#american road trip guide

[whatisamildopinion]

shout-out to the true master of playing with characters like dolls: country and folk music. no one else puts little guys in situations like true country and folk music. shout-out Devil Went Down to Georgia. shout-out I hung My Head. shout-out Banded Clovis. like, yes!!! tell me a story!!! make some shit up!!!! slay queen, this song is NOT AT ALL related to the artist's life!!!!

[mossycobblestonewrites]

DC X DP PROMPT #25

Amity Park is seen as a tourist trap, like the whole town. No one in Amity is aware of this. All tourists think the townees are just really into the act.

One (or multiple) super families have decided to go on a Classic American Road Trip™. Which means they simply must visit all the tourist traps they see!

While in Amity, on a guided bus tour, there is a ghost attack. While the other passengers are thrilled with the commitment to the bit, the superfamily starts to become suspicious.

[weaselandfriends]

The Making Of: When I Win the World Ends

(For my previous Making Of post, see The Making Of: Cleveland Quixotic.)

I. 1999

It was the year of the cubicle movie. It was the year of Fight Club, of Office Space, of Being John Malkovich, of Three Kings, of The Matrix, and of American Beauty. It was the year of suburban malaise, of eternal sunshine, of ceaseless normality. A year of United States hegemony; a year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.

Before the millennium turned and the towers fell, there was an initial challenge to this order, a completely inconsequential one made consequential by a newly minted 24/7 news media machine running out of noise to fill dead air now that people were sick to bursting of the Clinton impeachment. This challenge came not through war, revolution, or violence, but through entertainment. Children's entertainment.

And I was a child. Unaware of any cultural context, I knew only one thing: I loved Pokémon. I really, really loved Pokémon.

I owned Red Version, Blue Version, Yellow Version, Pokémon Pinball, Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Snap, Hey You Pikachu, a Pokémon Tetris sort of puzzle game, even the Pokémon TCG game for Gameboy. I had ten to fifteen strategy guides for the games, an encyclopedia of the 151 Pokémon, a choose your own adventure book, an I Spy-style book. I had Pokémon figurines, Pokémon plushies, toy Poké Balls, toy Pokédexes. I had Pokémon stamps and Pokémon stickers and a deck of Pokémon cards. Not trading cards, just a standard 52-card deck with Pokémon pictures on it. Of course I also had the trading cards. A complete set of the first three runs, plus a special Mew card you could get from I dunno Toys R Us or something as part of some promotion. I had a guide for the card game that explained which cards were good or bad even though I didn't even play the card game. I had a Pokémon Tamagotchi and Pokémon pencils and Pokémon erasers and Ash Ketchum's hat and I dressed up as Ash Ketchum for Halloween. Of course I watched every episode of the anime, and in notebooks I drew doodles of existing Pokémon and came up with names for new Pokémon. My father had died that year.

My father was a sports fanatic. Traditional sports. He, too, collected. Sports memorabilia, baseball cards, figures of famous stars. When I was an infant, he drove me on a cross country road trip to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where I became a part owner of the Green Bay Packers. He had always wanted me to grow up and pursue professional sports. When I was born, the doctor apparently said to start looking for football colleges, a quote he saved in a scrapbook of baby photos. He had played sports himself, in college; he was a baseball catcher, until a hitter accidentally struck him in the head with a full force swing.

Almost everything I personally remember about him involves him dying. He was sick for a long time, and I remember hospitals and hospital beds and strange smells and gauze. And then one day my mother told me he died.

He was a charismatic man, very social and very popular. He had many friends and a lot of family, all of whom had constantly been around our house. Once he was gone, they stopped coming around. Then it was just me and my mother, who was not a fanatic for anything, except maybe her job as an elementary school teacher, which consumed her time as she assiduously prepared lesson plans and graded tests until late at night. When my father died, she got into some argument with his side of the family, the details of which I still don't fully understand, and afterward they no longer spoke. Her own family lived far away, out-of-state, seen only at Christmas. The house became quiet.

And I… played… Pokémon.

II. The Electric Tale of Pikachu

Toshihiro Ono was a mangaka primarily known for shotacon and futanari hentai. His credits such as Innyou Megami and Anal Justice made him a no-brainer pick for the officially licensed Pokémon manga, Electric Tale of Pikachu, as it too would feature a 10-year-old boy as the protagonist.

This manga would be the foundation for my conception of what Pokémon was, narratively. Though I also had the Pokémon Adventures manga that ran concurrently and which has by now long outlasted it, Electric Tale left a significantly deeper imprint on my memory.

In summary, Electric Tale is a retelling of the first two seasons of the anime. Ash Ketchum is the main character, he's accompanied by Misty and later Brock, his rival is Gary, and Team Rocket harangues him.

What sets Electric Tale apart is its tone, which is far more adult than Adventures and the anime. Obviously, part of this comes from the author's primary area of expertise being hentai. Even in the censored English version, there is a sense of sexual playfulness in how every single female character is an older woman who likes to tease Ash about his romantic interests.

But there are other elements that creep in unrelated to sex, due to the perspective of someone only used to speaking to adults who suddenly has to speak to children. Ono doesn't really get the childish fantasy of leaving at 10 being normal in society, so he introduces an element where Ash can only get a one year deferment from school and will have to return unless he hits it big. Team Rocket are former competitive hopefuls who flamed out and then, with no education or work experience to speak of, had no choice but to turn to crime. The Pokémon are depicted more realistically, often eschewing the toyetic mascot elements of their designs.

And the landscapes are often wistful, even apocalyptic in their presentation:

This more sedate, mature, realistic depiction of Pokémon became what I wanted Pokémon to be, what I projected onto an original Red and Blue version that left everything open to interpretation, and what would increasingly frustrate me with the series as it deviated more toward bombastic villain groups with goofy destroy-the-world plots. (Which was what put me off Pokémon Adventures.)

Amid all this, one panel stuck with me in particular. One panel I would think about ever since I first saw it as a child, that would turn around in my head and keep coming back. That panel would eventually—over two decades later—become the basis for When I Win the World Ends, the seed from which an entire story grew:

III. The Unkillable Demon King

But in the interim, the seed remained dormant. 1999 fell away. I grew up. I played later Pokémon games and increasingly lost interest by around Gen 4 and 5. Then I went to college.

That's when I started playing League of Legends.

I was something of a psychopath in college. I operated on a strict schedule and did not deviate. Wake up, read 50 pages of classic literature, write 2,000 words, go to classes, study, and then by about four in the afternoon all my obligations were done and it was League of Legends until midnight.

I wasn't actually interested in the League of Legends esports scene in its infancy. In 2012, I was actually invited to attend its World Championship in Los Angeles and refused. (When I received this invitation, I had just finished reading Homestuck for the first time, and was caught in a month-long haze in which I could do little but bask within what I considered the greatest artistic achievement I'd seen in my life. It was this month that inspired Modern Cannibals.) I only liked playing the game and watching Dunkey videos.

It wasn't until the next year, when a girl I was interested in recommended I watch, that I tuned in to my first professional League of Legends game, at the 2013 World Championship. It was there that I got to watch this new, hyped, upcoming Korean player who had apparently taken the pro scene by storm that season. That player was Faker.

It has seemingly become essential to the narrative of any sport that there is "the man who always wins." American football has Tom Brady, and the moment Brady retired, he was replaced by Patrick Mahomes. Basketball has LeBron James, picking up the mantle from Michael Jordan. It's as if someone being "the best" validates the skill-based promise of the sport, the fundamental top-down fairness of its premise, the idea that the person who wins is the best and deserved it. Faker would become the backbone of League of Legends esports and his ascendance correlated to that of the sport itself, from its humble roots at small-scale tournaments in places like Jönköping, Sweden, to max capacity arenas in the biggest cities in the world.

It's surprising, though, how the legend of Faker had already begun even before he won his first World Championship. League of Legends was designed as a clone of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a popular mod for Warcraft III that emphasized competitive play. In its infancy, the competitive scene was mostly dominated by players who had migrated from DotA to League. They were older, winning thanks to a fundamental conceptual understanding of the game that was superior to everyone else, and frankly not very good in the aggregate. As League of Legends esports exploded in popularity from 2013 to 2015, these old pros would get filtered out swiftly, with even the biggest and most popular names retiring after only a couple of years in the scene.

Even once the new generation of League-grown talent ascended, though, careers were nasty, brutish, and short. The best players only remained on top for a season, as game patches dramatically changed viable strategies. Internationally the sport was dominated by Koreans, with the Korean regional league sometimes being seen as more difficult to win than the World Championship, where Koreans often breezed through uncompetitive Chinese, European, and North American squads.

This possibly affected the demographics of the professional scene. South Korea has mandatory military service, and leaving the pro scene to join the military was basically the end of a Korean player's career. This meant that it was rare to see a Korean player older than 25. Retiring in your early 20s was and remains common. Korean organizations, which had an infrastructural leg up on other regions due to the popularity of StarCraft 2 esports in the country, became adept at scouting promising players at 15 or 16, building them into top level competitive pros, wringing them dry for a few seasons with brutal training regimens, and spitting them out.

Faker was the exception. Though he had been discovered young by SK Telecom, a major Korean telecommunications company that did esports on the side, and gone through the training regimen, he refused to be spit out. He simply didn't stop. He won in 2013, then with a completely new four-man squad around him won again in 2015 and 2016 before narrowly losing the 2017 finals in a nail biter. Given League of Legends esports had only existed since 2011, he basically accounted for half of the championships up until that point. Nobody else, except for his teammates, had won more than once. And it was like it was known he would be this juggernaut the instant he manifested ex nihilo. Like it was known, even in 2013, that he would always win.

Then, Faker stopped winning.

By 2017, League of Legends esports was a titan. Venture capital firms, seeing the millions of eyeballs, thought that this was the next NBA in its infancy, and decided to get in on the ground floor. Multiple millions of dollars were pumped into the scene as even mediocre players in weak regions like North America pulled seven-digit salaries. In China, where League of Legends had become the national pastime, the nation's richest oligarchs ran teams for fun and vanity, outbidding Korean organizations for top Korean players in pursuit of a trophy that had gone to Korea every year since 2013. Riot, the studio developing the game, pumped tons of money into creating a professional sports product, with skilled announcers, dedicated arenas for regional leagues, live performances by musicians like Imagine Dragons and Lil Nas X, and all the other bells and whistles one might expect from a program watched on ESPN.

