#an old hyperfixation that has returned since this summer..

[kingdowager]

college age reddie!! they should've been at the club (together) saw posts for the reddiesance 5 year anniversary and had to draw them. rotating them in my mind

[e-adlirez]

Thea Stilton Treasure Seekers Review/Ramble

Behold, an impulsive ramble about a possibly-obscure trilogy that's been translated to English during quarantine-ish, adding to the obscurity.

So the Treasure Seekers, huh? :3

Coming out a little prior but more or less over the course of quarantine and thus a lot of people not having ready access to it, the Treasure Seekers is what turned out to be a trilogy of what it says on the tin: the girls hunting down cool treasures as a result of going down the world's biggest and highest-stakes scavenger hunt written a hundred-ish years prior to the present time.

Gonna be giving MAJOR spoilers for the first book in the trilogy, and there'll (probably) be one post per book in the trilogy. If you haven't read the book, here's a copy on the Internet Archive you can read before skipping ahead to the review, enjoy, it's pretty good. If you've already read the book or don't care about spoilers, please proceed below the cut :3

The story begins with the girls on summer vacation in Scotland. Shenanigans get started when they meet this old hermit woman who has in her house a mysterious heirloom tapestry with a mysterious poem on it.

The tapestry has this poem that talks about a place with sweet winds, petals that will lead you to something beneath them, something about midnight and birds, and an alabaster garden created for the "jewel of the palace" (like me to you), that is guarded by a friend with deep feet. Sounds like a whole lotta cryptic shnit the theory heads would enjoy :D

Anyway so the girls go visit Beitris (the hermit woman) the next day to return something they borrowed from her only to walk into a holdup :D

Said holdup-ers are these two grunts led by this mysterious lady hiding her identity under a black fedora and thick-framed Ray Bans. The girls deal with that situation real quick and get the guys to scarper (if you're wondering how they did that, "the police are coming"), and once it all blows over, they find that the thugs only stole the tapestry despite ransacking the entire place like raccoons. Such a realization leads to a revelation on Beitris's end, so she entrusts the girls with the tapestry's backstory in a segment I will describe as LAAANNNEEEE LOOOORRRREEEEEE (said in a MatPat voice, we'll miss you king :'])

-

The tapestry was a family heirloom passed down to Beitris by her grandmother Petra, who got it from her older sister Aurora Beatrix Lane, who is basically British Amelia Earhart. Wasn't into girly shnit, liked being outside and also archaeology, studied in the University of Cambridge as an Archaeology major and learned how to fly a plane, all while punting early 1900s gender norms into oblivion with her pants and motorcycle. Motorcycle queen, plane queen, archaeology queen, but then everything changed when this British Amelia Earhart did a British Amelia Earhart.

The context behind Aurora Beatrix Lane's disappearance is something relating to her work with her mentor Jan Von Klawitz, who was doing archaeology things with her and probably got up to some wild shnit, but we would never know because Aurora is very secretive about her plans and her destinations, and she only came home to the UK once, after her first trip, and that was when she gave smol child Petra the tapestry to guard because it led to "a very precious treasure", but she can't show it yet for the time being. The vibe was Aurora was planning on using the tapestry to show the treasure it hides once she's done with her archaeology shenanigans.

But then she did an Amelia Earhart but completely untraceable since she never revealed her destinations, so uh there's that :D

-

Back to the present, this little storytime from Beitris has gotten the girls sucked into a rabbit hole. They are now hyperfixated like nobody's business and this Aurora Beatrix Lane is JUST LIKE THEM FR, and as a result they decide that y'know what they still have a few days before classes in Mouseford starts, and while they're at it, they're gonna find Beitris's tapestry and maaayyyybeeee find the alabaster garden. First destination: Girton College at the University of Cambridge, Aurora Beatrix Lane's alma mater.

The girls take a quick jaunt to Girton by train and then by bus to have a lil' chat with the dean, who reveals to them that they're looking for the central archive if they're gonna be looking for the deets on a student from a hundred years ago, but uh the archive is closed for the day, please come tomorrow. (Wonder why, maybe it's because they rode from Scotland to Girton by train which takes a shnitload of time. /nsrs but fr tho I wonder if the original Italian had them drive over there by car-- they did rent an SUV, and going by car would be way faster, like it'll only take a seven-hour drive faster) They come back the next day, are let into the archives, and oop, they find a well-preserved diary with Aurora's initials hidden in the Stanley Library.

Y'know what that means, LANE LOOORRRREEEEE

-

So two months into her accompanying Jan on his excavations, she notes that Jan's been acting a bit sus lately-- being very nervous, being extremely protective over his luggage, being weird about hiding some of the relics he's found, and also a weird-ass incident where while exploring a small village's old castle, Aurora found a hidden chamber with a tome inside that Jan immediately snatched and was like "I'll take care of it don't worry, don't worry about the protocol stuff I'll be fine I'll take care of it". And then he went back to "normal" after that. Hmmmm.

A month later, while Jan was talking with one of his collaborators on their train to England, Aurora stumbled into the tome again, suspiciously in Jan's personal luggage instead of being properly archived and catalogued like it should've been. She read it, saw a thing about the Seven Treasures of the World, and that caused her protagonist genes to kick in since now she's now very tempted to look into finding them and showing them to the world.

After that, she went to some libraries to investigate and eventually decided to confront Jan about the whole treasures thing and his first reaction was he was pissed, calling Aurora a snoop and everything poking into his things. Then after calming down he said "just pretend to not see", but oh no, dear reader, Aurora was not gonna pretend to not see. She ain't gonna pretend to not see the fact that her mentor was actually a treasure hunter and collector who'd been using his occupation as an excuse to snatch some nifty treasures and keep them to himself like every European country who's stolen artifacts from Asian countries ever, ohohohooooo noooo, she's gonna do something about it.

-

The girls scuttle on over back to Scotland and Beitris, to find that uh oh dear, the thugs came back again and this time they were asking about the girls specifically. Beitris pulled the same trick the girls pulled to get them to leave. So NOW the thugs are looking for the girls for whatever reason and wanna know their deal. Anyway, the girls show Beitris Aurora's diary, tell her about the summary, and also that unfortunately some of the pages are missing, and the diary doesn't say shnit about the tapestry so far. Beitris helps by giving them a letter that Aurora sent to Petra about the tapestry and its treasure, but interestingly mentions that she should "only trust Robert".

Since I haven't mentioned him before, Robert Neville was Aurora's flight tutor, a flying medic, and was toootttallllyyyyy just friends with Aurora you guys they were totally just frie--

He is dead in the present time, but his nephew John Neville is a (former) lighthouse keeper for the Ar-Men lighthouse in the IÎe de Sein, Brittany, France. So the girls head on over there, land in France, insert a thing where Vi feels like she's being watched but is like "maybe it's just a me thing, I dunno".

They head over to the Île de Sein, find an old man who turns out to be John, are invited to his house, tell him about their situation, and John mentions that he himself has been researching like crazy too about Aurora ever since hers and Jan's simultaneous disappearance over the same place at the same time in the same terrible storm. And also the fact that Robert was totally devastated when he got the news and spent years looking for her. He gives them his notes that he's accumulated over decades of researching in his pastime (which amounts to just Aurora's trip to Mexico), and tells them that since Aurora was looking for seven treasures, they'll need to find out where her seven trips took place, which will not be easy because Aurora was extremely secretive, and she only made her first trip even remotely public.

First place is Mexico so might as well head on over-- oh god the holdup-ers are back to holdup.

The thugs snatch Aurora's diary and book it before the girls can do much besides get an impromptu ocean bath, and oh dear, the thugs' boss has them now, and it's not the mafia cosplayer lookin' woman. But that's something I'll address later :3

Nonetheless, they carry on since the thugs never stole John's notebook, and they use it to go to the Puuc Route in Mérida, Yucatán (sounds very specific until you realize that Mérida is the capital of the Yucatán, and one thing everyone and their mother knows about the Mayan ruins there like Chichen Itza) to find more clues.

They do some more research on the Puuc Route, find some clues about "an invisible place, guarded by the chattiest of creatures", discover that it means they have to go to Uxmal, get a dub against the unfortunately acrophobic thugs, and realize that yes, Aurora did in fact sneak another one of her diaries in there.

This one doesn't have as much Lane Lore to contribute besides a clue that the girls find leads to Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh, India, a city known for its perfumes :3 sounds like "sweet winds", doesn't it? Oh and there's also something about a place with two lakes, which turns out to be Lakh Bahosi, a bird sanctuary about an hour's drive away from Kannauj. The girls head on over and try to do some investigating, but it doesn't take them that long to find a pair of grunts struggling under the weight of a very familiar tapestry while their boss was struggling to supervise them with her heels constantly digging into bird sanctuary dirt.

Anyway so the girls concoct a little scheme to steal the tapestry and the thugs fall for it like fish for a fishing lure, and they managed to scatter with the tapestry. After getting to a private space in the sanctuary, they find a clue that leads them to a set of coordinates that they find is a beeg tree. Oh and the treasure seems to be a present that was made for someone close to Mumtaz Mahal, as in "the jewel of the palace", the woman the Taj Mahal was made for; and the tapestry has a set of coordinates that is leading them to a beeg tree, with deep roots/feet. Oh hell yeah it's all comin' together.

They get to the tree, deal with the mafia lady for a little bit, find the treasure, and it turns out it's a very exquisite perfume bottle made of alabaster called "The Perfume of the Earth". They find a little note from Aurora explaining the treasure and its value and the significance of finding it, and now the girls have found the treasure Aurora had been searching for, and now's the time for a villain reveal?

So I haven't talked about him yet and have glossed over this guy for the entire ramble. See the mafia lady, Cassidy? Yeah she's not the big boss here. It's this guy who has a whole secret base in Denali National Park, Alaska, and has been overseeing everything behind the scenes. And by everything, I mean everything: He was alerted to the whole thing with Cassidy's first raid of Beitris's house, found out about the girls' involvement, and for a good half of the book, was trying to figure out what the girls' motives are for interfering with his line of work and what they might know about this whole thing he's looking for, which is the alabaster garden.

This guy has been keeping tabs on the girls through Cassidy and her thugs, who've been stalking the girls ever since France. He and Cassidy figured out in Paris that the girls are Mouseford students on vacation, and he was the one who gave the orders to snatch the journal from there. He was the one who told the goons to tail them to Mexico, and he was the one who managed to look up the girls' names, backgrounds, reasons for being in Scotland, all from the comfort of his base in Alaska. And only then, only then did he go to India himself to supervise and put a cap to his goons' buffoonery.

Who is this guy? Well, he is a treasure hunter who just wants to enjoy the treasures Aurora Beatrix Lane has hidden from his great-grandfather a hundred years ago. That's right, meet Luke Von Klawitz, the current heir to the Klawitz legacy and the treasure trove Jan Von Klawitz left behind in spite of his disappearance. Unfortunately Jan was better (and old enough) to secure a family legacy of greedy artifact hoarding.

So while the girls were in Lakh Bahosi, Luke was too with the goons and Cassidy (who is not his right-hand man and more just... a subordinate trying too hard to impress him), being the babysitter with these guys on leashes, as he tries to keep their stupidity under control. He intercepts the girls as they're about to leave Lakh Bahosi, blocking their path, and asks about the alabaster garden. The girls obviously don't spill and prolly would've gotten themselves blackbagged and interrogated had a friend they made prior to Lakh Bahosi not shown up in her dad's truck and came in clutch. (It sounds cliche and like it came out of nowhere but trust me it makes sense in-universe-- after the girls left the friend's family restaurant that they were hanging at, Luke's goons came over to interrogate them about the girls and where they went. Subtlety, who is she?)

The girls bring the perfume to a nearby university so it can be brought to a museum, send the tapestry back to Beitris, and return home to Whale Island, to read the last bits of Aurora's second journal and presumably to

So that's the book :D I put in a LOT of spoilers, but I'd say that reading the book is still worth it because you'll be able to get the connecting tissues that tie the organs of this story together. H-hopefully this all made sense . .'''

First things first, if you're not used to how Scholastic kids' novels are written, then uh, you might wanna get used to it, because the English translation of Thea Stilton is very... that. It's not beating the kids' book allegations in English, unfortunately. On the brighter side, though, it's pretty good for Scholastic standards! The pacing's very fast, but it feels about right-- gives me the same energy as diving deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole and going to all sorts of places because of the hyperfixation responsible for consuming their sanity for all of a week or so. The dialogue isn't nearly as atrocious as the worst it's capable of being (oh trust me we'll get to that). The tapestry puzzle and how the girls work towards solving it is very coherent and logical for the situation they are in at the beginning, and it's very satisfying to see everything come together and for things to slowly make more and more sense in the poem despite it being as vague and puzzle box-y as it was.

