#and 2 its an old project from like 2 years ago and by god. was my tension TIGHT.

[typheus]

i know literally every woman enjoyer says this but andrea and lori got so much more hate than they deserved

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive (Daily updates!)

By Stephani Sutherland

Gentle nasal spray vaccines against COVID, the flu and RSV are coming. They may work better than shots in the arm

Alyson Velasquez hates needles. She never liked getting shots as a kid, and her anxiety only grew as she got older. “It really ballooned in my teens and early 20s,” she says. “It became a full-blown phobia.” She would panic at the sight of a needle being brought into an exam room; more than once she passed out. Velasquez says that she took an antianxiety medication before one appointment yet still ran around the room screaming inconsolably “like I was a small child; I was 22.” After that episode Velasquez, now a 34-year-old financial planner in southern California, quit needles completely. “No vaccinations, no bloodwork. For all of my 20s it was a no-go for me,” she says.

Then COVID showed up. “It finally hit a point where it wasn’t just about me,” Velasquez says. “It felt so selfish not to do this for the greater public health and the safety of our global community.” So she got vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus in 2021, although she had to sit on her husband’s lap while he held her arms. “It was a spectacle. The poor guy at CVS ... he did ask me, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’” She very much did. “I’m very pro-vaccine. I am a rational human. I understand the necessity of [getting] them,” she insists. But today she still struggles with each injection.

Those struggles would end, however, if all her future vaccinations could be delivered by a nasal spray. “Oh, my God, amazing!” Velasquez says.

The amazing appears to be well on its way. Vaccines delivered through the nose are now being tested for several diseases. In the U.S., early clinical trials are showing success. Two of these vaccines have generated multiple immune system responses against the COVID-causing virus in people who received them through a puff up the nose; earlier this year their makers received nearly $20 million from Project NextGen, the Biden-Harris administration’s COVID medical initiative. Researchers are optimistic that a nasal spray delivering a COVID vaccine could be ready for the U.S. as soon as 2027. Although recent efforts have focused on inoculations against SARS-CoV-2, nasal vaccines could also protect us against the flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more.

A few nasal vaccines have been introduced in the past, but they’ve been beset by problems. The flu inoculation FluMist has not gained popularity because of debates about its effectiveness, and a different vaccine was pulled from the market decades ago because some people had serious side effects. In China and India, nasal vaccines for COVID have been approved because those countries prioritized their development during the pandemic, whereas the U.S. and other wealthy nations opted to stick with arm injections. But this new crop of vaccines takes advantage of technology that produces stronger immune responses and is safer than preparations used in the past.

In fact, immunologists say these spritzes up the nose—or inhaled puffs through the mouth—can provide faster, stronger protection against respiratory viruses than a shot in the arm. That is because the new vaccines activate a branch of the immune system that has evolved for robust, rapid responses against airborne germs. “It may be more likely to really prevent infection from getting established,” says Fiona Smaill, an infectious disease researcher at McMaster University in Ontario. Such inoculations may also help reduce the enormous inequities in vaccine access revealed by the pandemic. These formulations should be cheaper and easier to transport to poor regions than current shots.

But nasal vaccines still face technical hurdles, such as how best to deliver them into the body. And unlike injected vaccines, which scientists can measure immune responses to with blood tests alone, testing for immunity that starts in nose cells is more challenging. But researchers working in this field agree that despite the hurdles, nasal formulations are the next step in vaccine evolution.

Traditional vaccines injected through the skin and into an arm muscle provide excellent protection against viruses. They coax immune cells into making widely circulated antibodies—special proteins that recognize specific structural features on viruses or other invading pathogens, glom on to them and mark them for destruction. Other immune cells retain a “memory” of that pathogen for future encounters.

Intramuscular injection vaccines are good at preventing a disease from spreading, but they do not stop the initial infection. A nasal spray does a much better job. That’s because sprays are aimed directly at the spot where many viruses first enter the body: the nose and the tissue that lines it, called the mucosa.

Mucosa makes up much of our bodies’ internal surfaces, stretching from the nose, mouth and throat down the respiratory tract to the lungs, through the gastrointestinal tract to the anus, and into the urogenital tract. Mucosa is where our bodies encounter the vast majority of pathogenic threats, Smaill says, be it flu, COVID, or bacterial infections that attack the gut. This tough, triple-layered tissue is specialized to fight off invaders with its thick coating of secretory goo—mucus—and with a cadre of resident immune cells waiting to attack. “Mucosa is really the first line of defense against any infection we’re exposed to,” Smaill says.

Mucosal immunity not only prepares the immune system for the fight where it occurs but also offers three different types of protection—at least one more than a shot does. Nasal vaccines and shots both mobilize immune messenger cells, which gather the interlopers’ proteins and display them on their surfaces. These cells head to the lymph nodes, where they show off their captured prize to B and T cells, which are members of another part of the immune system called the adaptive arm. B cells, in turn, produce antibodies, molecules that home in on the foreign proteins and flag their owners—the invading microbes—for destruction. Killer T cells directly attack infected cells, eliminating them and the microbes inside. This provides broad protection, but it takes time, during which the virus continues to replicate and spread.

That’s why a second type of protection, offered only by the mucosal tissue, is so important. The mucosa holds cells of the innate immune system, which are the body’s “first responders.” Some of these cells, called macrophages, recognize invasive microbes as foreign and swallow them up. They also trigger inflammation—an alarm sounded to recruit more immune cells.

Another part of this localized response is called tissue-resident immunity. These cells don’t have to detect telltale signs of a pathogen and make a long journey to the infected tissue. They are more like a Special Forces unit dropped behind enemy lines where a skirmish is occurring rather than waiting for the proverbial cavalry to arrive. This localized reaction can be quite potent. Its activation is notoriously difficult to demonstrate, however, so historically it’s been hard for vaccine makers to show they’ve hit the mark. But it turns out that one type of antibody, called IgA, is a good indicator of mucosal immunity because IgAs tend to predominate in the mucosa rather than other parts of the body. In an early trial of CoviLiv, a nasal COVID vaccine produced by Codagenix, about half of participants had detectable IgA responses within several weeks after receiving two doses. That trial also showed the vaccine was safe and led to NextGen funding for a larger trial of the vaccine’s efficacy.

It’s possible an inhaled vaccine may provide yet one more layer of protection, called trained innate immunity. This reaction is a bit of a mystery: although immunologists know it exists and appears also to be produced by intramuscular injections, they can’t quite explain how it works. Immune cells associated with trained innate immunity seem to have memorylike responses, reacting quickly against subsequent infections. They also have been found to respond against pathogens entirely unrelated to the intended vaccine target. Smaill and her colleagues found that when they immunized mice with an inhaled tuberculosis vaccine and then challenged them with pneumococcal bacteria, the mice were protected. In children, there is some evidence that a tuberculosis vaccine, in the arm, generates this type of broad response against other diseases.

Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University who is working to develop a nasal vaccination for COVID, sees two major potential benefits to nasal immunity in addition to better, faster, more localized protection. First, attacking the virus in the nose could prevent the disease from being transmitted to others by reducing the amount of virus that people breathe out. And second, Iwasaki says, the spray may limit how deeply the infection moves into the body, so “we believe that it will also prevent long COVID.” That debilitating postinfection condition, sometimes marked by signs of entrenched viral particles, disables people with extreme fatigue, chronic pain, a variety of cognitive difficulties, and other symptoms.

Making a new vaccine is hard, regardless of how you administer it. It needs to raise an immune response that’s strong enough to protect against future invasions but not so strong that the components of that response—such as inflammation and fever—harm the host.

The lining of the nose puts up its own barriers—literal, physical ones. Because the nasal mucosa is exposed to so many irritants from the air, ranging from pet hair to pollen, the nose has multiple lines of defense against invading pathogens. Nostril hair, mucus, and features called cilia that sweep the nasal surface all aim to trap small foreign objects before they can get deeper into the body—and that includes tiny droplets of vaccine.

And lots of small foreign particles—often harmless—still make it through those defenses. So the nose has developed a way to become less reactive to harmless objects. This dampened reactivity is called immunological tolerance, and it may be the biggest hurdle to successful development of a nasal vaccine. When foreign particles show up in the bloodstream, a space that is ostensibly sterile, immune cells immediately recognize them as invaders. But mucosal surfaces are constantly bombarded by both pathogens and harmless materials. The immune system uses tolerance—a complex series of decisions carried out by specialized cells—to determine whether a substance is harmful. “This is very important because we can’t have our lungs or gastrointestinal tract always responding to nonharmful foreign entities that they encounter,” says Yale infectious disease researcher Benjamin Goldman-Israelow. For example, inflammation in the lungs would make it hard to breathe; in the gut, it would prevent the absorption of water and nutrients.

These barriers may hamper the effectiveness of a nasal flu vaccine that’s been around for a while, called FluMist in the U.S. and Fluenz in Europe. The inoculation is safe, says infectious disease scientist Michael Diamond of Washington University in St. Louis, but it faces a similar problem as do injected flu vaccines: it isn’t very effective at warding off new seasonal flu strains. This might be because flu strains are so common, and people are frequently infected by the time they are adults. Their immune systems are already primed to recognize and destroy familiar flu particles. FluMist is built from a live flu virus, so immune cells probably treat the vaccine as an invader and demolish it as soon as it shows up in the nose, before it has a chance to do any good. This preexisting immunity isn’t such an issue in children, who are less likely to have had multiple flu infections. Nasal flu vaccines are routinely used to inoculate kids in Europe.

In other vaccines, researchers often use adjuvants, special agents that attract the attention of immune cells, to boost a response. Some nasal vaccines use adjuvants to overcome tolerance, but in the nose, adjuvants can pose unique dangers. In at least one case, a nasal adjuvant led to disastrous consequences. An intranasal vaccine for influenza, licensed in Switzerland for the 2000–2001 season, used a toxin isolated from Escherichia coli bacteria as an adjuvant to provoke a reaction to the inactivated virus. No serious side effects were reported during the trial period, but once the vaccine was released, Swiss officials saw a concerning uptick in cases of Bell’s palsy, a disease that causes weakness or paralysis of the facial muscles, often leading to a drooping or disfigured face. Researchers at the University of Zurich estimated that the adjuvanted flu vaccine had increased the risk of contracting Bell’s palsy by about 20 times, and the vaccine was discontinued. “We need to be cautious about using adjuvants like that from known pathogens,” says pharmaceutical formulations scientist Vicky Kett of Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland.

To get around the challenges posed by the nose, some researchers are exploring vaccines inhaled through the mouth. Smaill is working on one of them. She and her McMaster colleagues aerosolized their vaccine for COVID into a fine mist delivered by a nebulizer, from which it rapidly reaches the lungs. Experiments in mice have shown promising results, with mucosal immunity established after administration of the vaccine.

Another vaccine strategy is to use a harmless virus to carry viral genes or proteins. Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City selected a bird pathogen, Newcastle disease virus (NDV). “It’s naturally a respiratory pathogen,” so it infects nasal cells, says Michael Egan, CEO and chief scientific officer of CastleVax, a company that formed to develop the NDV vaccine for COVID. A small early clinical trial showed the CastleVax vaccine was safe and caused robust immune responses in people. “Those results were very promising,” Egan says. People who received the vaccine also produced antibodies that indicated multitiered mucosal immunity, not simply the adaptive immunity from a shot in the arm.

Following that trial, the CastleVax project received NextGen funding, and results from a trial of 10,000 people are expected in 2026. Half of those people will receive a messenger RNA (mRNA) injection, and half will get the new NDV nasal spray. The data should show whether the new nasal vaccine can do a better job of preventing infection than the mRNA injections. Egan has high hopes. “We’re expecting to see a lot fewer breakthrough infections in people who got the vaccine up the nose by virtue of having those mucosal immune responses,” he says.