In this milieu, it seemed like Faker had finally reached his limit. He was still good, but not the best. Even as an individual, while everyone still considered him the "greatest of all time," he was considered outmatched by newer pros like Chovy and ShowMaker. 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 passed with no championships. In 2022, on a team of mostly rookies, he reached the world finals, but was ultimately beaten. Korea's stranglehold over the sport had been shaken by China, which had finally strung together some championships. People wondered if Faker would retire, although he had managed to avoid mandatory military service by representing Korea in the Olympics-esque Asian Games. He'd dealt with wrist injuries and his level of play dropped year over year. He just didn't seem to be that good anymore, potentially holding back his team of talented young players rather than leading them to victory.

Then, in 2023—

And in 2024—

In the end, never count out Touchdown Tom. 11 years of professional play, 5 world championships.

From this longwinded explanation, you might have realized that after watching that game in 2013, I became a League of Legends esports fanatic, fulfilling the prophecy set before me by my father though perhaps in not the way he would have expected.

And the things I become a fanatic about, I want to write a story about.

IV. Modern Cannibals

There's a deleted scene in Modern Cannibals, as Maximillion is driving Z. and her friends through the Utah desert. He starts to talk about Pokémon.

"I bring it up because my university thesis was about Pokemon in particular how Pokemon has basically trained an entire generation of children to think in a completely different way than preceding generations my generation for instance our fad was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles now I don't know how much you know about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but from an educational standpoint we're talking absolute bankrupt complete and utter goose egg but Pokemon now Pokemon you see it's more like there's some substance to it you know that refrain Gotta Catch Em All right?" "..." "Well to most parents it looks like a marketing gimmick you make one hundred fifty-one characters and structure a game around collecting them the merchandising potential is astronomical kids buy one hundred fifty-one trading cards stickers coloring books figurines uh collectable lunchable toys I'm sure you've got some yourself."

He continues:

"But really you look at the game itself before the big toy explosion the game itself the focus is placed less on the collection and more on the catalogue you're given a blank encyclopedia to fill and you fill it by capturing one hundred fifty-one Pokemon but the goal is to create a complete database of each and every one and this is what I argue is the educational core of the Pokemon series." His hands left the wheel to conceive of his idea in the cool air of the car, which remained steady on its ever-forward path. "Our modern era is no longer one of singular isolated knowledge it is one of the catalogue the database which is most clearly personified in the advent of the internet because now all knowledge can be at the fingertips of any one human being all that is needed is someone to go and put the catalogue together and presto whiz bang it's there think about it Z. when you catch a bunch of Pokemon where do you store them?" Z. didn't need to think long to remember the game's mechanics. "In the PC." "Exactly now isn't that odd consider it in real life terms you have real life creatures made assumedly of flesh and bone and yet you store them in a computer how does that make sense you'd expect a farm or a holding pen but no it's the computer and that too prepares the budding portion of the millennial generation to become cognizant of the linkage between the computer the encyclopedia and the database structure of knowledge in a new era." "So," said Z. "So you're saying Pokemon taught kids how to think in the digital age?"

There's also a deleted character in Modern Cannibals. Well, mostly deleted—he still shows up, unnamed, in a couple of pages. He is Cole Coulter, Z.'s older brother, a popular League of Legends streamer. Before I deleted him, his role was to accompany Mrs. Roddlevan and Frederick in an attempt to bring Z. back home. He had POV scenes that gave insight into the weirdness of his cotravelers, but ultimately, I decided he didn't add anything to the story and removed him almost entirely.

Even then, though, I was already considering the future of Cole Coulter as the protagonist of a story about League of Legends esports. Playing under the ID MadKing, he would be a North American professional top laner, once known for his aggressive duelist style but recently forced into playing boring tanks as the esports metagame became more sophisticated and tactics-based.

The story would be simple, something I envisioned as a "sports story" only about esports instead of regular sports. It would start with Cole's team being relegated from the league, only for Cole to get a last chance signing to a new team with two promising Korean imports. One import, the mid laner, would be a charismatic and eccentric player in the mold of Doinb/Ganked By Mom/Huhi, while the other, an AD carry, would be introverted and pissy and elitist, in the mold of Piglet. The team would initially struggle, cultures would clash, then a mid-season replacement to sign a psychopathic Tyler1/Tarzaned style streamer as jungler would revitalize the team, put them on a major run, and get them to the World Championship. Though they would eventually fall after a miracle run, Cole would get a moment to truly shine on the biggest stage when he won a pivotal game by aggressive split pushing rather than tank play.

Thematically, the story would be about two things. First, a counterpoint to the idea of American exceptionalism, featuring a league where Americans are particularly bad compared to Korean or Chinese players. Second, an exploration of what it means to be exceptional at all. Cole would be an all-around mediocre person. Middling at school, at (real) sports, at the various popularity contests of being a teenager. League of Legends, this niche sub-sport, is the one thing he truly excelled at, the one place where he was good, better than 99.9 percent of all players, and yet even within that statistical greatness he wound up, ultimately, in a professional scene where he was once again mediocre, relegated to "tank duty," to facilitating other players to carry.

What does it mean to be the best? How can someone be so, so good, only to reach a level where they were still nothing special? Is there any way to win if you're not "the man who always wins"?

I remembered that panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu. The last people filtered before the final champion. It's certainly no walk in the zoo!

This idea was pretty detailed for a story I never wound up writing, something I mostly blame on the years 2018 and 2019, when a lot of bad things happened to me and in retrospect I consider it a minor miracle I managed to finish Chicago at all. As a human being, I would be decimated for the next three years, and so a lot of stories I might have written in that time never came to fruition.

Meanwhile, League of Legends esports reached a peak, then the venture capital bubble burst as investors realized there was no monetization scheme in place for any interested party except Riot Games. Money hemorrhaged out, Riot shifted resources to Valorant, and a sport that had been overinflated based on projected exponential growth in perpetuity fell back down to earth.

Also, Players came out.

Players was a 2022 mockumentary about a fictional League of Legends team competing in the North American league. Conceptually, it was doing a lot of what I had planned for my story: following a single team on a rags-to-riches run, focusing on the interpersonal drama of the team members, asking questions about greatness and its pursuit. It's a pretty good show if you're familiar with League of Legends esports at all, with a lot of on-the-ground fidelity that gives it an authentic feel, which is exactly what I had been hoping to use my esports fanaticism to accomplish. It completely took the wind out of my sails; it was like my idea had already been done.

So by 2022, the idea of a League of Legends esports story was dead. But there was still a drive to create something with that spirit, that would delve into those themes.

What remained after all these years of sifting the sieve, letting sand slip through, was that one panel from the manga. The number of people pursuing greatness slowly filtering until only one remained. And if I wasn't going to pursue that idea through League of Legends, maybe I could pursue it through another vehicle. Maybe the vehicle through which the idea had originally been exposed to me. Pokémon. It all came back to Pokémon.

V. Everything Evolving Into Crabs

I knew immediately that if I were to write a Pokémon fic, it would be a tournament arc. This was the natural evolution of my esports story idea. Also, if I were to write Pokémon, I wanted it to be a story about utopia, immersed within Pokémon's near-future ideal world, where everything is clean and healthy, where society is neat and ordered.

This idea caused me to remember the novel Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley, which I had read a few years back. A mostly autobiographical bildungsroman written on the precipice of World War II, the novel ends with the young protagonist on a journey to Central America, where he meets an idealistic doctor who believes sport to be a proper substitution for war. He tells the story of two tribes locked in internecine conflict through generations, able to replace that violence with soccer matches.

And wasn't that what the world of Pokémon was, a utopia revolving around neutralizing weapons of war by using them for competitive sport?

This tournament, I envisioned, would not simply be about deciding who was best, but an ideological battle for the future of the Pokémon world. To that end, I imagined a war between an entrenched trainer class, who competed as philosopher-warriors, intense individuals with deep connections to their Pokémon, and an upstart commercialization that sought to replace the ideological underpinnings that made their society so safe and prosperous with economic accumulation. It was from this kernel that the character who would become Aracely Sosa arose: charismatic, appealing, human-empathic, and propped up by a support staff who did all the hard work of teambuilding for her.

I imagined the story having an ensemble cast, focusing on nearly every competitor equally, with the Aracely character not having any especial focus until her improbable rise to the top. I imagined a final round where she faced off against "the man who always wins," and though she would lose to him, she would seem to have won the ideological battle, altering the course of society as major corporations scrambled to employ her formula for success at a much grander scale. The story would end with this realization of the earth-shattering importance behind her run, only for Aracely to sink in disappointment. Because in the end, all she really wanted was to win.

The more I thought about it, though, the less I liked the idea of an ensemble cast. The ensemble cast element of Chicago hadn't gone over very well (though I like it), and I figured it would wind up inflating the length of the story considerably. I was coming to the end of Cleveland Quixotic, after all, and once more wanted to write something smaller, tighter, and denser.

So I oriented my thinking to instead have the story revolve around Aracely and one major rival, to give an interpersonal mirror to the ideological war being waged. Thus, Toril came about as an antithesis to everything I had imagined Aracely to be: gruff, antisocial, independent. Their rivalry would culminate in a semifinals battle, before Aracely went on to fight "the man who always wins" in the finals.

I forget exactly when the gender theme came into the equation, but it evolved as an outgrowth of (once again) my competitive League of Legends expertise, where women are essentially nonexistent despite there seemingly being no biological blocks against them. This dovetailed nicely with Pokémon, a world where women seemingly could be powerful competitors, but where—in the anime at least—none ever are. For instance, look at this chart of every major tournament in the anime:

Every known winner is male. Every known finalist and semifinalist is male. Only a handful of female characters have reached the quarterfinals. What possible in-universe justification could there be for that?

This question was actually far more prominent in early planning and drafting than it wound up being in the final work. Initially, I had Aracely's personal motivation revolve around a drive to be the first female trainer to win; this would increase the ideological conflict between her and Toril, who attempted to ignore that she was female altogether. Over time, this theme would see diminished importance in face of the last piece of the thematic puzzle: cults.

It came from reading Underground by Haruki Murakami, a nonfiction journalistic account of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attacks carried out by the cult Aum Shinrikyo under the direction of its leader Shoko Asahara. Japan in the 90s was experiencing its own End of History, one taken literally by those disaffected with modern society's grand narrative. The prophecies of Nostradamus became fashionable among the young, who believed that 1999 would be the final year before the world was destroyed. Murakami interviewed both survivors of the gas attack and members of Aum Shinrikyo, collecting worldviews of people who simply thought they were "different" and who were willing to give everything in their lives to the one place that seemed to accept that difference.