The Lane family lore is very well-thought-out, and Aurora Beatrix Lane is the perfect spiritual predecessor to the girls, what with her love for adventure, love for travel, strong moral compass, and the strong compulsion to elbow drop every single feminine social rule under the sun. I can totally buy her being someone the girls would totally hyperfixate on researching, because she feels like that kind of compelling character-- a passionate young archaeologist who decided to put her own safety on the line for the sake of what she believed in and to dunk on Klawitz and his selfish (and very illegal) goals of hoarding the treasures of the world to himself.

As for the villain, I'll be real gamers, Luke Von Klawitz is probably the most intimidating if not terrifying villain in the entire franchise. He has drones spying on every corner of the world for him, he has goons he can contact at any time and have them do his bidding (to mixed results it seems), he has cutting-edge technology that he uses for terrifying means, all in the safety and comfort of his secret underground base in Alaska where he has his little basement filled to the brim with historical artifacts he's kept all to himself to enjoy. Lemme run this through you again:

He was able to learn the girls names, the university they're studying in, and why they were in Scotland in the first place, all without ever meeting them face-to-face or having his goons interrogate them directly. All he needed to learn all of this was the (not very helpful) research by Cassidy, and a few commands put into his world-connected supercomputer.

Are you intimidated yet? I sure hope you are :D this guy's got a lotta potential is what I'm saying. He's a bit of a brat who wants what he wants and wants it immediately, but he's also a bit of a chess master who looks over things in the background while his minions do all the work for him. Really the only thing holding him back is the incompetency of his goons, and technically it's not even that they're very stupid-- Cassidy and her grunts Stan and Max are very good at swooping in out of nowhere to wreak havoc, dip in and get out before anyone can do anything about it. They're decent if not good at the job they're usually assigned: low-level grunt work. Unfortunately they're not good at much else, which drove Luke insane this entire book, haha.

The girls' dynamic with Cassidy, Stan and Max was refreshing in the sense that the girls aren't always getting punted by them, and the goons aren't always taking Ls just from physical contact with the girls. Cassidy and the goons always had the element of surprise on their side, being able to show up out of nowhere and do their thing before the girls have time to even blink; but once the girls figured out their whole shtick, it was easy to learn that they are easily outclass-able by five mouse Oxford students in braincell count and thus act accordingly. They force the girls to think fast and come up with some snappy plans on the spot, and the girls force Luke to realize he hired Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, and Tweedle Dummy as goons :D

Now uh, I have been complimenting this thing the entire time, but there is one little thing I have an issue within this book, and that is the whole... Power of Friendship thing they've got going on throughout the book.

Yes, unfortunately, the Friendship Curse has claimed this hardcover series too, and while it's not the worst here, it's still... it's still a bit atrocious :D

For instance, the conclusion Cassidy and Luke come to for the girls' reasons for interference is "friendship". Literally, Cassidy literally says to Luke, "It seems they did it out of friendship, Sir", and then Luke responds with an evil cackle and is like "FRIENDSHIP? THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP DOESN'T EXIST IN THIS WORLD! AIN'T NO WAAAAYYYYY THEY'RE NOT FIVE SCHEMERS WHO WANNA GET THE TREASURES THEMSELVES", which is like... I don't get that vibe from Luke anywhere else in the book? Luke values efficiency and getting what he wants-- he's not hired Cassidy to be all buddy-buddy with her, he hired her for a job and she has to work to fulfill said job. He just wants competent employees, and y'know what, that's valid. Not a single part in that have I seen "ew power of friendship". It's very villain for the sake of villainy kind of energy, which I don't think fits Luke with the other bits of information we get of him? He's following his great-granddad's footsteps-- not a single minute of that did that mean "the spirit of friendship doesn't exist get yo head outa the cotton candy"

Then there's... how this applies to the girls.

inhales

WHY DID THEY MAKE VIOLET THE GROUP'S FRIENDSHIP PROPHET GRAAAAHHHH

I probably would make a full-blown rant about this at some point, but one thing I never liked about any of the hardcovers was how Violet of all people is the group's assigned friendship prophet. She'd occasionally make a comment about how uh something something the power of love is the strongest of all, and every single time I don't like it :D

Sure fine you can chalk it up to character development since her early months in Mouseford, but in the earlier books it's heavily established that she's the pragmatic one, the braincell keeper, the one who keeps the girls' group ADHD on track or the one who reminds them that "hey we've been at this for a really long time and it's now 2AM, we should really turn in now". Being a friendship prophet is a Colette thing, not a Violet thing, and I'm not trying to insult Colette or anything like that. I would be far more okay with it if Colette was the one to go on about the "power of love" because she's literally the HOPELESS ROMANTIC! She's the one with her head in the clouds, the one most likely to fangirl about ships in movies, the one who chooses to ship Romeo and Juliet and pretend to not see the entire second act of said play for the sake of believing in love.

If Colette had a line where she gushed about the power of friendship, I would've just chalked it up to "that cheesy-ass statement is something she'd totally say ngl", as opposed to the jarring whiplash I get from seeing Violet of all people call upon the Power of Friendship.

Again, probably will rant about this at some point (lemme know if you're into that idea), but yeah -m-

Literally just chuck the power of friendship bits and replace them with something more practical/realistic/grounded/whateveryouwannacallit, and it's basically perfect! Even the bits where the girls make friends on their journey is believable! Those don't have to be altered at all! Geuh it drives me insane, almost to the point of wanting to do something about it....

Well, that's enough rambling for today. I can't use up all my steam on this first book-- I plan on making ramblings for the second and third books, after all.

See ya Stilton fans, and for the newcomers from Twitter, welcome :D I hope you enjoy your stay :D

[achaotichuman]

Surprise self-rec time! Pick 3 of your favorite things you’ve written and share them here, then put this in the inbox (anonymously or not) of your fellow writers to spread the positivity and help celebrate already written fics

OMG YES I LOVE THIS!!!!!!

A Witch A Warrior And A Reckoning

I am super proud of this one, it's the first piece of writing I've made where I outlined everything and prepped before actually going ahead and posting (Im usually a *follow the vibe* kinda guy) My writing style is pretty developed now and I think it really shines through with this one. Especially because of how many of my OC's are featured here.

Summary-

Life is peaceful for Dahlia Fairburn, running with her War Band, and commanding the Spring Court armies. Since the day she could wield a sword, she's been helping her father, along with her younger brother, to restore Spring to its former glory. Trying to ignore the festering magic in her body, that threatens to consume her.

One day, all that peace is threatened to be shaken, as a certain prince of Night asks for her to join the rebellion of the Hewn City and Illyria. From beneath the great mountains, an ancient song calls for her. She meets a woman with death in her eyes, and power in her veins, who makes Dahlia's blood boil while something clicks into place between them.

This new generation of Prythian was thought to be one of peace and prosperity. But the mask of the reigning High Lords begin to crumble, as secrets older than Prythian itself are uncovered, and darkness is unleashed.

An ACOTAR next generation fanfiction

How Nesta Archeron Learned To Trap A Beast

I never thought in a million years this would get nearly the amount of attention that it did, but it is now my most popular fic to date. I started writing it because of a poll @kateprincessofbluewhales did about who would take Nesta on a camping trip instead of the Hike from Hell. And an anon suggested Tamlin. I was like "lol that would be so funny" and now it has over 225 kudos and 130 subscriptions

Summary-

When given the choice of being locked up in the House of Wind with the male she despises, or returning to the Human Lands where she will no doubt face certain death. Nesta Archeron takes her chances and decides to return to the Mortal World. However, she is going on her own. After catching a ship and landing herself in Summer, Nesta makes her way through the Spring Lands with one goal in mind, make it to her old home alive without being trapped by any other beastly Faeries.

Little did she know she might be the one catching the beastly Faery.

Crippled by memories and loneliness weighing down on him, Tamlin is near the verge of ending it all. His home is in ruins, his only company the dripping in the corner of the room and sometimes the singing of birds. As his thoughts spin him in circles Tamlin doesn't think life will ever be better than this. Then someone with silver eyes and bad attitude sets foot in his lands.

And well.... Tamlin had never been taught to not poke sleeping bears.

A Court of Song and Desolation

This fic was born from the vibes it has. I was up at 2am on a random Monday night with work the next day, and my writing group sent through a prompt for us to write about. I was struggling with what to write, and then as I was typing something about a beast in a cage, the idea came to make it about Tamlin. Yada yada yada, I turned it into an angsty Tamcien oneshot, and decided "well if anyone wants more (which I doubt they will) Ill make another chapter" Then someone commented they want more and I was sent down the pipeline of hyperfixation. And here we are!

Summary-

She had eyes like starlight and a grin that could outshine the moon, "We'll rule the world."

"What if we fail?"

"Then we'll burn it all down."

In hindsight maybe it could only have ever ended like this. Making a man who was never made to rule, High lord. This was all inevitable.

With his Court in ruins and everyone gone, Tamlin lives amongst the broken pieces of his Court and has no intentions of changing that. Lucien, however, will not stand to leave his oldest friend alone.

When Lucien takes Tamlin back to the human lands, they discover a darkness coming for Prythian. If something does not stop it, it will completely rewrite the way Faeries and humans alike live as they know it

[corn-fanfiction]

quam amiterre ludum (losing the game) James Moriarty x OC

Chapter One: losing the game

Description: "To begin it plainly, she had loved him." This is what Anora chooses to believe, true or no, after the events at the Falls of the Reichenbach. It begins with her covertly taking her recently deceased brother's place at university and meeting Professor James Moriarty. It shifts into a web of illicit acts, crimes, and a game of shadows. How it all ends remains to be seen.

Fic rating: M | Chapter Rating: T

Author Notes: does she finish SAVIOUR COMPLEX? No. Does she finish Old Country for No Men? No of course not. Does she continue If We're Lucky? Don't be silly! Obviously the correct answer is to begin an entirely new fic born of brainrot and hyperfixations. She's not sorry either. (She is me btw).

CW: mentions of scars

To begin it plainly, she had loved him.

Or, at least, that is what she believed.

It is easy to believe that one has had the wool pulled over their eyes, that the rose tint coloring their world made them into fools. That a poisonous and ruinous mixture had somehow been sneaked into them without their knowledge or consent. It is much easier, more comforting to believe this, rather than the likely truth that it had been a series of conscious choices. That a part of that person is poisonous and ruinous.

Anora still is not sure which was the reality of her life before the Reichenbach Fall.

It began with the death of her brother. Joseph had only just received a scholarship to the newly opened Queen Mary University of London, studying mathematics and chemistry. They were subjects that Anora and Joseph both found themselves fascinated by since childhood. They would spend their summers in the country digging through riverbanks for critters and fossils. It was on Joseph's twelfth birthday that their parents gave to him a chalkboard for the study. He and Anora would spend hours upon hours challenging each other with mathematical equations. Anora would have to stand on his stack of textbooks to reach his height to the board. Life remained that way- simple- until their parents died aboard a sunk passenger ship bound for Italy.

Joseph, aged thirty, was older for a student. But he had also been abroad at the time of their parents’ death, so when he returned, he applied for a scholarship. A degree at a prestigious university meant connections and almost guaranteed post graduate work. It meant money for Joseph and Anora, since their parents were no longer able to supply it.

But Joseph never got to go to school. A week after his return to London, the doctors diagnosed him with consumption- the sort that doesn't always show until it already has a person's lungs in its bloody grasp. Joseph died two days later.

For Anora, it was simple. She was built without much curve but a narrow waist and firm shoulders. She could pass as a man of thirty easily, though she was twenty-eight and would look younger regardless. But she had Joseph’s old clothes, his scholarship, a mind to match, and nothing to stop her.

So, with a thick vest, waistcoat, and short hair, Joseph Leeds began at Queen Mary University of London at the start of fall semester.

-

The church is empty when she enters, save for a sole occupant. He sits with his hands between his knees, looking up at the stained glass, his cane resting against the end of the pew.

Anora gathers herself what she can and approaches the doctor from behind. The memorial plaque catches her eye.

“My condolences.”

The doctor jumps a little at her sudden intrusion of his reverie. He speaks before he sees her fully.

“Sorry?”

Once he catches sight of her her, though, the recognition settles in and he sets a steely gaze on her.

“Detective Holmes, I mean. I'm sorry for your loss. Truly. I always thought he was a great man, perhaps even a good one.”

She sits at the pew opposite his and tries to look as earnest as she feels. But the confusion that is paired with her honesty seems to come out as well, making for an understandably wary John Watson.

“Right. I suppose propriety dictates I should offer the same sentiment to you.”