Florian Krammer, one of the Mount Sinai researchers behind the vaccine, engineered NDV particles to display a stabilized version of the spike protein that’s so prominent in SARS-CoV-2. “You end up with a particle that’s covered with spike,” he says. Spike protein in the blood­stream can raise an immune response. But the NDV vaccine works in another way, too. The virus particle can also get into cells, where it can replicate enough times to cause virus particles to emerge from the cells, provoking another immune reaction. Before moving into human trials, however, researchers had to complete clinical trials to establish that the Newcastle virus is truly harmless because the nose is close to the central nervous system—it has neurons that connect to the olfactory bulb, which is part of the brain. Those trials confirmed that it is safe for this use.

Nasal sprays aim directly at the spot where most viruses first enter the body: the nose. This type of caution is one reason a COVID nasal vaccine approved in India hasn’t been adopted by the U.S. or other countries. The inoculation, called iNCOVACC, uses a harmless simian adenovirus to carry the spike protein into the airway. The research originated in the laboratories of Diamond and some of his colleagues at Washington University at the start of the pandemic, when they tested the formulation on rodents and nonhuman primates. “The preclinical data were outstanding,” Diamond says. Around the time he and his colleagues published initial animal results in Cell in 2020, Bharat Biotech in India licensed the idea from the university. In a 2023 phase 3 clinical trial in India, the nasal vaccine produced superior systemic immunity compared with a shot.

Diamond says American drug companies didn’t pursue this approach, because “they wanted to use known quantities,” such as the mRNA vaccines, which were already proving themselves in clinical trials in 2020. As the pandemic took hold, there was little appetite to develop nasal vaccine technology to stimulate mucosal immunity while the tried-and-true route of shots in the arm was available and working. But now, four years later, an inhaled vaccine using technology similar to iNCOVACC’s is being developed for approval in the U.S. by biotech company Ocugen. Both inhaled and nasal forms of the vaccine are set to undergo clinical trials as part of Project NextGen. These new vaccines are using classical vaccine methods based on the virus rather than using new, mRNA-based technology. The mRNA preparations were developed specifically for intramuscular injections and would have to be significantly modified.

Codagenix, which is developing CoviLiv, sidestepped the need for a new viral vector or an adjuvant by disabling a live SARS-CoV-2 virus. To make it safe, scientists engineered a version of the virus with 283 mutations, alterations to its genetic code that make it hard for the virus to replicate and harm the body. Without all these genetic changes, there would be a chance the virus could revert to a dangerous, pathogenic form. But with hundreds of key mutations, “statistically, it’s basically impossible that this will revert back to a live virus in the population,” says Johanna Kaufmann, who helped to develop the vaccine before leaving Codagenix for another company earlier this year.

Because most people on the planet have now been exposed to SARS-CoV-2—in the same way they’re regularly exposed to the flu—some nasal vaccines are being designed as boosters for a preexisting immune response that is starting to wane. For example, Yale researchers Iwasaki and Goldman-Israelow are pursuing a strategy in animals deemed “prime and spike.”

The idea is to start with a vaccine injection—the “prime” that stimulates adaptive immunity—then follow it a few weeks later with a nasal puff that “spikes” the system with more viral protein, leading to mucosal immunity. In a study published in 2022 in Science, Iwasaki and her colleagues reported that they primed rodents with the mRNA vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, the same shot so many of us have received. Two weeks later some of the mice received an intranasal puff of saline containing a fragment of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Because the animals had some preexisting immunity from the shot, the researchers didn’t add any adjuvants to heighten the effects of the nasal puff. Two weeks later researchers detected stronger signs of mucosal immunity in mice that had received this treatment compared with mice that got only the shot.

“Not only can we establish tissue-resident memory T cells” to fight off the virus in the nose, Iwasaki says, but the prime-and-spike method also produces those vigorous IgA antibodies in the mucosal layer. “And that’s much more advantageous because we can prevent the virus from ever infecting the host,” she notes. The study suggests that this approach might also lessen the chances of transmitting the disease to others because of the lower overall viral load. Experiments in hamsters demonstrated that vaccinated animals shed less virus, and they were less likely to contract COVID from infected cage mates that had not been vaccinated themselves.

Although most of the new vaccine strategies are aimed at COVID, nasal vaccines for other diseases are already being planned. Kaufmann, formerly of Codagenix, says the company currently has clinical trials underway for nasal vaccines against flu and RSV. CastleVax’s Egan says “we have plans to address other pathogens” such as RSV and human metapneumovirus, another leading cause of respiratory disease in kids.

Vaccines that don’t need to be injected could clear many barriers to vaccine access worldwide. “We saw with COVID there was no vaccine equity,” Smaill says. Many people in low-income countries never received a shot; they are still going without one four years after the vaccines debuted.

In part, this inequity is a consequence of the high cost of delivering a vaccine that needs to stay frozen on a long journey from manufacturing facilities in wealthy countries. Some of the nasal sprays in development don’t need deep-cold storage, so they might be easier to store and transport. And a nasal spray or an inhaled puff would be much easier to administer than a shot. No health professional is required, so people could spray it into their noses or mouths at home.

For these reasons, needle-free delivery matters to the World Health Organization. The WHO is using the Codagenix nasal spray in its Solidarity Trial Vaccines program to improve vaccine equity. The CoviLiv spray is now in phase 3 clinical trials around the world as part of this effort. “The fact that the WHO was still interested in a primary vaccination trial in the geographies it’s passionate about—that’s indicative that there is still a gap,” Kaufmann says. CoviLiv was co-developed with the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines by dose. The partnership enabled production at the high volume required for Solidarity.

The CastleVax vaccine with the NDV vector provides another layer of equity because the facilities required to make it already exist in many low- and middle-income countries. “The cool thing is that NDV is a chicken virus, so it grows very well in embryonated eggs—that’s exactly the system used for making flu vaccines,” Krammer says. For example, for a clinical trial in Thailand, “we just shipped them the seed virus, and then they produced the vaccine and ran the clinical trials,” he says. Many countries around the world have similar facilities, so they will not need to depend on pharma companies based in richer places.

Even high-income countries face barriers to vaccination, although they may be more personal than systemic. For very many people, the needle itself is the problem. Extreme phobia such as Velasquez’s is uncommon, but many people have a general fear of needles that makes vaccinations stressful or even impossible for them. For about one in 10 people needle-related fear or pain is a barrier to vaccinations, says C. Meghan McMurtry, a psychologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Needle fear “is present in most young kids and in about half of adolescents. And 20 to 30 percent of adults have some level of fear.” A review of studies of children showed that “concern around pain and needle fear are barriers to vaccination in about 8 percent of the general population and about 18 percent in the vaccine-hesitant population,” McMurtry adds.

Some people are wary of injected vaccines even if they’re not afraid of needles, Kett says; they see injections as too invasive even if the needle doesn’t bother them. “We’re hopeful that something administered by the nasal route would be less likely to come across some of those issues,” Kett says.

In the U.S., however, sprays and puffs won’t be available until they are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, which requires clear evidence of disease protection. As Diamond points out, standards for such evidence are well established for injections, and vaccine makers can follow the rule book: regulations point to particular antibodies and specific ways to measure them with a simple blood test. But for nasal vaccines, Iwasaki says, “we don’t have a standard way to collect nasal mucus or measure antibody titers. All these practical issues have not been worked out.”

Iwasaki is also frustrated with a restriction by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that stops researchers from using existing COVID vaccines in basic research to develop new nasal sprays. The rule is a holdover from 2020, when COVID injections had just been developed and were in short supply; people had to wait to get vaccinated until they were eligible based on factors such as age and preexisting conditions. “That made sense back then, but those concerns are years old; things are different now,” Iwasaki says. “Now we have excess vaccine being thrown out, and we cannot even get access to the waste, the expired vaccine.”

Today scientists want to contrast the effectiveness of nasal formulations with injections already in use. “Those comparisons are really important for convincing the FDA that this is a worthy vaccine to pursue,” Iwasaki says. But the restriction has held up studies by her company, Xanadu, slowing down work. (The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.)

Despite the bureaucratic and scientific hurdles, the sheer number of nasal vaccines now in clinical trials encourages Iwasaki and other scientists pursuing the needle-free route. They say it seems like only a matter of time before getting vaccinated will be as simple as a spritz up the nose.

Velasquez, for one, can’t wait for that day to arrive. The circumstances that finally forced her to reckon with her fear of needles (a global pandemic, the prospect of parenthood and the numerous blood tests that accompanied her pregnancy) were so much bigger than her. If not for them, she might still be avoiding shots. “So having vaccines without needles—I would get every vaccine any doctor wanted me to get, ever. It would be a complete game changer for me.”

[sukisheadlights]

MAKE ME STAY!

landonorris x famous!oc

summary: where she sends the Internet into a slow spiral after releasing a song out of the blue (except it’s not out of the blue, it’s papaya)

part 1: make me stay, series masterlist

faceclaim: dua lipa 🫶

rory’s voice mail 🎧: PART 1! hope you guys like this, it’s obviously going to be a slow burn but I’m really excited to write it for y’all <3 ALSO the first two chapters are gonna be a little slow to set up the story and a strong base for it 😚 LOVE YOU SAY IT BACK

@TMZ • 2 hours ago

Exclusive: F1 phenom Lando Norris spotted leaving Las Vegas after-party with a mysterious redhead!

Rumors are swirling that F1 racing superstar Lando Norris may have found a new love interest in Las Vegas!

The 22-year-old McLaren driver was spotted leaving the after-party of the FIA Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix with a gorgeous gal on his arm.

Our source spotted Lando and the mystery woman leaving together and said the pair appeared to be "flirty", as Lando "wrapped his arm around her" and they "walked off into the night."

@THEHOLLYWOODFIX • 2 hours ago

It looks like F1 driver Lando Norris is getting back into his dating game!

After breaking up with his long-term girlfriend last year, our favorite driver was seen leaving the Formula 1 Las Vegas after party with a mysterious red-haired woman dressed in a form-fitting black leather dress.

We're not sure if this is just a one night stand, or if Lando has his sights set on someone new. Either way, we wouldn't blame him - the Formula 1 Las Vegas parties are known for being a hot spot for celebrities and models alike!

liked by paisleysterling, zendaya, and 8,75,784,894 others

lizcolton miss me?

paisleysterling no girl gtfo of my house 🙄

lizcolton stfu you love me

paisleysterling god I hate you

lizownsme UH YES?!!?! THE RED HAIRR???? ITS GIVING NEW ERA 🫣

user654 the world is NOT READY for whatever lizzy is cooking rn

user849 literally buy me

taylorswift stunning as always!! ❤️

tittieswhere BOTH MY MOTHERS ARE HERE OMFGGG TAYLOR GET HER TO OPEN FOR YOU

lewishamilton pic creds to me, btw.

lizcolton he took the pictures, or whatever 🙄

user4 EXCUSE ME WTAF ARE YOU DOING HERE

user9 @user4 it’s giving “excuse me what the actual fuck are you doing in my house—”

isoldmysoultof1 WHAT WHAT WHAAAT

isoldmysoultof1 @f1wags NEW F1 WAG POSSIBLY?!!?!!

@TMZ • 45 mins ago

Pop Sensation Liz Colton is Back!

Liz, who's long been hailed as a retro-pop phenomenon and one of the biggest social media stars, has just announced her return to the spotlight after a two-year break! Liz had been absent from public life following her rough breakup with actor Jacob Elordi.

Now, the queen of pop has set the Internet ablaze with a photo of herself sporting a sleek new red do and rocking an all-leather look, accompanied by the caption 'miss me?' Fans are abuzz!

In addition, Colton has been recently spotted interacting comfortably with Formula One superstar Lewis Hamilton in her social media comment sections! Hamilton, who is a known celebrity himself, has even asked Colton to give more picture credits, making fans hope that she's ready to expand her network and step into the world of Formula 1.

Could this mean the start of a whole new era for Liz?

liked by paiselysterling, sabrinacarpenter, and 9,34,748,830 others

lizcolton the face of a person keeping secrets 🤐

comments disabled.

@TMZ • 1 min ago

BREAKING NEWS!

It looks like Jacob Elordi, the "Euphoria" heartthrob who recently broke up with longtime girlfriend Liz Colton, was caught in a compromising position.

