a large, banded tricep. The cute bunny face and ears distorted into a strange shape under the weight of Sukuna’s arm.

“You’re still here?” You asked his sleeping form, stepping over to the couch and taking a seat next to his stomach. Gazing down at him, reaching to brush your fingers across his scalp, tickling near his nape so much that he stirred in his sleep. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”

“..I only leave when I feel like it.”

You flinch, seeing Sukuna’s dark eyes begin to open. Peering up at you from underneath his arm, tired and cold. “You were out for a long time.”

“I was with Nickolas,” You start, returning the calm stare, furrowing your brows together before looking around the living area. Taking in the mass amount of things he has strewn about: more plushies that you kept near your bed, some little doodles on paper you saved for later projects, and some blankets mixed with pillows. “I thought I said to keep my place clean.”

“It’s clean, you’re imagining shit.”

The fight from that morning returned to your mind at the snippy comment, making you clench your jaw and rub the bridge of your nose, exhaling to let out the bite back. “Still, what are you doing here? Don’t you feel better?”

“...No.”

Well that was odd.

“Do you need ibuprofen? I have some Advil, I think.”

Sukuna’s head shook, messing his hair up even more. He was looking like a giant cat that just got denied good food or a cuddle with its owner. It was kind of a sweet sight to be witnessing. You let out a strained sigh and lean back against his stomach, hearing his grunt in compliance from underneath your weight.

“Was Yuji tough on you?”

“That lil’ shit should be lucky I even gave him an ear to listen to his moaning.”

“I take it you weren’t too happy then.”

A small silence followed as you both rested on the couch. Somehow, this moment reminded you of when he needed help home. How he was dazed, barely noticing what you were doing for him until he needed a shower. The way he lifted you into his bed for the night after the both of you bickered over where you’d be staying for the night. (While you would never admit it, you did like that night’s rest.)

Sukuna noticed your smile, the way it was so perfectly crooked.

“Why did you steal all my stuffed animals?” You asked, returning your gaze down to his level.

His eyes narrowed momentarily as he decided how to answer the question. Eventually he lifted his arm and pulled the stuffed bunny from his grasp, holding it out and staring at it. Sukuna didn’t utter a word as he messed with the plush stomach of the toy, letting out a soft murmur.

“I missed.. Your smell.”

You were caught off guard, brows rising at his response. Since when did he say things like that?

As you were left to ponder on what to do with the mess, Sukuna dropped the bunny and sat up, lifting the blankets that covered him and pulling you once again into his hold. You let out a small yelp and tried to fight back, but were too tired to really push him off or yell. So, as you were wrapped up in Sukuna’s leg, arm and the comforter, you took a deep breath.

Under the weight of Sukuna’s hold, your body started to register that sleep was imminent and slowly forced you into a dazed state.

“Y/n,” Sukuna muttered as you turned into him, pressing your face into his chest, letting your hands fall between your thighs to keep warmth. You murmured out a grunt while you got comfortable. 

While your eyes had closed, your snores starting to grow, Sukuna was left awake by himself. His arms coming to wrap around you as he had the doll, nuzzling his nose into the scalp of your hair and taking a deep breath, inhaling your scent, the scent he wanted close the whole day that he thought he could sub with a plush toy.

Shameful, needy– these are things he didn’t want to be.

He breath came out in a huff, brushing against the shell of your ear. “I want to work on my math tomorrow.”

“Sure.. jus’ wake up at a decent time.”

As sleep overtook you, you could barely register what was said. The warm embrace of the man you had hated from that morning being the one thing that made you feel most at ease in your sleep. It was strong, firm; made you feel as if you were on cloud nine. 

In mere moments you were asleep, cuddling into the same arms you wanted to be away from that morning. Deep down, you were still irritated with Sukuna. You didn’t want to hear out whatever excuse he wanted to spill, if one at all. But right now, you just wanted rest.

That day was probably the most calming day leading up to the Willow Tree trip.

↞↞↞ ♡ ↠↠↠

a/n: holy shit was this a lonnnnggg time waiting and a longggg time writing!! i'm glad i'm finally getting back into the swing of things with my writing, I really hope you enjoyed reading all 8k of this chapter (longest chapter i've ever written to date!!) Seeing as it's been a while, I think my style has changed a lil so sorry it's a lil odd. anyways, thank you for the long asf wait but i hope you really liked this one! pls feel free to put suggestions in the comments and submissions! i also updated the taglist as best i could!

Chapter Song Theme: – Figure You Out -- VOILA (Lyric Video)

taglist: @mageyboo , @mzladyd , @mysticwonderlands , @sukunastoy , @sukunaspersonalfleshlight , @kawaiipenguin20 , @k-indie , @okkotsufav , @cafeinthemoon93 , @pulchritxde-blog , @bontensbunny , @deepinballs , @kleeboomed , @fiierytearzx , @wo-ming-bai , @instantgalaxysheep , @watyousayin , @z3r0art , @sukunaobsessed , @lik0 , @domainofmarie , @the-moongoddess , @dark-n-dirty-duchess , @agentdedf1sh , @sukunastoy , @lyn-soso , @bao-yu-sarah-morningstar-wang-9 , @heyitstacy , @lost-in-tokyo , @marksassybanana , @bozos-r-us , @p-3-4-ch , @misslauravillanueva , @chaoticqueen33 , @dxxny -loves-u , @l0tus-in-l0ve , @jiordeci , @opossum0-0 , @gumisgirl , @mommasbigd , @fallenlostarchives , @infinitivesearch, @t4ters, @n4muqr, @huuuhwhaat, @jiordeci, @chaeryred, @purplebee21, @hisheadismountfuji, @voyager1fan, @ichibaba, @brandydel, @berrylovesstuff, @whispersofbeskar, @dontcare1331

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[martiae]

from me to you | pepe martí

“all of the girls you’ve loved before, made you the one i’ve fallen for” ♡ (inspired by to all the boys i’ve loved before!)

synopsis: you’ve been in love with your childhood best friend since you were 6. when you were 13, you decided to start writing love letters to him. you never planned on sending them but they somehow made their way to his house?

pairing: pepe marti x reader (y/n) adler | genre: highschool au, smau, fluff, slight angst | warnings: some cursing, suggestive jokes from christian (haha), gianna/gigi is an oc, y/n is kind of irritating because she assumes a lot !!

chapter 1 : ignorance is bliss

now playing : i think he knows — taylor swift

you waited at the bus stop a few blocks from your house, your mind totally occupied by the mortifying events that happened yesterday.

while you didn’t want to think about it at all, it was hard not to. your mind was constantly playing the moment back.

you wondered how much he read, how he felt when he read it, what his face looked like, his thoughts, etc.

but, a part of you also really did not want know. your heart was sadly fragile, super sensitive to anything relating to pepe.

you knew it was stupid; but, you really thought that you could just peacefully like him. you were waiting for your feelings to just go away, a confession seeming out of reach.

you had to get a grip, you needed to figure out how to go about this whole situation since you knew that he would most likely not drop it.

the bus began to approach the stop, a part of you feeling happy that you had some more time to put together a plan for today.

you sat down at the window seat, the seat feeling very comfortable, yet, undeniably cold.

it was nice though. you finally had some peace and quiet, and could focus on what was important.

that focus broke quickly when a familiar figure sat next to you, their head instantly looking at you.

“hi there”

you wanted to scream. no, you actually wanted to get off the bus and run back home. your plans of peace, tranquility, and happiness was totally interrupted by the guy.

your eyes widened, your mouth parting in a surprised expression. your guys eye contact and silence existing for a long time.

“you’re still not talking to me?” pepe asked, his eyebrow quirking up.

you stayed silent, trying to disassociate from the fact that the boy you’ve been in love with for 11 years is trying to talk to you after finding out you like him.

pepe smiled to himself as he looked down, a small chuckle coming from his mouth. your heart skipped a beat, his stupidly cute smile has always had some kind of effect on you. and you know very well that you probably wrote some very cringey (but true) things about it in your letters.

oh god, just thinking about him reading your bare emotions and feelings about him has you feeling like laying out on the road. this was torture!

pepe looked back at you, his smile not leaving his face yet. you returned back to looking in front of you, the bus coming to a sudden halt.

the force made you lean forward; but, pepe quickly put his palm in front of you and his other hand holding onto your shoulder.

you leaned back, looking at him in surprise.

he chuckled, “didn’t want you hitting your head on the chair..”

your face became slightly flushed, a very soft expression on your face, “thank you”

pepe smiled again, his hand letting go of you and returning to his lap.

“are you going to explain the letters now?”

you tried to not show your shock; but, it appeared on your face before you could control it.

you were praying for the bus to drive faster, you just wanted to go to school and avoid him at every opportunity. its hard to ignore him over text. but, it’s even harder to ignore him in person.

“one more stop” you chanted in your head.

pepe sighed with frustration, “come on..anything? as i said im not mad at all! i just really want an explanation or something! please give me something to grasp!”

you saw the bus begin to pull towards your school, your face relaxing.

“please? something?..” he explained.

the bus stopped, the door’s opening quickly. you looked at him before murmuring a small “bye” and speed walking towards the exit.

you could hear pepe calling your name from behind but decided to sprint to the campus, your adrenaline running.

that was the worst 7 minutes and 34 seconds of your life. (yes you were counting.)

pepe was a guy who was sweet, calm but also expressive, and passionate. he was strong willed and smart and honestly, perfect. he was the guy who every girl has had a crush on before, the guy who would be the best boyfriend and would never fail to impress your family, and just be the guy you’d plan on marrying.

he was all of those things. scratch that, he is all of those things. but because he’s all of those things, you know that it couldn’t work out.