“Nothing proper about any of this,” she chuckles breathlessly. She fidgets with her nails in her lap. There's no one here to judge her for it. “I didn't want him to die.”

“Nor I your professor. Though I expect it's for different reasons.”

Anora bristles at some buried accusation. “Do you think? Because of my emotions and your sense of righteousness?”

Doctor Watson opens his mouth, then closes it. He sighs.

“It doesn't have to be this way.”

No, it doesn't, and Anora knows that. She feels it in her bones that still creak under the weight of an explosion.

“I'm sorry. I've lost so many people in so short a time. I'm alone so often that I can forget how to speak to someone. May I ask you a question?”

His eyes light with the natural curiosity of a doctor…and of a good man. “Of course.”

“Did you…I mean, I know he wasn't buried, but…”

He seems to understand. “They never found a body.”

“Did you look?”

“It was left to local authorities; I wasn't allowed near the investigation.”

Anora nods away her disappointment. “I see.”

“Why do you ask?”

She feels traitorous tears begin to prick at her eyes. “It gives me something to think about. I spend my nights alone, Doctor. Cherish that you do not.”

Watson nods. “I do cherish it.”

“Good. Oh- and I meant to say, congratulations, to you and Mrs. Watson.”

The shock of her knowledge of Mary Watson's pregnancy shows plainly on his face. “How do you-?”

“Word gets around,” she says coyly, then stands and smooths her skirt. “I want you to know that I don't resent you, though it would be dishonest to imply I don't envy you.”

He stands to match her and grabs his cane.

“I'm fortunate enough to have an enviable life,” he says and extends a hand. Anora takes it and they shake.

“Goodbye, doctor. Hopefully you'll not be troubled with me again.”

She goes. He watches her, hesitates, then says before she leaves,

“Anora? I- at the risk of sounding piteous… Would you like to join Mrs. Watson and myself for dinner?”

She turns around and regards his caring face. “You do sound piteous.”

“There's no reason for us to be enemies.”

“Nor is there reason enough for us to be friends. I wonder, sir, if you'd be so willing to extend an olive branch if I weren't a young woman. I chose to be with him. It was a job I took on willingly.”

Watson seems to think on this for a moment before settling on a response.

“The offer stands.”

He doesn't seem to play games the way his partner had. Neither of them do, really. Both matched in the fact that they could never match their counterparts in moves and countermoves. Anora comes here in sincerity and Watson responds in kind.

“A time and place, then.”

-

The time is seven in the evening the following day. The place is the Watson residence.

Earlier in the day, Anora finds herself going through her closet, attempting to find a dress that speaks formal but without too much effort. Not that she has many options. In total she has two evening gowns. Everything else is trousers and shirts and a handful of loose skirts. Any high society raised with her was abandoned the moment she became her brother.

In her shift she paces her bedroom floor. No longer in the dormitories of Queen Mary. No longer enrolled at Queen Mary, in fact. But that's in the past even now. Anora fingers the locket that hangs from her neck and sits

between her breasts. She thinks of him. Many things make her think of him.

It isn't so much that he had seeped into every aspect of her life like one might think. When you love a person like she had, it's easy to see them in the world around you.

It helps that the truth of this soothes the sting of its consequence.

She settles on a green gown that covers most of her skin. After the explosion, she doesn't like showing much. Too many scars prompt people to ask questions and she can only look at someone dumbstruck for an answer so many times. She keeps the locket on though.

The doctor and his wife have taken residence in a nice two story in a part of town removed from much of the construction. It looks to be a good place to start a family.

A maid greets her at the door and takes her jacket. It's weeks from Christmas and London is freezing. In all her dealings with the doctor and the detective, Anora never had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Mary Watson. She's very pretty, with small features and freckles coloring her face. Her pregnancy is showing under her blue frock. Though the choice of clothing is surely for comfort, it still makes Anora feel overdressed.

“Miss Leeds! I've heard so much about you,” Mary says. Anora's sure she means it well but it's too ironic an opportunity to pass.

“I'm sure,” she jokes. Mary seems to understand this immediately and turns sheepish.

The doctor comes to greet her.

“Thank you for coming, Miss Leeds. We haven't had the pleasure of entertaining guests yet.”

“Then I feel honored. It's a lovely home.”

“This way, please.”

The Watsons lead Anora to a dining room that's still in the throes of renovation, but is cleaned up enough for company. John Watson pulls a seat for Anora and pushes her in. As she adjusts her skirt and gathers her bearings, and once the Watsons have sat, she notices a fourth place setting.

“Are we expecting another?”

Mary's polite smile drops and Watson casts a look over Anora's shoulder. She follows his gaze and is honestly more surprised than she's ever been in her life. Because standing behind her, no worse than bruised up, is Detective Sherlock Holmes.

Immediately, Anora shoots up from her seat and bumps her back into the table. Though she has no real reason to fear him, it is like seeing a ghost, and Sherlock Holmes has every right to be a vengeful spirit. Doctor Watson and Mary make moves to help Anora gather herself but she's able to do it on her own and puts plenty of distance between herself and the man she believed to be dead.

“I'm flattered, Anora, truly. But I'm not here to haunt you.”

Holmes sits at the empty seat at the head of the table. John and Mary both lower themselves with hesitation, leaving only Anora standing. Her grasp on the back of her chair is so tight that it manages to absorb the tremulous shaking of her body. What began as shock has dripped its way icily into a sickening fear. Though it makes no sense for his character or sense of law, she feels certain he's going to kill her.

The cook brings out their plates. Holmes greets the dinner with a pleased “ah!” and tucks his napkin into his collar. Once she realizes no one is immediately out to hurt her, Anora eases herself back into her seat but doesn't go anywhere near her food.

They go on eating in silence for far too long. Only the awkward clattering of silverware and the snoring of a dog can be heard.

“So, Anora, how are your studies?”

Anora realizes that she's been staring holes into the patterned tablecloth when Mary pulls her attention. The bizarre nature of the question, or rather it being asked in the middle of such bizarre circumstances, leaves Anora befuddled.

“I- I'm sorry?”

“Your schooling. John tells me you transferred to the University of London. How are you liking it?”

Anora watches Mary with uncertainty until she decides the question is being asked in earnest. Instead of answering, she turns to Holmes.

“What's going on? How are you- I mean, how long have you-”

“We knew it was only a matter of time before your guilt drove you to visit my memorial, thank you, by the way, for your sympathies, so we waited for you to broach the conversation first. From there it was simple. Watson is unceasingly charming when he wants to be,” Holmes explains. Watson catches the end and looks offended.

“I'd like to think I'm charming more often than not.”

His wife puts a reassuring hand on his.

“So, is this some sort of sick joke? This doesn't make sense, I saw you die.”

And remembering so vividly that night makes Anora's chest tighten.

“You didn't, actually. Watson tells me you two didn't go to the trouble of checking we fell into the Falls in the first place. Supposed I'd grabbed onto a ledge.”

“Yes, and suppose you can breathe underwater,” Anora snaps. Holmes chuckles but she's thoroughly unamused. “It is funny to you! How dare you?” Anora pushes herself from the table again, this time throwing her napkin onto her untouched plate. “I did everything I could that night! It was you who drove me away from that balcony. I could have helped you. I could've helped him-!”

Anora stops herself with a hiccuping cough as hot tears fall down her face. She turns away from her audience and covers her mouth to muffle the embarrassing noise of her anguish.

“He never would have left with you,” Watson says. Anora grabs her napkin and dabs at her eyes with it. The audacity for the detective to be so cruel, for them to talk about him like-

Anora stills; drops the napkin. Turns back to the table shakily.

“But- if you're alive, then…”

“And now we come to the climax of the show, the reason for the facade. Miss Leeds, your beloved professor is in fact alive, and you're going to assist us in finding him.”

[linksondreamhomes]

Hello everyone! It's been a while.

So. I still have a bunch of houses saved in drafts I never posted because I never made their blueprint. I'm the kind of ADHD that I struggle to do anything ever unless I'm actively hyperfixating on it in the moment, and also my life has been rather hectic so I've reached the conclusion that I have no idea when I will ever find the time and energy to make said blueprints.

I know I designed my original blueprint system to be easy to rearrange into something usable, but I didn't figure out until I was decently far along that I had done the measurements incorrectly, so I spent twice as long driving myself nuts trying to make it look right each time. I really don't have the energy or motivation to remake the whole thing right now when the whole point of the project was I was doing it for fun.

So! I have decided I'm going to queue up the remaining houses that I have, and post then as just the video. I might draw someone of them out on paper since it's something I could do quickly, but if I do I will probably post them in a reblog or edit.

I apologize for the inconvenience! I made this blog not just to post what I came up with but to give people the chance to build it themselves, and it kinda fails in the second half by just posting them without the blueprint. I figured it's better to post the video than just leaving them to rot in my drafts though.

With that said, while I cannot promise when I will return to build new houses, I do in fact own a switch capture card now, and I could always record instruction videos on how to build the old houses as well as new ones. Hopefully one day I will find the time and energy to do so.

EDIT: I did in fact build some new houses! People seem to be liking them so I've started fiddling around in the game again. I already have some new ones added to the queue.

Still not sure on when I will have the time to make tutorials, but hopefully I will in the summer. I forgot how much fun it was messing around with this game, it's kinda like a combination of the Sims 4 and legos to me.

[omegawizardposting]

The deeper I delve into my second phase of ScarVi hyperfixation, the more I realize just what a shitshow these games actually are. We were all way too lenient on them, I'll be honest.

I'm going to be talking about mechanics specifically, since we all already know the performance and graphics are ass.

First, let me note that the steps taken BACK from Legends: Arceus are EGREGIOUS. Legends: Arceus had quick, snappy gameplay that respected the player's time. Its out of battle catching mechanic was universally beloved and made for a much less tedious experience overall. The ability to grow Nature Mints and availability of Gravels (which augmented your Pokemon's EVs) made customizing Pokemon a relatively painless experience.

Lets start with battling. In ScarVi, we see the return of mandatory turn-by-turn combat. This is fine while playing through the story, but a major part of Pokemon's appeal is its postgame, which is dominated by one, singular activity: customizing your Pokemon. Whether you breed for the perfect 'mon or hunt for them in the wild, the majority of long-term players spend their postgame acquiring Pokemon.

In Legends: Arceus, this could be done without ever having to enter battle, but even if you chose to do so, battling was significantly speedier than in previous gens. No more waiting five seconds for a text box to tell you that your Pokemon is paralyzed. You were in and out in the blink of an eye.

Gen 9 returned to the franchise's roots, turning catching Pokemon into a slog. Unless you're using Quick Balls, it's possible to spend minutes at a time on some of the trickier catches, such as the Paradox Pokemon. I just got finished hunting for a Modest/Timid Sandy Shocks (did I mention that Synchronize no longer has its usual out of battle effect?), and at one point, I was so unlucky that I spent upwards of five full minutes watching text and battle animations play out. In Legends: Arceus, if you didn't catch your target on the first ball, you weren't punished for it. In ScarVi, if that bitch breaks out, it's going to be another eternity before you get to throw another ball.

Speaking of battle animations, they're on. Permanently. I'm the kind of person who prefers to save money (to the tune of 500k) by EV training my 'mons the old fashioned way. To expedite this process, I used to turn off battle animations. No longer an option. You will sit there and watch every animation or you will grind Raids for money for vitamins.

Okay, well, if catching Pokemon is such a pain, why not just catch one and use a Nature Mint? My sweet summer child, we can no longer grow them. The only way to obtain Mints now is by taking on 5-star+ Tera Raids, none of which are guaranteed to drop even a single Mint. Add onto that the bugginess of Tera Raids and you've got a recipe for disaster.

So no Gravels and we can't grow our own Mints.

Are you starting to see the problem here?

All right, the Paradox Pokemon might be annoying, but for every other Pokemon, why not just get a Ditto with good IVs and breed for the right nature? Darling of my heart, apple of my eye, they fucked breeding up, too. The picnic system is so unintuitive that it boggles my mind how it got past player testing. (Do they even DO player testing? It sure doesn't seem like it.) Not only is the acquisition of eggs painfully slow without the use of Egg Power sandwiches (DON'T GET ME STARTED ON THE FUCKING SANDWICHES), you cannot produce eggs and hatch eggs at the same time. The only time eggs are produced is while picnicking. You cannot change your party once a picnic has begun, and even if you could, steps taken while picnicking DO NOT COUNT.

Overworld traversal is clunky. Places that feel like they should have fly locations don't, while others have far too many. Gliding and flying on Mir/Koraidon is SLOW, probably because if they moved any faster in the air, your Switch would explode. (I have never played a more poorly optimized Nintendo game.) Mir/Koraidon would rather slip and slide than stick to a climable surface half the time.