Just months after Liz and Jacob decided to split, details have emerged that the Australian actor cheated on his girlfriend multiple times. While neither Liz nor Jacob have commented publicly on the situation, fans have been quick to blast the actor for his apparent indiscretions.

With a successful career and multiple projects in the works, it looks like Jacob's reputation is about to take a dip.

liked by alexademie, sydneysweeney, and 8,59,499,484 others

lizcolton kisses to my exes, out 8pm tonight 💋

paisleysterling ATE

paisleysterling first picture’s for someone special?? I KNOW YOU BITCH

liked by lizcolton

lizcoltonsslave MOTHER ISNT SINGLE ANYMORE!?

lizcolton @lizcoltonsslave single as HELL baby!! Y’all haven’t lost me yet dw 😚

lizcoltonsslave @lizcolton bye I’m about to go die in a hole now

lewishamilton roscoe is ready to stream

lizcolton @lewishamilton thanks ig 🤨

wagintraining @lewishamilton LEWIS LIZ OMG LIZ ARE YOU FRIENDS WITH THE DRIVERS!?

lizcolton @wagintraining no comments

coltonhq headphones are ready!! 🎧🤍

lizcolton @coltonhq love u admin 😭💋

lizismother18 oh this is gonna EAT

[singsweetmelodies]

a little while ago, i got this ask asking me if i could make some sort of introduction to the pierre/charles ship and all its lore. and since they are, without question, my f1 rpf OTP, my answer was oh my god yes of course. it's taken me a little while to compile all that lore - because boy, is there a lot - but it's been one of the happiest research projects of my life, without question. and i think it's finally ready to go!! so, with no further ado...

ABOUT PIARLES: a (not-so-brief) introduction to f1 rpf's french friends to lovers ship

so the first thing you need to know about piarles is that they're childhood best friends. not that uncommon in a sport like f1, to be fair - most of the drivers grew up together, racing against each other in karting. but pierre and charles are a little different in that they aren't just karting acquaintances: the two of them (and their entire families) are genuinely good friends.

in fact, if you ask either pierre or charles about the other (and interviewers often do) one of the first things they'll probably say is "we've known each other for a long time," quickly followed by "we used to go on holiday together when we were kids." and they ALWAYS say this with the fondest expressions 🥰 even if you take shipping completely out of the equation, it's clear that these two have a very long-standing and very close friendship, with many fond memories which both of them seem to treasure very much.

in charles' own words:

"Pierre! We know each other since... a long, long time. We used to go on holidays together when we were children with our parents, and uh... we did quite a bit of mess together when we were children, but (laughs) very good memories. And the relationship never really changed throughout the years, even though we have taken different paths, because he was a bit older, so we weren't always in the same categories. But we would always call each other, text each other, go on holidays together... and yeah, I just have so many memories." (source - watch from timestamp 2:06)

pierre tells a very similar story:

"He's definitely one of my best friends. Charles is a very nice person and an incredible driver. We met when we were 9 years old and created a very strong bond. Our parents are very close, and we went on vacations from when we were 10, so we created lots of memories. We were teammates in karting when we were 12, and today we find ourselves in Formula 1. It's a pretty incredible story. But for me the most important part is to see the person he's become, and he hasn't changed since he was young." (source)

i think it's important to note that these aren't the only times pierre and charles have spoken about each other in glowing terms like this - no, it happens quite frequently. pretty much every time they're asked about each other, tbh. (i'm not going to add quotes from every single time here, though, because we would be here for the rest of the month if i tried. 😅) the point is, piarles are pretty damn close, and think very highly of each other.

but it's not just them that are close: like i mentioned in the first paragraphs of this post, their families are close, too. they really are childhood friends in that "your family is practically my second family" sense, which i think is something really special.

here, for example, is pierre's father jean-jacques talking about charles:

Charles is part of the family. We've known him since he was nine and when he started in karting with Pierre. (...) When the races were in England Charles was sleeping at our place, and when the races were in Italy, Pierre was sleeping at Charles's place. Then Pierre moved to F4. I don't think there have ever been a big rivalry between them even though their careers were similar. Charles is part of the family probably even more since Hervé passed away. Our door will always be open for him and he knows.” (source)

🥹

what's more, charles has also said numerous times that it's hard to maintain true friendships in f1 - but his bond with pierre is one of those rare exceptions:

It’s rare I think, it’s very rare to have a sincere friendship in F1, because there’s a lot of competition. So yes there’s friendship, but it’s not always entirely sincere - but with Pierre it really is, and it has always been. (source)

they're friends. they really are friends, not just friendly coworkers, like many of the other f1 drivers are. pierre and charles genuinely like and appreciate each other's company very much - which, even if you put shipping completely aside, is just such a wonderful thing, and always makes me smile so much.

one of my personal favourite moments was when pierre talked about charles on the beyond the grid podcast in 2023:

"That's why I really like these chats that I can have with Charles, because I know with Charles, discussing about both our lives, we won't judge each other... because we know what it's like and we just speak very openly about various things. And I know it's almost like a happy place or a comfortable place where you really feel you can open up. He'll understand, I'll understand him..." (source - listen from timestamp 32:01)

if that doesn't make your heart melt at least a little bit, then i don't know what to say to you.

... no, actually, i do. if this kind of sentimentality won't do it for you, how about a bit of silliness and humour?

that's right. like any good childhood friends, pierre and charles also have an embarrassing nickname for each other: "calamar," which is french for "squid." (we know that they call each other that courtesy of charles' insta).

what on earth is the origin of this nickname, you may be wondering? well, according to pierre...

"It goes back to a long time ago when we were kids, like... nine, ten years old. We would go on holidays together and spend more time. I don't know. It just came, like one day we decided to call each other calamar, which is not really such a beautiful nickname, but yeah it was just for fun. We were kids and we were laughing. And actually, we have many other nicknames because we were teammates also in karting and we spent a lot, a lot of time together. So, a lot of nicknames came alongside all this time. And this kind of stayed with us." (source)

as pierre said in this quote, "calamar" is not even the only nickname they have - pierre sometimes calls charles "charlito" and also "charlo," while charles calls pierre "mon petit."

and as if that's not enough, they're also that pair of boyfriends friends who always have to bring each other up in conversation. if there's ever an interview question along the lines of "which f1 driver would you...." then you can pretty much bet pierre will answer "charles," and charles will answer "pierre."

for example, here is pierre choosing charles as the one f1 driver he'd take for a drink. and here is charles naming pierre as his best friend in the paddock. oh, and here is pierre saying he'd choose charles as one driver to take with him to a desert island. there's more, but i think you get the idea 😆❤️

so yeah! that's a quick(ish) overview of the background/context of piarles - AKA the french (yes, i know charles is monégasque, but he SPEAKS french) friends/boyfriends on the grid.

(if you'd like to know more details about their friendship, especially about their pre-f1 years, then i recommend this post and its follow-up compiled by the incredible @vegasgrandprix. these posts really are a treasure trove for piarles history & lore!)

but now that i've painted a pretty clear picture of their friendship, let's move on to some more shippy moments, shall we? the "lovers" part of friends to lovers <3333

believe it or not, eveything up till now was just the background information about piarles. it's more than enough to build an OTP on already, i'd say - but wait, there's more!

the thing with pierre and charles is that along with being friends, they are also french (or....french-adjacent. close enough) which means that they have absolutely zero problem with being very openly affectionate with each other.

this has given us some very delicious shipping moments, which i will now try and give an overview of. (my fellow piarlies: if i've left out one of your favourite moments, please forgive me - they have so many moments with each other, and tumblr has a post character limit, so there was just no way for me to include everything, much as i wanted to. but i do think this is a good introduction!)

let's start with perhaps the most iconic piarles moment of them all: monza 2020, aka pierre gasly's first win in f1.

that was a crazy, wonderful day in so many ways - first of all, the race itself was insane. pierre started 10th on the grid, and with a lot of luck + a safety car that really worked out for him, ended up leading the race and defended from carlos sainz with DRS to get his maiden win. this was almost exactly a year after he'd been dropped from red bull, so the win was pretty much the biggest fuck-you to everyone @ RBR and comeback moment for pierre that was possible. it was also a dream come true (every f1 driver dreams about winning a race!) and you only need to look at any interview pierre did afterwards to see how much it meant to him.

what makes it even more insane, though, is that charles was right there to congratulate him and watch his podium. keep in mind that, in the same race, charles crashed out - both ferraris did, in monza of all places. i don't think anyone would've been surprised, or held it against him at all, if charles just kept his head down for the rest of that day.

but no. even though he wasn't medically cleared after the crash yet (!!) charles went to parc fermé anyway to congratulate pierre. remember that thing i said about them being french and very open with affection? well:

here are some pictures of the monza piarles congratulations hug. (am i the only one who thinks it looks like charles wants to kiss pierre in that second pic?! god....) here and here are some more angles of the hug to go insane over, if you like.

you can also watch it in video format here - and yes, charles really did pull pierre out of his hug with romain so that he could congratulate him himself. i know. (also, yes, pierre does pat charles' ass just before they go their separate ways. what can i say? french.)

as if that's not already insane enough, charles also stayed to watch pierre's podium despite not being medically cleared yet after his crash. (we have to thank netflix FOREVER for providing us with that specific behind-the-scenes shot 🙏 drive to survive - you did well that time, you really did.)

and afterwards, charles said:

It was just a dream for one of us to get into F1 one day. In the end we’re both in F1, we’ve both won a GP, both of us in Monza. (...) I was really happy that day, even if my race went wrong, his win made it a good day. (source)

your honour. who says that about another driver's win, especially on a day where you yourself had an awful race? if that's not love in a sport like f1, i don't know what is!

i really could talk about monza 2020 and how much it means for a very long time, but i will rein myself in to just one final comment: isn't it rather beautiful to think that pierre & charles' names will always be next to each other in the monza winners list? charles won there in 2019, and then pierre won there in 2020. talk about soulmatism ❤️💙

now, moving on to another absolutely iconic (and delightfully gay) piarles moment: baku 2021, aka that time pierre and charles had an awesome last-lap battle for the P3 podium spot.

it was very close racing, with them swapping positions several times down the straight - but they kept it clean. in fact, they kept it so clean that someone remarked it's like they know each other by heart. yup. totally a normal thing to say about two men racing.

equally normal was charles' comments after the race:

"The last lap was my favourite part of the race. It was crazy and had a lot of actions. With Pierre it was hot. I'm happy for him for his podium." (source)

and as if that's not enough, he also GRABBED pierre into a hug in parc fermé, and then held him incredibly close while congratulating him.

you can watch this hug in video format here and gif format here, if you want - and i really recommend doing so, because it's insane to see how charles quite literally crashes into pierre's personal space and yanks him into a hug. (here is a close-up of their helmets during said hug - and you can just say it with me. GAY.)

that's still not all, though: charles congratulated pierre twice after the race. once on the outlap (with a thumbs-up and a middle finger as pierre's car drove past his, LMAO) and then on social media as well (with a nickname and a kiss emoji).

he ALSO commented on pierre's instagram post about the race with another kiss emoji:

so, apparently, charles was thinking about kissing pierre quite a lot in baku 2021. 🤭 an iconic day all around!

and as it happens, 2021 brought us another iconic piarles moment - though this one is a whole less happy. i'm talking about styria 2021, aka that time pierre and charles had contact in a race, and pierre had to retire from that grand prix.

here is the official f1 news article about the incident - the long and the short of it is that charles misjudged on lap 1 and crashed into the side of pierre's car, ending pierre's race. naturally, pierre was furious and upset, especially because the alphatauri was actually a good car in 2021, and he'd stood to score really good points that sunday.

now, for most f1 girlies, an incident like this between childhood friends immediately brings up vivid brocedes flashbacks. and, to be honest, it wouldn't have been that much of a surprise if this had indeed soured pierre and charles' friendship - we saw exactly this happen with pierre and esteban, after all.

but no. charles went to see pierre post-race to clear the air between them, and although pierre was furious with him, he didn't let it ruin their friendship. in fact, when he was asked how the incident affected their friendship, pierre had the following to say:

"Yeah... I was really sad to end 15 years of friendship. He is no more my friend (laughs). No, no, it's... honestly, it was really painful, you know, you work so hard the whole weekend for Sunday to score points, and then after literally like 20 seconds, the whole race was over. So, quite a difficult one to swallow, but, you know, we know each other, with Charles, we have a lot of respect for each other. He came to see me after the race - I was still pretty pissed off with him, but, uh, we knew before last Sunday, nothing ever happened between us on the race-track, and we knew one day it would happen. Unfortunately I paid the price more than him, but yeah, it's racing, unfortunately. (...) It's painful, it's racing, it happens sometimes - I just told him to make sure it doesn't happen another time, and... we're fine." (source - watch from 17:01)

i think that styria 2021 is vital piarles lore not because it's a fun shippy moment, but rather because it shows the strength of their connection. an incident like this could easily have destroyed their friendship, but they didn't let it. they mean enough to each other that they let what happens on-track stay on-track and not affect their closeness off-track. and that, i think, is something truly special - they were tested in a way which has destroyed f1 friendships before, and yet they still came out stronger.

iconic indeed.

on a happier note again, now, there is also montreal 2022, which many piarles fans consider one of THE seminal piarles moments. the race itself was not so memorable for our boys this time, but what they did off-track is.

that is to say: pierre and charles went on a dinner date. then, they were spotted driving around the streets of montreal in a white ferrari. and THEN, as if that's not mind-blowing enough already... charles posted, to his public instagram story, a video of pierre wearing his charles-leclerc-16 branded ferrari hat.

these screenshots are peanut quality, i'm sorry, lmao... but all of montreal 2022 feels a bit like a fever dream in the best way, so i think the blurriness just captures the vibes, tbh.

we're not quite done with montreal 2022 yet, though - earlier on the same day, charles also had a very sweet hello with pierre's parents. you can just SEE how much pierre's parents love charles, and isn't that just the most heartwarming thing 😭❤️

now, one final thing about montreal 2022: pierre never posted his infamous photo dump after that race. that might not seem particularly important, but... this is the only race of 2022 for which pierre DIDN'T post a photo dump.

there are a thousand and one theories about why he didn't - maybe he just forgot, maybe he had a busy weekend, maybe he didn't have any photos he wanted to share. or, in a more shippy interpretation... maybe he does have photos, especially photos of charles, but he doesn't want to share them/wants to keep them all to himself. we don't know!

one lucky piarlie got to meet pierre in london in 2022 at an alphatauri event, and actually asked him about the montreal photo dump thing. here is what he said (courtesy of the lovely @they-call-it-traffic 💞)

the descriptions there... you can just picture pierre's expressions & smirks SO perfectly, right? he is insane. they are insane. #investigatemontreal !!

anyways. moving on one year again: 2023 brought us pierre and charles' basketball date:

as well as two tennis dates:

(i call them "dates" because pierre and charles spent a significant time together during them, hanging out & enjoying each other's company and looking at each other with major heart-eyes. obviously, irl, they aren't officially dates - in fact, both pierre and charles had their irl girlfriends along with them when they attended wimbledon. but who cares too much about irl -- this is a rpf post 😉)

i'm not going to spend too long explaining the lore behind these, because i'm already flirting with the tumblr post character limit 🙈 but basically, what happened is that on all 3 these occasions, pierre and charles chose to hang out together at events completely unrelated to f1, simply because they are friends and like each other's company. (that, to me, is always a measure of how much f1 drivers actually like each other - whether or not they choose to spend time with each other when they're not forced into proximity by f1. pierre and charles pass this test with flying colours.)

the basketball date is particularly insane, because that day was actually an event which charles, pierre and esteban attended. but you wouldn't know THAT from charles' post about it. charles fully cropped esteban out of his post - he really said "esteban who? i only spent time with my friend pierre 😌" and he said it with his whole chest.

ALSO, while we're on the subject of the basketball date and social media - pierre and charles co-posted a reel about it on instagram. yes. CO-POSTED. you know, like a couple co-posting about their date.

piarles basketball date, you will always be famous!!

(P.S. - a lot of piarles fans refer to this 2023 basketball date as "basketball date 2.0" - and this is because pierre and charles have actually done this before, in 2021. i really can't talk too much about that date - character limit, my beloathed - but let me just say that pierre draping his arm round the back of charles' chair is something that lives rent free in my mind. rent free.)

another thing that lives in my mind rent-free is charles being interviewed at their first tennis date, and calling pierre his best friend <3333 love is friendship set on fire, etc etc!

... so, okay, when i said i wasn't going to talk too much about the lore behind the tennis & basketball dates, i lied a little bit. but in my defence - they were insane for these, they really were!

anyways. now, let's skip back in time a little - because i would be very remiss if i didn't include pierre and charles' 2016 joint championship celebrations.

in the year 2016, pierre was the GP2 champion and charles the GP3 champion (GP2 and GP3 are the old names for F2 and F3). in a very pretty twist of fate, they both clinched their respective titles at the same circuit, in the final race of their respective series - and then, of course, they celebrated together.

here is an adorable gifset of them celebrating together after the final GP2 race. and here are some more pictures from the official Prema photoshoot for the GP2 & GP3 champions (yes, they did a joint photoshoot together. even Prema ships it, apparently!)

actually, while we're on the subject of celebrating together: pierre and charles almost always congratulate each other for their significant achievements in f1. see: charles making a point to congratulate pierre on his podium in baku, as i discussed earlier in this post, and again in zandvoort 2023. (both times with a kiss emoji, mind you). similarly, check out pierre seeking charles out in parc fermé to congratulate him for his bahrain 2022 season-opener pole, and then congratulating him for his win twice over on social media. (and these are just a few examples out of many!)

this is one of those things that sets them apart from many other f1 rpf pairings: they both seem genuinely happy when the other does well. and like. they are COMPETITORS - but they're good enough friends that they can still celebrate each other's achievements genuinely and happily. that is insane!!

yes, sure, it's good sportsmanship to congratulate other drivers for wins/podiums - but that is usually done with a handshake in person or a copy-paste "congrats to XYZ" in the post-race interview, or something like that. one rarely gets the sense that it comes from a place of genuine, deep happiness for the other driver being congratulated.

pierre and charles are just on a whole different level. they specifically seek each other out in parc fermé, hug each other with so much enthusiasm that it looks suspiciously gay, and also post about each other's achievements very fondly on social media.

again, this is something you might see a driver do for their teammate - for example, charles congratulating "carlos and the team" for a win in singapore - but almost never with a freaking KISS EMOJI. and a pet name. and so much genuine joy.

just... yeah. they care about each other so much, and are each other's biggest supporters ❤️

it's not just in good times that they're there for each other, either: 2019 was a truly difficult year for both pierre and charles (pierre especially) but they were still there for each other when it mattered.

the prime example of this is monza 2019, which was one race after pierre's demotion from red bull, and also one race after anthoine hubert's death. because the fia has no sense of basic kindness or decency, naturally they put pierre into a press conference that very weekend.

the video of that press conference is very hard to watch - every time pierre is asked a question, you can hear how much he is struggling to hold it together. honestly, the sole good thing from this presscon is that at least pierre had charles beside him.

here is a post i made where i discuss this in a bit more detail, but essentially: charles sat as close as possible to pierre for the entirety of that conference - close enough that their shoulders were practically touching - as a non-verbal gesture of support. you can see the difference in space between charles & pierre vs all the other drivers, and there's no way that was accidental. charles might not have been able to voice his support for pierre out loud right then, but it's there in every part of his body language.

another very meaningful moment is also from 2019, when pierre went up to charles pre-race in spa:

"I told Charles before the race, please win this race for Anthoine." (source)

and charles did. 💙

then later in 2019, when pierre got his first podium in brazil, guess who was right there to hug and congratulate him? that's right.

this was another case where charles' own race fell apart - he had a crash with his teammate, in fact - but he still made a point of going to hug pierre after his P2, and going on social media to tell pierre and also the whole world that pierre deserved that podium. that's what i call supporting your best friend.

now, at this point, you might be thinking... well, pierre and charles have it all. whether you're looking for happy moments or deep emotional moments or suspiciously gay moments to fuel your shipping fire, it's all there.

and you'd be right! they do have it all. though i will say this - one of the complaints i've heard whispered around this fandom is that piarles is a fun ship, but they don't have any content videos together like teammates do. so it's harder to ship them, because you don't get to see them actually interact with each other aside from like 5-second video clips...

to that i say: well. they might not have any teammate videos together, but oh boy. as of 2023, they do have something else: the squeezie video.

i could talk about the squeezie video for MONTHS, i really could - but let me try and keep it brief. so, squeezie is this french youtuber who has this "who's the impostor?" video series in which he gets a couple of celebrities to join him on the show, plus some people from a certain profession, and then they have to guess who actually does that profession and who's the impostor.

the day that pierre and charles were guests on the show, the professions were "firefighter," "midwife," "flight attendant" and "school counselor." this resulted in absolute chaos of the best kind - ah, man, i cannot even begin to describe to you what a glorious mess it was. that video had everything from charles & pierre cradling fake babies, to charles & pierre extremely dramatically accusing each other of lying, to pierre making dirty hand gestures while charles blushes profusely, to charles & pierre play-acting being naughty schoolkids (feat. charles saying he fell asleep in class and woke up from a nightmare screaming "box box" 😭)

here are some screenshots of some of my favourite moments:

the way they LOOK at each other... GOD.

anyways! you can watch the video here. my recommendation is to watch it with the original french sound track - there is an english dub available, but it sounds incredibly strange to hear american accents coming out of pierre & charles' mouths, off-sync with what they're actually saying. it's a MUCH better experience to watch in french, so you can hear what they actually said, and enjoy how they interact with each other. (english subtitles are available!) alternatively, you can find some translated highlights here, courtesy of the incredible @sedicii <3333

aside from all the still-can't-believe-they-actually-did-this-on-camera content, one of the things that makes me feel the most insane is that pierre and charles both chose to appear on this video. there was no contractual PR requirement saying they both had to participate in it, like with teammate challenges - no, they did it in their free time, because they wanted to.

i mean, sure, that video was definitely good for PR for both of them, but the point stands that they didn't have to do it, and they certainly didn't have to do it together. they CHOSE to - and what's more, they said at the end of the video that they'd do it again.

that's so central to pierre and charles, i think: they choose each other, time and time again. they freely choose to spend time with each other, because they genuinely like each other and enjoy each other's company. so much so that you will find them together at least once on almost every race weekend.

no, seriously. it's a very unusual race weekend if pierre and charles aren't spotted together at least one time. whether it's being glued to each other's sides on driver's parades, or chatting in the background of some or other interview, or just walking through the paddock together... they will find each other.

there are SO many instances where this happens that i would be here for over a month if i tried to list them all - and i'd still probably miss some. but here are some of my personal highlights!

pierre and charles finding each other pre-race in jeddah

pierre and charles chatting in the media pen in the background of one of alex's interviews

pierre and charles walking together in vegas (feat. fond smiles)

pierre and charles being baby gossip girls in 2018

more baby piarles in 2018

even more baby pierre and charles chatting in 2017

and just to round things off: most recently, pierre and charles walking together in jeddah 2024

and many, many more... including a whole bunch of moments we'll probably never know about.

that's another thing that makes me more than a little insane about these two: pierre has actually said, in so many words, that they'll never share everything about their friendship.

In the end we have the same life, we grew up together. We've done many things together, but you won't hear about all of it. (source)

all these moments that we see, that we go insane over... that's probably not even the half of what they've actually done together. and that makes me feel some type of way. if this is just the small pieces of their lives & interactions that they choose to share with the public, then just imagine what else there could be...