The 1995 attacks were a watershed moment in Japanese culture. In their wake would come pivotal works of Japanese pop media, like the titan of otaku culture, Neon Genesis Evangelion:

(What's scary about Nostradamus' prophecy is that it might not come true. A year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.)

Pokémon, whose first games released in Japan in 1996, also emerged within this post-Aum world where fixation on the minutiae of pop media was becoming a primary pillar of meaning for the youth, and it's hard not to see echoes of cultism in the evil teams that dot the series' landscape. Even Team Rocket, originally more modeled on organized crime than occultism, veers that direction in Gold and Silver, and afterward the organizations and their world-ending plots become increasingly absurd, to the point where it starts to become unclear why anyone would ever follow, say, Lysandre.

As I mentioned earlier, my personal interest in Pokémon was at odds with these clownish, Saturday morning cartoon villain organizations, but Murakami's account of the Aum attacks recontextualized them for me, made them make sense even within the framework of a "realistic" utopian world. The last elements snapped into place, and I knew my main character would be the member of one of these cults. A cult dedicated to, what else? Evolution. A core element of the Pokémon series, a perfect metaphor for the frustrating lack of movement of the End of History 90s. I imagined a cult leader as a surrogate mother figure for Aracely, who would have a strained relationship with both of her own parents, and deciding on that, the idea of making Pokémon's canon evil mother Lusamine the villain was a no-brainer. I imagined a post-SuMo Lusamine, unable to move on from her experience merged with Nihilego, languishing in Kanto after being sent there to consult with Bill, who had his own experience being merged with a Pokémon... It didn't take long to figure out how all these pieces connected.

The full form of the story had taken shape.

VI. Showdown

I knew immediately I would be following Showdown rules for the battles. No alternative even crossed my mind. I had dabbled in Showdown a few times over the years, first in Gen 3 OUs, then later in Gen 7 OUs, and I knew from experience that Pokémon is a monumentally more interesting competitive game when operating at a high level compared to either its depiction in the anime (shounen logic, mid-fight evolutions) or the general playing experience (spam your best move on your overleveled starter). I knew I would use competitive rulesets before I even considered the thematic or worldbuilding aspect I would eventually take in the story itself (i.e., that the specific rulesets prevent battles from becoming bloodsport and enforce order on the world). I simply thought doing battles this way would be far more entertaining.

To prepare, I started playing Gen 9 OUs under the guidance of a few friends who were into the competitive scene. I grinded the ladder for months, eventually getting a good enough grasp on the metagame to reach 1500 Elo on the Showdown ladder, which is not very good but generally higher than someone can reach with dumb luck.

Crafting the tournament format and rulesets used in the story wasn't difficult. I modeled the tournament format on the League of Legends World Championship, with region-based seeds (having been selected due to performance in regional tournaments) competing in four groups before the highest performers advanced to a single elimination bracket. Initially, I envisioned a 32-competitor bracket instead of the 16-competitor bracket that would appear in the final draft, but otherwise the format came quickly and easily.

In terms of the rulesets and available Pokémon, my considerations were made primarily in terms of what would be most entertaining to read. I decided to include Mega Evolutions and not include Z Moves, Dynamax, or Terastallization, because Mega Evolutions are cool and those other gimmicks are not. The bring-9-pick-6 format, while unusual in Showdown rulesets, is similar to the rules in Pokémon Stadium and VGC tournaments, and also adds a level of intrigue to which Pokémon each competitor uses. (It also enabled Red's Zapdos at the climax of the story, which was something I knew I would bring out from very early on.)

With the help of one of my friends who knew competitive Pokémon, I scripted out each battle assiduously before I wrote them. Every battle was tested using Showdown itself, with only a few turns mocked up to account for luck. For instance, in Aracely versus Jinjiao, Slowking is meant to stay asleep for three turns. Rather than rely on luck to ensure Slowking actually slept that long during the test, I could give Slowking a useless move and have him use that instead to simulate being asleep.

The only thing that couldn't be tested in Showdown was the 7 PP Kingambit trick Red uses at the end of the story, because it's impossible to set a Pokémon to have fewer than max PP in Showdown. This led to one of the bigger mistakes of the story, as it turns out that Encore would simply wear off if Kingambit ran out of PP, rather than forcing him to use Struggle like I assumed. Luckily, even if this were the case, it wouldn't change the outcome of the battle, so it's not an error I lose too much sleep over.

Character teams were chosen to thread the needle between a few considerations. The team needed to be competitively viable, reflect the character's personality in some way, and be distinct from other teams for the sake of variety. (Variety is somewhat unrealistic in real top-level competitive Pokémon, where you'll often see many almost identical teams in the top ranks. But that would be boring.) Some lack of optimization was allowed under the conceit that actually training these Pokémon to peak form would take a lot of time in the real world, compared to Showdown were optimization can be determined quickly due to the ability to immediately adjust stats and builds.

I also tried to give some preference for Pokémon that would be more familiar to layman fans, though this was difficult because Gen 8 and 9 have outrageous power creep and many popular early generation Pokémon have been completely phased out. (Using Megas helped with this issue.) It was this consideration that led to Azumarill being Aracely's ace. There was also an innate challenge to imagining what the competitive scene would look like without legendary Pokémon. Zapdos and Landorus-Therian have been inexorable staples of the competitive scene for generations. What happens in a world where they aren't used at all?

In the original 32-person bracket, I imagined Aracely competing against Jinjiao in the first round, then minor characters Adrian da Cunha and Jacq Ray Johnson in the next two rounds, before facing Toril in semifinals. I imagined Adrian da Cunha as a "hometown hero" whose team wasn't great but he was plucky with a lot of grit, and Jacq Ray Johnson as a self-aware heel who liked to use cheesy strategies and gimmicky Pokémon like Smeargle and Ditto. Condensing from 32 to 16 occurred around the same time I had settled on Lusamine as my villain/cult leader, which led to replacing those two with Gladion. I developed full brackets for both the 32-man and 16-man iterations, with character names and regions, just in case I ever needed to mention them.

All that was left to do was write the story.

VII. Unbroken Line of History

I began writing in September 2023 under the tentative title Unbroken Line of History, which I would later change to simply Lines. In the original drafts, I opened the story with a modified version of the panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu detailing how people are filtered over time in their pursuit of being the best, this time starting with all 8 billion people in the world until only one remains. The story then cut to Aracely's perspective in the restroom as she mentally prepared for her final group stage match.

At this point I was more set on Aracely being the clear protagonist of the story, so she had a few facets of her personality designed around that. First, as I mentioned before, there was a feminist angle where she was motivated specifically to be the first female trainer to win the championship. Secondly, I threw in some more generic nervousness/fear of failure. The other major difference is that I did not lead with the cult prophecy of the world ending. I originally envisioned the cult reveal to be a mid-story twist, and only obliquely hinted at it.

The scene still played out with Toril appearing and the two getting off to a bad start. Then, Cely's father tried to talk strategy with her while she ignored him, before the battle transpired in much the same form as it does in the final draft.

I showed this early draft to my friends and most disliked it. My girlfriend at the time told me Cely sounded like an edgy 13-year-old boy, while my neuroscientist friend whose aspirational idol is Bondrewd from Made in Abyss wanted to know more about the oblique hints of a cult, finding everything else boring. Another friend said it was stupid that there were 30 seconds between turns during the battle and that the Pokémon should just go at each other; nobody would actually want to watch a battle that was paced so slowly. (I vehemently disagreed with that take. Basically every popular sport balances between slow-paced moments of strategy and fast-paced moments of action and execution.) Some people I showed it to did enjoy it, though. Gazemaize, the author of Chili and the Chocolate Factory, was especially enamored by the Brittany/Gardevoir reveal and the Bud Light Analyst Desk, and implored me to keep both of those elements at all costs. 7th, one of my friends who helped me with the Showdown stuff, was so into it she drew fan art of all the characters (which I've posted before) and also wrote eight pornographic short stories about them.

I rewrote the same opening scene several times across October and November, though these were minor iterations without significant adjustments. Frustrated with the lack of progress, I decided to take a break from writing to simply think about the story for a few months.

During this time, to fix Aracely's edgy 13-year-old voice, I decided to lean into her being from Pokémon Los Angeles (with her native region, Visia, being a play on "visual" as a reference to Hollywood) and gave her a Valley Girl accent. To prepare for this, I listened to hours and hours of ASMR videos of people speaking like Valley Girls and took notes on their inflection and syntax. It was here where I decided on Aracely's underlining quirk, as a way of capturing the unique style of emphasis Valley Girls used.

This also made me realize I needed to adjust Aracely's personality. Despite the tone of her voice, she was still acting antisocially. She didn't want to talk to her father, she didn't want to talk to Lachlan Nguyen, she didn't even really want to talk to Toril. Toril herself was a lump of coal. My own misanthropy kept leaking into the characters, even when I conceptually didn't want them to have it. I thought back to Cleveland Quixotic, and how what made the Jay and Viviendre romance work was that they actually both liked each other, and figured—even though I didn't have explicitly romantic plans for Aracely and Toril—that I needed to do something similar to make their rivalry truly pop. Rather than avoid people, Aracely would lean into talking to them, even if they were annoying. Although Toril remained frigid, there would be a part of her yearning for emotional contact, a way to coax her out of her shell.

I also thought deeply about the structure of my stories in general, and my inability to come up with good hooks. It was around this time that someone I knew was reading Chicago. They pointed out that the plot of Chicago doesn't really start until Chapter 26; that I was "burying the lede." I considered this. My logic, when writing Chicago, was that the Empire moving to take over Washington would be a twist, something that would shock and excite people and change their perception of the entire story.

But did that make sense, when really the story was "about" that twist? Didn't that just make everything before the twist harder to get into for a reader? Chicago might look radically different if I revealed the Empire's goals immediately, but it would also probably be a more immediately engaging work. I'm a big fan of delayed gratification in storytelling, but had I taken it too far?

This was a major revelation for me, and immediately I understood what I needed to do for my Pokémon story: move up the cult plotline. Place it front and center. Name the whole story after it even. I decided on framing the opening scene from Toril's perspective, depicting Aracely initially more as an alien other, emphasizing the fact that she was in a cult rather than hide it behind foreshadowing. This could also lead to Aracely and Toril having more of a dual protagonist setup, which would make my planned two-half finale (one half where Aracely battled "the man who always wins," one half where Toril got involved in stopping the cult's doomsday plot) work even better.