“oh my god, i tried catching up to you but you were running for your life!” gianna said out of breath.

you were panting, still recovering from your very quick run to your class.

“he….was…at….the…bus…stop.” you let out with many breaths.

gianna’s face lit up in shock and excitement, her hands covering her mouth.

“no way! spill now!”

you went the whole school day on guard, observing carefully to not run into pepe. it was kind of pathetic, even you could admit it. you were practically on edge and running away from him because you knew that it was getting harder and harder to face him. you did not want to confess, hell, you didn’t want to do anything. you wished you could reverse time and stop your 13 year old self from beginning the disturbing trend of writing sappy love letters addressed to him.

gosh, this whole situation really made you feel insane! it was hard to just let it pass without feeling the pain of embarrassment.

“(name)!” gianna called.

“oh hey gigi!” you smiled.

“hey! any updates?”

you sighed before looking her in the eye, “i’ve been avoiding him all day.”

gianna groaned, “oh come on! you can’t ignore him forever!”

“i don’t want to ignore him. it’s getting really hard to do that. i just, gosh, i really just don’t know what to do.”

“i get it. but i also don’t. what are you so afraid of?” gianna questioned.

you wanted to say ‘everything’. it was true. you were scared of hearing his voice tell you that he didn’t feel the same, his reaction when you tell him it’s true, oh god, it seriously was the most embarrassing thing in the world.

“i’m afraid of the truth. i really wanted to hold onto my crush and just peacefully love him.”

gianna frowned before turning to stand in front of you, both of you guys stopping.

“the truth may be scary. you may expect him to not feel the same; but anything’s possible. while i know how crazy those letters are, trust me, i can say for sure that you shouldn’t ignore him anymore. he deserves an explanation.”

gianna was right, and she knew she was too.

with a sigh, you nodded.

to face him after this all is like opening mary poppin’s bag. there’s no certainty at all, and you knew that it was going to be so uncomfortable.

gianna’s eyes began to drift to behind you, your natural instinct telling you to look.

you turned to see pepe standing behind you, a shy expression reflecting on his face.

“good luck!” gianna cheered before walking out the gate.

“gigi!” you shouted.

she began to skip happily, an obvious taunt to your calling.

“gianna!”

you turned around to look back at pepe, who’s hand was touching his neck shyly.

oh god. you were done for. you could tell that he was annoyed, or maybe angry? fear began to make an appearance on your face, your body staying frozen.

“can we talk now?”

[adachimoe]

Atlus, please tell me the lore behind Adachi's mp3 player

Even just looking at Adachi, he doesn't exactly have the image of someone who gives a shit lol.

And this is intentional. Soejima talks about this aspect of Adachi's design in the P4 Design Works. Adachi is said to be an elite officer, one of the best of the best, and Soejima thought an elite might be smart, but lacking in other areas. For this reason, Soejima designed him with that crooked tie and messy bedhead.

That's certainly a common thing in fiction - someone who's good at one thing, but a complete space case in something unrelated. Though he comes off as incompetent in-game, to the extent that him showing competency in December surprises Dojima lol. And even when you get into the real dumb plot stuff that I write 10k words about, it took him like 4 months to figure out that "people can come out of the TV". Ma-Maybe his record was better at his old station.

Even in what Atlus has mentioned about the setting for P4 that doesn't get discussed in-game, Adachi's red tie is something Dojima gave him, and only because Dojima got tired of seeing him wear the old shabby tie he wore before and gave him one of his spare neckties.

If Dojima had never just given him a different tie to wear, I imagine Adachi would still be wearing his old shitty tie until it completely fell apart... Is Adachi pathetic enough to try and like... tape a tie together? Probably.

Him not caring too much about appearance and being a messy guy seems to extend to other aspects of his life. Even in his character profiles for P4 and P4AU, both say he's terrible at cleaning his room and the P4 one also says he sucks at filing paperwork lol.

This continues in his P4AU narration. The investigating detective pulls out 3 pieces of "evidence": A TV which ends up being used to get Adachi into the plot, a model gun which fits with his hobby being doing gun maintenance at home, and some kind of random off brand iPod-esque thing.

The actual music player itself is unimportant. Instead, it's used for a little characterization moment where Adachi confirms that it is indeed something that's his (he even remembers how he got it!), but he didn't particularly care about it and just left it wherever.

All things considered, I get the mental image of Adachi being the kind of guy who uses that meme 13-in-1 ~for men~ product, and his room is just a mountain of cup noodles and piles of random bullshit. Maybe there are more iPods and model guns to be unearthed from underneath his other stuff.

All of this is only talking about the more physical and material aspects of him, but I think you can extend this to who he is as a person and his mentality as well. Granted, some guys in real life end up being useless slobs as adults because they're used to their mom/sister/family/etc babying them, but uhhhhhhh from what Adachi says about his past, we can instantly rule that out with him.

(Edit: As a comment pointed out, upon re-reading this this does sound weird. When I wrote this, I was thinking more about doormat pushover moms. I don't see Adachi's mom doing domestic stuff as her babying him as a child because it strikes me as the Default Gender Role thing where the dad makes the money but the mom takes care of the household. And from how Adachi talks about it, you get the impression she wasn't hyper attentive towards him, as if she did like the bare minimum lol. Adachi's attitude towards the whole thing also strikes me as different than the dudes who grow up as spoiled little kings in their households.)

It seems pretty sensible to correlate his physical state and the way he uses it to express a lack of care for himself to something going on in his brain. Adult burnout, depression, lack of self-esteem & self-worth, all of the above.

I like the random anecdote about the music player, especially since it's him. A bingo game at a New Year's party............... A bingo game at a New Year's party???????????? Adachi, you went to a New Year's party? Hoooly shit dude I don't even do that.

Since he was in jail during New Years 2012 and only arrived in Inaba during spring 2011, for him to have won it during New Year's implies this is from before the events of Persona 4. E.g. it's not something Dojima dragged him to. I assume it was some work-related New Year's party when he was still stationed in Iwatodai. Keeping up appearances for the higher-ups? Did he just want free food? A bit lonely and wanted company and absolutely not gonna say that outloud? (All of the above?)

In both his P4 dialogue and his P4AU inner thoughts, he tends to look down on others. He's annoyed by the old woman at Junes (...though his voiced line on rank 6 expresses he liked her doting on him), he calls the protagonist a dumbass (...but only after admitting he misses him, Dojima, and Nanako), he doesn't think he'll ever get married (even tho I'm available).

And yet, as little blurbs like this go to show, we know he still participates. ♪(´▽｀)

Did he even use the iPod thing before chucking it? What did he put on it? Idols or something? Answer me, Atlus.

[11queensupreme11]

RECORD OF RAGNAROK: THE APOCALYPSE OF THE GODS HAS ME SO HYPED

first of all... i am so excited for this, WE GET A NEW CAST OF GODS WOOHOO!!! more people for me to swoon over, yaaaaay 🤤🤤🤤

but anyway, one thing i noticed is this:

there are only twelve names on there and zeus' is missing, even though we obviously know he ends up fighting anyway.

THIS JUST TELLS ME THAT MY THEORY ABOUT THERE BEING A 14TH ROUND IS GETTING CLOSER AND CLOSER TO BECOME REAL 🥳

the "14th round" theory is actually already quite popular around the fandom, but i believe that this current round (okita vs susano'o) is gonna end in a tie, thus enacting the 14th round for the leftover human vs new god to fight. i just feel like the results of this round are too predictable (with okita most likely winning), so i think the mangaka's doing this on purpose to shock us with a tie!

so yeah, i believe that the end of the spinoff is gonna conclude with someone winning, only for SURPRISE, they gotta beat the final boss: zeus. obviously, they get their asses wiped and zeus goes on to join ragnarok. but then the 14th round comes up and they need another god fighter, and that's where the winner of the gods' tournament comes in

anyway, another cool thing we learn is about the existence of "outer gods". from what i'm getting, that's basically what they call the 'black sheep' of the gods??? they seem to be disliked or something because of how uncontrollable they are and the little regard they have to the rules/society (ie. ra going against the council to try and kill humanity anyway, cú cuchulainn being undesirable because of his status as a demigod, etc.)

i don't know if i'm understanding this right (so pls correct me if i'm wrong), it seems to me that zeus is using this as a ploy to get rid of a majority of the outer gods? like the gods tournament is used to lure them in so they could kill each other and become less of a problem for the other gods??? idk, i was a lil lost during zeus', hermes', and ares' convo, so i'm gonna try and read it again

i wanna try and add them into arsenic blues simply because they seem so cool 😅 i just wanna write some brief interactions between them and percy, but so far we've only been introduced to so little of them and i'd have to wait months to meet the whole cast 🥲

and unfortunately, i fear this might be just as long as ror

these are the matches, with three rounds total and 13 fights, just one less than ragnarok 💀💀💀 so uh yeah, this spinoff is gonna take a while 😭

i'm mostly excited about cú chulainn, leviathan, and hydra!!!

obviously, for cú chulainn i'm gonna have to change canon a bit and make him either like a pre-ascension heracles demigod (a human with the strength of a god) or a demigod like how i wrote the valkyries.

and as for leviathan, remember my old post about beel being a dilf and making a bunch of monsters, demons, and gods to kill him and how leviathan (and basically the other sins) were created by him, thus making him their daddy technically? i feel like it'd be funny if i kept it that way for leviathan lmao 😂 plus, leviathan is a SEA SERPENT meaning WATER POWERS and i just love having percy bond with water ppl (and pissing poseidon off) 😂

then there's hydra.... the only hydra i know of is the monster from the greek myths so unless they're allowing a monster join, i think hydra's gonna be a god here???? idk, but it'd be funny since percy got attacked by the hydra during her quest LMAO

[youregonnabeokay-kid]

SO. i was able to figure out the general structure of the script JLH leaked.