POKEMON.

HAVE.

NO.

COLLISION.

The amount of times I've exited one battle only to immediately be forced into another because an aggressive Pokemon quite literally shoved its entire body up my tight little asshole is TOO DAMN HIGH.

Both of the DLC Legendaries (or are they considered Mythicals?) force you to capture them after a stupidly lengthy battle. Ogerpon and Terapagos have MULTIPLE phases. Resetting for different natures is simply not an option if you value your time at all. This is coming from the guy who reset for Eternatus, don't even bother. Grind Raids. Use a Mint.

As far as I'm aware, there is no quick way to jump through your inventory. You must scroll. And scroll. And scroll. Arceus help you if you're looking for something in the middle of the bag. (In USUM, you could press L or R to jump down several items, which was a lifesaver when you were looking for, say, a Protect TM.)

Why are TMs single use again? Who asked for craftable TMs?

The list goes on...

I remember being so hopeful for these games, and honestly, I had fun playing through the story both times. It was when I got to the postgame and started hunting 'mons that I could no longer ignore their flaws. ScarVi was not a game built with longevity in mind, which is INSANE given how big and dedicated the competitive scene is. You are meant to play through their story, maybe the DLC stories, too, and then never, EVER touch them again.

[dani-luminae]

Dani’s Fic List

As promised for my 300 followers celebration, a list of all my active fics on Quotev! I think this is comprehensive. If there’s a fic that’s left off, that’s by accident. All of these are on my “published” list on Quotev.

For this story list, I’ll start with ones that already have links posted on here, then move to other lesser-known ones (below the cut). These are listed in no particular order at all.

@auradon-bore-a-don Since you asked to be tagged, here it is! Like 95% of this is all Descendants-related. It’s been my hyperfixation since the first book came out back in early summer 2015 and it’s stuck... 

Behold, a bunch of nonsense that comes from an overactive imagination and no social life!

-

 Title + link: Sophronia

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: Sequel “A” to Good to be Bad: A Disney Descendants Twisted Tale, this story focuses on Ben and Audrey’s adopted daughter, Sophie. When the terrible Horned King escapes the Isle of the Lost, Sophie sets out to protect her kingdom from any evil, no matter who it is.

Title + link: Nightshade Rose

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: Sequel “B” and a sort of “What if?” take on Good to be Bad: A Disney Descendants Twisted Tale, this story is focused on Princess Nightshade, a Princess of Auradon who lives unaware that her parents are the Rulers of Evil who threaten her land.

Title + link: Never Enough

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: The sequel to Rewrite the Stars; Ben follows Lia to her home planet of Solasar as Lia prepares to marry her fiancé and become Queen. However, there’s more happening on Solaar than they could ever expect.

Title + link: The True Defender

Fandoms: Disney’s Descendants (mostly), Treasure Planet

Basic plot: A D2- and D3-based AU featuring Lia. Will also go on to cover an AU of Good to be Bad: A Disney Descendants Twisted Tale.

Title + link: Love from the Stars

Fandoms: Disney Descendants; contains elements from the world of Treasure Planet

Basic plot: Ben and Mal’s wedding is derailed by the arrival of space pirates who abduct Ben, but he’s rescued by an Etherial, one of the most powerful creatures in the galaxies.

Title + link: A Wondrous Place

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: Essentially an AU of Descendants, just with BenJay as the endgame instead of Bal.

Title + link: Come Alive

Fandoms: Disney ZOMBIES

Basic plot: Zeraphina is a Zombrid – half-human and half-Zombie – forced to hide her hair color and fit in. But now that Zombies are welcome at Seabrook High, she’s hoping to start on a new chapter of her life, one where she doesn’t have to hide who she is.

Title + link: Darkness Falling

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: Book 2 (of 3) in my Dark Haven series; Bianca, Princess of Dark Haven and daughter of the Rulers of All Evil, returns to the kingdom of Auradon to help Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos destroy the talismans (from Rise of the Isle of the Lost.) But there’s a more dangerous threat that none of them know of… (This fic is completed and this link currently acts as a placeholder for this series, until the sequel is published.)

Title + link: Fate and Fairy Tales

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: Carly is looking forward to a happily-ever-after with her fiancé Chad Charming, as Carlos looks forward to a future without their mother around. But the sudden and unexpected arrival of their father, the malevolent king of a magical race, complicates everything. (This fic is dedicated to Cameron Boyce, who passed shortly before its publishing.)

Title + link: Blue Fire

Fandoms: Sky High and Disney’s Descendants (crossover)

Basic plot: Haley is just your average, everyday super-powered teenager attending Sky High. It just so happens that her hair turns into blue fire and she has no idea where she comes from, or who her father really is. 

Title + link: The Crown and the Sea

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: a crossover between me and my girlfriend @megamultifandomtrashposts featuring our characters Bianca and Sophia. Bianca is with Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos as they return to the Isle of the Lost (from May Evil Reign), but the reign of Ursula’s daughter, Sophia, over the Isle complicates things...

Title + link: An Untold Story: Tales of Auradon

Fandoms: Once Upon a Time and Disney’s Descendants (crossover)

Basic plot: The second of three books in my An Untold Story crossover between OUaT and Descendants, this book takes place between Season 3A and Season 3B of OUaT. Instead of going to the Land Without Magic, Emma and Henry come to Auradon to stay with King Adam, Rose, and the rest of their adoptive family. This book includes an adaptation of Rise of the Isle of the Lost and the first Descendants movie.

Title + link: Heroes and Villains

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: This four-part story encompasses the first Isle of the Lost book, the first Descendants movie, and the Return to the Isle of the Lost book, before departing into an OG fourth part. This is the story of Royal, Mal’s half-sister, in a version of Auradon where the Isle of the Lost wasn’t the first solution for working with the villains and history is a bit different.

Title + link: Spells Were Made to be Broken

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: Basically a crossover between Heroes and Villains and the world of Descendants 3 post-D3, Royal, Chloe, and Skalja, the Princess Trio, are tasked to save the kingdom from an unexpected enemy.

Title + link: The Return

Fandoms: Disney Descendants and MCU (crossover, kinda?)

Basic plot: An adaptation of Return to the Isle of the Lost, featuring my OCs Lily and Balthazar, the children of Loki (from the MCU.) This isn’t an active story exactly, but it is the latest in the series while I’m planning out the next and final book.

Title + link: More than Flesh and Bone

Fandoms: Disney Descendants and Disney ZOMBIES (crossover)

Basic plot: Gwyn, a cheerleader in Seabrook, has mysterious ties to a certain Werewolf pack, ties that originate from her mother on the faraway Isle of the Lost.

Title + link: The Dragon That Cannot Fly

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: In the third and final book of her series, Nara, the adopted daughter of Queen Narissa, must team up with Naros, her brother from an alternate and almost-identical world, in order to put a permanent end to Queen Narissa’s evil.

Title + link: The Believers

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: In an OUAT-inspired story that combines OCs from various different stories, Ben awakens from a coma and discovers that his memories of Auradon were nothing but dreams. However, he soon learns that the world he’s in, Auradon City, is really his kingdom placed under a curse and controlled by Maleficent.

Title + link: Not All Treasure is Silver and Gold

Fandoms: Disney Descendants and Pirates of the Caribbean series (crossover, sorta)

Basic plot: Jackie is the daughter of Captain Jack Sparrow and Angelica. When she goes to Auradon, she finds a little adventure and a little romance with an old friend and a new one. (No love triangle, just polyamory.)

Title + link: Fathoms Below

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: In the final book of Selina’s series, Selina must confront and defeat Morveren, the first evil Sea Witch and the originator of her lineage, in order to protect her family and her kingdom. With fewer allies than ever before, this is quite a daunting task.

Title + link: The Unusual Kingdom Keeper

Fandoms: Disney Descendants and the Kingdom Keepers book series

Basic plot: Aria, the twin sister of Audrey, unexpectedly finds herself in the Magic Kingdom. In this world, Disney Characters are made real through the power of children’s belief in them, heroes and villains alike. And the villains are just as evil as ever.

Title + link: The Thieves in the Shadows

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: The second book featuring Jay and Aza, the two of them try to track down a mysterious rash of thefts throughout Agrabah. Unfortunately, they uncover a plot launched by Jay’s mother, the sorceress Azirah, to take over all the lands.

Title + link: The Rebel Descendant

Fandoms: Disney Descendants and Ever After High

Basic plot: Reign is Raven Queen’s adopted sister, and a Rebel to the core. But there’s more to Reign’s story than just a Rebel. She comes from somewhere else, somewhere that doesn’t need a Storybook of Legends.

Title + link: Maddie Baylor and the Second Titanomachy

Fandoms: Percy Jackson and the Olympians

Basic plot: Maddie is a friend of Percy Jackson, the son of Poseidon, and she’s no stranger to the world of gods and monsters; after all, she’s a daughter of Dionysus, herself. When it becomes clear that the Titans plan to rise again and defeat the Olympians once and for all, she’ll fight by Percy’s side in quest after quest to save the world.

Title + link: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Fandoms: Disney in general, I guess?

Basic plot: Belladonna Valaise is an apprentice studying in Sorcerer’s Town in a hidden, magical dimension. When an unusually mouse-like apprentice from another place arrives, seeking help to recover his master’s Animating Pen, Belladonna decides to seek out a little adventure and help.

Title + link: Bringer of Spring

Fandoms: Dreamworks’ Rise of the Guardians

Basic plot: Embla Springbringer has a very important job: each year, on Groundhogs Day, she battles the Frost Giant Rasgol to end winter and allow spring to come to her small Norwegian fjord. Embla has been doing this job even since the Man in the Moon called on her to do so. Now, the Man in the Moon has a very different job for her: becoming a Guardian to help defend the world’s children against Pitch Black.

Title + link: The Heroes of Tomorrow: The Next Trickster

Fandoms: Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow

Basic plot: An AU and then some of the movie Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow featuring my OC, Lokabrenna, daughter of Loki.

Title + link: Frost and Flame

Fandoms: Sky High and the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Basic plot: When Muspels, the Flame Giant enemies of Frost Giants, begin to come after Cassia for her half-Jotun heritage, Cassia is forced to turn to the last people she would like to help her: the Avengers.

 ~

Shared stories! These stories are shared/co-authored/inspired by @thetimelordbatgirl and her stories. 

Title + link: The Daughters of the Trickster

Fandoms: Disney Descendants, MCU, and Marvel’s Descendants

Basic plot: In our very first crossover, our OCs Lily and Locket meet for the first time and have to navigate the realization of alternate worlds and alternate families while battling Mariana, Lily’s mother.

Title + link: The Trickster’s Daughters Return

Fandoms:  Disney Descendants, MCU, and Marvel’s Descendants

Basic plot: In the second team-up, Lily and Locket return to join forces. They must face Mariana again, but this time the stakes are higher, with the impending freedom of the demonic Chernabogs.

Title + link: Sisters of Fire

Fandoms: Disney Descendants, Sky High, and Marvel’s Descendants (crossover)

Basic plot: An AU of Haley’s story, Blue Fire. Haley is not the only inexplicably fire-powered child at Whitefield Foster House. She has a foster-sister named Jayla, a powerful girl with golden eyes who can transform into a magnificent and fearsome dragon.

Title + link: Devil’s Due

Fandoms: Disney Descendants and Marvel’s Descendants

Basic plot: An AU of the above story. What if Haley was never kidnapped? What if she stayed on the Isle with her father? And what if Jayla had still found her way to this family? They’re quite the unexpected family, that’s for sure.

Title + link: Ties to Evil

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: A future AU on Heroes and Villains, inspired by the Family Business series. The second in the series featuring my OCs such as Adam (son of Royal) and Beryl (daughter of Beast and Belle.)

Title + link: The Dragon’s Son

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: A future AU on Nara’s series, inspired by the Family Business series. In which Fairen is the son of both Evie and Nara, he reluctantly leaves his mothers behind on the Isle when Prince Alexander chooses him to come to Auradon in his proclamation. While in Auradon, Fairen learns of Nara’s unlikely connection to Auradon, and the kidnapped Princess Roseleta.

Title + link: Heirs of Agrabah

Fandoms: Disney Descendants

Basic plot: A future AU on Aza’s story, inspired by the Family Business series. Ben’s proclamation never happened, but now his son Alexander chooses some children to leave the Isle of the Lost. One of these children is Jayra, daughter of Jay, who makes a unique and unexpected connection to Aza.

Congrats! You’ve reached the end of my list of masterpieces and nonsense.

[the-official-pentacorn]

my 2021!