....buuuuut that'll start becoming a fanfic if i let myself carry on with that line of thinking too long. (can i just say one thing about that, though? the piarles fanfic community is absolutely INCREDIBLE. such talented writers, such wonderful people... just, chef's kiss all around!!) but, yeah! i think this post has gone on for more than long enough now, haha.

so, to conclude: pierre and charles really are the epitome of a friends to lovers ship: they get along famously, they genuinely seem to love each other's company and are always laughing together - and they can very often be found giving each other the heart-eyes/looking at each other like they're in love. if it's warmth, joy and friends to lovers feels that you're after, then look no further <3333

thank you so much for reading! and i do hope that after all this, you're at least a little bit in love with piarles, too ❤️

[lonelierthanu]

Penmanship

Satoru Gojo x Gender-neutral Reader

series: incomplete

words: 3.4k

warnings: mentions of smoking; funny; meet-ugly; no mentioned female or male anatomy; no spoilers; no curses; slow build; slow to update; college au

summary: you decided you never want to see this man again and fuck the pen altogether. Well, life has other plans.

part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 …+

Your coffee splashed dramatically against the concrete wall you tossed it at. You’re pissed, to say the least, and the sugarless coffee —that you asked for extra sugar for— was your tipping point.

You were behind some bleachers that laid against the wall outside the dining hall. You’re not sure why these bleachers are here? They seem old and were probably here way before the school was renovated and they put in a huge football field across campus. The school is old so you wouldn’t be surprised if they just left it here. But right now you’re grateful they did because you’re knee deep in a tantrum, if one wants to consider it one, and this is your only sanctuary at the moment.

“Was that necessary?” Aoi asks you, after he takes a drag from his cigarette.

“I thought you said you were going to quit?” Rikki asks from beside him.

“And I thought you said you would never date Tenji,” he mumbles under his breath as he takes another drag and doesn’t bother blowing away from her direction, a courtesy he would have usually given. Rikki scowls at the side of his face.

“We’re not dating.”

“The pictures on his instagram say something different,” Aoi takes another drag.

“I was… drunk…” Rikki crosses her arms as she kicks a rock towards your direction. It lands back in its spot after bouncing off your shoe. It startled her attention towards you, like she suddenly remembered you were there.

You roll your eyes at both of them and lean against the opposite wall from them. Since you’ve known them they’ve had a weird relationship. At least in your eyes. You’ve known them for a little longer than a year and they’ve had an on and off crush on each other since the three of you met. And the two sides have never been on the same page. One person has a crush on the other, then the other gets feelings when the other person loses feelings . It’s a weird dynamic that you wish they’d get over already.

But a part of you wants it to stay this way, so your friendship never changes. But you know that one day this weird game of tug of war will come to an end and it’ll either end in peace, or someone in the mud.

“To answer your question Aoi, yes. That was completely necessary,” You say to break the silence. Rikki jumps at the opportunity to change the subject and cut through the tension. She comes to lean next to you.

“What’s got your panties in a twist anyway?”

“Remember that creepster that thought I was hitting on him for a week?” Rikki tries to hold back her laugh. She fails. You had told her about what happened the next morning after the incident on Saturday. Despite her hangover she found the misunderstanding hilarious. Laughing while saying ‘oh my god, that is so something he would do!’ And you ended up filling Aoi in during one of your class periods you shared with him a couple hours ago.

“Yeah,” she answers, failing to hide her smile.

“Well my professor paired us up for a group project,” you cross your arms.

“At the end of the semester?” Aoi asks as he stomps on his cigarette to put it out, “How does she expect you to get a project done during the week of exams?”

“No, starting next semester is when we start the project. The worst part is, we’ll be working on it ‘till February,” You groaned into your hands, covering your face with them.

“I’m sure it won’t be that bad,” Rikki tries to console you by putting a hand on your shoulder. You put your hands down to glare at her.

“Don’t jinx me,” Rikki laughs at you. Aoi smirks, also finding this amusing. “And wipe that smug look off your face,” you point a finger directly in Aoi’s face. He pushes your hand out of the way and rolls his eyes at you, still smug.

You stuff your hands into your jacket pockets, trying to fight off the cold. You’re not looking forward to next semester, to say the least, and when you heard the devastating news of Creepster being your project partner you immediately started thinking of ways to get out of it.

Because since that Saturday you had heard no word of this man until that following Monday. He came in late, like usual, but before he showed up your professor had given the whole spiel about the details of the new project the class would be working on. Everyone picked their own partner but you since there was an odd number of students in the class. Then Creepster walked in.

She told him you’d be his partner and he turned his head to look at you while she vaguely explained the project to him. Your body turned cold when his smirk grew wider. Like he was looking forward to this. The professor dismissed him to his seat saying you could explain in more detail.

When he sat down he faced you, completely ignoring the rest of the professor’s lecture. He leaned his head on his hand, smirk still present on his face. You refused to look at him and continued looking forward.

“Hey partner,” you internally recoiled. He sensed your unease and with the new bout of knowledge that this guy thinks you have some sort of crush on him, or just wanna get in his pants, he probably took your unease for nervousness. The thought alone pissed you off.

He barely got two words out of you in that class, which was yesterday, and today was no better. Though somehow you ended up agreeing to go to his house (his real house) to outline and plan the beginning of the project to finish it faster after the break. It was his idea and it honestly shocked you to hear him suggest a genuine responsible plan. Not gonna lie, you definitely thought the word “ responsible “ didn’t exist within his vocabulary.

You only mildly cared about this idea. You mostly agreed to do so you can finally get that damn pen back before you go on break. You’ll be damned if you go home empty handed when you confidently told your niece you’d bring it back.

“So. What are you gonna do?” Aoi asks, putting his hands into his jacket pockets as well.

“Get my pen back,” you answer, then your phone rings before you can look at his confused expression. It’s your alarm to go to your last class. You leave them to ruminate in their awkward tension.

Creepster told you he’d pick you up after school to take you to his house. You were definitely uncomfortable with the idea of being alone in a car with this man, but you don’t have money for a ride right now, Rikki went to work today, and it beats walking an hour and a half to his place.

You waited at the school's gate for fifteen minutes and was about to text him when you remembered you don't have his number. But before you could stress over that fact, a shiny black Lexus pulled up in front of you. The driver window lowered revealing a strange man at the wheel. He said your name and asked if you were who you were. You didn’t answer at first but then Creepster moved into your line of vision in the passenger seat.

“Get in loser,” he laughed at his own reference, then smiled at you. You rolled your eyes and opened the door to the back seat.

The drive was fairly short, probably a little shorter than ten minutes, and the drive was not silent. But you were glad for that, because if it weren’t for the surprisingly good tunes being blasted through the speakers, you know your awkward uncomfortable air would have permeated through the windows for the other drivers on the road to feel. You’re also glad that you aren’t alone with this guy. That would have been a whole different situation for you.

When you pull up to his house you physically feel the hinges connecting your jaw to your skull unclick. You gawk at the state of his house while you pick your jaw up off the car floor.

His house is fucking huge.

And this is his actual house. You have half a mind to confirm that.

When you head inside you have to put in extra effort to keep your eyes from bulging out of their sockets. It’s just as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside. The difference between this and the frat house is vast.

For starters, it’s furnished way better. Which makes you think he definitely didn’t do it himself. It’s clean, which you weren’t expecting, and it smells nice. Another thing you weren’t expecting but desperately hoping for.

“So, should we get started?” Creepster says from behind you. It startles you how close he is. You jump at least a foot away before turning to him.

“Yeah,” you say, calmer than your heart is beating. He guides you to his dining room where a large circular table resides next to a beautiful huge island with high bar stools tucked into it and a sink in the middle. The dining area is surrounded by windows, letting copious amounts of natural sunlight in. The room is brightly lit without any lights being on. It’s impressive. This is the type of room you’d save in a pinterest board.

He pulls out a chair for you to sit on, but the way he smiles at you after pisses you off so you sit in the chair next to it. He seems amused by this, and chuckles fondly.

“I’m gonna go grab my laptop, I'll be right back. Don’t go anywhere,” he jokes. You don’t laugh, but he walks away without seeing if you do or not. You see him walk through an alcove in the kitchen and go to the right. Once you know he’s gone you look more thoroughly at your surroundings. You see a set of grandiose stairs in the living room by the entry. And from where you’re seated you can see two halls up there and a third one could exist but it’s too high to tell. You already know you’d get lost trying to walk through here. Your family would have to send a search team to find you.

Your eyes shift over to see grand imposing glass doors that lead to a pool, there could be more land out there but you can’t tell from where you’re sitting. But from how huge the estate is from when you pulled up you already know the backyard is huge. You don’t see any other doors around besides the one in the kitchen, but you just assume that’s a broom closet or a bathroom or something.

Just from looking around you’ve lost a glimmer of hope of finding this pen. It’d be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. You’re already preparing the apology to your niece in your head.

“You want a tour?” You whip your head around to see Houdini putting his laptop and bag onto the table and pulling a chair out across from you.

“No,” you answer immediately because the thought of him knowing you’re impressed by his home makes you wanna scratch at your skin. But after a quick second you realize that that could’ve been your chance to find the pen. You curse at yourself. He sits down and opens his laptop. You take yours out from your bag and place it on the table as well.

You want to just open your mouth and ask for the pen again, but a part of you is scared he’ll think you're trying to hit on him again. You agreed to come to his house so that could definitely send the wrong message in this guy’s delusional brain.

“Can I get your notes on the project so far?” He asks without looking up from his laptop. You take your notebook out of your bag and slide it across the table. He shares a doc with you before opening it. So, he really is going to work on this project. A part of you thought this was another ruse to sleep with you. To say you’re relieved is an understatement.

The next half hour goes by with him asking you yes or no questions, finding resources to cite from, quotes, studies, creating the powerpoint and typing in each slide what each should consist of, and starting a rough draft for the essay you’re meant to write. Everything is going pretty smoothly and you’re proud of the progress you’ve made in such a short time. You’re also pleasantly surprised by Herc-Houdini’s work ethic. You’re starting to think he might not be that bad.

And honestly, when you think about the situation, you can kind of see how he misunderstood. It may seem a little absurd to you that asking for a pen correlates to ‘please sleep with me’, but if there are people doing weirder things to get him to sleep with them, then you kind of understand. You’re still not very keen on him though. His reputation and the crowd he’s associated with just puts you off.

Hercules groans loudly as he stretches his arms. The muscles in them tense and show off the gains he’s worked for. A small part of you thinks that he wore that shirt on purpose, but when he’s relaxed he looks as skinny and lanky as always.

I’ll be right back,” he tells you before getting up and heading for that same alcove, going to the left. You vaguely notice him going in a different direction than before and go back to doing your work. You almost jolt with the realization that you could look around and find the pen while he’s gone.

Frankly, this could be a terrible idea. You don’t know what he’s doing so he could be back any moment. You could say you were looking for a bathroom, but then you could’ve just asked when he got back. You’re already up and walking while thinking of the logistics of this plan. It’s stupid, you know, but what if you find the pen? It seems like a great risk to reward ratio to you.

Knowing Sherlock went to the left you check there first once you’ve met the alcove, then dash to the right and go through the first door you see. Unfortunately, you’re met with a bathroom so your excuse has now flown out the window. You could just play dumb.

Before you exit, you listen to the door, then slowly open it to peek outside. Still nothing, so you leave, closing the door behind you before going to the next one. You do this three more times. You were met with two closets and a study, that you did search just in case. When you see the end of the hall you start to feel disappointed, but then you realize there’s a sharp corner. When you turn it, you see a narrow set of stairs.

At this point, you know that you took entirely too long and that Houdini has most likely gone back to the table and realized you were gone. Taking these stairs will make your search even longer and there’s no plausible explanation you could give that’ll justify you snooping around this guy’s house.

You give yourself three seconds to think it over.

Fuck it.

You’re justifying the irrationality of your actions to yourself as you trudge up the stairs, also pretending that the consequences that will undoubtedly follow won’t be that bad. But really? What’s the worst that could happen? He bans you from his home? No biggie. If you find this pen, you don’t plan on coming back anyway.

Or maybe he’ll hate you and think you’re extremely unmannered. Fine by you, then the feeling of dislike will be mutual and he’ll finally leave you alone forever.