[explanation under the cut]

in order for all this to make sense, the first thing you need to know is that in north america all screenplays (scripts) are written in the same format

knowing this, we can deduce the general structure of the scene and even the length of some of the words

first we need to address the big question everyone's been asking:

are they talking about Bobby or Eddie?

screenplays are always typed in courier font, and in courier the capital letters B and E are identical at their left sides.

so while i enjoy people trying to figure out if the blurry letter in line 24 is a B or an E, the answer is it could honestly be either

where we really need to look is line one. the screengrab is blurry so i've outlined the word "going" and circled the area we should pay attention to

at first, the last letter of the prior word looks like an undistinguishable blob, but there is actually one key thing we can discern from it: the letter can't be y, it doesn't hang low enough

there is a chance that the word is not a name and is "he" which would not rule out Bobby or Eddie. however, that would mean the conversation goes on for at least 14 lines without mentioning "him" by name which is (heavily) frowned against in screenwriting. so chances are they're talking about Eddie

also, with what we know about the characters it's most likely Eddie. can you really see Bobby not talking to Buck because of... well, anything? and we already know that Eddie has a difficult time communicating. so i've decided to go with him for this script but haven't 100 per cent ruled Bobby out

moving on to the actual script itself, anything not highlighted in red is something i'm confident is either the exact wording or something similar. the red sections are the parts that i'm less confident in or know are incorrect somehow

Maddie's first dialogue block is the part i had the most trouble with. with context from the following conversation i figured that she probably asked something along the lines of when [Eddie] will be back at work. the main issue with this section is that the top line is actually six letters shorter than what i have written. this also means that the word that follows "going" has to be at least eight letters long. i tried messing around with the dialogue a bit but couldn't come up with something that would fit the appropriate letter count so for now i just wrote a line similar to what i think the actual line probably is

line six has to be either 12 or 13 spaces long and the first word has to be at least four letters long so i used "really soon" as a place holder, but i'm not completely confident in it

for line eight i initially had "Oh, that's good." but the line was one space short so i changed the "Oh" to "Hey" instead. i don't feel too poorly about this one but it still doesn't feel right to me. if the actual script says "Hey" i wouldn't be surprised if JLH changes it to something else or forgoes the exclamation completely

the final line is just a rough guess of what it could be. i'm not sure how formal the 911 writers are with action lines so i just took a random guess. some writers are extremely formal with action lines while others are more comedic with it (Neil Gaiman is a great example of this). i'm guessing the 911 writers are more the former but i honestly have no clue

[thesnazzysharky]

Ranking the specimens based on how tragic they are (1/2)

Been excitingly waiting to do this one. As you can see from the title, we will be ranking the specimens based on how tragic they are. There will be a total of 25 specimens included in this list. Part 1 will be featuring the first 13 and part 2 will feature the other 12. The unknown specimens are excluded since the game doesn't really offer us anything substantial when it comes to their backstories (aside from White Face since he came from a different game, but I haven't played said game yet). Specimen 1 is also excluded because... well... take a grand guess.

How did I go about this ranking exactly? Well, for each specimen I created bullet points for both how they could garner sympathy or lose sympathy from the player. Then I created a tier list and started arranging them from the least sympathetic to the most sympathetic. Taking account of the notes I wrote, what makes this specimen tragic from my own eyes and morals, the hints and implications at something deeper, how detailed some of their backstories go, ect. So that's how I'm going about this. Of course, this is all my own opinion and I'm sure some will disagree with some of my takes or change some placements, which is fine. This list is entirely subjective and if you disagree with something, I would like to hear why. Now let's dive in.

25. Ghost Cow

To nobody's surprise I'm sure, Ghost Cow is at the very bottom of the list for one simple reason: He's pure and utter evil at its core. Ghost Cow is one of the most interesting creatures in the game because unlike a lot of the others we get to directly see the aftermath of what he did. The hospital is not only in a clearly fucked up state when we arrive there, but what we see and what we read are pretty gruesome and gory.

He possessed a bunch of doctors and nurses, forced them to kill their patients, later making them forget how they killed their patients so they can live with the guilt of having done something they didn't do, drove one patient to suicide, most likely killed and experimented on literal infants; and overall has caused a lot of death, pain, suffering, and psychological torture and trauma within the hospital. Even after the hospital is completely brought to ruin, he still finds a way to cause agony within the building. It's implied that most, if not, all of the monsters that we see in the DLC aren't actually in control of their own actions. The cow just used to them to try to attack the player. Like possessing the Body Bag in the morgue or possessing the Hanged Man. The latter clearly being in distress about the whole thing and just wanting his suffering to end. There's also the creation born from his experimentation on an infant rotting down in a basement while presumably being in pain from its state, the guard being a mindless husk and slave to a living virus that I assume is a creation from the cow, and whatever is going on in this room

All of this out of pure and utter sadism it seems with no real end goal. All of this while he wears a twisted smile on his face, clearly enjoying what he's doing. The game makes it clear that there's no sympathy to gain from him.

Yeah... this thing just fucking sucks.

24. Beef Demon

The Beef Demon is similar to Ghost Cow in that the dude is just evil. For starters, he manipulated a business owner looking to save their own restaurant and used said restaurant to his advantage to control others.

He made mind manipulating burgers that basically broke the mind of whoever ate it. Either causing them to order excessive amounts of food or becoming overly violent and aggressive. These burgers are also implied to cause strange nightmares, which is definitely not fun to deal with.

That's already bad enough, but then there's also the fact that he's a very violent entity as stated by CAT-DOS. Kidnapping, possibly torturing, and killing his victims in his own dimension; throwing their remains out a few days later once he gets bored. But the nightmare doesn't even end there for his victims, as he just straight up takes and keeps their souls. Presumably taking these souls down to the pits of Hell or making them succumb to a fate just as bad. He also may or may not have targeted children judging by some hints in the play area. He's clearly made out to be sadistic and enjoys what he's doing. As seen in his death sequence where he lets the protagonist approach HIM instead of the other way around with wide open arms and his taunting reversed lines.

Yeah get this mf out of here.

23. The Clown

The clown is strange in that he doesn't do any harm to the player. He's completely harmless, but doesn't mean he isn't bad. He was a spirit that was summoned from... somewhere... in order to make the dolls of the dollhouse happy. Only for that to backfire due to the dolls being scared shitless by whatever this thing is.

Nobody knows what his deal is, but what we do know is that the clown does seem to have some sort of sadism. He seems aware of how much he scares others and takes pleasure in doing so. Sporting a wide grin on his face, getting closer to the player whenever they turn their back, and occasionally laughing to himself.

No sympathy to gain here either.

22. Bekka

Finally. We're starting to come across some specimens that are a bit less asshole-y. Aside from obviously being inspired by Rebecca Black, not much is known about Bekka herself. We don't how she was created, what her motives are, or if she's worthy of sympathy or not.

The best we can get out of her is her behavior and appearance. Bekka first makes her debut in Karamari Hospital where she decided to steal a page out of Taker's book by catching the player off guard through tricking them into walking down a seemingly endless hallway. She appears again in Endless Mode where she has a very unique mechanic. Instead of chasing behind you like a lot of the other specimens, Bekka instead appears directly in front of you. Popping behind the door that you were planning on going through. Once again, her main way of attacking is catching the player off guard. Leading to some very frustrating chases or loses as many players have expressed.

With her behavior and the constant smile on her face, you could say that Bekka is mischievous or a bit of a trickster in terms of personality. Seemingly having some fun in tricking others and judging by the blood on her hands and dress, she has killed at least one other person. If there's at least one tragic element to her, it's that she was most likely human before she turned into what she is now. Most likely a nurse who worked at the hospital. This isn't confirmed of course, but the main motif with the monsters in Karamari Hospital is that they all are very clearly supposed to resemble humans unlike the specimens prior which were more varied in creatures and designs. Ghost Cow is the exception to this because he's intentionally supposed to stand out and be the outlier. Following this logic, I don't see why Bekka wouldn't have previously been human like all the others. We don't know how she became what she is, but considering all the batshit insane stuff Ghost Cow did, her demise probably wasn't pleasant. And as mentioned earlier, there's a chance that she's simply possessed like the other monsters and isn't in control of her actions.

A lot of things about Bekka are ambiguous or left in the air. And what little we can get out of her imply that she isn't the most well meaning entity. So she gets placed here.

21. Frenzy

Frenzy's death screen implies that she has some sadism within her. Being one of the only specimens in the game to express her sheer excitement of being able to kill and make the player suffer through the use of exclamation marks.

"Frenzied torment, distorted Mind! Blood to spill, bones to grind! The flesh it takes for time to wind Eye for eye makes all turn blind"

At the same time though, she only attacks the player if they don't take care of the doll they're holding. Implying that she has a close relationship to the dolls and cares about their well being.

She also has a very human appearance. A human being that seems to have been burnt from head to toe somehow by the looks of it. So there's some implications there.