*crawls out of hole* hrmf must return to tumble to make year end post

this has to be the first time in at least half a year that i’ve opened tumblr desktop lol. i’m barely on here anymore but @the-last-airbadger​ did a reflection post and well, here we are somehow

the beginning of 2021 vs now

like i said in my last reflection post, i have horrible memory (which i now know is rampant adhd, bless) but i’ll try my best to remember some stuff.

if anything, the beginning of the year was shit. all of us got covid in late january and my dad ended up in the intensive care unit where he could have honestly died. in hindsight i was also still struggling with body image a lot. i actually started recording yearly new years video messages to myself last year, and today when i watched that video it reminded me of the mental place i was in... which wasn’t great. i was also going through friendship drama because of a dumb crush, which looking back now might have just been... adhd hyperfixation but on a person (that diagnosis really put some things into perspective this year). and on top of everything i was gearing up for 6 months of online classes from Korea, shitty timezone struggles included, instead of the 6 months in-person exchange i’d been looking forward to for ages. i did dye my hair though! but that just turned out ugly as well so it was a waste of both my money and hair lol.

BUT! summer was when i shined. she was living her hot girl era and doing her hot girl shit including but not limited to:

1. impulse buying anything and everything!

2. shaved off half my brows lol

3. outrageous makeup looks

4. had a gender crisis and impulsively cut off all my hair (regret)

5. barely slept

6. suddenly very social and outgoing

...which is just giving mania but that’s a bag of worms for another time lol. but i did have a really good summer considering i only had 2 weeks of break before crashing right into my 3rd year fall semester. then came fall and winter and my mood came down with it, and these last 3 months have sucked all the life out of me again. switching back to physical classes after a year and a half was both a blessing and a curse. on the flipside i could actually see friends, participate in class, and feel like a kinda normal uni student for once. on the downside... my mondays were insanely long which wiped me out for the rest of the week, not even considering all the readings and assignments i had to do for my shitty management minor that i should have just not chosen but for some reason did. christmas break should have been my first real break since february, but i’m already gearing up for resits in january and an essay as well. i’ve been in full on vegetable mode this last week (only half by choice). i guess i have to start doing stuff again starting tomorrow... someone help

but yeah, i guess i did grow as a person a little bit? i did try a lot of stuff i’ve wanted to try for a while at least. and i also took the first steps toward finding out what’s actually up with me and my mental health by getting checked for adhd (and autism) which i think counts for a lot.

the best things about 2021

there’s a few things that were really good this year. i recently received news that i got accepted for 3 months study abroad in Korea at my no.1 university pick next year, which is one of the major things keeping me going. summer was also really fun, i went out with friends a lot to theme parks, zoos, the beach, you name it. i also met 2 exchange students from Korea who I became good friends with and who helped me improve my Korean a lot (and me their Dutch). another thing is that i fell head first back into my k-pop hobby (i mean what else was going to happen being online so much) and met new friends and reconnected with old friends through it. starting an ateez collection... good for the serotonin, bad for the bank account. i’m proud of finishing my 6 months online with high marks. and lastly, finally getting my adhd diagnosis has helped me a lot, both on a personal level and academically.

my resolutions for 2021

i didn’t have many resolutions for this year. the ones i did have were:

1. get to know myself better

2. take a few more scary steps towards adulthood

3. continue making an effort to be kind to myself and others

i think i did get to know myself a lot better. steps towards adulthood... i’m afraid i haven’t taken many, but i am thinking a little more long term now and i’m slowly becoming less freaked out about the future. i’m lucky i don’t have to worry about stuff like taxes yet tho. and i’d like to think i’ve been pretty kind to myself this year, everything considered. i hope my friends feel loved as well, because yes, you very much are ♡

my expectations for 2021

well, my expectations fell through almost completely:

1. i’ll move out sometime this year

2. i’ll get a parttime job if covid allows

3. reliable vaccines will get accessible for everyone sooner rather than later

4. my university will greenlight our summer trip to Korea 🤡

5. i’ll get a lot better at Korean through the 6 month language course

6. i’ll get a girlfriend 🤡

this year has left me no mental energy to do anything outside of school. so moving out, a job, a girlfriend (lol) understandably didn’t happen. covid screwed up the Korea summer trip, and i didn’t improve much at all over those 6 months because of multiple reasons. the only thing that kind of happened was vaccines rolling out, but compared to the rest of the world we were really slow to vaccinate.

2022 resolutions/expectations

i’m usually not big on resolutions, but i guess i do have some for next year. first of all, i want to actually start planning with the system my psychologist gave me and start getting a little more organized. i also want to get at least a 7 for my bachelors thesis and finish all my courses this year, whatever it takes. i want to push myself to at least start tasks and work on them little by little, instead of leaving everything to the last moment. i would also love to replace basically my entire wardrobe because it’s full of old stuff i don’t actually like. also i need to be more careful with my money. and of course the usual, be kind to myself, appreciate the world and others, etc etc.

as for expectations. hm. if anything, i don’t expect the covid situation to get much better because people are the worst. i expect to go to Korea for my study abroad if the universe has mercy on me. i also expect to finish my bachelors programme (preferably with okay grades). ooh, and if covid doesn’t fuck everything over, i’ll be going to the ateez concert in february (with a vip ticket if i’m lucky!) which will be the best. 

friend shoutout!

don’t really feel like tagging, but if you’re reading this, you know who you are. i love you and i appreciate you so much. i can be a lot to deal with sometimes and i really wonder what i did to deserve you all. let’s make 2022 a year that doesn’t suck :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR! 새해 복 많이 받으세요!

[darnittumbleweed]

I JUST REALIZED THIS BLOG WILL BE A YEAR OLD NEXT MONTH. I started this blog as a stress reaction to covid hitting and me being placed on a remote learning and a furlough from my student job I had at the time....like I went on spring break and never returned to community college in person.... I was coping rather poorly and returned to a hyperfixation I’d had since high school after I became disillusioned with Game Grumps....It’s almost been a year....a year...and Covid is still a thing. I don’t know if I should be laughing or crying....Also I don’t have a job...and I’m in a four year university instead of a community college...but I’ll be getting my associates degree in the summer soooo....but my blog is almost a year old...the f man....nothing has changed and everything has changed...

Do I buy my blog a birthday cake??? It’s its first birthday...does it need a smash cake? Do I choose a theme for it? DO I have a party??? I shouldn’t we’re in a pandemic....

[widonotts]

Thanks For Ten ❤️

Starkid has been such a constant fixture in my life that it’s strange to think it’s only been around for ten years. At the same time, I remember the first time I watched A Very Potter Musical, a couple months after it went viral. I was in third grade and had read about it on some Harry Potter fansite, so I pulled up Act 1, Part 1. But I was an eight-year-old nerd who hadn’t yet realized I could be both the Smart Kid and the Theatre Kid—I didn’t see High School Musical until I was in high school myself and thus never learned from Gabriella’s arc—so I was actively suppressing my love for musicals. There’s also the fact I didn’t understand some of the jokes, which I’ll attribute to my youth and purity and also my lack of High School Musical knowledge. I decided the show wasn’t for me and promptly forgot about it.

A couple years later, though, I was raving about Harry Potter to a Girl Scout camp counselor who asked if I’d seen AVPM, and when I told her no, she acknowledged I was probably too young for it. I didn’t take it as a challenge immediately, but that conversation sat in the back of my mind for a while before I revisited it. The second time I watched it, I fell in love, and I fell hard.

So many of my memories of early adolescence involve Starkid, and I look back on those memories with so much fondness. I remember my friend and I unabashedly singing “Granger Danger” during science class; I remember another eleven-year-old friend approaching me at the lunch table, shell-shocked, and when I asked what was wrong, he told me he’d tried to watch Me and My Dick. I remember when the 2014 Summer Season was announced, and somehow (that is, through nonstop chores and yard work), I got to go. I went on GIMP and made my very own T-shirt design by dragging the Brush tool to spell out “Meet me at my place, the Fortress of Friendship!” in block letters inside a crude Superman logo, printing it out on that iron-on transfer paper and carefully applying it to a craft store white t-shirt. I wore it to Ani, where I asked Brian Holden to sign it, and it became my pride and joy.

Everything about the Summer Season was, for lack of a better word, totally awesome. Waiting in line for Ani, a group of older girls were kind enough to talk to me and my mom. She acknowledged that she’d worked in theatre herself, and therefore had seen a lot of risqué performances, and asked them “if there would be anything she’d blush at”; for some reason, those girls and I insisted there would be nothing of the sort. I can’t believe she didn’t drag me out at the first mention of Death Star boobs. But I loved the show, and I adored Trail to Oregon the next day. The Dikrats may have their official canonized names now, but to me, that family will always be Bitch Tits, Little Shit, Rico, Genghis Khan, and Jeff Blim Bacon.

Meeting the Starkids after the shows, though, was by far the best part of the experience, and I don’t know if I really have all the words to describe it. It was beyond inspiring. They all treated me with such humility and kindness; it still stirs me every time I think of it. A couple of them even seemed surprised that I asked for a picture. To know that each person in this group I adored so dearly was so grounded and kind… It was amazing, and looking back on those photos makes me smile despite myself; I was an awkward, gangly, anxious, overeager kid, but in every photo, my eyes are shining with happiness and my lopsided grin is wider than ever.

After a while, I fell out of complete hyperfixation, but Starkid’s shows stayed present with me. I sang the songs, referenced the jokes, dreamed of playing the characters, and watched AVPM every year on July 31st, but it wasn’t the degree of obsession I had in my early teens. I watched Firebringer the moment it was released, and I raved many times about how incredible it would be if they released the rights—and here we are!

Even though a couple years went by without hyperfixating on Starkid, my love for it stuck with me through years of difficulty with mental illness, and that means everything to me. I remember a very hard day when I didn’t know what to do or how to go on. I listened to “Not Alone,” and I cried, and even though I felt isolated and small, I felt at the same time that I was loved and that there was hope for my life and my future. That one moment has stuck with me, but it is not the only time Starkid truly helped me save my life.

Even with all the impact it had on me, it wasn’t until I watched The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals that my hyperfixation returned in full force. I had been anticipating its release for a while; when it was announced, I was about to leave my home city to go to college in Chicago, and I was so pumped to see that I would finally be living in good old Chi-Town when a Starkid show was released… only to learn that it would be playing in Los Angeles. But I guess I forgive them for not catering to me specifically, because seeing TGWDLM for the first time (and the ten times since) was extraordinary, and I was immediately in deep.

I’m The Starkid Girl again, and this time, I’m not self-conscious about it. When I was younger, I usually hid my passions, fearful of judgement, and my love for Starkid was no exception (except, of course, for that wonderful impromptu “Granger Danger” karaoke session in the middle of science class). I was a nerd; I knew what it was like to have people make fun of me for the things I found awe-inspiring, so I kept myself hidden, singing “The Coolest Girl” day and night but never quite having the courage to put myself out there in real life. Now, though, I’m going back to Starkid, and I’m not afraid to show it.

It’s wild to be in Chicago now, to live in the same city where so much of Starkid’s work was created. The first time I went to a counselor whom I now visit weekly, I took the L, got off at Belmont, and was amazed to see that my new counselor’s office was one single block away from Stage 773, where I had been so struck with awe at Trail to Oregon and Ani five years before. Every week, I walk past the giant “773” with reverence, and before I get back on the L to go home, I walk past the station to get a coffee at the Starbucks right past the Annoyance, where so many Starkids have performed. Typing it out, it seems silly, but it truly instills me with so much joy and inspiration to know I live in the same world as these people who have done such amazing things, people for whom I hold so much respect and admiration.

Because I myself am now a year into college, I’m even more struck at the ingenuity, dedication, and talent of the college kids who produced a hilarious Harry Potter musical ten years ago, and even more grateful that they took that success and continued to create and perform and inspire people with their productions. Whether it’s with Starkid, associated companies like the Tin Can Bros, or unrelated groups, the work all of these people has done never ceases to embolden me not only as an aspiring actress and creator of art, but also, most importantly, as a person. Starkid is a group of wonderful people who have done wonderful things, inspiring so many people along the way, and I cannot thank them enough for it. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

This has been far too long a note, so I guess I’ll wrap it up before it gets too late. I just have one more episode left in my rewatch of Choose Our Destiny.

— Lelah

[novantinuum]

the time we lost, the time we mended (Chapter 4)

AO3

Rating: T

Words: ~ 3600 

Story Summary: Before the summer of 2012, Ford and Fiddleford never thought they’d get the opportunity to see each other again. Now… they have a second chance. A chance to rekindle the love they once shared, reconnect a family once lost, and to mend old wounds. But as they’ll quickly discover, fixing the mistakes of the past doesn’t always come easy. Nor is it always possible. RP to fic.