Confidence resurged. At the end of January 2024, my girlfriend of seven years  and I broke up. A few days later, I started writing the sixth—and ultimately final—draft of When I Win the World Ends.

VIII. When I Win the World Ends

Now it's the part of the Making Of where I actually make the thing I'm supposed to be making, but there's a lot less to say about it. Once I have a plan, the actual writing of the story is the easy part, and most of what I wrote—with a few exceptions—looks similar to the story as it exists now.

There were some oddities. I wrote the first seven chapters (everything up to the end of the Jinjiao battle) and then had to take a two week break to write a short piece for a writing contest I had entered in December as part of an effort to stop overthinking WIW. After this interruption, I returned to WIW writing perhaps a bit more perfunctorily than I usually would, leading to an original version of Chapter 8 (the chapter where MOTHER makes her first real appearance) that was short and abbreviated. Later, in editing, I would rewrite most of this chapter.

A few ideas emerged while writing, like the motif of serendipity/Logos, which I felt tied nicely to the ideas of evolution and history. It was also in this draft that I introduced Cely's friends Haydn and Charlie, as a nod to an earlier work of mine also featuring a fashion-obsessed girl from Los Angeles. (Speaking of nods to earlier works, in the original 32-man bracket, Cole Coulter featured as one of the competitors, but he didn't make the 16-man cut.)

The process went smoothly. I finished the draft at the end of May, a little under four months after I started it. I had envisioned the full story as being about 70,000 words, but the draft ended up closer to 115,000. Underestimating story length is just an essential element of the trade, though.

A few days after finishing the draft I went on a four-day Oklahoma Darkness Retreat where I had access to zero electronics. The goal was to think about my story deeply and how it could be improved in the editing process.

In this time chamber, where I did nothing except complete crossword puzzles and read The Recognitions by William Gaddis, I came to a realization. There was one element the story needed that wasn't already there.

That element was Sabrina. In the original draft, Sabrina was not present during the scene where Aracely meets the Old Man. She was mentioned obliquely a couple of times in conjunction with Aracely's "psychic powers," but it never really built to anything. There was still a scene where Aracely was interrogated due to her relationship with MOTHER, but only by nameless goons, and the scene lacked tension as it was clear Aracely could talk circles around them.

When I returned from Oklahoma, I prepared for my conception of Sabrina as a character by writing an 8,000 word short story from her perspective, which hashed out an entire backstory for her. Then, I started editing the draft.

For me, a lot of editing is just polish. Usually, cutting out needless sentences and fixing clunky ones, as well as emphasizing a few of the more understated themes and motifs. For instance, during editing, I made slight additions to emphasize the thematic connection between Aracely's suicide attempt and the global war that almost destroyed the world, as well as the connection between the moon and cyclical insanity (lunacy, etymologically, being related to the moon). I made the Old Man more of a Walt Disney-esque figure (from my notes: "a dying Disney"), rewriting much of his dialogue to either be direct quotes or to evoke his ideals. I also expanded on several of the scenes where Toril and Aracely interact to make their relationship more complex and nuanced. I gave MOTHER some new dialogue, including her speech in Chapter 18 about loving a child for the potential it promises, while also paradoxically wanting it to remain a child forever.

The largest changes were in the three chapters I almost fully rewrote. The first was Chapter 8, which as I mentioned earlier was overly terse. In the original draft, it depicted MOTHER as more pathetic, more dependent on Aracely. I decided to make her a more threatening figure, and incorporated a few references to the Moloch sacrifice scene from Valle Verde to make her seem more like a false idol. Similarly, I rewrote Chapter 12, which was originally a very short chapter that focused solely on a conversation between MOTHER and Nilufer that ended with the order to kidnap Aracely. In rewriting the chapter to include Fiorella, I gave myself more opportunity to flesh out the respective philosophies of her and MOTHER (including some of the story's most salient discussions about why cults exist), as well as give more of an insight into the inner workings of RISE as an organization. And lastly, I fully rewrote Chapter 19 to include Sabrina.

The last changes I made in editing were to the final chapter. When I finished the final draft of the story, I sent it to several readers, many of whom had looked at the original drafts of the first chapter, as well as julirites, the author of a Fargo fan fiction called London. There was an immediate and minor backlash to the final chapter, which was originally much more pessimistic, from most people who read it. In the original version, Aracely and Toril were not still in communication. (Fiorella was also dying of cancer instead of jockeying to replace the Old Man.) The finale had a much more somber, sedate, tragic note. Juli and 7th disliked this sad ending, while Gazemaize wanted me to cut the final chapter altogether. I felt confident that the final chapter was necessary, though, and revised it to its current version, which was much better liked.

And then... the story was finished, near the end of July. I crunched the numbers and realized that if I posted two chapters to start and then did a twice-weekly posting schedule, I could end the story serendipitously on October 12. So I did.

IX. Names and Special Thanks

In my Making Of post for Cleveland Quixotic, I had a fairly extensive list of where I got all the character and place names from. The list is a lot less extensive here; most names I constructed for the purpose of sounding evocative, rather than taking them from someplace specific. For instance, I chose the name Aracely Sosa because it sounds like whistling with its repeated S sounds, compared to Toril Lund which is a lot harsher with its consonants. You can see a similar rationale behind names like Fiorella Fiorina, Yui Matsui, and even some of the background characters, like Jacq Ray Johnson, Jr., where there is a lot of emphasis on alliteration and rhyme.

There are a couple of exceptions. Jinjiao is the in-game ID of a longtime Chinese League of Legends pro of middling notability. He picked the name (which means "Golden Horn") as a reference to the Golden Horned King, a villain from Journey to the West.

Lutz, Fiorella's cameraman, was named after an extremely minor character from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, who is not playable and only appears in a singular cutscene before being killed. They are so irrelevant that despite naming a character after them, I actually forgot their name, which is Lotz, not Lutz.

Haydn is named after the famous classical composer.

Special thanks to 7th and Elick320 for helping me with the teams and battles. Thanks to Gazemaize and julirites, among others unnamed, for reading and providing feedback. And thank you all for enjoying the story.

[schmergo]

If you think I was a kid who loved to read, you’d be right, but that doesn’t just mean I was reading, like, Newbery Award nominated prestigious children’s novels. Because in my experience, most kids who love to read are more gourmand than gourmet. I was also reading:

* Class rosters. I begged my teachers for these. I wanted to try to memorize everyone’s middle names.

* Similarly, old yearbooks. I liked judging whether people’s names matched their faces and making up different names for them if they did. I also loved reading baby name books and making lists of names I liked.

.* The personals section of the newspaper. I liked picturing the people as they described themselves and imagining which combination of people on the page might like each other.

* The ingredients of food packages. Not even for any real informational reason, I just really liked certain fantasy-sounding words like thiamine and riboflavin.

* An old World Book Encyclopedia from the 1970s. I would sneak out of bed to read it because the bookshelf was near my bedroom door and I could crawl to it without making the floor creak. My favorite entries were the ones about Hawaii and tigers. I kinda developed a ritual of rereading the Hawaii article when I had read a scary book before bed and needed to calm my brain down.

* My dad’s Dave Barry and Woody Allen humor books and also transcripts of all of the Monty Python’s Flying Circus episodes. This is probably why my sense of humor has been so weird from such a young age.

* The part of the church hymnal with ceremonies for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. I liked to imagine them.

* Wine catalogs at friends’ houses. The descriptions of the wines seemed so poetic and abstract. I also liked when they said “fruit on the nose” because I pictured a dog balancing a whole piece of fruit on its nose.

* My parents’ parenting books. I liked to see if I was exhibiting developmentally appropriate behavior. I am not 100% sure if doing that is, in fact, developmentally appropriate behavior.

* Those little brochures advertising various roadside attractions and tourist activities at rest shops. I would grab as many as possible when we stopped to use the bathroom on a road trip. Also, travel guides in general.

* I checked out the entire “unexplained” section of the library over the course of third grade. (Dewey decimal 001.9.) Ask little me about Project Blue Book, I guess.

* I LOVED party planning books, especially ones with highly specific themed parties that seemed impractical to put on in real life like a whole chess-themed party culminating in a game of human chess, complete with lemon chess pie for dessert.

* Seed packets. I find the writing style of these very endearing. It always sounds so affectionate toward the plants.

* My grandma’s Reader’s Digest magazines, which felt like Russian roulette because they sometimes published disturbing articles that gave me nightmares. (Reader’s Indigestion?) I especially vividly remember a feature on adopted kids who need to wear Ilizarov apparatuses to straighten their limbs because they became malformed due to severe neglect at orphanages.

* For some reason, I loved reading restaurant menus and imagining what kind of food different fictional characters would order from there.

* And last but certainly not least, because I think this is a relatable one: the AMERICAN GIRL CATALOG! No, I never had an American Girl doll, but getting the catalog was a source of much excitement.

[hypnostheory]

A guide to Hyp’s Writing

Okay so I have enough fics now that I feel like I can make a little guide here. So here we go:

“Hyp, I want something sweet”

something good and right and real - After the election, Henry explores Alex’s childhood room. He finds trinkets of a young Alex that intrigue him, including a crown that gives him some ideas.

and that’s the way i loved you - Alex accidentally fell hopelessly in love with his roommate and fuck buddy Henry. He tries to plan the perfect confession, but when have any of Alex’s plots worked perfectly?

heartbeats under coats - Alex, a DC lawyer on his way back from a work trip, is stranded in New York after a freak blizzard grounds all flights. He gets the last available hotel room on the island, but a freak error means the room is double booked. Unwilling to leave the other stranded, both men agree to share the room and wait out the blizzard together.

“I want something with action and intrigue”

trouble’s gonna follow where i go - Henry thought it was silly to hire an American to be his personal guard. He didn’t care that the man had an excellent service record, the highest level of security clearance in the American government short of the president, or a black belt in six forms of martial arts. A foiled assassination attempt changes that opinion, but Henry’s gratitude is not a passive thing – Alex’s going to have to work for it.

wanting me dead has really brought you two together - Rebel smuggler Alex is caught by his nemesis, Alderaan Senator Jeffery Richards. His prompt assassination is put on hold when Richard’s bounty hunter reels in a bigger fish; Senator Henry Fox of Naboo. Turns out, Alex has more than one rival on board the ship, but he’s going to need to work with Henry if they don’t want to get killed.

move fast (and keep quiet) - Alex is a spy tasked with securing a case of diamonds being auctioned off by black market smugglers. Henry is a rival spy who happens to be tasked with receiving the same case of stones. When Henry wins the auction, Alex has to retrieve his target, no matter the cost.