Similar to Bekka, not much is known about Frenzy, but what we do have implies she isn't all bad and that there may be some sort of sad story with her origins.

20. Bab

Okay. So here's where things start getting interesting. Bab does have a detailed backstory... to a certain extent.

The problem is trying to figure out WHO Bab is supposed to be. The notes in her locale tell a clear story. Some dumb dumbs in a cult are worshipping some mysterious entity, they fuck up a ritual by sacrificing a girl who wasn't a virgin, said entity becomes pissed at them and their fates are left unknown.

Most assume that Bab is supposed to be the "Mother" entity that is described in the notes. However, one can also easily think that Bab is supposed to be impure girl who was sacrificed. The creature that we currently see being the aftermath of what happened to her after the sacrifice. Or maybe Bab is just supposed to be one of the many entities that Mother sent down to kill the cult members?

It's intentionally ambiguous and her ranking can easily change depending on what you personally believe in. She could be ranked higher if you believe that she was the impure girl. A girl who most likely did nothing wrong and later became a monster. She could be ranked lower if you believe that she was Mother. The notes paint Mother to be a demonic entity of sorts, which obviously isn't good.

There's no concrete answer. So Bab will be placed here.

19. The Mansion Within a Mansion

Should this mansion even count as a living entity? Well... yes actually!

As CAT-DOS states, the "mansion" was born after a massacre or tragedy took place within it. Turning the once regular and ordinary mansion into a paranormal entity. What was this tragedy? We're not sure. Perhaps it has something to do with the skeletons that we can find in this room.

Or maybe it has something to do with this guy hanging by a noose.

Or maybe it's both or a multitude of things. We know that tragedy can be a powerful force within the SJSM universe. For example, ghosts can be born from someone succumbing to a tragic enough fate. So whatever tragic thing happened, it was enough to turn a whole entire building into a paranormal entity. So it must have been REALLY fucked up and gruesome for the victims who were here previously. Not to mention that it's implied in one of the notes in Specimen 12 that the souls of these people are still in the mansion. As the Vlogger/Old Man states that he can hear "movement and voices" below him. So they aren't even able to be at peace.

So what about the mansion itself? It does have some irredeemable qualities to it. Such as purposefully driving its victims insane through psychological torment, leading to their possession and violent behavior, only for it to choose another host when it comes across one and thus killing the last host in the process. Creating a vicious cycle.

Easy to say that the mansion is evil and sadistic, but it's hard to say really considering that it was created from a tragedy. Is it doing this because it's actually evil or is it more so instinct?

Well, if we want to go down the route of the voicelines that hear from the Old Man actually being from the thoughts of the mansion instead of the Old Man himself, then it is implied it possess some form of sapience. One line in particular paints an interesting picture.

"I'm so lonely..."

Looking at this simple line in the context of it being spoken from the mansion, it implies some things.

The mansion is an entity born from tragedy. It never asked to be alive and it most likely lives a sad and miserable existence. It's always looking for a host to attach itself to. For what end goal exactly? Well, maybe it simply has to do with loneliness. The mansion feels lonely and bored and so it tries to have some fun by possessing whoever steps within it. Having a host to latch itself to, only to later use said host in a game of cat and mouse for the other poor soul that wanders into the mansion, said soul then kills the host out of paranoia, becomes the current host, and the cycle repeats. The mansion is a trickster and manipulator. It gives its victims the illusion that they have any chance to escape. Giving them hiding spots. Making the host seem dumb by not making much of an effort to look for the victims. When it reality? That person was already dead the moment that they stepped through the door of the mansion. It draws out these games of cat and mouse because it sadistically takes pleasure from doing so. It's bored. It's lonely. It's miserable. It was born from tragedy after all.

Doesn't excuse its actions obviously, but it lives a pretty sad existence. Both it and the many victims of the tragedy that created it.

So when the Protagonist comes along and is about to become one of the few or perhaps the only one able to escape Specimen 12? The mist in the mansion becomes green.

The color green symbolizing peace, growth, renewal, healing, and some other positive things that could work for this scene. Mostly likely representing the souls inside of the mansion having hope. Hope that the Protagonist will be able to make out it out alive. That maybe, just maybe, the cycle will be put to an end.

Of course, this is all going heavily into theory and speculation territory. Perhaps too much so. Hence why Specimen 12 is only here and not more higher. A lot of stuff about it is up to interpretation and not outright confirmed. It's all still very interesting to think about nonetheless.

18. The Siren

The siren seems like a typical monster at first. The notes in her locale first describe how she kills whales from the inside out to feast on them. Sad and gruesome for the whales, but nothing outright horrible. Maybe she's just doing what she has to do to survive.

Later notes then describe how she killed the staff of the whale researching facility. Purposefully flooding the facility and luring people to their deaths via her singing voice. Manipulating others into going into the sweeping waves.

None of this is great, but CAT-DOS does tell us something interesting about her that garners sympathy. It states that she is a lost soul who tragically died during the "Deluge" as it puts it. A deluge being a severe and overwhelming flood and often they're associated with mythical floods. Which deluge is being referred to specifically, whether it be Noah's Flood or some other mythical flood, is left vague. What matters most though is that she was once a regular human being who tragically died during one of these floods.

If there's one thing to know about floods is that they can be utterly horrifying. Even if you never personally experienced one, just simply looking up images or footage of them will tell you just how scary these natural disasters can be. Massive waves of water suddenly rushing towards you, causing severe damage and destruction in its path, and causing many deaths in the process. Considering that the Siren died during a mythical flood, which are notoriously bad and severe, and even CAT-DOS outright states that she died "tragically", tells you that her death was a horrific one. A fate most likely filled with nothing but sheer paranoia and fear before she passed away. Doesn't excuse her actions later in her life, but you do feel bad about what she has previously went through.

Ultimately the Siren doesn't have a very detailed origin and not much is known about who she was before she died. Which does bring her down a bit. We have enough backstory however that gives us a sad perspective on the Siren.

17. Ben the Merchant

Ben's story is a straightforward yet sad one. A merchant who wanted to put a smile on others faces with his puppets. The puppets in question being looked at fondly and proudly by him considering he calls them his "children".

Due to some jealous shopkeepers however, he would have all his puppets thrown in the river. Putting him in a panic and accidentally drowning himself while attempting to save them. The merchant beginning to drown due to his devotion to his puppets was not the plan the townspeople had in mind. They could've easily saved him.

But instead they let him drown to death due to their own bitterness. What was originally supposed to be an attempt to sabotage another man's business became involuntary manslaughter. A man lost his life for basically no good reason. The result of this? A monster who would kidnap and kill the children of the town. The children who once loved and enjoyed the puppets that the merchant sold started to become puppets themselves.

The monster in question being Ben. But why? Why is he doing this? Well, there's his death screen in the main game.

For awhile, I took this death screen as Ben having a blue and orange morality of sorts. He thinks he's doing you a favor by turning you into a puppet. You don't have to deal with the burden of having to make a choice if you don't have any choices at all. He kidnapped, killed, and turned children into puppets as a strange way of helping them after realizing how cruel and cold the world was after his death. To make them less miserable and more happy.

That's what I thought at first, but then I thought about it some more and realized... no. Ben is just a fucked up dude.

For starters, unlike a lot specimens that are either devoid of personality or have some semblance to it hinted at through vague text or sparse voice lines, Ben is unique in that he shows most of his personality through body language and expressions. Making him the most expressive character in the whole game and thus easier to read on what his deal is.

His ingame poses depict him as taunting and even sadistic. It's made clear by the constant smile on his face that never changes, but it's also clear by some his poses showing him trying to act casual, comically and poorly trying to hide his needle, or extending his hand towards the player; as if trying to beckon them. Not to mention the audible laughing that can be heard in his death screen and occasionally whenever he moves. Further hinting at his twisted nature.

As you can see above, his face will occasionally turn into an angry and aggressive one. Although it could simply just be him showing frustration, it could also be him trying to further scare or intimidate the player.

The disturbing thing about all of this is that he's most likely fully self aware of what he's doing. As his death screen in Dollhouse implies.

This death screen is less vague and more clear. He outright states why he killed the children of his town. No sugar coating, no excuses, no signs of being under some odd delusional goal. He just spills the beans. His "children" drowned so he took the children away from the townspeople as payback. An eye for an eye as they say. He even goes into some disturbing detail about how the children were killed. Silencing them, sewing their bodies up, and drilling out their eyes.

Now the death screen in the main game has become all the more unnerving. Ben is simply trying to manipulate you into thinking that turning into a puppet isn't all bad, but in reality he just wants to turn you into a puppet as replacement for the ones he lost the day he died. You're his plaything and nothing more.

We have a very interesting case on our hands. Ben has a pretty detailed backstory that paints him as this poor and tragic guy who just wanted to make people happy and suffered a depressing death for no good reason due to some assholes. Meanwhile ingame he comes across as this petty, sick, and twisted prick who takes pleasure in tormenting the player and most likely took pleasure in killing those poor kids as well. Having full self awareness of what he was doing, but not caring about in the end. All of that shit, presumably not even because of the loss of his life, but because of some puppets...

You could make the argument that Ben was probably not the most mentally stable individual if his first reaction to losing some puppets was to go on a child murdering spree. He is referred to as a "strange" merchant in the notes and he calls his puppets his "children" and thought that they were "drowning". Going as far as to think his lifeless wooden puppets are in anyway comparable to living, breathing, and human children and that those actual living children should be replacements for his "children".