A Fiddauthor reunion story written by @the-ill-doctor​ and I! This chapter features Stan and Fidds bonding over cooking, the ol’ McGucket family gravy recipe, and scrapbook-ortunities. Also, Ford can’t deny it any longer- he definitely still has a crush...

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3

Fiddleford crept across the hardwood floor at a sloth’s tempo, gently testing the corners of each board for extreme creaks and whines before pressing his full weight upon them. The little alarm clock resting on the dresser in the parlor Stanford let him sleep in read eight o’ four when he left. Since he didn’t know how late or early anyone in this here Shack slept in normally, he figured he should stay as quiet as he could. The last thing he wanted to do was give any of the fellas living here an unexpected spook.

He yawned deeply, quickly slamming his hands over his mouth when he realized how unintentionally loud he was being. Dagnabbit, he wanted his surprise breakfast to be a surprise to the family, not announced to the whole world before he could cook it! Muttering to himself, he hurried his pace, luckily managing to avoid the brunt of the squeaky boards as he entered the kitchen. He then set about rummaging through the shelves and drawers to see if they had all the right ingredients for omelets, or maybe biscuits and gravy. Definitely biscuits and gravy, he decided, since Stan didn’t seem to have any veggies he could toss in an omelet.

Hopefully he could remember his ma’s recipe in full this time...

Fidds heard heavy footsteps approaching, and a brash yawn. He turned and froze like a spooked deer intercepted by headlights on the backroads, standing on a chair in mid-reach for a baking sheet on the top of the shelf. Stanley stood in the doorway of the kitchen in his underwear and a tank top.

“Oh,” he said flatly, drinking in the scene before him. “Good mornin’, possum breath. Need help cooking anything?”

“M-mornin’, Stanley,” he said, and nervously tugged at his beard. He climbed down from the counter. Honestly, he still wasn’t sure how to act around Ford’s brother, considering how stand-offish he’d acted towards him in the past. “I- I’m fine, I just wanted to surprise y’all with some grub to thank you for lettin’ me stay here!”

“Well, no need to thank me,” Stan mumbled almost imperceptibly. “It’s Ford’s house, after all. But... eh, you’re welcome I guess.”

Fiddleford could practically sense the cool metallic intensity of that man’s eyes boring through the back of his head as he continued searching about the kitchen, trawling for ingredients. He scratched at his arm. Constant surveillance made him feel kinda itchy.

“Uh, hey? If you’re making biscuits, then how ‘bout I make some bacon?” Stan spoke up then.

He grinned wide, flashing what teeth he had left. “Sure! Can’t have biscuits and gravy without ‘em! Now let's see, after flour I need... uh-" His brows sank, growing pensive as he desperately tried to sort through recently recalled memory. "Come on, Fiddleford, you should know this..."

Wordlessly, Stan pulled the correct ingredients off the shelves and placed them on the counter for him. He then got out a frying pan for himself, for bacon duty.

"Oh, thank ya’," he said, walking over to the counter to observe the ingredients. "Although-" He placed his hand on his mouth and leered at the food Stan set up for him. "There's somethin' missin', I just know it! Mcgucket, Mcgucket... The Mcgucket Family Secret Gravy Recipe!" He opened the fridge, and found a half used can of brown meat. "I can't believe I almost forgot this! My ma would have my hide if I messed up her gravy!"

“You’re rememberin’ more and more every day, aren’tcha?” Stan asked suddenly, glancing towards him as he watched the bacon beginning to sizzle. “After all that mind wiping cult stuff got taken down…”

Fiddleford nodded amicably, amid measuring flour and baking powder into his bowl. "Some days I get a ton o' them back and other days it's very slow." He looked up at the other man, smiling sincerely. "It's tricky piecin' a lot of them back, especially the ones about your brother. But I'm just happy I finally remember who I am!”

"That's, uh... that's real great," he said with a weak laugh, attention drifting away to the bacon again.

His smile faltered. Part of him wondered what was going on in Stanley’s mind right now, but the other part of him feared gathering the nerve to ask. It probably ain’t his business anyways.

Within a few minutes, he’d mixed everything together and formed the biscuits between his hands on the baking sheet. As he waited for the oven to heat up, he began to hum an old silly song he recalled his pa used to sing while strummin’ on the guitar... Oh, grandma’s in the cellar, and boy don’t you smell her cookin’ biscuits on that darn ol’ dirty stove? In her eye there’s a matter that keeps drippin’ in the batter, and she whistles as a- *SNIFF*- runs down her nose! His ma despised it, if he remembered correctly. He carefully edged the sheet into the oven, and pretty soon the sweet aroma of his cooking began to waft throughout the shack.

"Ya know, I used ta’ make this all the time for your brother,” he mentioned offhand.

"Is that so?" Stan said, raising a brow. "Well, good on ya'. Some days I think Ford would've starved to death if there weren’t someone there ta' feed him. I swear, it’s like he’s too distracted to eat half the time."

"You’re tellin’ me!" Fiddleford laughed. "I literally had to wrangle him into a chair and tie him down to get him to eat whenever finals came around!"

The other man’s face lit up, and he let out a loud bark of laughter- genuine, this time. "Yeah, that sounds like 'im, that nerd," he said, laying the cooked bacon on a plate. "Hey... it, uh- sounds like your memory's returning better then you thought. You said you had trouble remembering stuff about Ford, but... that's two memories right after another."

Fiddleford's amused chuckling died down as he stopped to think for a moment. "You’re right,” he murmured, eyes widening into saucers. He stared up at Stanley with probably the calmest expression he's ever given him. "Thank ya’!"

"For what? You're the one remembering everything, all I did was talk to ya'..."

"Well, talking to ya’ really helped." Fiddleford replied, still smiling. "It's hard rememberin’ on your own."

At that moment, the two heard footsteps approaching from around the corner, and muffled voices. It sounded like Ford and Dipper, cheerily talking about some supernatural creature they’d both encountered in the woods. Stan froze at the sound, and Fidds was sure that man was mentally hyperfixating on every last detail of his last not-so-friendly interaction with his brother the night before.

Ford poked his head into the kitchen first, drinking in the sight of the home cooking occurring. He inhaled deeply, likely having followed his nose to the kitchen. "Good morning, Fiddleford. Stanley." Can I talk with you outside? he mouthed at his brother.

Stan nodded nervously, ducking out of the kitchen with him.

"Mornin', Dipper!" Fiddleford said.

"Morning, McGucket." Dipper shuffled toward the breakfast table. “I, uh- I see you're making breakfast?”

"Yep, biscuits and gravy!" Fiddleford scooped up a heaping spoonful and offered it to Dipper. "Wanna taste? I promise it’ll be the best dang gravy you’ve ever tasted!" he said with a wink.

Dipper seemed hesitant, which he didn’t blame him for— the kid saw him cooking roadkill on a spit a few days ago, after all!— but it seemed the smell was too alluring. Walking over, he took the offered sample and gave it a shot. The moment his lips closed around the spoon, his eyes widened, and he promptly licked the utensil clean. Fidds beamed.

"Heh heh, guess that means I made it right!"

The boy stayed at the counter next to him after that, watching him finish cooking the gravy. "So Mr. McGucket, you and Great Uncle Ford were roommates in college, right?"

"Yes, siree we were!" Fiddleford replied.

"What was he like?"

Fiddleford paused from his cooking, considering the question seriously. "Honestly? I love that man, but he was an absolute pain in the tush to bunk with!"  

Stanley tensed as he walked into the hall with his brother, already getting flashbacks of the first argument they had here. As with every other interaction with Ford lately, nothing good could come out of this. He crossed his arms pensively. "Whatdy'a want?"

Ford sighed, pressing fingers to his temple. He seemed to almost deflate in his presence, oddly enough. "Stanley? Let me be frank with you."

Nevertheless, Uh-oh was all that could run through Stan's mind.

"I was-" Ford continued, forcing himself to look Stan in the eye. "I might have acted a little harsh towards you last night, and..."

"You think??" Stan burst out suddenly, residual anger from last night's encounter boiling over. "You were 'bout ta’ kick me out before the summer ended! Before my time, before I was ready, and exactly like what Dad did all those years ago!"

Ford stiffened at the comparison to their father, and continued. "I'm aware of that. Or at least, I was helped to become aware of that, and..." Another weary sigh. Where was he going with this? "There's no reason for me to treat you this way,” he said finally. “I'm- I'm not kicking you out. Obviously, you're free to leave if you ever wish to, but it would be unfair of me to uproot you from this place."

Stan stopped, and blinked. Dumbfounded. Did he just-? Did those words seriously come out of Ford's mouth? It wasn’t exactly an apology, but...

"So you're... you're letting me stay?" he said, mouth agape. "I don't have to leave after the summer?"

"No, you don't have to leave," Ford confirmed, a gentle smile crossing his face. "This has been your home for far longer than it's been mine, after all. I'd still like to talk about your Mystery Shack at a later date, and determine what compromises if any we could come to on that front, , but-"

Without any warning, Stan rushed forward and wrapped his arms tightly around his brother. Ford nearly stumbled back in surprise, at first not sure how to respond to this at all. But eventually, his hands stopped awkwardly floating midair and settled on Stan's back, tightly returning his embrace. They might still have a lot more to hash out- issues from their past to unpack- but for the moment they were simply happy to share in the kind of sibling affection neither had experienced in over forty years.

Meanwhile, Fiddleford continued to share embarrassing stories about his college years with Stanford, Dipper seeming wholly engrossed with each tale.

"Wow, so you two really didn't get expelled for setting the lab on fire?" he asked.

"Nope!" Fiddleford replied as he started to set the food on the table. "And luckily, too, the last thing we needed was to get kicked out of school. But boy howdy, were they not easy on us with the community service!"

“Are you giving me up, Fiddleford?” Ford asked suddenly, peaking around the corner of the doorway with a wry smile on his lips.

Fiddleford let out a surprised yelp. "H-howdy, Ford!" he said, grinning sheepishly. "Just sharin' some of our tamer days."

"Really? That's tame?" Dipper asked.

"My boy, setting a university laboratory on fire is child's play. Just wait until you hear about the time we almost accidentally released an alien superbug into all of greater Gravity Falls!" He walked over to his old friend, grinning mercilessly. "Fiddleford and I had all sorts of misadventures, back in the day..."

Fiddleford leaned his cheek against his arm, giggling at the memory. "Most of them were ‘coz someone liked to poke his nose into other critters’ business," he said, playfully nudging him in the stomach. "Yer’ just lucky we were able to synthesize that antidote, or else the town wouldn't be here anymore!"

Ford could feel the blood rushing to the capillaries near the surface of his face at the sudden physical affection, and while it left him with a sort of light, jittery sensation in his core he couldn’t necessarily attach a bad connotation to, he also felt a tinge of embarrassment that Dipper was there to see his reaction. He hadn’t gotten the chance to properly explore and catalogue his increasingly muddled thoughts on the matter yet. He’d far prefer to do that in private than in front of family, yes...

"Yeah, I fear we nearly destroyed the town on a number of occasions in those days," he replied to Fidds.

"Don't stop fearing yet," Stan butt in suddenly, returning to the kitchen. "Now that you're back in this dimension again, you've got plenty more years of potential destruction to cause!"

Ford frowned, picking at the stray threads on his jacket. Something about the way Stan phrased this brought the rift to mind, the rift he'd securely enclosed just this morning.

Mabel sleepily shuffled behind Stan, clutching onto a stuffed unicorn. "Mornin'," she yawned before climbing into one of the kitchen chairs.

"Mornin', pumpkin," Stan said, and gave her hair a nice big ruffle. He turned to the rest of the group, all loitering in the kitchen and surrounded by food. "Hey, we gonna eat, or what? This all smells delicious! Whoever cooked it must be a culinary genius... especially the fella who cooked that bacon!" He laughed boisterously at his own not-that-funny joke, and Ford promptly rolled his eyes.

"Do you need help taking any of these plates to the table, Fiddleford?" he asked, grateful for the change of topic from before.

"If y’all don't mind givin' me a hand. I'm hoping y’all like the food! Been a while since I've properly cooked anything."

"Tasted amazing to me!" Dipper smiled while helping a sleepy Mabel up to migrate.

Stan and Ford each grabbed a dish and carried them to the table in the living room. Ford carefully placed his at the center, and promptly returned to the kitchen to find some plates. Stan on the other hand, sat directly down, strategically positioning himself in the chair right in front of the bacon. "Hey, uh, kids," he began. "Just so ya' know, the Shack won't be open today. Maybe not for the next few days, who knows. But anyways, until this pigsty is fixed up, you two little gremlins are off the hook, okay? Go play with your friends, or in the woods, or whatever it is ya' do when I'm not lookin'."