“I just want something really smutty!”

you handle it beautifully - Alex, discovering Henry is having a hard time getting out of his head enough to enjoy sex, has a clear solution: recreational drug use! While on the road to self-discovery and self-actualization, Henry surprises Alex more than once.

the only thing on my mind series - Piercer!Alex teaches Henry about the inner workings of BDSM in mid-90s New York.

secret moments in a crowded room - After getting a concerned call from the man's PPO, Henry makes an effort to ensure his body double Angus is getting properly socialized. Alex is hesitant to spend time with the Henry-shaped clone, but he quickly finds himself getting charmed by the man. Angus gracefully slides from strange phenomenon to friend.

“I just want a quick one shot”

like it’s patrón - Henry meets Alexander at a gun range, but it’s not the first time they’ve met. Alex calls in a raincheck.

where every wish comes true - Alex gets locked out his apartment on Christmas Eve. He's forced to take refuge in his neighbor and occasional fuck buddy Henry's apartment, and together the two get into the Christmas spirit with the help of a festive costume and a silk ribbon.

here the whole time - Married and bonded, Henry and Alex decide it's about time to get off suppressants and start enjoying their bond fully.

“I’m here for the angst”

you were more than just a short time - David the Beagle passes. Alex is there for Henry through his grief, and through the start of moving on.

look at this godforsaken mess that you made me - Rafael Luna gets through the election by the skin of his teeth. The other two Bastardos notice.

where others gave you scars series - Henry, after living in America, realizes some of the things he’s been living with aren’t normal. Alex teaches him that his pain isn’t in his head, despite what his family thinks.

[theravenmuse]

Aziraphale and Crowley are on their cross country American road trip in S3

[Walmart parking lot]

Random evangelical: have you found Jesus yet?

Crowley, panicking: WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON? WHO SENT YOU! WHAT DO YOU MEAN? OF COURSE WE HAVEN’T LOST HIM! EVERYTHING’s FINE!

Aziraphale: Crowley, maybe they’re trying to help…

Crowley: NGAJAHWJKSSMNDJPWLKAM

Aziraphale, smiling politely while gently guiding Crowley away, hoping the demon doesn’t spontaneously combust: we’re just fine, thank you.

Evangelical: 😰

[diocletianscabbagefarm]

Looking at comments in this silly bike helmet debate does show me how many people are used to painted bicycle gutters without separation from car traffic as the optimistic high end of cycling infrastructure.

I suspect helmets never caught on here (though the authorities are trying) because of a number of factors such as 1) overconfidence due to riding a bike - often alone - since being a preteen if not a toddler, to the point it’s second nature 2) most trips being short and a part of other activities such as riding two-three streets over to the local shop or public transport, rather than being classified as a separate category of activity like a sport, like “jogging” is different from walking. It strikes me that North-Americans often classify it more like a sport and I’ve heard multiple cycling advocates talk about the way this is a hurdle as cycling is dismissed by car drivers as a leisure activity rather than legitimate means of transport 3) the benefits of a helmet are seen as rather marginal because the streets are already pretty safe here (car fatalities occur at one tenth the rate they do in the US for example) because a) since the 70s Dutch street design has tried its best to physically separate bikes from the biggest danger on the road (cars) through segregated bike lanes, curbs, barriers and foliage in between. According to design guides mixing is only allowed in places where cars drive very slowly (30km/h, or about 19mph) and the volume of traffic is very low b) city design routes cars and bikes through different routes through the city to common destinations (the most direct route for a cyclist might be a straight shot through a residential neighborhood while the cars are routed along the highway around the city) to avoid them coming into conflict with each other. This is called “ontvlechten”, meaning ‘to disentangle’ c) most drivers are not overtly and actively hostile to cyclists. Almost all of them cycle too, so they tend to be aware and deferential to cyclists because they know what it’s like to be outside their steel cage.

Because of this, the hassle of using a helmet is likely seen as not really worth it, because the context doesn’t necessitate it as much. Here’s some typical Dutch street design.

Look at that sweet sweet separation.

I mean if I had to cycle on what passes for biking infrastructure in North America where you’re wedged on a tiny painted lane between SUVs trying to run you off the road for daring to infringe on their sacred asfalt while needing to go onto the road to circumvent rows of cars parked in the bike path, while trying not to get launched into the air like a SpaceX rocket due to potholes, before the bikelane inevitably simply ends and you need to bike on the road for a couple blocks before it resumes… I wouldn’t be wearing a helmet because I simply would not be fucking cycling at all.

[mariacallous]

In Jesse Eisenberg’s new film, a pair of American Jewish cousins on a heritage tour of Poland sneak back onto a train they already had tickets for, after getting off at the wrong stop.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” says Benji, played by Kieran Culkin. “We shouldn’t have to pay for tickets in Poland. This is our country.”

“No it’s not,” says David, played by Eisenberg. “It was our country. They kicked us out because they thought we were cheap.”

It is an exchange that encapsulates the mix of pathos, humor and fast-paced banter that Eisenberg brings to “A Real Pain,” which he wrote and directed in addition to stars in.

Eisenberg, 41, loosely based the script and characters on a composite of real people and experiences, including a 2008 visit with his now-wife to what was once his great-aunt’s house in Poland until 1939 — back when the Eisenbergs were still “Ajzenbergs.”

“I was at this house, I was standing in front of it, and I was expecting to feel something specific and revelatory, and nothing came,” Eisenberg said in a Zoom interview. “That feeling of emptiness kind of stayed with me for a long time. I was trying to diagnose the emptiness, and I was wondering: Is it because I’m an unfeeling person? Or is it because it’s really just impossible to connect to the past in an easy way, in a kind of external way?”

All these years later, “A Real Pain,” which hits theaters Friday, seeks to ask those questions, Eisenberg says: “How do we reconnect to the past? And how do our modern struggles connect to the struggles of our families?”

Eisenberg, best known for his cerebral, often neurotic turns in “The Social Network,” the FX limited series “Fleishman is in Trouble” and a number of Woody Allen films, has returned to the Holocaust as a subject in a number of projects. In 2013 he wrote and starred in “The Revisionist, an off-Broadway play about a Polish survivor of the Holocaust.” In 2020 he took part in a staged reading at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage of “The Investigation,” Peter Weiss’ documentary play about the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials of 1963-1965. That same year he played Marcel Marceau in “Resistance,” about the famed mime’s role in the French resistance.

As in “Treasure,” a movie released this year in which Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry star as a daughter and father who travel to Auschwitz, “A Real Pain” is about the main characters’ evolving relationship and about the legacy of the Holocaust on American Jews now two generations removed from the genocide.

In Benji and David Kaplan, viewers are introduced to two very different expressions of trauma: Benji feels everything and has no filter and an ability to get people to open up, while David is overly cautious, analytical and takes medication for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

They set out for Poland while reeling from the death of their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, joining a tour group of adults much older than they are. The group is led by facts-obsessed guide James (Will Sharpe), and includes Marcia (Jennifer Grey), whose marriage recently fell apart, as well as a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan).

Egyiawan’s character is based on a real person, Eloge Butera, who converted to Judaism because, Eisenberg said, “the only people he felt connected to were older Jewish people who could relate to the experience.” Eisenberg and Butera have stayed in touch since meeting at a wedding years ago, and Eisenberg said he had always thought Butera’s story made him an interesting model for a trip participant.

“As I was writing, of course, it occurred to me that it does this other thing, which is allow the audience to broaden out their perspective,” Eisenberg said from Indiana, wearing the same red Indiana University baseball cap his character wears throughout the film. (Eisenberg dropped out of Hebrew school in his native New York City but has recently begun attending a synagogue in Bloomington, Indiana, where he lives with his family.)

He added, “It allows me to bring in other stories of trauma in a way that’s not kind of academic, but actually in the physical presence of this man who is a survivor.”

As the movie’s characters reckon with their personal and collective trauma, the main characters’ differences come into stark relief. Benji wisecracks his way across the brittle terrain, while David deals with a sense of guilt for ever having felt like his own problems were legitimate.

On a walk with the group, the cousins briefly imagine what their life would be like if the Holocaust didn’t happen. They would probably be religious Jews, Benji thinks, and have beards, and not touch women, according to traditional interpretations of Jewish law. Bottom line: They would likely still live in Poland.

That’s a scenario with some appeal for Eisenberg, who developed such an affection for the country while filming there that he decided to seek citizenship, an option often available to descendants of Polish Holocaust survivors. He will become a citizen this month and formally mark the occasion at the Polish embassy in Washington, D.C., which will also screen the film.

“I think of myself as a New Yorker through and through, because I go to Broadway shows and I was born here, but the reality of my lineage is that we were Polish for a lot longer,” Eisenberg said. “There’s something so kind of sad about the way things can end so abruptly and be forgotten so abruptly, because to remember was so painful, because of the war and because so many people were killed. And so the way I think about it is I’m trying to reconnect.”

Filming in Poland, Eisenberg said, allowed him to experience the generosity of the people living there who worked to tell his family’s story and preserve the memory of the Holocaust, defying his expectations of contemporary Polish cultural attitudes toward the Holocaust.

In 2018, the Polish government, led by the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party, passed a law criminalizing speech blaming Poland for crimes committed by the Nazis, part of a broad effort to demand pride in Polish history. (The party was ousted from power last year.) The law created a chilling effect for some stewards of Holocaust history, curbing a public reckoning about the degree to which Poles collaborated with the Nazis.

The crackdown on “unpatriotic” accounts of Polish history also caused a shakeup at the Polin Museum, Poland’s national Jewish museum, where “A Real Pain” had its international premiere in May. A museum leader was pushed out when he sought to stage an exhibit about a wave of antisemitic persecution in 1968. When the museum recently marked its first decade, Eisenberg spoke virtually at the gala.

Eisenberg said the political tensions over Holocaust memory did not encroach on him as he filmed on location, including at the interior of the Majdanek concentration camp, which remains remarkably preserved.

“I’m aware of it in a kind of intellectual way, but my experience there was just the exact opposite,” he said. “I was working with a crew of 150 people who were all eager and working their asses off to try to make my personal family story come to life.”

In gaining permission to film at Majdanek, Eisenberg said he benefited from telling a story that is rooted firmly in the present, even though the camp uniquely lends itself to filmmaking set in the past because it remains in roughly the same condition as it was in when the Nazis operated it.