It's hard to say though. Ben could have also easily been a well meaning, awesome, and chill dude. But the day he drowned, lost his puppets, and saw how truly horrible the world can be to even the most kind hearted people, made something snap within him. The Lucifer Effect. Sometimes all it takes is one bad day and Ben had a really REALLY bad day.

Still a sick and twisted fuck who painfully killed children, but one that you can't help but feel bad for and somewhat understand why he took the path he did.

16. Ringu

At first glance you think Ringu would be placed more lower on the list. The notes in her locale don't really tell us anything about her, her voicelines aren't too noteworthy, and her death screen was... just seen as weird by most people.

Not a whole lot to her it seems. Just another murder monster as most people probably thought. Until you find out about what Kira said about her under one of their posts on Deviantart.

Now everything makes sense and is pretty easy to explain.

Ringu isn't a malicious spirit by any means. She doesn't want to harm you and in fact wants the exact opposite. She wants to protect you and keep you safe. Presumably after she died through unknown circumstances, she became completely delusional. Searching for children to keep "safe". Safe in her belly. Safe from the dangerous outside world. After all, her baby was completely safe there until it popped out of it.

Most of her victims being from school makes a lot of sense in this context. Because that was where all of the vulnerable kids were. To Ringu, those kids were in danger.

Ringu becomes a very tragic figure now. Losing an infant, especially one that you've always wanted, is a horrific and damaging thing to go through. As someone who would love to have a kid or two in the future, I can't even imagine how much emotional and psychological damage I would go through if I ever experienced that. It would probably fuck me for a long time. Perhaps for the rest of my life even. Picturing a once human Ringu reacting to something like that is just awful.

The fact that she doesn't even realize what she's doing is wrong and is killing the children she wants to protect in the process is as disturbing as it is sad. She's clearly a caring and empathetic motherly figure. She just goes about it in a completely wrong way.

Hell! This is even alluded to with her original theme! Breakfast Was Too Early (which you can listen to here). Compared to the other chase themes in the game, this one doesn't really feel give off the vibes of "Oh shit! Something's coming after me!" or anything intense or dreadful. It sounds... peaceful and comforting? Like a lullaby that would play for a young child getting ready to go to sleep. That's what it sounds like.

As some have pointed out, the theme sounds like Ringu is trying to calm the player down. As if the theme itself is trying to say "Don't panic. Don't run away. Don't be scared. I won't hurt you. It will be over soon." This makes sense because again, Ringu doesn't want to actually harm the player.

So Ringu is pretty easy to sympathize with. She has killed kids which is always awful, but she isn't aware of what she's doing, so how much can you blame her really? That said, considering that she is outright not malicious unlike the previous specimens we ranked so far and the severity of what she went through to cause her to behave how she does now; shouldn't she be more higher on the list?

Well... there's one problem.

This bitch.

So Ringu received a new form in Endless Mode and she's a bit... different. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that Endless Mode Ringu feels like a separate character almost.

The whole "I don't want to actually harm you" motif with the original Ringu has been ridden of and instead the "I literally want to eat you" motif gets more focus. Endless Mode Ringu is depicted as a more vicious entity that is starving and desperate for a meal. This is made evident by the much more intense and definitely not soothing chase theme, the visible blood dripping out of her mouth, and her second form where she sprouts multiple arms. Unhinging her jaw beyond human capabilities and showing some sharp teeth.

She's also depicted as a more malicious entity in general. With her Endless Mode form having a visible smile with a gleeful expression in her eyes compared to her more neutral faced and bug eyed original counterpart.

Doesn't exactly help that we also see Endless Mode Ringu in the Hellgate chase and she basically gives the player the middle finger by putting a curse on them after she gets absorbed by the Hellgate. Which roughly translates to "I will curse you" or "You will be cursed". Like damn. Salty about being sent to Hell much?

This is where we have to go back to the comment that Kira made on Deviantart and look at the wording they use. They did state they wanted Ringu's backstory to be about her having her baby killed and then going on to search for children to keep safe. Keyword: wanted. Past tense wording here.

So Ringu's backstory must have been changed a bit. To what extent? We don't know really. Maybe the whole baby being killed thing is still canon to her backstory. Maybe both forms coexisting can make some sort of sense if you put your mind to it. At the end of the day, clearly some things were changed to make her be depicted so differently as we see in Endless Mode.

I could go on a whole rant about what exactly Kira changed about Ringu. Why both her forms were given scan lines on their HD models, why Endless Mode Ringu suddenly introduced a motif having to do with TV's despite such a thing never being hinted at before, why Breakfast Was Too Early was changed to Breakfast Was Too Late, ect. And overall just trying to figure out what tf her deal is. But that can be its own separate post.

To sum it up, trying to figure out where to place Ringu on this list was confusing because trying to figure out what her deal is and what's canon and what's not is headache inducing. It's just a whole entire mess. So she gets placed here. Although out of all the specimens here, I feel like her placement is most likely to change at one point or another

I'm sorry for failing you @chenxisolos. I really wanted to put your girlie up higher, but y'all need to figure something out because she's a mess right now/j.

15. The Worm Eel

Who's a good eel! You are! You are!

Ah man this poor thing. So this was a creature made to be a killing machine similar to Subject 5, only to end up being a passive. At the very least, it was kept as a pet around GL Labs, only to later be abandoned. Through unknown means, the Parasite ended up inside it and later bursts through its skull, killing it in the process.

There's not a whole lot to this eel other than that, but I imagine that it was pretty sad and lonely when the facility was abandoned and later was in a lot of pain when the Parasite entered it's body. That's unconfirmed though.

Still, although short lived, it's sad to see this peaceful little guy go. He was a good boy who did nothing wrong.

14. The Security Guard

Once a regular guard of Karamari Hospital who later became infected by the virus in the hospital and turned a deformed and controllable husk.

Similar to the Eel Worm, there's not much to this guy, but we can sympathize with him nonetheless. Similar to Bekka, considering that it was Ghost Cow causing havoc in the hospital, his death was probably a horrific and sad one. The virus that infected him most likely didn't take over his body immediately and who knows what horrors he witnessed when going through that process. Deadly viruses of any kind can definitely be a horrifying thing.

13. The Walls of Flesh

Another specimen that I struggled with figuring out where to put on this list. Because here's the thing with the Wall of Flesh. It's intentionally cryptic and not really a character in a traditional sense. It's supposed to represent trauma or repressed aspects. An entity that doesn't physically attack you, but mentally attacks you.

Nothing really implies that it has any personality, goals, outright malice, or full sapience. It's just... a thing. An idea. Not an actual being that exists. So how do you rank something like that? Well, we can rank what the specimen is trying to tell us. That being that there's something wrong with our protagonist.

Without going too much into unconfirmed theory territory, the threshold of consciousness and the scenes with the White Cat basically tell us that there's more to the protagonist we play as in SJSM than one would think. We can make many sorts of theories and interpretations as to what's the deal with the protagonist. That's the whole point of Specimen 7. It's intentionally interpretive. One thing is clear though, our protagonist is broken. Considering the fact that the Wall of Flesh literally one shots us when we make physical contact with it? It definitely brings some worrying implications.

Specimen 7 gives us a look into who exactly we're playing as and although a lot of it is vague and cryptic, hence why it isn't higher on the list, it does tell a tragic story. A tragic story that you yourself can make your own interpretation of.

Conclusion to part 1

I think that's a nice place to end this on for now. Part 2 will (hopefully) be completed before the end of this week! Once that comes out, as I stated before, I'll be ranking the rest of the specimens and then I'll state any closing thoughts I have. In any case, I'll see you when part 2 comes out and I hope you have a snazzy day!

[twilightarc-gm]

ao3 Wrapped 2024 - twilightarc

Instead of an ask game I decided to just answer the questions on the sourced post that I can answer for my own benefit and fun.

How many words have you written this year? Ao3 Published: 310,834

How many works did you publish this year? 7 Complete / 13 Total

What work are you most proud of (regardless of kudos/hits)? Always 'mainfic' i.e. This River Runs Beyond Heaven and Earth [江流天地外] I put so much work into it for fanfic. Why? I got mental health issues, I guess.

What work of yours has the most hits? I Long For You (相思) Hits: 5,311

What work of yours got more feedback than you expected? Damn your love, damn your lies. Everyone is VERY VOCAL (affectionate) about Jiang Cheng being in a loveless marriage and needing a divorce pronto. 🥰

Favorite title you used Again, mainfic's title taken from a poem and has a wealth of description to it that really sets the tone for the entire story. Never gonna top that.

If you use song lyrics, which artist’s songs did you pull from the most? "damn your love, damn your lies" is the only song title and it's from Fleetwood Mac - The Chain

Pairing you wrote the most for this year? CHENGXIAN to no one's surprise...

Favorite pairing you wrote for this year? Obviously this is also ChengXian but only because I haven't actually got to Jiang Cheng/Hu Touxiang(OC) this year.

What work was the quickest to write? To Endeavor is to Endure (4,331 words) This was a prompt fill, I did it in like two days ish.

What work took you the longest to write? Of the complete works: The BigBang2024 entry I ended up doing as a series with my co-author Specs. It took 6 months to write. YM3 Gen fic with MSY worldbuilding 🤲 Reprieve and a New Start and The Turning Point

How many WIP’s do you have in your docs for next year? 19!

What’s your longest work of the year? My most viewed work this year! I Long For You @ (45,781 words)

What’s your shortest work of the year? The prompt one-shot which is my 'quickest' (4,331 words)

What WIP are you taking into next year with you?