"Really?" Mabel asked with a sleepy smile as she climbed into the seat beside him.

"Yeah, what's the catch?" Dipper asked, skeptical of his intentions as always.

Stan frowned deeply, more for show and dramatics than any true expression of disgruntlement. “The catch is, do it before I take advantage of Gravity Falls’ lax child labor laws and put you two to work on somethin’ else! Now, who wants bacon?”

“I’d like a strip or two,” Ford said eagerly, just returning to the table with plates and silverware for the five of them. He set the plates down and let the kids pass them out. “I don’t think I’ve eaten bacon for over thirty years. There’s not anything quite like it, out there in the midst of the multiverse...”

"I'll have a slice!" Dipper replied.

"Me too!" Mabel added.

Fiddleford walked in and set his gravy pot on the table. "It's been a long time since I've seen any bacon smellin’ this good,” he commented as he took his seat. "I wanna thank you again for helping me out with the cookin', Stanley."

“Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome, or whatever,” he said, brushing off his thanks with a flourish of his hand. Ford shot him one of those looks, but said nothing. Stan dished out the bacon to everyone, grabbing four slices for himself, and soon everyone began digging in.

Fiddleford noisily gobbled down his share of biscuits. To him, this was the most luxurious meal he'd eaten in months. After polishing off his first, he realized he’d spilled crumbs all over his beard, but he was so caught up in enjoying his food that he couldn’t bring himself to truly care. Meanwhile, Dipper practically drowned his poor biscuits in the gravy, and with food in her stomach Mabel was finally beginning to wake up.

Stanley worked away at his own plate quietly for a moment, too hungry to provide much in the way of conversation. As he ate, he glanced from Dipper, to Mabel… to Fiddleford, and sitting next to him— after all these years— his brother.

“Heh,” he muttered suddenly. “Y’know, now that I think of it, it’s funny…”

The four of them paused, Fiddleford mid-chew, when Stan spoke up.

"What is, Grunkle Stan?" Mabel asked.

“This… well, it’s dumb, but once I got ta’ thinkin’ about it, this is the first real meal I’ve shared with Ford in over forty years,” Stan said breathlessly, staring off into the distance, not quite meeting anyone’s eyes.

Ford dropped his fork against his plate, brows furrowing as he counted the years, calculated and double checked his claim. “You- my word, you’re right,” he said, eyes widening as he contemplated the truth behind this statement. Even yesterday— his first evening back— they hadn’t crossed paths much, since he’d dedicated nearly all of that time to constructing a containment field for the rift in the basement.

Mabel let out a loud and dramatic gasp at Stan's realization. "And it's the first time Grunkle Ford has eaten with me and Dipper period, meaning-" She shot up from her seat, all the vim and vigor Ford remembered from early this morning returning in a flash. "Be right back!" With no explanation, she rushed out of the living room, excitedly stomping up the stairs. Before anyone could truly comment on her outburst she returned with her polaroid camera.

"SCRAPBOOK-ORTUNITY!" she announced, holding the camera with lens facing her, the entire family in the frame behind her. When the camera flashed Stan was in the middle of picking his nose, and Ford was eighty percent certain he blinked. The greyed scientist began to laugh heartily at Mabel’s happy antics.

“You remind me of my Ma,” he said through laughter. “She was always taking pictures of Stanley and I, and mostly when we weren’t prepared for them.” He took another bite of his biscuit. A stray bit of gravy dribbled from his lip.

Mabel giggled and shook the polaroid when it came out of the camera. "I never miss a scrapbook-ortunity!"

“Mabel,” Dipper whined, “I was chewing when you took that picture!”

“It’s candid photography, that’s kinda the point, duh!”

Fiddleford gave his finger a lick, and reached towards Ford’s face. "Ford, ya’ got a little somethin' on yer chin..."

Ford blushed a deep scarlet as Fiddleford dabbed the gravy off his chin and the corner of his lips, his eyes blowing wide. He suddenly felt clammy, almost itchy as he felt the rest of the room stare at him… He knew for a fact they all saw the way his ears and cheeks flushed like some lovesick fool at Fidds’ touch, and his heart pounded at the thought of having to explain this to his own family when he hadn’t even taken time to fully consider these feelings himself. Not for the first time, he felt achingly like an alien— perhaps even an imposter— in his home, that is, if he could even claim it as such.

Mabel slammed her hands over her mouth and excitedly wiggled in her seat. She began to repeatedly nudge her brother's side, much to his annoyance.

When Fiddleford finished, he gave Ford a shy smile and leaned back in his chair. "Sorry, old habit from the old days," he said, blushing as well.

“Sheesh, if you two want to leave the room for a sec or somethin,’” Stan said snarkily, “then don’t let me stop ya’.”

Ford roughly set his cup down on the table. ”Stanley. That’s enough,” he hissed. “We will not be discussing this at the breakfast table.”

The kids flinched from Ford's sudden outburst.

“Wow, okay, okay,” Stan muttered, recoiling a little. “Hit a nerve there...”

"Stanford, there's no reason to get so upset, he was only teasin'." Fiddleford said, trying to diffuse the tension.

“I-I…”

Ford looked back and forth, from the kids— who were staring at him with slight apprehension— to Stan— who looked much like a kicked puppy— and finally to Fidds. Fiddleford. The man he knew deep down he’d never gotten over, never stopped loving, not even after thirty plus years, and the man who was currently gazing at him with such a gentleness in his eyes even despite his rough outburst. His palms sweat as he clasped them together, nervously threading his fingers between each other. Before his mind could catch up with his body, he found himself bolting through the door between the house and the gift shop.

Stan stared at the chair he left empty for a moment, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. He was only teasing. Surely Ford didn’t think he would judge him if he did have an old crush on Fiddleford, if his prediction was in fact accurate? “You, uh,” he began lamely, glancing towards Fiddleford. “You might wanna go after him before he locks himself away in the basement for the rest of the day.”

"Yeah, uh..." Fiddleford stood up. "E-Excuse me fellas."

[sunsandships]

the age gap issue, and how i’ve made my peace with it

or: a meandering word dump as i try to sort out my feelings on CMBYN

disclaimer: these are unedited thoughts. i welcome discussion & people engaging with my thoughts. age gap specific thoughts are towards the end; the beginning is just,, literal word vomit. pls handle gently.

to begin with, both the novel and the movie hit me like a freight train; sort of like that part in Inception where they’re on the first level of the dream in that ugly taxicab and the train just literally slams into them from outta nowhere. descriptors like lush or intimate are probably way overused with respect to CMBYN but they are truly what spring to mind. what struck me, and stuck with me, as i read the novel then watched the movie (in that order) was how difficult it was for me to do in one sitting.

for context: i’m the type of person who usually blazes through a novel, no matter how long, in one sitting. and movies, of course, i usually watch in one sitting as well. but i also have a recorded history of sucking at handling second-hand embarrassment. my freshman year college roommates will testify to my ridiculous behavior when trying to watch She’s The Man. i had to cross the room. at one point, i think i rolled on the floor a little in mortification. when it comes to novels, i usually skim past the section that’s causing me second-hand embarrassment, or just flip forward the page entirely.

call me by your name is not a long book. it took me nearly a week to finish reading. i just couldn’t handle too much of it in one sitting -- i would read somewhere between 5 to 30 pages, and something would be too much, and i would have to go do something else for a few hours. it took me three evenings to finish the movie. and i couldn’t even watch the movie in the daytime; the ambience just felt too wrong. but even in the darkness of my bedroom, with no one else in the world to judge me for what i was watching or feeling while watching it, i couldn’t finish the movie in one go either. i paused in strategic places, and had to return to it the next day.

it’s wrong to call what caused these pauses second hand embarrassment. nothing particularly embarrassing happens, except perhaps elio’s straightforwardly fervent attraction and sexual awakening. yet the fact that i needed to take these pauses remind me of the times i’ve had to pause in a movie or skip forward in a book due to mortifyingly visceral second hand embarrassment. and i think that’s the connecting factor, the reason it took me so long to finish both book and novel, despite loving both. something about the narrative is just so gut-wrenchingly real. the novel reminded me of reading Richard Siken’s Crush for the first time as an angst-ridden middle schooler. when, for no reason i could pinpoint, the prose just kind of socked me in the stomach and makes me feel things like a physical ache in my sternum. CMBYN was something similar; less of a punch in the gut, more of a long, slow burn. like the twinge of muscles after you’ve overexerted yourself exercising the day before. and the movie -- god, the movie -- is shot so beautifully; the elegant piano in the sunlit itallian villa, the sounds of summer in the background, the cerulean sea, the ripe peaches like the world’s best and worst metaphor at the same time. and again, the words that spring to the lips when talking about CMBYN -- lush, sensual, intimate. 

and there, that’s another key word -- intimate. the novel and movie both feel a little like voyeurism, like the whole thing was a real, private experience between two real people and you’re spying in on them through an omnipotent camera operator, seeing something not meant to be seen, much less by you.

and maybe that’s why i fell head first into yet another hyperfixation; it’s been a long long time since i read something that made me unflinchingly feel that much. maybe because primarily i’ve been reading trope-laden fanfictions, self-indulgent fics that i can know what to expect of. the equivalent of eating literary fast food for years and then suddenly tasting fresh fruit -- am i cheeky enough to say a peach?

but now, and wow it’s taken me a long time to get to the main point, having stewed in my love of the prose and the movie’s cinematography and the frankly gorgeous acting (and persons) of A.H. and T. C., a little niggling doubt in my hindbrain -- what about the age gap? after all, that was the main reason i’d put off reading the book for so long, when i’d first started seeing buzz around CMBYN months and months ago. especially with all the recent sexual abuse allegations floating around, i was hesitant, weary.

to quote oliver, i know myself. i know my kinks, which yes, sometimes include age gaps; i know intimately that what makes it a kink for me is the inherent power dynamic of an age gap. and i think 99% of my kinks trace back to there being that power dynamic. the other 1% is fear. so, y’know -- it’s not that the age gap, by itself, weirded me out. ya girl ain’t about to kink shame herself. but the difference for me was, in the weird cesspool of fandom, it goes without saying that kinks that push the edge of social norms (heck, kinks that go way beyond the edge) are definitely fictional. fantasy. in the realm of things you can explore with fictional characters. unhealthy power dynamics are just that -- unhealthy. played with in the context of kinky fic, yeah. but definitively not glorified, not romantic, not real.

and by god, CMBYN is all of those - glorified, romantic, achingly real. so why, why when i read the novel and watch the movie, did my concern fade into the background? had fic desensitized me? was my moral compass loose? and of course, much ado has been made about the age of consent being so much lower in italy (14, holy smokes), and the absolute ego of applying U.S.-centric morality to everything, so is it really a non-issue?

maybe the first thing is to place the novel in its own context -- the author is not a teenage boy. the author is a college professor of comparative literature. the author is a married man. the author is even a straight married man, in fact. and yeah, despite setting the novel in the head of a seventeen year old, it’s also framed as older!elio looking back nostalgically. so wow, does the narration not sound like a seventeen year old boy. and oliver, poor oliver, does not get his perspective in. everything is framed by older-elio-recalling-younger-elio’s thoughts. and when you’re reading it, you’re caught up in the narration, the feel of the words, the story, and you’re not thinking about the age gap at all, not really, unless the narrative itself calls your attention to it, and by then you’re in it for the long haul, and suspension of disbelief has kicked in, and it just kind of,,, stops bothering you.

and the movie, wow. the casting. T.C. can definitely pass as younger-than-twenty. maybe not seventeen, precisely, but young-ish. still a teen. meanwhile, A.H. is definitely older than twenty-four. he’s thirty-one and at best passes for late-twenties. so hoo boy, did the movie accentuate that age gap. by the time i watched the movie though, i was already a goner for the book. so i didn’t focus on it too much, or at all. it doesn’t hurt that T.C. and A.H. are both gorgeous by themselves, and that together their chemistry is amazing, and that their acting is just,,, subtle and superbly mind-blowing at the same time.

and so wham bam, i finish the movie. i plunge into hyperfixation pretty quickly. and then suddenly, deep in the CMBYN tag, i read a well-written, non-aggressive review of the novel which does a pretty neat take on why it’s an issue the novel is written by a much older man fantasizing about the sex life of a seventeen year old with a older man. when you put it like that, it’s pretty,,, squicky. 

so, the age gap problem. time to face it head on, me.