Or maybe he’ll lie to his “clique” that you’re a thief and only agreed to do a project with him so you could slither your way into his house and they all make fun of you for the duration of your college career which will then spiral into more awful rumors and you’ll be branded an outcast and be ridiculed so horrendously that not even your friends will want to be around you…

…Or maybe you’re overthinking it entirely and it’ll all be perfectly fine.

As you come to a stop at the top of the stairs you realize that there were three halls up here. You don’t dare check the view below in fear that Sherlock will see you. So, you creep along the wall that you hope isn’t in view from down stairs and bolt for the nearest hallway. Heart beat pumping a million beats per second.

You open the first door, a closet. A second door, a very small bedroom with nothing but a bed and a lonely side table. A third door, a much bigger room with a pretty sweet gaming setup, though it looks unfinished.

The end of the hall, a large room that’s akin to a master bedroom, a bathroom and balcony included. The room isn’t quite messy, but it does appear to be lived in. The bed unmade, a dresser drawer left open, a couple clothing items on the floor near the hamper, and miscellaneous items strewn about in flat surfaces.

A pair of huge, round, dark sunglasses sitting on top of the dresser tell you exactly whose room you’ve stumbled into.

Once you’ve realized, a moment of doubt passes through you. What if he finds you here? But as quickly as it came, it passed. You’ve made it this far unnoticed, what’s one more minute.

A quick glance tells you that the pen isn’t lying about so you begin your search. You only look in places it could possibly be and refrain from his dressers. You check random bags that were in his extraordinarily large walk-in closet. You check in hoodie and pants pockets even. You leave the closet with a fraction less of hope and check under his bed. Still Nothing. You have half a mind to check his dirty clothes but decide to check his bedside drawers before getting that desperate.

It’s when you’re about to wiggle yourself from under Houdini’s bed that you hear it.

“Has anyone ever told you it’s rude to snoop?”

You jolt so hard you hit your head on the bed frame while trying to frantically wiggle free. When you do, you're met with that same smirk. Like he’s amused to find you this way. He walks towards you from the door frame, you unconsciously backup and bump against the side table. He stops right in front of you and bends down slightly to tower over you, his face slightly shrouded in darkness.

“If you wanted a tour you could have just said so,” he drawls deeply, in a quiet tone that sends a shiver down your spine.

“No, I-“ he chuckles.

“You, what? hm?” he takes one of his hands out of his pockets to reveal your pen, “You we’re looking for this?” Your eyes widen for a fraction of a second before a glare marks its position on your face. Was he making fun of you?

“Give it to me,” you try to reach for it, but he effortlessly dodges out of the way. He patronizingly waves a finger at you.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he taunts, “I can’t just give it to you now,” irritation bubbles within you.

“And why the hell not?”

“Because. You pranced around my house uninvited and invaded my privacy,” You stand up, refusing to be looked down upon, even though standing up he’s still taller than you.

“So? Then what do you want?” He hums to your question and puts the end of the pen on his chin as he contemplates.

“How much are you willing to do for this pen?” You raise a judgmental eyebrow at him. “Of course nothing drastic,” he adds, “but how far are you willing to go?”

“Well, if i’m willing to stifle through a man’s house like some kind of thief then I guess you can gauge it yourself,” He smiles at that. He lowers his glasses and you see his crystal blue eyes in person for the first time. You’re almost enraptured by them until he opens his mouth.

“Date me.”

(･ω<)☆

when i tell you i didn’t know what the fuck to write 💀last chapter i realized that is abt to be a s l o w b u r n and i’m right there along with you guys wondering what’s abt to happen next 😭 hopefully chapter 5 won’t take 4 months this time 🙃

★prev next ☆

[shubox]

Tapu Mew-Mew Ref Sheet!

Another thing for the 'Try-Two' Mewtwo AU I'm slowly chipping away at! One (of four) offshoot clones of the original Mewtwo, with lore and concept/research under the cut! --------

So long ago my bestie and I decided that there were going to be a few clones past the original one that we started with that was made in the same lab as Mewtwo. Depending on where they were made, they'd adopt some regional traits. One of which was Alola - where this bean comes in! One of the offshoot Mewtwo project labs was secreted away in Alola, and since the progenitor was a lost cause (what with wrecking shop on the HQ and all), what resources they could divert went into these far-flung facilities. Not that it lasted long - the Island Deities of Alola were not appreciative of such things in their region, and both leveled the facility in entirety, but also kidnapped its focused Mewtwo clone. After years of being raised alongside them, and having not quite fully 'grown' at the time of his rescue, he began to take on weird traits - aided by his Tapu caretakers. This would result in plates similar to theirs, a Water Typing (complete with biologically-created water veil at will!), and pigmentation changes that'd eventually mimic the very beings raising him. As such, they eventually inducted their weird little pseudo-progeny into their roles, playing a bit of an odd 'fifth' role. He doesn't preside over Alola like they do, but he both tends to - and observes - the balance between their natural origins and cultures, while also ensuring the merciless march of technology and contact with outside regions does not cause a discarding of the olden ways. He is the youngest of the clones, but also because of how Alola has become a rich tourist destination, he's also the most well-informed - having known about his 'father's' rampage, the death of Giovanni, and some (not ALL) of his 'siblings'. His nature being what it is, he's also the closest to old-school Mew in demeanour. --RESEARCH TIME-- SO. I wanted to make sure what I was doing wasn't an absolute mess, especially given the Tapu reference a *very real* culture. So, I dug in a bit, looked up each of the four major Hawaiian gods that the Tapu refer to. (at least those that were most prominent, King Kamehameha's reign causing some muddiness in it)

Given that bit of research, plus the other thing Alola's rituals/trials reference (the balance between preserving Hawaii's traditions, while *also* adapting influences from outside regions since contact), I wanted this 'pseudo-Tapu' to be a sort-of 'avatar' for Alola's version of it. A few things: 1) The Tapu have animal themes, which are indicated by their shells and patterning. Tapu Mew-Mew's are less angular, and more loosely resemble manmade structures. 2) As he isn't a biological Tapu, despite his grown shells, he is unable to close them whatsoever. However, he did gain an odd quirk that they can generate a sort of water-shawl and skirt that he calls a 'water veil'. 3) Because he is, by creation, a literal clone (unlike his father, who was an unborn Mew mutated into a Mewtwo), he is slightly indicative of that balance - born by artificial means, raised in nature and adapting to it. The Tapu deemed him fit to both have his own personalized Trials, but also that his role was exactly what he symbolized - observing and maintaining the balance between the two sides of the post-contact cultural shift in Alola.

4) He is *absolutely* as capricious as his caretakers. The reason the Aether Foundation both remains in Alola, but does not stir up trouble is because he has made it all too clear that the reason it still exists was due to him being 'in a good mood' when he confronted Lusamine and her staff. He's also not one to make his retribution proportional. (Damn near considered capsizing it from the get-go because he 'didn't like how it looked'.) An absolute joy to make, and will be even more fun to write! Y'know. Once I get there. |D

[greenerteacups]

Hi! Just wanted to say the latest chapter is lovely & amazing & sweet & had me smiling the whole time! I absolutely love your characterisation of everyone, especially Draco, so it was so so lovely to return to this world & to his thoughts!! with his best friend and crush at malfoy manor no less! All the yearning is already off to a great start hehe I am so excited for the rest of book 5!

Wanted to ask you how has it been for you to write this new book and volume? Has your writing process changed since when you’d first begun taking on a long form project like this?

& also are there any moments or surprises in this book that you’re especially excited about?

sending so much love & gratitude for you and your incredible works 💓

Thank you so much! This is really encouraging, I so appreciate it.

Inasmuch as I can use this metaphor without having kids myself, I sort of see each of the books as a different child. The first one flew out in basically a few weeks of very intensive writing, and it was a total dream — plot, pacing, symbolism, major beats, all fell into place basically without effort. The character stuff was the hardest, as I've written about before, but even then, the glorious part of writing beginnings is it's the most energy you'll ever have for a project, so the lows were pretty soft lows. Book 2, in contrast, I had to drag kicking and screaming by its ankle from under the bottommost mattress of my brain. It's one of my least favorite books (tone problem; COS has killer plot/setting/ingredients for a YA novel, but it's stuck in the doldrums of Harry Potter's well-documented Early-Installment Weirdness, before Cedric Diggory slams the gas and upshifts the whole series into its correct age bracket). More specifically, once I'd gone through and picked out everything in the book that happened because of Lucius, I didn't have a plot — hey alexa how do you rewrite Chamber of Secrets when We Got No Fucking Chamber Of Secrets — and oh by the way, even if you want to do a moody tone/political setup book, remember that your protagonists are still twelve, so if you go too dark or too intense, you'll risk torpedoing your readers' suspension of disbelief. Good luck, Charlie.

Book 3 felt the most like its own novel, if that makes sense? It's the last truly feel-good book of the series; it's a great stand-alone mystery novel with relatively low stakes. Plus you get a bunch of the big series icons: patronuses, dementors, werewolves, Hogsmeade, the Marauders' Map, and time turners arithmancy. It just felt like a good old-fashioned motherfucking romp of a mystery/adventure story, before any of the complex character work and major stakes of the late books come in.

Book 4 was the most fun I've had writing anything maybe ever. I don't even know what it was. Maybe the tournament arc, honestly? Love me a tournament arc. But in any case, I opened every new chapter feeling a tingle of excitement for what I was gonna get to do. Oh, and the romance started, finally, Jesus God (if it feels like a slow burn reading, just imagine what it felt like writing it, when everything takes ten times as long, and you have to figure out how to word the fucker.)

Book 5, in contrast, has felt much less like that tingle of "here we go!" and more like "oh, man, this is gonna be cool." Because this is the arc of the story that composed the original idea for Lionheart, literally years ago, and to be honest, I didn't think I'd get this far! If you'd asked me "do you know that it's going to take you 500,000 words of backstory before you can start writing that concept you're thinking about, and you're going to do it anyway?" I would have said: "absolutely not, strange mind-reader!" But like... I'm here! Finally! And it's... real now? Like, this isn't just a bunch of clips of scenes in my head anymore! That's rad!

That being said, it's definitely been slower than Book 4, because I kept switching back to my outline document to make sure that certain things were set up properly, and that I hadn't lost any of the plot threads or forgotten a minor beat that was vitally important for the story three chapters later. And I had a minor crisis about three months ago when I ripped out about 8 chapters in the first third of the book — basically everything from September to December — because I'd done a readthrough to check pacing (big mistake! never edit while drafting, that's satan talking) and realized I had a missing storyline. Like, there was a whole layer of the story that was just. Missing. Not there. And the existing text really couldn't fit another thread, so instead of taking weeks to pore through and try to sift out what I could save, I needed to factory reset and start over. And I didn't want to! I vividly remember sitting there with my head in my hands, trying not to weep, because I'd decimated 90,000 words of work in a single edit. But it had to be done. Because the story wasn't going to work. And now (hopefully) it will.

And of course, there's still that sense of excitement and exhilaration from before. Always. But whereas Book 4 felt like a delicious chocolate pudding, Book 5 is a medium-rare steak.

(Book 6, so far, is four shots of espresso and a whiskey chaser. FWIW.)

[kinja145]

The evil has been defeated ; the french translation of DLTD is complete !!!!!!!

It has been almost 9 years since I started it. I was in my first year of highschool when I started, I've gratuated, I went to university for 3 years, graduated again, and now I'm working. It has been a long, long thing to do. I did it with passion, but sometimes I feel like I wasn't as much implicated in the translation of some chapters compared to others, but I still loved it from start to end. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to stay so implicated and how I didn't just abandon the project ! But at the end, DLTD is always somehwere in my thoughts, I just can't escape it lol DLTD is a story, a fandom, I can't quite seem to leave. I've been way less into it these past few years, but everytime I came back to it, it felt like home and it still does. I think I've felt almost every emotion with DLTD, and I'm not just talking about the first part, but DLTD as a whole. I don't have the words to drescribe how much this story means to me, how it changed my brain chemistry.