What’s your most common “Additional Tags” tag? Not counting the "structural tags" of my "flavor" tags it's: Protective Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian (3) 🥰

Your favorite character to write this year? Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin (9)!!

The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year? 😣 LWJ in divorce fic. I hate writing him. It was really hard to convey his own issues and insecurities while not making him say too much or explain himself too readily.

What’s one pairing you want to explore next year? Jiang Cheng/Hu Touxiang!!! No more posting WIPs for me in 2025 I need to buckle down to get mainfic really going!

Which work of yours have you reread the most? 😅 If not mainfic then Red Tin of Heresy because I dunno what's going on with the vibes on that one but I keep rereading hoping I'll learn something from the demon that possessed me.

How many kudos in total did you get this year? Kudos: 1,050 !! And that's with works locked down which is really nice for me because I got more kudos the year I only posted 5 works when I left things unlocked.

Which work has the most comments?

Did you do any collaborative works this year? Yes! For BigBang 2024 with my friend Specs😘 and the divorce fic with/for @spriteofmushrooms. Oh! and CX Zine 2024 fic with @kabybaali who came up with the idea and wonderful art!

Did you write any gifts this year? Three!!

Did you receive any gifts this year? Five! From @groundwiremantaray Mission: Survive the Date (T rated chengxian SpyxFamily AU, very cute!) and from Specs Still Sparkling in the Night (T rated chengxian with Chinese Mythology!). Also a beautiful art gift scaly sweetheart by sugar_shoal and @notluceo fanart of Cheng-lang and Ya-Xian!! AND a beautiful gifset from @add1ctedt0you for one of my first one-shots Of Summer and Smiles

What’s your most common category? M/M (5)

What do you listen to while writing? Usually something wordless like industrial techno on loop.

Favorite work you wrote this year? Of the complete stuff: I Long For You, I really enjoyed writing the sex scene in that one because it was a lot of ebb and flow and from top!JC's pov.

Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

Biggest surprise while writing this year?

Not doing the last two because of recency bias 🤣 like hell I can remember something like that to compare over an entire year!

[bcacstuff]

The conversation Alice had with a fan and you mention that there is stong language tell more about that? Was it her who used it to the fan and was it fan who did that or talking shit about Sam?

I think you meant t write 'slip' 😉

So yes, before all kind of crazy stories start to occur, and this is actually the subject I wanted to address but as well had to think about how to do it in a correct way, as honest as I possibly can but also with integrity.

You see, it concerns DMs, and yes, meanwhile someone showed them to me and I have read them. I could surely have said no, I don't want that, but at the same time, I had 2 Anons claiming Alice had answered fans in DM. I showed you part of the Anon message:

"Alice has been replying to a fan in DM this I know 10000% saying Sam followed her and sent her DM and now she’s posted in London."

The rest was more or less calling Sam out, so i didn't like to post that part.

So I felt a bit in dubio, one side doesn't want to be secretive, the other side is thinking, those are DMs, not meant for public consumption to begin with.

Also, I need to emphasize that I was shown these DMs second hand. There is no way I can verify. I'm not saying I don't trust the person who showed them to me, I'm merely saying, I can not verify how genuine they are, is this really what this person in DM said or not. So I really would emphasize this and keep that in mind when reading the rest of this post.

I'm not literally gonna write what was in the DMs, but will try to give an objective summary of it.

I saw 2 DM convo's, by 2 fans separately and not at the same time with Alice. One DM convo was short, fan asking, she answered, th other was a little longer more a little convo. Both starting with asking her how she got Sam following her. She answered both. (which I have to say I find surprising, it is quite easy to ignore). But okay, she seemed to have answered both of them. Telling how Sam slid into her DMs, now I don't feel that is something new, that part we know (hence I feel I can tell that part). And Anon 2, i don't know when, I just know he started following her on 13 June. She went on with more personal stuff he did and said they DM-ed daily.

But she was also sort of bragging that he invited her to London. Now both DMs were before this weekend. One started on 20 June, and they ended last Wednesday. So nobody knew by then Sam was going to be in London and at the tennis match. My Anon also wrote Fridaynight, before we knew he was in London, but she wrote because Alice posted a picture tagging her hotel in London. And yeah, your question ismy question as well, why on earth did she felt the need to advertise that?

Then in both DMs she suddenly (and imo unnecessarily) said something on Sam's behalve which was not so nice. Something both fans I know felt hurt by. You could say, perhaps he told her about fans harassing women he's been connected with somehow, but from what i saw these fans were not harassing, were asking her something in a friendly way, curiosity, she could have ignored, or simply have given a short answer without all the rest. I feel it was not her place to say something like that on his behalf, whether it is true or not, it was not on her to do so.

I'm not gonna spell out what exactly was said, but it was unkind, hurtful for the (curious) fans, and unnecessary. I know some might have their thoughts about the fans contacting her, and I in no way would encourage anybody to do so (and I surely never did or will do so myself). But that is not a reason to be hurtful and say things on someone else's behalf that hurt his fans.

As said, and i emphasize again I can not verify this all, if that is really what she said. And that is also why I wish not to spell something like that out, here my integrity is at play. I just can say, the DMs didn't look fabricated/photoshopped or anything. But I just can't verify.

Anyway, whatever happened to Be Kind!?

[sabrinatvband]

Notes on Comic Art #2: To Hatch or Not to Hatch, also some coloring stuff

One of the most influential things I've ever read on the subject of comic art is a piece Jesse Hamm wrote on Alex Toth where he talks about flatpacking.

[I discovered while writing this that Jesse Hamm passed away in 2021. He was a brilliant educator, one of the best in the history of the comics medium, and will be sorely missed.]

In the piece Hamm basically discusses how over-rendering objects usually makes them function worse as comic art. Many other people have discussed how using thicker lines for objects closer to the "camera" is good practice, how colors can seperate shapes and create depth, etc.

The question is, where does cross hatching fit into all of this? Or rather, various methods of adding more detailed rendering to artwork? I'm trying to figure this stuff out as I'm doing layouts for my comic, because I want to know the answers before I start inking the final artwork.

I try/want to have an uncluttered, clean, easily readable art style. I occasionally add hatching to my drawings, because hatching is fun, but I often feel like I've slightly ruined my artwork when I'm finished.

I've decided to look at some of the art that I feel like my own work is trying the hardest to emulate, at least philosophically, to see how other artists "weigh in" on this debate. It's important to remember that inkers embellish artwork [hence the alternate title "embellisher"], and so I'm going to try and find inkers most representative of a given penciller's intentions when applicable.

As I was working on this piece, I read Hamm Tips vol 1.1, and I discovered this diagram, which seems to relate with what I'm going to discuss later:

I think it's accurate to say that my desired approach is Uninflected/Deliberate; I think most people going for a clean and cartoonish look fall into that quadrant. Some people might describe Toth's work as being "clean", and so I should clarify that I'm talking about clean in the spirit of "lines meet neatly".

Some of the artists I'll discuss have lines that fall somewhere between being Inflected and Uninflected, and I think a lot of this comes down to inker approach. I feel like, in spirit, all of these pencillers are Uninflected, but some of the inkers use brushes, which creates a sort of middle ground. Brushes add different weights to a line, whereas crow quill nibs and pens have a uniform width. [The technical term for unweighted inked lines is "dumb line"; I believe this was coined by David Mazzucchelli.]

Let's first look at Adam Warren's work in the Dirty Pair volume Fatal But Not Serious. I'm a huge fan of how this comic looks; the flat, cel animation-style colors are very clean and easy to read. It's a very pleasant look, and I'm surprised more comics don't do this.

There is some hatching here, but it's not "serious" hatching. Just a few lines on cheeks, hands, etc. 98% of the artwork is shapes delinated entirely by a clean line and color. The convention floor panel is able to have a ton of detail without really changing the visual "rules" of the comic. An artist who does things in a more highly rendered way may've, for instance, reduced the crowd to a series of heavily shadowed figures, or colored in a single expressionistic wash to paper over things, etc.

Warren's Magical Drama Queen Roxy used a very similar approach to Fatal But Not Serious:

Let's now look at Rick Mays. I'm not a huge fan of Rick Mays, I've only actual read a single issue of a comic by him, but as I was reading Gen 13 he immediately stood out as being the best artist on that series, aside from Adam Warren himself [speaking only about issues Warren wrote]. It feels very telling that Rick Mays later did the final art for a graphic novel Warren laid out called Livewires.

These are from Gen 13 vol 2 #70:

The biggest difference between this piece has nothing to do with Warren or Mays, and everything to do with the coloring approach. I don't think the coloring here is bad, but the gradient-y colors do create a vastly different visual effect than the cel look I highlighted earlier.

The inking approach feels quite similar between the two artists; while Mays's art takes one or two steps towards realism relative to the Fatal But Not Serious stuff, texture is largely used to the same degree [with the grass and tornado being understandable exceptions]. What's interesting is that this issue has three different credited inkers; Karl Story, Rick Mays, and Jason Martin. I'm assuming this happened for deadline reasons.

I feel like I'm maybe starting to sound a little repetitive, and so I feel like I should share an issue of Gen 13 that I disliked, and then we can move to things that aren't Adam Warren-adjacent. These are from #43 and #44, with pencils by Lee Bermejo and inks by John Nyberg:

I'm not a big fan of this. The borderline chiaroscuro inking makes everything look heavily referenced, labored, and weird, and the "acting" in the comic suffers because of the over-rendered faces. It's a real shame the artwork is like this, because this two-part story is actually quite solid and would be a minor classic with better artwork.