“A few things were in our favor: Most movies want to shoot in Majdanek, and they want to turn it into 1942 Auschwitz, and they want to have 100 extras in Nazi uniforms running around with guns. We were trying to do the opposite,” Eisenberg said. “What we were trying to do was depict Majdanek as it is now as a tourist site, in an attempt to do the exact thing Majdanek is trying to do itself, which is to try to bring awareness to this, to the horrors that occurred on these grounds.”

He said he had ended up becoming close with a number of young scholars on the staff at the camp memorial. “Our relationship started off with suspicion,” Eisenberg recalled, “and wound up as a beautiful meeting of the minds.”

Eisenberg said he believed that collaborating with others around his age — removed by generations from direct connection with the Holocaust — enabled “A Real Pain” to channel a fresh approach to grappling with the past.

“I’m in a younger generation,” he said. “I have enough distance to go to Poland … and not feel the kind of visceral memories of pain, but going there with an open heart and mind and meeting people who I love and who are contemporaries and friends and who are working to make the world a better place.”

[uglyandtraveling]

Looking to survive your next road trip with ease? Check out our Ultimate Road Trip Survival Guide for tips on planning, packing, staying safe, and having fun on the road. From determining the best route to packing healthy snacks and staying hydrated, our guide has you covered for any adventure. Follow these tips for a smooth and enjoyable road trip experience. Read more at https://www.uglyandtraveling.com/the-ultimate-road-trip-survival-guide/

[writingmochi]

cast: ateez & txt & enhypen ✗ reader

synopsis: a collection of ateez, txt, and enhypen works based on author's favorite radiohead songs

genre: variative for each member

based on: music radiohead's discography from albums “the bends”, "ok computer", "kid a", "amnesiac", "in rainbows", and "ok computer oknotok 1997 2017" (1995-2017)

status: subterranean homesick alien out now!

message from the moon: do remember that this is fiction and all the actions the idols do in these works do not reflect what they are in the real world. this is a non-priority anthology so all stories are standalone, won't have any schedule for deadlines, and will be written on my availability! also, note that the infos written below aren't the final one so i can add/subtract anything such as each of the synopsis which will have its final form when the certain fic is released

taglist? right here

listen to all 20 tracks!

you're turning into something you are not

cast: frat bro!sunghoon ✗ sorority girl!fem.reader

genre: romantic comedy, greek life au, college au, angst, mature content (smut)

inspired by: literature the prince and the pauper (1881)

it wears me out

cast: san ✗ fem.reader

genre: adventure, sci-fi, romance, dystopian, angst

inspired by: movie wall-e (2008)

you do it to yourself

cast: wooyoung ✗ fem.reader

genre: modern dystopia, thriller, tragedy

inspired by: tv show black mirror (2011-present)

this, this is our new song

cast: idol!hongjoong ✗ indie musician!fem.reader

genre: drama, coming of age, musicians au

i am back to save the universe

cast: jungwon ✗ fem.reader

genre: superhero fiction, adolescence, science fiction, angst

inspired by: comic cloak and dagger

ambition makes you look pretty ugly

cast: hueningkai ✗ reader

genre: content not available, set in the terra incognita universe

inspired by: error 401

they'd think that i'd finally lost it completely

cast: alt kid!soobin ✗ fashion student/designer!fem.reader

synopsis: after soobin's encounter with a person from his original timeline, he experiences doubts if he can settle in this new timeline or not. his alienation and existentialism take a spin in a new world he has to figure out himself, or if he could be courageous enough to ask you to guide him down back to the surface

genre: coming of age, slice of life, romance, drama, friends with benefits au, college/university au, angst, fluff, mature content (drug consumption and explicit smut), set in the time wave universe

this is what you'll get when you mess with us

cast: jay ✗ fem.reader

genre: drama, crime, romance, thriller, angst, mature content (smut)

inspired by: bonnie and clyde but with a dynamic of succession's tom wambsgans and siobhan roy

you know we're friends 'til we die

cast: seonghwa ✗ fem.reader

genre: content not available, set in the terra incognita universe

inspired by: error 404

we are standing on the edge

cast: detective!jongho ✗ detective!fem.reader

genre: crime, mystery, psychological thriller, noir

inspired by: movie se7en (1995)

the worms will come for you, big boots

cast: spy!yeonjun ✗ investigative journalist!fem.reader

genre: action, adventure, drama, agent au, angst

inspired by: movies from the 007 series: the spy who loved me (1977) and tomorrow never dies (1997)

i'm not here, this isn't happening

cast: singer-songwriter!taehyun ✗ up-and-coming actress!fem.reader

genre: drama, childhood friends au, fame au, angst, mature content (suicidal thoughts, manipulation, exploitation), set in early 2000s

help me get back to your arms

cast: movie character!heeseung ✗ fan!gn.reader

genre: psychological thriller, parasocial relationship, angst

there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

cast: yeosang ✗ reader

genre: adventure, action, mystery

inspired by: video game silent hill 2 (2001)

catch the mouse

cast: beomgyu ✗ fem.reader

genre: adventure, drama, thriller, road trip au, run away au, angst, mature content (smut)

inspired by: movies bones and all (2022), american honey (2016), and y tu mamá también (2001)

one by one

cast: guitarist!mingi ✗ session musician!fem.reader

genre: rock band au, angst

inspired by: documentary meeting people is easy (1998)

it is the 21st century

cast: niki ✗ fem.reader

genre: enemies to lovers?, high school au, angst, fluff

inspired by: folk story mulan

because we separate like ripples on a blank shore

cast: guardian angel!sunoo ✗ human!gn.reader

genre: fantasy, angel au, angst

inspired by: the boyz's roar concept (2023)

i don't want to be your friend, i just want to be your lover

cast: yunho ✗ reader

genre: drama, toxic relationship, friends to lovers au, angst, mature content (smut)

the beat goes round and round

cast: jake ✗ fem.reader

genre: time-loop, science fiction, mystery, drama, fantasy, romance, gang au

inspired by: movie groundhog day (1993) meets musical west side story

NOTABLE MENTIONS (written fics and the radiohead songs in their playlists)

let down ; exit music (for a film) - time wave

weird fishes/arpeggi - troubled pixies

all i need ; go slowly ; spectre - isobel

© writingmochi on tumblr, 2021-2024. all rights reserved

[shipskicksandgiggles]

The Meaning of Home (also on ao3)

Ever since he learned to drive, Steve had loved his BMW. He wouldn’t let anybody else touch his car, much less drive it. 

He kept it spotless. He wouldn’t consider himself a neat freak, but he kept the carpets vacuumed and trash out of the cup holders and off the floor. 

Not to mention he learned how to tune her up all on his own. His dad wasn’t around to help, and even if he was, he certainly wouldn’t be helping his son with dirty, disgusting work like changing the oil or cleaning out the filter. 

That was work for a mechanic. Someone you paid to get black sludge under their fingernails. 

Learning how to do it himself was a process. Without a positive male role model in his life, he resorted to reading books to guide him, starting with the car’s manual. 

Steve wanted his car in the best hands, and he trusted no one more than himself. 

He knew more about the inside of his car than he had any business knowing. Feeling her purr under his hands was the most satisfying part of his day. 

Even when he drove other people’s cars, feeling the thrum of the engine made him feel like he mattered. Like he had control. 

Nancy’s car was his favorite to drive. It was a shitty old station wagon, but he loved it. He was honestly a bit jealous. 

The truth was, he loved his car the most at first. He was able to use it to get around, to pick up girls, to impress his friends. That was when he was a younger man. 

Nowadays, his usual passengers were three kids and Robin, which his BMW was a bit too cramped to accommodate. 

Driving the Wheeler’s station wagon was a breath of fresh air. Sure, there was a suspicious rattle coming from somewhere, but he had all the kids with him, and he didn’t have to worry about them. He was even considering a minivan for his next car, if they survived all this. 

This being another apocalypse. They must be on four now, maybe five if he missed one last time he took a vacation. 

Not that Steve took vacations. He hadn’t left Hawkins for more than a day since he was 16 years old. Something about being anxious that one of the kids would need him, and he wouldn’t be there to help. 

Even the station wagon was too small to fit their whole group now, and not all of them were in Indiana anymore. Steve might have to reconsider his choice of a minivan. A bus might be a better option. 

Or a Winnebago. 

He could hear faint chatter behind him. The air was tense, but they were all trying to pretend like it wasn’t. 

Like they weren’t watching Max, in case she might float away. Like they didn’t check out the windows every few seconds to make sure they weren’t being followed. 

Like Eddie wasn’t on the run. Like Eddie hadn’t hotwired their vehicle. 

Like they weren’t on their way to get weapons to take out an evil, alternate dimension wizard. 

Steve had a headache, and no one had punched him in the face this time. 

His only relief came in the form of being able to count everyone, confirm they were all okay. 

‘Okay’ might be a bit of a stretch. 

Alive was good enough for him, even if they were all scraped, bruised, hungry, and tired. 

He focused on the thrum of the vehicle under his hands, and took a deep breath. 

As if she was reading his thoughts, Nancy plopped into the passenger seat next to him. 

“How’s it handle?”

“Not bad considering it’s a literal house on wheels.”

She huffed out a quiet laugh. None of them really had the energy for lighthearted fun anymore. 

Steve glanced over at her, and remembered back to when they were barely older than most of the kids in the backseat. They’d grown up so much since then. 

He sighed. “I used to imagine driving one of these actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you know, like when I was older, with a family, a whole gaggle of kids. I’d just pack everything up and we’d travel across the country every summer. Take a different route every year so we’d eventually hit 49 out of 50 states.”

“That’s quite the dream.”

“Well, when you still believe in the American Dream, a road trip with six kids sounds like a good idea.”

“Six kids? That sounds like a horror show.”

“I realize that now,” he said, gesturing vaguely behind him. Six kids were a nightmare.

“I meant for your future wife, my god. What angel of a woman did you picture in this scenario?”

“Honestly? I have no idea. When we were younger, I think I hoped it would be you, but now?” 

Steve turned in his seat to look at the people behind him. Eddie and Robin were attempting to distract Dustin, Lucas, and Erica while Max watched them with her Walkman secured over her ears. Their party had changed so much over the years, but he loved them nonetheless. 

Just as he was about to turn back, Eddie caught his eye. He smiled and winked before doing something dramatic that made Dustin yell. It was amazing how he fit right in. 

“Eyes on the road,” Nancy reminded. “You’ve changed a lot since we first met.”