the age gap presented breaks no laws. canonically, elio’s parents are even aware of what’s developing and approve (and perhaps even encourage? setting them up in a bougie hotel for the overnight Rome trip, hello??). but after i separated a little from the initial euphoria of just existing at the same time as the gorgeousness of CMBYN and thought about it a little more, it just,,, felt weird, in a intrinsic level, the same intrinsic level that felt all the positive feels possible for CMBYN when i was immersed in it and had full suspension of disbelief happening. 

why does it feel weird? well me, right now, i’m twenty. and i feel so, so much older than i was when i was seventeen. i would not date someone that is seventeen. i would pretty much find it impossible, i think, to find a emotional or intellectual connection with someone that is seventeen. so much happens in those in-between years, and that’s with just the difference of high school vs. college. elio and oliver are looking at the extra gap of high school - college - grad school. it’s not a trivial age gap. and just because it doesn’t break any laws doesn’t make it a non-issue, i think.

back to that power dynamic; the way the age skew totally definitely allows the older person to take advantage, to abuse. is that what’s happening here? certainly, i had issues with the sex scene (hello, lube? hello, condoms? hello, prep?? i do not believe you can engage in anal, penetrative intercourse without needing to talk through it, yet one of the major things after the sex is elio retreats into himself, into shame over the act itself. i’m not in the camp that the sex was non-consensual; elio was clearly there for it. but i don’t think it was written or handled well, much less realistically -- the author is, unfortunate, a Straight) but i don’t think, on the whole of it, any advantage-taking is happening. oliver doesn’t hold any authority over elio, and elio’s infatuation/desire for oliver is full-blown with no encouragement (or, a less-nice word: manipulation) from oliver.

they don’t pursue a long-term relationship. there’s no mention that they might even try to extend the relationship beyond the summer. when oliver leaves, elio lets him go. canonically, elio takes that whole experience, wraps it in bubble wrap, and puts it on a pedestal. and yeah, years later, when they are both much much older, they reconnect and still feel things but also both have clearly done fine in their individual lives and elio is a drama queen ok. he’s nostalgic. he’s still feeling things. but would he have totally buried all feelings if, at the time of their fling, he’d been twenty instead of seventeen?

though on the flip side, why does elio need to be seventeen at all? would it change the story at all if he was twenty? twenty-two, even? just freshly graduated college, summering with his parents one last summer? maybe there’s something to be said about elio being on the cusp of manhood, or whatever. that it needs to be his first love, not just a love. but hey, i’m twenty, and i haven’t been in any type of relationship, much less love. so clearly, within the realm of possibility. here, i think, is a much deeper critique than the age gap in and of itself. something along the lines of Andre Aciman, and his authorial choices as a Older Straight White Male. i’m not really qualified to touch that, though; i’m really here to just digest my own feelings about the age gap, and why ultimately i’m at peace with it, and why i think i’ve made my peace with being at peace with it.

because, no, i don’t really buy that a seventeen year old and a twenty-four year old can fall in true true love without knowing much about each other beyond bonding on a shallow intellectual level over classical literature and music and idyllic bike rides and swimming. certainly, i would be much happier buying the love part of the equation if elio was twenty, or twenty-one, or twenty-two. but nothing about the relationship is manipulative, or nonconsensual, or coerced. and due to the narrative style, in my head, elio isn’t even quite seventeen - more of a amorphous precocious early twenties, maybe. 

maybe also because, at the heart of it, i don’t think CMBYN is a love story. i think it’s a story about desire, and the inevitability of time eroding pretty much everything, and enjoying and holding onto things when they’re in your grasp. and so while i think the age gap makes love a little out of my realm of understanding, it certainly puts no barrier on desire.

[daes-of-august]

How Cairo came to be

I have a lot of thoughts on my daemon, Cairo, and his origins. Figured I’d share them here. there’s a really long explanation under the read-more

I call Cairo my “daemon” for the sake of simplicity, but I use that term a bit loosely as he doesn’t seem to fit the usual description of daemons that I have seen. For one, his form has been mostly settled for as long as I remember, and I first met(?) him when I was very young. Another thing is that he doesn’t take the form of a real animal. I’ve seen some debate as to the legitimacy of “daemons” that aren’t real animals, but I have my own thoughts on how this applies to Cairo.

For one, Cairo originated as my version of the character Guilmon from the digimon tamers series. This was back when I was still in elementary school. Aside from the name, voice, and being vaguely dinosaur-like in shape (and waving psuedo wings for ears), my Guilmon’s character didn’t resemble the cartoon character at all. I used a t-rex beanie-baby to represent him physically (I still have him) He was intelligent (though we played that down when playing pretend with others), thoughtful, and more “real” than any other stuffed animal or character I’d developed thus far. He was my confidante and friend when I felt alone, and I think he was the only one of my stuffed animals/characters (they were the same thing back then) that I actually talked to with half an expectation of receiving an answer.

Fast-forward a few years (middle school/high school). For the most part, I no longer played with stuffed animals (with a few exceptions), but Guilmon still hung around. I didn’t talk to him as much, but he was still my partner, guardian, and companion. As I started writing stories that I actually want to publish one day, I changed Guilmon’s name to Blaze, seeing as I didn’t want to get hit with a copyright infringement. From there, Blaze followed my personas and other characters into their worlds. Here, he took on a lot of roles, though they all came back around to protector, companion, guardian, confidante. He’s only really interacted with characters that were my actual self-inserts or personas, and he was always more than a character. I could never write him as just another oc; he knows too much about me, the writer, and he’s been around for longer than any of my stories.

Fast-forward again to the summer of 2018. This was the first summer I spent on my own, living away from my family situation (which is an entire other conversation). This is also about the time I realized I was having a lot of issues with depression and anxiety. As a college student, I know I wasn’t alone in these issues, and yet, I was so alone. I only had one friend and she was busy all the time (not her fault, I don’t resent her for it). I wasn’t close to most of my family and was actively avoiding the handful of family members that I was close to. During this time, Blaze came back to me. My friend, my confidante, my shelter from the biting loneliness. We only interacted within the context of “stories” (not actively talking to each other) but these stories were ones that were never written and only played out in my head. Just small scenes where he told me that I wasn’t alone, that I still had him no matter how much I or my circumstances changed.

We’ve maintained that sort of relationship up to this point. I’m not physically alone anymore (I have a lot of people I can talk to or hang out with if I want, and I have a better relationship with my family) but I still feel like everything is slipping out of my hands and I don’t know why. I finally got into my major (I’m a junior now), I have a good relationship with my family, I’m taking classes that are on subjects that I actually enjoy, I’m finally on an anti-depressant/anti-anxiety medication. And yet, a combination of poor time-management, and persistent apathy toward my existence as a whole has brought me to another low point. 

At first, I wanted to create a tulpa, a concept that I’d been interested in before but then forgot about. I wanted someone that would be with me all the time and would (hopefully) help me get my life in order. However, that didn’t seem fair since I tulpa is a being with its own separate existence. I didn’t want to force an ideal onto another being and then be resented for it. It’s also not fair to the being I intended to create. And there was the fact that I already had Blaze, and creating another being with the intent to act as my guardian and companion felt incredibly wrong. However, I couldn’t turn Blaze into a tulpa. He was already too real, and I was afraid the tulpa would resent me for forcing this persona onto it. I also didn’t think I could mentally withstand the idea of Blaze becoming anything other than the friend I’d had since childhood.

Then I learned about daemons. As someone with a “Christian” upbringing (another very long story) I was hesitant to look into anything like that. However, as I understand it, daemons (not demons) are your soul personified. That “voice” in the back of your mind that tells you to sleep before 3 am, or to eat when you haven’t for an entire day, that reminder that a failed test isn’t the end of the world, that conversation you have with yourself, debating the pros and cons of staying up late to study or going to bed early right before a test. For me, I think Blaze has always been that voice.

Which brings me to his current state. I started talking to Blaze again, just like I used to when I was a child. It felt strange at first since I’m now an adult that’s essentially talking to myself. And yet, it felt like I was calling up an old friend that I’d followed online but hadn’t actually spoken to in years. We talked about the idea of him being my daemon and returning to a more prominent role in my life. It’s hard to explain his feelings on the subject, but more or less, he’s happy about the decision. (more like... happy that I’m asking for help? Even if it’s just from my own soul?) 

Yesterday, we decided on another name change. “Blaze” was never meant to be anything other than an alias for him to use when I wrote about him. His name had still been Guilmon, though as I wrote more about Blaze and spoke less to Guilmon, “Blaze” became the more common way for me to think of him. We played around with some sounds and spellings (he really didn’t want a name that started with “A”) we came up with Cairo (rhymes with “arrow”. Also, I only just now realized it’s also a place in Egypt and not just a word I made up...). This is partially from my synesthesia: “A’s” are bright red, “i’s” are yellow, and “o’s” are white. This combo is bright and warm, and the word itself is short, reminding me of a candle. I’ve always associated him with fire. “Cairo” also (vaguely) resembles “Hrairoo”, which is what Hazel occasionally calls his brother, Fiver, in the netflix adaptation of Watership Down (which, if I’m right about being ADD, is my current hyperfixation) Due to this, I occasionally call Cairo “Cairoo” because I think it sounds cute.

Cairo’s form is... difficult to explain. While he has changed from what I originally envisioned him as, his form hasn’t really changed from when we were kids. He is still vaguely dinosaur shaped, still brown with rust colored markings across his nose, a pale belly, and a sort of mane that runs from his head to his tail. The only big difference now is that his wing-like ears are shaped a bit more like rabbit ears and he can run on four legs as well as two. The closest real animal I can compare him to is a hare with a square snout and dinosaur tail. We tried to get him to shift into an actual hare, but that felt very... wrong and unnatural. 

I’ve heard that daemons with fantasy forms aren’t daemons because they don’t mean anything, they don’t tell you anything about yourself. I’m not sure how to feel about that, but my opinions on daemons and their forms would be another conversation entirely. If the definition of a “daemon” truly excludes those with unnatural forms, then I am fine to say that Cairo is not a true daemon. Either way, those are just words to us. He is my friend, my companion, and my guardian. That has been true from the beginning, and I am beginning to believe it will be true to the end.

[dumbthinmint]

Oh my gosh same.

In 5th grade I found the Return of the King offical game in the back of the game drawer and begged my dad to let me play it, even though it was rated teen. He said sure, and when I couldn't beat it on my own (why were games so HARD back then??) he played with me until we beat it in co-op. It took over a year.

At that point, this had become a bonding thing for us. I wasn't very good at connecting with people on a dialogue or communication level, but playing these games gave me a hyperfixation to talk about that he could intelligently talk back to me about. In the past, all of my hyperfixations were things no one else seemed interested in. Even Harry Potter was old news to my friends since I wasn't allowed to finish the series until I was old enough to handle how dark the last four books got. Having someone I looked up to positicely engage with me about one of my hyperfixations was incredibly validating, and I think my dad could tell. He asked if I wanted to play Halo with him, and the summer of 7th grade, I had become fully immersed in the world of video games.

Skyrim was my first RPG, and for the first time, I could customize a character that looked kinda like me and go on adventures and save the world myself! Eventually it became a relaxingx familiar home-world for me to return to again and again, riding around and listening to the music. Mass Effect was my first choices-matter game and the first game in which I actually got super invested in the love interests. To this day Kaidan Alenko is my favorite romance option in any video game ever, and the badass female protagonist of Commander Shepard will never stop being something of a feminist inspiration for me. Dragon Age and the real-life friend it led me to is literally the #1 reason I survived my freshman year of college. Assassin's Creed lets me live the fantasy of fixing all the problems in the world caused by bad people with ease, even if it is a bit stabby and not super applicable to solving real world problems. The VR station in my school that I started using just out of nerdy gamer interest has become a confidence boosting form of exercize that allows me to feel good about my ability to improve at something that's actually a bit athletic. In other words, video games has given me something few other mediums have; a sense of accomplishment. That I, an autistic, adhd, squishy little girl with too much to prove and nothing to prove it with, can actually do something. Even if it's only in a game, that confidence transfers over to the real world and helps me see the accomplishments and adventures I have in my everyday life.

Oh, and they also brought me to tumblr and youtube and all of these wonderful people, both famous and not, who share this love for video games. So yeah, happy video game day everybody!

Heyyy it’s national video game day!! 🎧🎮

I owe a lot to video games! When I was in school worried about being alone, the thought of coming home to play Skyrim was the only thing that got me through the day! When I was in college considering dropping out, doodling video game characters on my desk put me at ease ✨

And now, my life is so lovely and I’m surrounded by so much love- and because of @therealjacksepticeye Ive made friends all over the freaking globe, and gaming is my absolute greatest passion! So happy video game day everyone! 🌎