I know the story isn't perfect, God knows I can tell that. But I just accept it with its flaws and kind of cringe parts that are so reminiscent of 2010s ! Without DLTD there is no drawings from me, or at least less, and probably not so much progression. So DLTD saved my imagination in a way, even tho time and energy is missing now that I'm working but I still love to draw for it. Thinking back on those 8 years, I'm amazed to see how obsessed I was with it. I did a comic adaptation of the first chapter, an ending, a parody I never finished with Daniel, dozens of fanart, a discord (that didn't really work but it's still out there !). I met lot of people, including my beta reader YuuKyun whom I haven't heard from for almost 3-4 years now. I really, really hope she is okay and will reappear someday. Big kudos to her, she was so helpful in the early years ! This translation wouldn't exist without @burakkuenjeru19. She is the reason I even started translating it. So kudos to her. She also listened to me yapping about DLTD for all those years, and yapped back so yeah, really kudos. This story has literally marked me. Even today, we still quote the lizard in the toaster from chapter 2 with my friends (iconic !), and more parts of the story. We had so so much fun reading the story together, giving each other a character to voice. We did it again a few weeks ago for old time sake, and it was still so wholesome !! The chapters aren't all out right now, but I'll start posting one chapter per day in december. Wich makes me think ; ever since 2016, I've always had at least 10 chapters of advance on the publication. I think I can take pride in that uwu As for DLTP, I don't know for now if I'll get to it. It's just a whole lot of work, way more than the first part. But I feel like I'll miss it so maybe there's a world where I start the translation of it too. I'm just not making any promesses !

And to end this post, I have to thanks the one and only : @hateweasel

I don't even know what to say to thank you, Hate. You brought to me and to many more people so much with your story and your imagination. Your interest for the surnatural stuck with me and you put it so well into the story, I just love the fact that you don't represent surnaturals as monsters. Yeah, they're people too. I just love this concept !!

I was so, so scared the first time I sent you a message here to ask the permission to post the translation. I think I read my message like 10 times to make sure that there wasn't any mistakes... And then, you helped me tons of time with words, sentences, and parts I didn't get. And you let me have so much liberty with the adaptation of the story in my language, it was really, really great from you, thank you !!

We started talking a lot at some point even with jet lag, and it was really great even tho we had multiple conversation at the same time lol

You made me discover a lot of things outside of DLTD with your blog too, and I'm thankfull for that too.

I just can't thank you enough, and I think everyone else who has read and loved DLTD can say the same. Thank you again, Hate (especially if you read all that) !!!

I'm going to keep on posting the last chapters, and then post drawings here and there I guess, now. Until then, farewell duckies !!

[synthy-sizer]

??? YEARS AGO

………

The harsh light fades away and you're left with a small, cramped office. It's old and well-used, showing its age and character. Wooden shelves in varying sizes and grains line every wall. They're crammed with floppy disks. Against the back wall is an old, wooden desk. It's covered in messy stacks of paper, computer parts and more floppies. And there's a yellowing CRT with a keyboard and mouse. The office chair similarly looks like it's been in use for at least a decade.

“Hey, Jordan.” You turn around to see an assuming, shrew man standing in the doorframe, a white void cascading out. “If you don't mind, I need to get to my computer.” You stand aside and watch him walk over. You ask no questions, something that confuses you, but somehow you don't feel you need to ask. He sits down and swivels the chair to face you, then extends his hand. “Allow me to formally introduce myself. I'm God. Lovely to meet you.” You awkwardly shake his hand. “Now. You've done very well getting here. I know it's been difficult, and for that I apologize. And unfortunately, I also have to preemptively apologize, because your mission isn't done yet.” You finally feel the energy in you to speak. “I'm so tired…” He nods sympathetically. “I know you are. You've been a faithful agent. But you just need to get a little further now. If it's any consolation, I'll finally provide you with the answers you seek.” He gestures. “Sit down. It's ok.” You find a spot that's relatively clear of assorted papers and disks and sit on the wooden floor.

“When you return, 500 years will have passed. There will be people who are struggling to reclaim the world after the apocalypse. You need to guide them, so they can come to me. Their names are Violence and Lust. And you will be christened, ‘Heresy’. Do you understand?” You glance over at the bookshelves. There's a few books on them, on a small nook dedicated to literature rather than floppy disks. Your eyes land on one in particular; the first of the 3 books in Dante's Divine Comedy; Inferno. You look back at God and nod. “These people are important. You need to convince them of their path. There's also a girl named Sofia. Find her and bring her to you.” Your vision starts to go fuzzy. The words enter your mind but you barely register. Testaments, burned into your mind, unconscious directives for you to follow. “Now you can return to the world of the living. Go on.” You slowly rise and walk towards the void of white. “Oh, and Jordan…” You turn back to look at him one last time. “I know you grow your hair out and wear oversized hoodies. When you get back, do yourself a favor and bring those behaviors to their logical conclusions.”

…….

Well, here we are. Yet another novella complete. When I started Eden, it was something that I made up as I went along. I had recently watched Lost, Lain, and read Homestuck, and tried to mash elements from things I was passionate about into a project I would be forced to finish because it was being put out online. As the story progressed, it took shape, and I realized that if I wanted to keep actually making things out of my ideas I would have to keep writing. And so the overarching story began.

When I started Otherside, it looked different than it came out. I had an idea based loosely on a horror game, where someone was on a moon base, convinced the world was dead, and then a signal would convince them to escape and go to Earth. There they would find the escape to the moon was very justified. But I think Otherside marked the end of how different the premises of these stories start in my head and the actual end results are. I've had the ending to act 2 in my head since last year, when I was writing act 1. I hope the ending I have in mind for this series is as cool and exciting as I think it is.

As usual, I would like to thank @ice-fairy-chiruno for being the artist for the series. She brings to life things impossible to find online, and I both cannot thank her enough or apologize enough for my executive dysfunction leading to some rushed deadlines.

@technicolorxsn has been and remains my biggest fan, and honestly half the reason I write this stuff is for their reactions. It's so cool seeing your reactions to everything I write, and I honestly can't thank you enough for sticking with me and being excited for the stuff I make.

I also have to thank my friend @telltaletypist for offering writing advice and re-aligning me when I got too lost in the trap of chasing perfection. I feel much more refreshed and reinvigorated thanks to her.

See you next year!

-Synthy

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[henrysglock]

Do You Have A Minute To Talk About Our Lord And Savior: Vecna?

Specifically, I'd like to talk about Jericho, Book of Revelation, Paradise Lost, and the concepts of God and Satan as "good" and "evil", and try to decode who is who.

Let's start with Jericho, and go from there. Like everything else in Stranger Things, though...we'll loop back to the beginning eventually.

Season 5: Jericho

We all know about the nuclear disaster aspect, I don't think I need to continue beating that particular dead horse. (There are plenty of topics to beat into the afterlife. I witnessed a public beating re: production errors just a few days ago.)

I want to talk biblical.

I want to talk about the Battle of Jericho.

The Battle of Jericho is an old testament tale from the Book of Joshua, and there are some basics of the battle you should know:

The Israelites, who have been wandering in the desert for 40 years, prepare to invade and take the City of Jericho from its king. Joshua sends ahead 2 spies in preparation.

These spies are housed and hidden by Rahab, a prostitute. The Israelites promise to spare her and her kin for this, so long as she marks her house with a red cord.

The River Jordan dries up, allowing Joshua and his people to cross. The King of Jericho orders the walls of the city to be closed (This is important to note: He closes the walls. This is not a Rifts parallel. God opens the walls.)

God commands that for 6 days the Israelites march about the walls of the City of Jericho, one time each day. Then, on the seventh day, they are to march around the city seven times.

On this seventh day, seven trumpets are to be blown by seven priests from behind the Ark of the Covenant.

The Israelites do as God commands, and the walls of Jericho fall under the sounding of the trumpets and the cheer of the Israelites.

The Israelites kill all of Jericho's citizens except Rahab and her kin, who are accepted into their community. All of this per God's command.

Wow, that's a lot of sevens, a lot of miracles, and a lot of death.

Here's the thing about Jericho: It lay in a rift valley, and the area is historically prone to both earthquakes and landslides, which have been noted to block the Jordan for days at a time. The fall of Jericho's walls...could very well have been the result seismic activity.

If we take the recounting at face value, God likely triggered an earthquake, which caused the walls to fall.

Sound familiar?

What's also interesting about the Battle of Jericho is that there is no mention of Satan, the Devil, anything of that sort. It's just God vs Jericho on behalf of the Israelites. It's Old Testament (OT), and it's projected to have happened in 1400-1500 BC, whereas the New Testament (NT) material is all AD. (Jesus's crucifixion happens in 33 AD, and Book of Revelation is set in 81-96 AD.)

We know the OT God is highkey obsessed with 2 main things: Truth and Oppression. This guy hates being lied to, having oaths broken, being betrayed/deceived/not obeyed, etc. He has very strict commandments for his followers, and he isn't keen on people going against them. He hates human oppressors and is avid about punishing them in massively brutal ways (see: the Israelites and the King/People of Jericho). OT God is a wrathful God, and from the point of view of some...an oppressor himself.

If the other thing didn't sound familiar...boy...doesn't that one sound familiar?

Not gonna tell you who it sounds similar to yet, though. We'll save that for later. No biases in my house.

Anyway, that's all well before Christ figures and Satan as a major definable force against God. In fact, there's almost no mention of Satan as a physical adversary in the OT. "Satan" in the OT literally translates to just...adversary/traitor. There's no mention of the devil as a single entity. We know there's a fallen angel, Lucifer, a serpent in the Garden of Eden, etc., but Satan as a single, definable, physical adversary who physically fights God? Not a thing yet.

This is very different from NT literature, where Satan/the Devil/the Antichrist/etc. appear as physical figures. This is especially apparent in Book of Revelation, in which Jesus and the heavenly forces literally fight the demonic forces with swords.

This is where it starts to get spicy.

Book of Revelation

I'm just going to give you all the Cliffs Notes, because John of Patmos was definitely tripping balls...and I don't want to subject you all to that:

John of Patmos has a vision of the apocalypse: It's Jesus's second coming and the decimation of the Earth. (This is debatable historically, but for the purposes of this section lets take it at face value.)

He writes of his visions to the 7 Churches of Asia: Ephesus: "He who overcomes is granted to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God" - They are praised for not harboring evil, exposing fake apostles, and being a symbol of perseverance and patience. Smyrna: "Those who are faithful until death will be given the crown of life. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second dead" - They are praised for being rich in faith in times of hardship, and is told not to fear imprisonment for holding fast against false prophets. Pergamum: "He who overcomes will be given the hidden manna to eat and a white stone with a secret name on it." - They are praised as a faithful martyr, but admonished for sexual immorality, holding false idols, and holding the doctrine of both Balaam and the Nicolaitans. Thyatria: "He who overcomes until the end will be given power over the nations in order to dash them to pieces with a rod of iron; he will also be given the morning star." - They are praised for works of love, service, faith, and patience, but admonished for allowing a prophetess to engage in sexual immorality and holding false idols. Sardis: "He who overcomes will be clothed in white garments, and his name will not be blotted out from the Book of Life; his name will also be confessed before the Father and his angels." - They are told to strengthen their works in order to achieve perfection before God. Philadelphia (yes, Philadelphia): "He who overcomes will be made a pillar in the temple of God having the name of God, the names of the City of God, "New Jerusalem", and the Son of God's new name" - They are praised for keeping God's name holy, and is reminded to hold fast to what they have. Laodicea: "He who overcomes will be granted the opportunity to sit with the Son of God on his throne" - They are admonished for being lukewarm in their faith, reminded to be zealous. They're told to buy "gold refined in fire", white garments, and to anoint their eyes in salve so they may see.

The throne of God appears, surrounded by 24 elders. All of this happens before the throne of God: - The 4 living beings appear: A lion, and ox, a man, and an eagle. They are akin to biblically accurate angels, each having 6 wings and a multitude of eyes. - A scroll with 7 seals is presented, and only the "Lion of the tribe of Judah, from the Root of David" can open it. - The "Lamb of God, with 7 eyes and 7 horns" accepts the scroll, and all present bow before it.