“Is that a good thing?” he asked, suddenly shy. 

“Definitely,” she assured him. “I’ll let you drive.” She patted him on the shoulder as she went back to join everyone else.

A couple years back, Steve had kind of dismissed his dream. It was right around the time he woke up concussed in the backseat of his own car with Max driving. Kids were out of the question. 

Then he thought maybe he’d travel the country by himself, pack up just his car and drive until he hit the ocean. 

He didn’t think he could leave Hawkins anymore. Not after all this. 

Steve shook the thought out of his head and focused on driving. One day all of this would be over. 

Moments later, someone else dropped into the passenger seat. Thinking it was Robin, he didn’t say anything, expecting her to speak first. 

“I got Dustin and Lucas to explain Hellfire’s last D&D campaign to Nancy and Robin.” 

Not Robin. Eddie. 

“Oh?”

“Figured it might keep them entertained for a while at least. They’ll probably be quieter too.”

“They’re not that bad. You get used to it.”

Eddie snorted. “You must have a lot of patience, Harrington.”

“I’ve just been babysitting them for a long time.”

He nodded. “Since this all started?”

“Something like that,” Steve agreed. “Once you live through the end of the world with them, all the yelling doesn’t seem like such a big deal.”

“Imagine that. Are you sure you’re The Steve Harrington? Like the prom king, king of the school, lady’s man of Hawkins High?”

“That’s what it says on my driver’s license.”

“It says all that on your driver’s license?”

“My wallet’s in my back pocket if you want to check.”

“As inviting as it is to touch your ass, I think I’ll wait until we’re not around the kids. What do you say darling?” Eddie winked. 

Steve felt himself flush. 

Eddie didn’t seem to notice. “But you really have been saving the world this whole time? Kids and all?”

“Kids and all,” Steve confirmed. “It doesn’t get easier by the way, so if you don’t want to stick around for the next apocalypse, I wouldn’t blame you.”

“You stick around,” Eddie pointed out. 

“I’ve got a pretty good reason to.” It was the truth. He loved Hawkins, loved the kids, loved Robin and his shitty job and even his empty house. He couldn’t just leave it all behind. 

Speaking of, he adjusted the mirror so he could see them, and smiled softly at what he saw. Sure enough, Dustin and Lucas were still fully invested in explaining things to Robin and Nancy, who were actually expressing interest. Even Erica seemed to be getting involved, and Max had slipped her headphones off of one ear so she could listen to both her friends and Kate Bush. 

“We’re going to get them out of this,” Eddie said quietly. “Right?”

Steve nodded. 

“They never got to be kids, did they?”

“Not really, no. Ever since Will went missing, they had to grow up too fast.”

“Do you ever wish you could go back and change things, knowing what you know now?”

He studied Eddie carefully. “More than you could possibly understand.”

“So make me understand.”

Eddie looked at him like he held all the secrets to the universe, and Steve took a deep breath, turning his focus back to the road to avoid Eddie’s gaze. 

“Realistically, I know that this was the way things were meant to happen. That I wouldn’t be the man I am today without all this suffering. Still, knowing what I know now, I would go back and be a less shitty person. Because then maybe Barb would still be alive. Maybe Billy would be too. Maybe we could have been friends a long time ago. Instead we’re here, and I know I can’t go back and fix everything, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Please, I forgave you the first time Henderson said you gave him rides home from Hellfire because his mom couldn’t make it.”

“Really?”

“Well, sort of. I thought he meant a different Steve Harrington until I saw your car pull into the parking lot and not leave until his seat belt was buckled. Then I forgave you.”

Maybe he was finally losing it, but for whatever reason, that was the first time Steve had really laughed for the first time in days. They were in the middle of the end of the world yet again, and he couldn’t stop laughing. 

His outburst seemed to surprise Eddie based on his expression. A grin slowly grew across his face. “Something funny, Stevie?”

“No, no, I’m sorry, I just-” he hiccuped. “I just can’t believe this is happening.”

“Didn’t we just establish you’ve saved the world multiple times?”

“Not that, I can totally believe that, but this. This stupid Winnebago and those kids and this. Sometimes I can’t believe I’m here. If you told Steve Harrington of four years ago that he’d be babysitting a group of kids with his ex-girlfriend, his best friend who he got tortured by Russians with, and the freak of Hawkins High, he’d think you were nuts, and yet.”

“Still think I’m a freak?” Eddie asked nervously. 

“Sure, but who isn’t?”

“Welcome to the party, your Majesty, it was good of you to join us.”

Eddie’s dramatics only caused him to start laughing again. “Sorry I’m late, honey, traffic was hell,” Steve mocked in return.

“Are you having a nervous breakdown? I think you have to tell us if you are.”

For a second, Steve thought he’d overstepped and offended Eddie, but a quick glance reassured him that he was just joking. 

“I think I’ll be okay. How are you though?” 

The past few days had been harder on Eddie than it was on most of them, which frankly he was handling like a champ, but Steve still worried. 

“Well, let’s see. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to go home, and even if I do I’ll probably be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life because the basketball team turned into a murderous gang. Also, I’ll need a list of everyone’s favorite songs because that seems important now which sounds insane, but it’s no less insane than anything else so what the hell, right?”

Steve got it. Not that he’d been accused of murder, but witnessing the upside down version of their town and facing the end of the world did tend to put things in perspective. What about their lives really mattered anyways?

He let Eddie’s words hang in the air for a moment before he figured out what to say. 

“My favorite song is The Winner Takes It All,” Steve said. “For when you start making that list.”

It seemed to take Eddie a moment to process that. “ABBA, Steve? ABBA? Are you kidding me? We cannot be friends, I’m so sorry, your taste in music cannot be that bad.”

His dramatics caused Steve to lose it. “Oh my god, I’m kidding. It’s actually Heroes. You know David Bowie?”

“Do I know David Bowie, he asks. Jesus Christ, Steve, of course I know Bowie. He’s not bad, but still, remind me to play you some better music if we make it out of this alive.” Then he paused. “When we make it out of this alive.”

“You’re already a natural at keeping a positive mindset with the constant threat of the world ending! I’m proud of you, man.”

“Might as well, right?”

“Exactly. And I can’t wait to hear you play. I've heard you’re a part of the best metal band in this part of Indiana.”

“Steve, we’re pretty much the only metal band in this part of Indiana.” 

“Which automatically makes you the best!”

“Fair enough. My favorite song is Rainbow in the Dark by the way. Master of Puppets would probably work too honestly.”

“I’ll make sure we get a tape of both of them, just in case.”

“Thanks.” His response was uncharacteristically soft, but Steve tried not to think too hard about it.  

They drifted back into silence after that. 

“Do you know what you’re going to do after we save the world?” Eddie asked. Sitting quietly for too long set all of them on edge now. 

“Same as always I guess. Might start taking classes at the community college.”

“Yeah? What are you planning on getting your degree in?”

“Something stable. Teaching maybe. If it doesn’t work out, I can always try my hand at being a mechanic.”

“Mechanic? You?”

“Hey, I fix my own car all the time, don’t start. Anyways, people always need mechanics.”

“We’ll always need teachers too, Steve. I can see it now, your classroom full of bright colors and smiling faces.”

“Now you’re just teasing me,” Steve groaned. 

“I’m not! I really think that’s a good path for you. Stability is a good route to go.”

“Would you ever want anything like that?”

“Oh god no. I want to be out on the road! Experiencing real, true freedom,” Eddie said with conviction. 

Steve certainly believed him. The relief was evident on his face, as if that freedom was finally in reach. 

“Really? You don’t even want someone to come home to? Something to look forward to when you’ve been away for a while?”

He could feel Eddie studying him. 

“I guess that doesn’t sound so bad,” Eddie said eventually. 

“Look man, I’m not saying you can’t do whatever you want. If you want to be out on the open road for the rest of your life, that’s what you should do. But I think everyone needs somewhere to call home, and maybe someone who helps make it a home.”

“Yeah?”

“It probably sounds dumb, but-”

“No no no, I think it’s sweet. I just don’t think that’s the kind of future I’m destined to have.”

“Why do you say that?”

Eddie sat back in his seat a bit. “Home for me growing up wasn’t the definition of stability, and I don’t know if I have what it takes to build that foundation with someone. And even that would require someone to want to have that with me in the first place. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that’s not in the cards for me.”

They lapsed into silence as Steve digested that information. Finally, he spoke again. 

“Okay, don’t take this the wrong way, but are you dumb?”

“Thank you for that, Steve.”

“No, listen to me. You’ve already got a halfway decent start on that foundation, I just think you need to take a step back and see that.”

He looked at him doubtfully, but Steve continued. 

“You created a safe space for a whole group of kids that wouldn’t have that if it weren’t for you, and they adore you. It’s that unconditional love and willingness to accept them that’s going to start you in the right direction. That D&D club of yours is a home of its own if you think about it, and you did that all on your own. Imagine what you could build with someone else.”

Eddie took a moment to think. “What if I don’t want kids?”

“That’s fine. Home doesn’t always equal kids. Good luck getting rid of Dustin though.”

“Which will prove to be a challenge I’m sure, that kid sticks like glue.”

“Trust me, I’ll be dealing with it for the rest of my life too, don’t you worry.”

“Maybe we should deal with it together then,” Eddie said nervously. 

Steve heard the hesitation in his voice like he wasn’t sure how he would react. 

He reached out a hand and patted Eddie’s knee. “I think that could be arranged.”

“Stability, huh?” Eddie asked. 

“If you want it.” 

Steve craved stability more than just about anything else in the world. He couldn’t imagine functioning without some surety of knowing how his life was going to play out for at least the next few months. 

He also craved validation and comfort. One might say he craved love.

A love he wasn’t so sure he could have. 

But Eddie glanced back at the kids and smiled softly, almost privately to himself had Steve not been there to see it. 

“Yeah. I could go for a little bit of stability.”

[starsfic]

Summaries:

LMK/PP: Due to a misread address, a missent letter, and some poor decisions, Qi Xiaotian finds himself trapped in the depths of the Playtime Co. factory. But he's not gonna let DogDay be stuck too.

Based on a Discord convo with @draw-of-the-moon, LMK: Red comes to the noodle shop for the stress-relieving arcade machine. Definitely not for the cute and sexy waiter. Smut.

Based on another Discord convo with @draw-of-the-moon, LMK: Red, an inventor, starts receiving mysterious meals on his doorstep. His investigation leads to his new neighbor, the baker Qi Xiaotian. Smut.