I notice that many newer comic artists [which is to say, people who began their careers during the 90s onwards] put a lot of heavy shadows on figures in a way that feels too slavishly devoted to a certain kind of realism. I say a "certain kind" because the high contrast look of black spots being put onto a figure make the shadows way darker than they'd actually look in real life, so it almost makes the figures look dirty.

Look at comic art from the olden days and figures are largely defined by outlines/color. If a figure in an old comic has a lot of shadow on them, it's for reasons that are obvious and motivated; noir-y venetian blinds stuff, a mysterious villain being obscured, someone being underlit, or having half their face obscured, etc. There's a clear reason shadows are being used in these cases, rather than it being done to add usually unnecessary detail.

Anyways, let's look at Amanda Conner's work. Image on the left is from a Vampirella story called Fantasy Feast, and the image on the right is from Power Girl #12. Texture is used, like on the walls of the bathroom, but sparingly.

Looking at Conner's work in this context makes me realize, I don't think I've ever seen Amanda Conner's stuff colored flat [at least after she fully matured as an artist]. I don't think the more three-dimensional rendering used in any of these panels is bad, but I'm not going to be doing that kind of coloring in my book, and so it's not quite as instructive to me.

That being said, I really love Conner's style. I've noticed that Marvel and DC are increasingly using artists with styles that are broadly similar to Conner's; I've included an example below. Maybe it's because the artist below is too lazy to draw a proper background, but their work feels so much more flavorless than Conner's in comparison. I think it's because the "acting" is not as impressive, and Conner brings a fun-factor that feels completely absent in the page below.

I realize "fun" isn't always the order of the day, but this page doesn't really reflect . . . anything. It's completely bland.

Here's Kirby, who couldn't be bland if he tried. The left image is from the Young Romance collection Fantagraphics put out, and the right is from OMAC. The former is from the 40s, latter is from the 70s. [By the way, the Young Romance image is photographed from my own collection; there's no warping visible because Fantagraphics knows how to design a book].

Looking at these pieces side-by-side really challenges a lot of my assumptions about Kirby's artwork, because in some ways his artwork changed less than I previously thought it did without direct comparisons. There are some things that are more abstract about the OMAC page, like the wiggly shadows. Someone unfamiliar with Kirby might assume these were drawn by two different people, but only because 30-odd years of growth seperate these two pages.

Kirby's style, in my mind, is highly geometric and defined more so by abstract shorthand squiggles than hatching or other forms of rendering, but there actually is a fair amount of hatching on the OMAC page.

However, that OMAC page I believe was inked by Mike Royer, or at least someone using a brush. I noticed that, by sheer coincidence, almost all of the Kirby art from my first post in this series was inked by D. Bruce Barry, who didn't use a brush and also followed Kirby's pencils perhaps more literally than any other inker he ever had. In those images, it's clear that most of the hatching in Kirby's work was added by his inkers.

When Kirby did ink himself [using a brush], his style was oddly clean. He did add in hatching, but it was never particularly dense.

Anyways, I want to close this by including some Jesse Hamm quotes from his instructional PDFs:

-Simplicity is great, but often you need extra texture to seel weirdness.

-Another sign of experience is texture. The pro-level artist has learned to give different textures to grass, hair, tree bark, bushes, etc. Meanwhile, the amateur uses the same one or two shading techniques on EVERYTHING, giving it all a samey feel.

-Open spaces of black or white may be "activated" with a bit of texture. A few pebbles/ripples/etc will spur the mind to fill what's missing.

-We talk often about spotting blacks, but spotting greys (i.e., details/texture) is also crucial to clear compositions.

The lesson in the bit of Hamm writing I most often revisited, the flatpacking post, was that too much texture and rendering can make a comic exhausting to read. But reading more of his work, it turns out he had a more nuanced, texture-inclusive view of things.

What's the lesson here? Discretion.

[kiwiana-writes]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

A big ol' fuck you to @rmd-writes for the tag xoxo

1. How many works do you have an AO3? Lol. Lmao even. 289.

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 914,620 on AO3, but that includes co-writes as well as things I've podficced where the fic and pod are in the same work. My actual personally-written wordcount, per my Batshit Spreadsheet, is 771,819.

3. What fandoms do you write for? Mostly RWRB these days, though most of my back catalogue is Schitt's Creek. Also The Pairing and various other things scattered about.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Kinda think that I might be his type aka Alex and Bea fake date coming in at the top spot, which will never not bewilder me. Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely fic!! But I am always surprised that it was a few hundred more kudos than:

With so much of my heart (that none is left to protest), the Much Ado actors AU. My magnum opus, my beloved.

We were supposed to find this - baby's first soulmate AU and my first RWRB fic. The brainrot really took hold with this one lmao.

All the Lonely Starbucks Lovers, in which Henry takes 'open mouth insert foot' to a whole new level.

Warm like the glow that you feel head to toe, the age gap fic with older Senator Alex and younger Prince Henry. This is probably the only one in my top five that really surprises me, considering age gaps are... divisive.

5. Do you respond to comments? Always always always.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I mean I did write that one MCD fic in Schitt's Creek, though I maintain the other five parts in that 5+1 are in fact angstier than the MCD ending.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Uhhhhhhh, the rest? The Doylist answer is any of my fics where the HEA is literally forever rather than 'till death do us part'; so, the Schitt's Creek afterlife AU and the RWRB zombie!Alex AU. (Is that all? Am I forgetting one?)

8. Do you get hate on fics? Yeah, sometimes. Weirdly, more through tumblr anons than on the fics themselves? A lot of them I just delete, sometimes I'll give them a bit of a public scolding etc. Frankly at this point if you come into my ask box to be a cunt on anon I'm going to assume you have a public humiliation kink and will indulge you accordingly.

9. Do you write smut? Who's to say.

10. Do you write crossovers? I'm more inclined towards a fusion than a crossover (love a good media fusion) but I did write a short RWRB/The Pairing crossover for VoiceTeam.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope. Someone did ask recently, so we'll see!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? HEAPS. @ships-to-sail is an ongoing collaborator, but I also did a bunch of "each write a chapter" type collabs in Schitt's Creek. Currently co-writing something truly fucking incredible with @indestructibleheart.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? IDK if it's a WIP by the strictest definition, but every day the likelihood of the SC kink!verse series being completed slips further away lol.

16. What are your writing strengths? Rae, you're the worst.

Smut, I guess? Giving people new kinks, apparently. Character voice. Also a very specific type of world-building where I explain nothing because the characters already live in that world and let y'all infer how it works, which came up a LOT on one of this year's Kinktober fics in particular and led to my spouse saying "okay so you're basically the Brennan Lee Mulligan of tree fucking", which is sure not a sentence I expected to ever be directed towards me, but here we are.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Anything original, apparently. Good thing I didn't quit my job to be a writer or anything OH WAIT.

(In all seriousness, though, I am genuinely shit at, like, plotting. And action sequences.)

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? If it makes sense for the character, sure! I'm enlisting someone who speaks it for anything more complicated than, like, a pet name - I've seen what Google Translate tries to spit out for my second language and therefore don't trust it lmao.

19. First fandom you wrote for? terf queen mcgee's property.

20. Favourite fics you've written? The RWRB fic specifically based on the episode The Husbands of River Song from Doctor Who. Hands down the best thing I've ever written.

I also fucking LOVED the Much Ado actor AU. My love letter to Shakespeare and theatre and queer joy.

-

Tagging @blueeyedgrlwrites @cactusdragon517 @cricketnationrise @firenati0n @getmehighonmagic

@hgejfmw-hgejhsf @indestructibleheart @inexplicablymine @notspecialbabe @orchidscript

@piratefalls @sherryvalli @sparklepocalypse @stereopticons @whimsymanaged and, as always, anyone who wants to play! 

[jennrypan]

Let's go down the line of fuckassary: LONG ASS POST AHEAD.

1: Gaia looked and acted like everyone else. She should've been WAY angrier, she should be pissed at Persephone for bringing about winter first of all. Should be pissed that she was a sleep and NOTHING got better over the centuries. But sure, she's giggling and happy.

(I liked that she shoved her hand in Ouranos' chest tho.)

2: It's soo funny that people keep SAYING that Persephone and Hades have true love but the comic hasn't showed us that ever 🤨, like if anything those two losers are obsessed with each other. Be so fr.

3: Once again..this should be Persephones story/POV but its in Hades' always. Fascinating.

4: "You have to spend 3 months away from your sugar daddy" OH NOOOO BUT WEVE BEEN APART FOR SO LONGB 🥺. God. At this point does she even NEED to be in the Mortal Realm fr?? Like..Demeter, Metis and Rhea are back now so..what's her purpose there.

5: The way Gaia just isn't. Gaia is baffling. Anyways. Demeter FINALLY found out what happened to Persephone but she's not..having a moment with her daughter?? Not talking to her about it?? Okay.

6: As usual. They're eager to have sex cuz that's the only thing they do. "I can't wait to see that ass--" ..how very Zeus and Posedion of you quote on quote romantic 🤨

7: She gets her coronation but..didn't she already have that when she married Hades?? Ig not then. Also..Apollo just got a slap on the wrist, not surprising.

DEMETER GOT PUNISHED MORE THAN HIM??? Hell the Titans got punished more than that bitch what the fuck??? God.