@draw-of-the-moon’s LMK/Ninjago AU: When Red mysteriously disappears, Long Xiaojiao and pregnant Qi Xiaotian have to beat back suitors.

Scooby Doo, my incarnation: The first part of Episode 1, when trying to leave their hometown of Crystal Cove to start their second year of college, the Mystery Gang finds themselves trapped in Crystal Cove.

@draw-of-the-moon’s LMK/Ninjago AU: While babysitting baby Firecracker, the ninja are called away to defeat a giant mech. Cole stays behind to watch the baby.

@draw-of-the-moon’s LMK/Ninjago AU: In a daring mission to rescue their baby sibs from the underworld and Samukai, Nya and Kai both find themselves lost in the outer regions of the underworld. A lone wanderer named Azure offers to help guide them.

Poppy Playtime: The moment that the angel steps into the factory, every toy knows. Dogday, down below, hopes.

Poppy Playtime: Carnation Ludwig finds a dead body in her father’s room.

LMK/FNAF: After a nasty argument with her parents, Long Xiaojiao decides to cut herself off financially from them and get a job. However, the only available position is a night guard of an American pizza chain. Shouldn't be too hard...right?

LMK: Smut, Qi Xiaotian wakes up ten years in the future, married to Red Son. Meanwhile, Qi Xiaotian wakes up ten years in the past, not together with his husband yet.

LMK: When tagging along to one of Xiaojiao’s less legal street races, a dark horse rider appears out of the blue, and Xiaotian is starstruck. Spicynoodles smut.

[mekanikaltrifle]

In (the World of) Darkness

(Inspired by @cruddyart’s character lineup)

I’ll post some summaries here for you all, just so we’re up to date on everyone (and as a handy quick reference guide if you are ever unsure who these bastards are :D)

(edited to add some links to songs for the little guys. Most have a ‘theme’ and a ‘current vibe’ for where they’re feeling in their relative narrative spot. Most are not super cheerful!)

Top Row (2021 characters):

- Domino Giovanni (formerly Dom Winters), 10th Gen. clan Giovanni neonate. Independent/Clan aligned. Sired in 2006 at age 26. (Game: Alien Hunger/Harbour of Resentment 2006-2009, currently active).

American (origin: Denver, Colorado)

Personal Theme/ current vibe

Result/victim of strange Kindred scientific experiment into curing vampirism, the results of which were lost. Betrayed by their teammates, nearly decapitated before they were enlisted into the Family and Clan Giovanni. Budding necromancer, former Counter-Strike champion.

- Andrew Serafim, 13th Gen. clan Toreador antitribu fledgling. Sabbat aligned. Sired in 2020 at age 27. (Game: Cauldron Crusade/Atlanta Chronicle, 2020), currently active

English (origin: South London)

Personal theme/ current vibe

Part of the winning team in a Sabbat Bat Race, hours after Embrace. Has a ghoul in his long time friend Madelaine Webb. Immensely athletic and dexterous, previously a national-level aesthetic gymnast in life. Insanely tall.

- Glass Man, 13th Gen. clan Nosferatu neonate. Camarilla aligned. Sired in 2003 sometime in his mid-late 20s. (Game: Boston Nosferatu Chronicle, 2007, currently inactive)

American (origin: Syracuse, New York)

Personal theme

Has access to out-of-clan Fortitude, is a trainee assassin and poisoner. Previously was a junior doctor in life. Enthusiastic free-runner, covers his whole body at all times.

Bottom Row (2022 characters):

- Ms Lina Meijer, 10th Gen. clan Malkavian fledgling. Anarch aligned. Sired in 2012 at age 30. (Game: Den Haag Chronicle, 2012, currently active)

Dutch (origin: somewhere in South Holland, the Netherlands)

Personal theme/ current vibe

Embraced in a mass-Embrace of three, became embroiled in a bloody civil war in Den Haag and Rotterdam. Currently hiding out in Malaga in Spain, hoping things will quiet down. Very able combatant. Has a firearm illegally.

- Dr Dani Reyes, 12th Gen. Tremere fledgling. Independent aligned. Sired in 2020 at age 32. (Game: Atlanta Chronicle Part 2/ A.Rubra, 2020, currently active)

Mexican (origin: Guadalajara, Jalisco)

Personal theme/ current vibe

Was originally a ghoul, and then Embraced in a violent manner by Silas via their domitor Atlas. Known to have committed diablerie in the interest of saving an ally’s life and destroying a genocidal maniac. Honestly just wants a nap.

- Mai Le Pham, mortal. Aware of the supernatural, first encounter in 1997. Aged 30. (Game: Cognitohazard, 1997, currently active)

American (origin: somewhere in the desert, South California)

Personal theme/ current vibe

Investigated eerie happenings in her apartment block with a couple others, only to find the place full of Slashers. Befriended a Deviant by virtue of being unfazed by/oblivious to their odd vibes. Was shot in the abdomen, and healed using demonic blood, and then made a sacrifice of her own blood to the ‘angel Gabriel’ to get free of a strange alter-dimension. Currently on a road trip to Phoenix.

[lericekrispie]

COMPILATION OF ALL MY FANFICS IN THE JUST ROLL WITH IT FANDOM- A GUIDE AND A LITTLE SELF PROMOTION

Million Years Ago

4/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/53612986

The Suckening: set around ep 5

After the compulsion on Shilo drops, so does the command on all the Queen's victims. Grefgor remembers his past after the Queen's control dies off and he talks about it with Shilo

Road trip

3/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/47222407

Prime Defenders: Early season two

Tidalwave fic. Basically While the Prime Defenders are in Vyncent's homeworld, Tide and Mark go looking for them, and are gay on the way

Creature feature

1/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/47221504

Prime Defenders: early seson one

unfinished draft of an AU based off of the What IF? of harttawa Island and the amalgams

Take care

4/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/45394852

Prime Defenders: Season two?

William Wisp and his epic adventure in accepting help with his chronic pain. Basically headcannons about chronic pain.

All too soon

5/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/45315220

Blood in the bayou: pre-canon

When the boys were younger, what happens if they find out about the doppelgangers a little bit earlier?

Fauna

2/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/44405947

Worldbuilding and concepts thrown at the wall for vyncents world. Written in a dnd dm notes style.

AbOriginal

5/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/40551981

Prime Defenders: between season one and two

A deep dive into what a native american Dakota Cole would look like, with some worldbuilding and fun adventures.

Rose-tinted spectacles

3/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/40083303

Riptide: After Noctis

Fish and Chips confession.

Perfection

3/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/39969681

Apotheosis: close to the end

Hurt comfort with Rumi dealing with exandroth taking over Peter's body

When did things get so complicated?

4/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/39762360

Riptide: right after block

Gillion had a panic attack and there is reflection and headcanoons on his upbringing

It doesn't work

4/5 stars

https://archiveofourown.org/works/39479670

Riptide: After noctis still nightmare arc

Gillion asks Caspian for advice on what to do about Chips curse instructions for a magical ritual. lots of angst but also fluff and like it's really cute and they all get drunk and cry

If you are too shy to leave comments on my works, feel free to leave thoughts here or in the reblogs! Thank you so much for reading, every kudo, bookmark, and comment means the world <3

[thebesthealthcareprovider]

Smile Bright in Dubai: Your Guide to the City's Best Dentists 🦷✨

Hey Tumblr fam! 👋 Are you in Dubai and on the hunt for a top-notch dentist? Or maybe you're planning a trip and want to combine it with some dental work? (Hello, dental tourism!) 🏙️🦷 Well, you're in luck because we're about to dive into the world of the best dentists in Dubai!

Why Dubai for Your Dental Needs? 🌟

Dubai isn't just about sky-high buildings and luxury shopping. It's also becoming a hotspot for world-class medical care, including dentistry! Here's why:

- 🏆 Top-tier facilities with cutting-edge tech

- 🌍 Internationally trained dental pros

- 💼 A perfect blend of tourism and treatment

What Makes a Dentist the Best? 🏅

Before we spill the tea on Dubai's dental scene, let's break down what makes a dentist truly shine:

1. 📚 Qualifications and experience (because you want someone who knows their stuff!)

2. 🦷 Range of services (one-stop-shop, anyone?)

3. 🖥️ High-tech equipment (because old-school isn't always cool)

4. 👍 Glowing patient reviews (real talk from real people)

5. 📍 Convenient location (because Dubai traffic, am I right?)

6. 💰 Fair pricing and insurance options (your wallet will thank you)

Dubai's Dental A-List: The Cream of the Crop 🎖️

Here are some of the most highly regarded dental clinics in Dubai:

1. Dubai Smile Dental Clinic

Specialties: General dentistry, cosmetic dentistry, orthodontics

Location: Jumeirah Beach Road

Why they stand out: Experienced international team, cutting-edge technology

2. American Medical Clinic

Specialties: Implantology, periodontics, endodontics

Location: Sheikh Zayed Road

Why they stand out: American-trained dentists, comprehensive dental care

3. Prime Health Clinic

Specialties

Routine Dental Treatment: Both adult and child dentistry

Dental Extractions: both simple and complex, including Wisdom Teeth Extractions

Dental treatment under Sedation / General 

Location: Airport Rd - next to Le Meridian Hotel - Al Garhoud - Dubai - United Arab Emirates

Why they stand out: Family-friendly environment, multilingual staff

4. Dr. Joy Dental Clinic

Vibe: Family-friendly and warm

Specialty: Invisalign for that stealth teeth-straightening

Cool factor: Multiple locations, so there's always one near you!

5. Boston Dental Center

- Vibe: Holistic care with a side of expertise

-Specialty: From simple cleanings to complex oral surgeries

- Cool factor: Marina views while you get your teeth cleaned? Yes, please!

Keep That Smile Shining! ✨

Now that you're in the know about the **best dentists in Dubai**, here are some quick tips to keep your pearly whites, well, pearly and white:

- 🪥 Brush twice a day (you know the drill!)

- 🦷 Floss like a boss

- 🍬 Say "no" to too many sweets (your dentist will be so proud)

- 👩‍⚕️👨‍⚕️ Regular check-ups are your BFF

 Wrap It Up With a Smile 😁

There you have it, folks! Whether you're a Dubai resident or just passing through, you now know where to find the **best dentists in Dubai**. Your smile deserves the best, so why settle for less?

Remember, a great smile is always in style, especially in a city as glamorous as Dubai. So book that appointment, snap that post-dentist selfie, and let your smile shine as bright as the Dubai skyline! ✨🏙️