8: The disrespect to Zeus is so. 😶 Zeus would literally not sit back quietly for this shit the fuck??? Also..Hera didn't divorce Zeus all those years and now she did ?? And she's what..gonna get with Echo now??? Fascinating. Zeus needs to start tossing rocks. Rachel did Zeus and Heras relationship so fucking DIRTY!!!! GOD!! FUCKING DAMMIT. I hate how she wrote them. Anyways.

9: The Mortal Realm is a lot easier cuz Hades is there?? YOU WERE BORN THERE!!! ITS YOUR HOME!! You ungrateful ass spawn. It wasn't that fun cuz you didn't have a man there?? Insane.

10: The way Persephone clearly doesn't love her own mother is sickening actually. Like..we can't even have them talking to each other?? Dancing?? Even the comment about her doesn't have that much emotion. Also..Dionysus' hair looks goofy, and I guess Hades is all for bringing back mortals now despite making a big stink about it in season 1 but whatever. Yay Semele.

11: "hera just gives him busy work" ..He's literally the king. Literally-- oh my god. "His powers having been the same" which..MEANS WHAT?? And the way Zeus would literally not be happy about this shit is so-- UGH. God it's infuriating. Hades and Posedion clearly don't give a shit about their brother if they aren't concerned about his fucking powers 'not being same'??? Die.

12: Echo needs to stand SEVERAL feet away from Hera. That ship is so god damn tasteless and unnecessary. If you're gonna give hera a new love interest. Maybe give them actual moments?? Make it make sense!!

13: "Ares is still a dog!" *cue laugh track sound*, god this is so..why ?? Ares, baby I'm so sorry people keep disrespecting you in every iteration 🤦‍♀️

14: ignoring the Artemis bit cuz she wasn't relevant for any of the major plots and she still isn't. Anyways. Hades stay the FUCK away from Thanatos. "They can have conversations" oh?? How fascinating. Hades just NOW deciding to care about Thanatos doesn't make up for years of his neglect.

15: Persephone, Ares and Aphrodite should beat Eros' ass for being useless about Apollo. I still think that. Eros is an ass of a friend.

16: 'new powers' ..Girl your powers are basically your old powers with one extra step. Shut UP!!! anyways. (No one cares about kassandra, sorry not sorry. Who was worried about that )

17: Hades and Persephones millionth drabble of nonsense fluff. They're not saying anything new, nor are they doing anything new. I do like the art tho. It's just..baffling how..they're relationship started soo much nonsense and we're suppose to see it as a good thing??

THIS is a good ending??

Nevermind the fact Persephone didn't spend time with her friends or her MOTHER, nevermind the fact Zeus and Posedion don't even get to speak to their mother either.

Hera, Hestia and Demeter don't have a moment with Metis either.

Like..what was the point of bringing them back if you weren't gonna bring it to a satisfying conclusion?? Absolutely insane

Also..Eileithyias design is ass. It's sooo boring. It's literally just pilot Hebe but darker. Oh wow she's yellow with purple eyes??? Insidious. Also she just looks boring and bland to be the daughter of the literal king and queen but sure. Give us nothing.

And..again with making the children boring copies of one specific parent! Macaria is so..boring to look at just like Melinoe. Also...hades can..have kids now?? 🤨 okay.

So basically..this was insane from start to finish.

This wasn't a good conclusion. It was absolutely a wreck.

[greatqueenanna]

Frozen 3 - What We Know So Far - 2024

(Note - official F3 concept art released during D23 2024)

(Edit on 9/30/24 - Added the news that Jennifer Lee is actually returning to direct and write Frozen 3 along side Marc Smith.)

(Edit on 6/9/24 - Added the confirmation of Kristen Bell's return and made some grammar corrections.)

(Edit on 8/10/24 - Added new information released during D23 August, 2024)

(Edit on 8/13/24 - Changing some misleading wording choices, fixing some grammar mistakes, and adding quote from D23.)

(Edit on 8/14/24 - Added alleged release date for F3.)

(Edit on 8/23/24 - Added confirmed release date (or, goal) and some development)

As with the my 2023 F3 news post, I wanted to make a post that highlights everything we learn in 2024. I have linked the previous year's post below, so you can see the articles and references directly.

This post will be updated the more we learn about Frozen 3. Keep checking to see if any new news is added as the year goes by.

What We Know So Far - 2023

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What We Know

Frozen 3 is releasing in November 24th, 2027. It was delayed from 2026. Jennifer Lee confirmed that they are aiming for this date.

Frozen 3 is having its story separated into two films.

The team is working on F3 and F4 at the same time.

F3 and F4 are still in early development.

Jennifer Lee and Marc Smith are directing and writing the films.

Idina Menzel and Josh Gad have confirmed that they are returning. Kristen Bell has also confirmed, but through a temporary Instagram story.

The Lopezes are returning to write the songs.

Only the main films (and possibly short films as well) will be considered canon to F3 and F4.

The writers are trying to answer lingering questions, including more Ahtohallan and Nature Spirits lore, more explanation about Elsa's powers and why Anna does not have magic, Anna's role as Queen, Anna and Kristoff's future plans for children, if Kristoff will be King, Kristoff and Sven's past, what happened to Prince Hans, and more about the Frozen Heart concept.

It has been confirmed that no story leaks have released online, and everything has been kept a secret.

What We Don't Know

Frozen 4 release date.

If Johnathan Groff, or any other major voice actor is returning to the project. Although, it is heavily implied that at least Johnathan Groff will return.

If Chris Buck, director of the previous two films and Frozen Fever, is returning to the project.

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More information and article and video links under the read more.

A couple articles and videos that were missed in 2023.

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In November, Josh Gad did an interview on The View to discuss his new Broadway show Gutenberg! The Musical. Here, he also teased that Frozen 3's story will be Mind blowing, and also hinted that the entire cast of the main five protagonists will return.

"I could share things with you, but Disney would literally escort me out of the building with armed security No, apparently there are two Frozen sequels in development right now — surprise! Equally surprised — and I know Jennifer Lee, who wrote and directed the first two, is hard at work with the team right now. I’ve heard a little bit and I can tell you guys, it’s pretty mind-blowing what’s coming. It’s pretty exciting. And it’s been so great because Kristen, Idina and Jonathan have all come to be guest producers on Gutenberg! The Musical. So we’ll come backstage and we’ll all talk Frozen and then talk this other thing." - Josh Gad

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Also in November, Jennifer Lee did another interview, this time with GamesRadar, where she claimed that Frozen 3 has a lot of story to tell, and that is why it was separated into two films.

"We're really excited about where they're going, and we just have a lot of story to tell with that direction we're going in. So, I think, in my head, there may be enough for two in that story. But I'm really, really loving working with the team and where they're going." - Jennifer Lee

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Later on in December, Peter Del Vecho did an interview with The Direct while promoting Wish, where he claimed that the story of Frozen 3 will be amazing.

“Look, we only do sequels if we believe there's enough story to tell. They're working on it up in development, I'm focused on 'Wish'. But it is exciting what they're working on. I will say anything that you read about it in the public, we haven't said anything about it. So it's all conjecture, but I trust that it's going to be amazing." - Peter Del Vecho

Articles and videos from 2024.

The first major news we got in 2024 was in February, when Frozen 3's released year was announced. Bob Iger confirmed that along with Toy Story 5, Frozen 3 was set to release in 2026.

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On August 10th, 2024 - D23 brought a lot of Frozen 3 news, including the announcement of the delay to 2027, and some major questions that could lead to the main plot points of the two part film. Recording of Jennifer Lee's announcement at D23 provided by the user Keena Kindragon on Youtube.

“Coming out of Frozen 2, we still had some questions. A lot of questions actually. That was just page one. Now you know why it will take two films to answer them. Just a tease, again, just a tease(…). We are very early on, this is development art, don’t hold me to it. But if you look closely, it captures the seeds of the next epic adventure of Anna and Elsa. And some things might spark, we hope, a few new questions for all of you. Everyone at Walt Disney Animation is so excited to be back in this world, and we would not have this opportunity if it were not for all of you.”

— Jennifer Lee, D23

A more closer look at the new concept art, new logo, and questions provided below -

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On the same day, Josh Gad confirmed the release date and also showed the leaked logo artwork that was originally thought to be fake, but might actually be either an early concept or alternate version. Photo provided by @frozen-snowflakesandsunflowers

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On August 13th, Deadline released an article with release dates for multiple Disney projects, including Frozen 3. Without any official Disney sources, they stated that the release date is November 24th, 2027.

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Thanks to @frozen-snowflakesandsunflowers, another interview was given by Jennifer Lee for Fundago on 8/21/24 where she confirmed that they are aiming for November 24th, 2027 release, that they are very early on, and that they are working on F3 and F4 at the same time.

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On September 19th, a major update was released. Jennifer Lee would be stepping down as head of WDAS to focus more on film-making and writing again. She would officially (as expected, if you ask me) become the Director and writer of Frozen 3 and 4, along side Marc Smith. This is the first time we get full confirmation that Marc Smith is indeed directing and/or writing the films.

I am so grateful to Bob and Alan for supporting my decision to return to filmmaking full time. Every day working with them is a master class in creativity, business, community, and integrity. I’ve always believed in Jared’s incredible talent and can’t wait to see, with his passion and dedication to animation, what he brings to the CCO role. For me, getting to collaborate with this studio of artists, animators, and storytellers is such a privilege, and I look forward to all we will create together. — Jennifer Lee, Deadline

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