The seven seals are opened: First Seal: White horse, Conquering. Second Seal: Red horse, War. Third Seal: Black horse, Famine/Hunger. Fourth Seal: Pale horse, Death. Fifth Seal: The souls of the martyrs, dressed in white robes, are told to rest until the martyrdom of their brothers is complete. Sixth Seal: A great earthquake, wherein the the sun goes dark, the stars fall to earth, and the sky rolls back like a scroll. Mountains are moved, and the people of earth hide within them from the "wrath of the Lamb". 144,000 Hebrews are marked upon their foreheads with the seal of God and sealed within the caves. Seventh Seal: Introduces the 7 trumpets, one for each of 7 angels. An eighth angel devastates the Earth with heavenly fire just before the 7 trumpets begin.

The angelic trumpets are sounded: First Trumpet: Hail and fire and blood rain upon the Earth and burn up 1/3 of plant life. Second Trumpet: A "great, flaming mountain" falls from the sky and devastates 1/3 of the seas. Third Trumpet: Wormwood, a great star, falls from the heavens and poisons 1/3 of all freshwater sources. (Radiationgate!) Fourth Trumpet: 1/3 of the sun, moon, and stars are darkened, casting the world into total darkness for 1/3 of day and night. Fifth Trumpet: The First Woe. - A star falls from the sky, and is given the key to the bottomless abyss. - The abyss opens, and the smoke of the giant abyss blots out the sky. - Locusts, in the form of humans with lions' teeth, wings like hoofbeats, and iron breastplates come and kill any who are not marked with the seal of god on their forehead (the 144k Hebrews from the 12 tribes of Israel). *** Sixth Trumpet: The Second Woe. - The four angels bound in the Euphrates are released to prepare two million horsemen. These armies kill 1/3 of mankind. Seventh Trumpet: The Third Woe, in preparation for the 7 Bowls. - The temple of God, in heaven, opens. There is lightning, an earthquake, and hail.

*** ST4 leaves off at the asterisks

The 7 Spiritual Figures, leading up to the Third Woe:

A heavenly woman is pregnant with a male child.

A dragon pulls stars from the heavens and awaits the birth of the child so he can devour it: The Archangel Michael fights this dragon, as it is revealed to be the devil. The dragon is cast out of heaven, and becomes obsessed with waging war against all the woman's offspring.

A Beast with 7 heads, 10 horns, and the names of blasphemy on his heads emerges from the sea: The people of the world follow the Sea Beast in wonder, and the dragon empowers the beast for 42 months. The Sea Beast goes on to blaspheme God's name and wage war against the Saints. He is victorious.

The antichrist/false prophet appears from the Earth: He has 2 horns like a lamb but speaks like a dragon. He instructs the people of the Earth to build a likeness of the Sea Beast, and all who participate are marked with the Sign of the Beast: 666.

The "One like the Son of Man", aka Jesus, goes and defeats the beast with the 144k Hebrews bearing the seal of God.

Heaven opens, and the 7 Bowls Revelation begins with the sounding of the Third Woe/7th trumpet.

The 7 Bowls Revelation:

First Bowl: "A foul and malignant sore" afflicts the followers of the Beast (Radiationgate Sweep!)

Second Bowl: The seas turn to blood, and everything in it dies.

Third Bowl: All fresh water turns to blood.

Fourth Bowl: The sun scorches the Earth.

Fifth Bowl: Total darkness and great pain floods the beast's kingdom.

Sixth Bowl: The Euphrates dries up, and the forces of good and evil prepare to face off.

Seventh Bowl: Another earthquake and hailstorm essentially flatten the surface of the Earth.

Aftermath Vision:

The Whore of Babylon and the Scarlet Beast are shown to John, revealing their identities and fates as such.

New Babylon is destroyed, and is mourned by its people.

Marriage Supper of the Lamb: Not a whole lot to say here, people praise God (...for decimating the Earth? Okay whatever floats your goat--I mean boat I'm not a satanist hahahaha what???)

The Judgment of the Beasts, the Dragon, and the Dead:

The Beast and the Antichrist: Both are imprisoned in the Lake of Fire.

The Dragon: He is imprisoned the Bottomless Pit for 1,000 years.

The Resurrected Martyrs: All of them live with God in peace for those 1,000 years.

After the 1,000 year time jump: - Gog and Magog: The dragon is freed, and goes on to deceive the corners of the Earth once more. He gathers them for a final battle against the City of God, and is defeated by heavenly forces, at which time he is cast into the Lake of Fire alongside the Beast and the Antichrist. - The Final Judgment: Death and Hades, along with the wicked who followed the Devil, are also cast into the Lake of Fire. This is known as the Second Death, and ensures that no more suffering or death may afflict God's chosen people.

New Heaven and New Earth:

After the fighting ends, the City of God meets the Earth and it's essentially a neat and tidy "eternal life, no more suffering, we're all in paradise with God" ending. The City of God is said to be a paradise for the pure and strong of faith, and God lives among them.

Phew. That was a whole fucking trip.

Most of it is a) allegorical and highly debated based on that fact, and b) highly disputed as to its accuracy as part of the Bible...because it was written by a second generation disciple 60 years after Jesus's death. On top of that, it just doesn't fit with the vibe of the New Testament. New Testament is very much about love and forgiveness, not wrath. Wrath is very Old Testament, which I'll come back to re: Brenner and Vecna...and Lucifer.

I'm not gonna delve into allegory tonight because while the Duffers are picking and choosing bits of the story, they seem to be taking it all very literally. That is to say, this isn't a perfect one-to-one, but what is there? Tells a story.

Let's review:

The 7 Letters: Max writes letters, a total of 10. However, we only focus on 7 of them: Steve, Lucas, Dustin, Mike, El, Will, and Billy. We don't know what they say inside, however it is interesting that Billy is the final letter, akin then to Laodicea (see: Laodicea's entry), which is essentially about lukewarm faith, white robes, and anointed eyes. Max lies to Vecna in her confession, wavers on whether or not she actually wants to die, and ends up in a white hospital gown with healing eyes.

The Living Creatures: - Lion: El in Brenner's lab has a lion doll - Ox: We've got a handful of cow references, the most prominent being 010 and Brenner's dog drawing. Funny how it all seems to tie back, huh. - Man: "He was nothing but an ordinary, mediocre man." re: Brenner and opening the Rifts. - Eagle: "Fly right, Bald Eagle!" re: closing the Gate.

The 4 Horsemen: - Chrissy: First, Conquest, our intro to Vecna Visions. - Fred: Second, War, our intro into the conflict between Hellfire and the Basketball Team. - Patrick: Third, Famine, presented alongside Hopper in Russia before the feast in The Dive (which is actually presented very similarly to The Last Supper). - Max: Fourth, Death, the fourth gate. 22 dead, and the death toll continues to rise.

The Fifth Seal: The martyrs are told to rest until the martyring of their brothers is complete. Max is in her white hospital gown, indefinitely in a coma.

The Sixth Seal: One of many great earthquakes in BoR, after which 144k Hebrews are sealed in the caves. We see one earthquake in the UD in The Dive, where Nancy, Steve, Robin, and Eddie are trapped in the UD.

The Trumpets: - First Trumpet: 1/3 of plant life is killed...I'm looking at the rot in ST2 and the dead flowers in ST4. - Third Trumpet: Wormwood, a great star, falls from the sky in and poisons all fresh water. The spores. Radiationgate. - Fifth Trumpet: The abyss opens, and the smoke from it blots out the sky. Fucked up "locusts" emerge and begin killing. The rifts open, and the smoke blots out the sky. Demo-creatures will spill out into Hawkins and begin killing.

This is where we leave off at the end of ST4. We have not met Satan yet. So far? It's all God.

God did all this, up until this point, as the beginning of a final reckoning for the sinners who populated the Earth. None of that was Satan.

Things do start to get complicated here...because we do technically have a false prophet of sorts. Jason. Jason inspires the people of Hawkins to go against the forces of good in the name of defeating the tragedy befalling Hawkins. He is killed by the Rifts. He is literally killed by a fiery pit. (More on this later, because it's more complex than it seems.)

What's spicy about all this is that...the forces of good are not the religious ones, the "pure" ones, the "normal" ones. They're the freaks. The "satanic cult". They're Hellfire.

So...What is going on in the house of commons?

If Vecna is meant to be Satan, the Antichrist, whatever...why is he so obsessed with truth, penance, and giving himself the artificial moral high ground? Why does he wait for a confession, explicit or implicit, to kill? Why does he torment his victims while claiming to be relieving their suffering?

Because he's punishing the sinners, and he's doing so under the guise of saving them/freeing them from their suffering. Punishing sinners is God's job, not Satan's. Satan punishing sinners is a misconception. Satan is being punished as much as anyone else.

Vecna has the ultimate goal of decimating the human world and remaking it into a "beautiful" place where he and those like him will never suffer or die. Vecna punishes people he deems to be bad until he receives an acceptable confession of guilt, and then he soothes himself about it by killing them and "relieving their suffering".

All things considered:

Vecna, 001, The One, is New Testament God...and plot twist: he's a wrathful dick who hides behind artificial morality...just like Old Testament God.

Okay...so what about Henry? Brenner?

In true Creel form...this is my first loop backward in time. I'm going straight back to the very beginning of Satan's story.

Let's talk Lucifer. God's most beautiful angel. Smart, powerful, capable...and cast out of heaven in disgrace.

His crimes? Daring to believe he and the other angels were equal to God, and later instructing Eve that she didn't have to obey God either, alerting her to the fact that God was hiding things from her. God didn't like that, and sent Lucifer to Hell as punishment.

I'm very very much seeing Brenner and Henry here. Brenner, a wrathful, controlling OT God. He shocks those who disobey (Henry), those who lie or whom Brenner would have you perceive as a liar (Henry and 002), those who oppress (002)...all while being an oppressor and liar himself.

Brenner also quite literally calls himself Papa. Abba. The Almighty Father...and he punishes Henry repeatedly and brutally for being a) uncontrollable and b) spreading information Brenner would rather keep hidden.

He takes away Henry's status as 001, gives him a fake name...and makes him watch as he oppress the other angel--I mean numbers through the same torment he once suffered with no way of stopping it. Henry himself calls it Hell. No one ever said Hell was literally and physically separate from Heaven. Hell is very much a state of mind, and experience. Victor is "still very much in Hell"...but he's in Pennhurst. Henry is in Hell in Brenner's lab. Hell is not a physical place, it is inescapable torment and suffering.

We also get many Lucifer shots of Henry during the Rainbow Room fight...but when his hair is in the Henry style. Not the swept-back Brenner style.

Example:

So Henry is Lucifer, then, right? He's definitely not God then, right?

Yeah. Exactly. He's the fallen angel, and he's also the serpent in OT God's garden of Eden, offering knowledge and awareness to the ignorant Eleve--I mean Eve. He inspires Eve--I mean Eleven to question Papa, who has trapped her in ignorance in the Garden of E--I mean Hawkins National Lab.

But...didn't we just say he's God? Well...no. Not exactly. I said that Vecna is God.

Are we ready for the mindfuck?

Henry and Edward, and the frankly unnecessary swapping in NINA.

As per Em's analysis of The First Shadow...it's highly highly likely that Edward Creel is Vecna, not Henry.

This absolutely tracks with multiple facets:

The cyclical nature of Brenner and one of the Creel boys re: behavior and appearance.

The inexplicable hairstyle change between whichever Creel is in the store closet and...whichever Creel is in the Rainbow Room.

The inconsistency between Vecna's retelling of his childhood...and the expressions of the Creel boy on screen.

Ok, so we've got Brenner as OT God the Father, clearly...but we have Vecna as NT God, 001, The One. That's two Gods in one timeline, and we can't explain how they all seemingly ended up in the same timeline...unless Martin Brenner, Edward Creel, and Vecna are the same person at different times in different circumstances. At least one of the Creel boys is shown to have time travel abilities. Martin Brenner, Edward (?) Creel, and Vecna behave very similarly. All this to say...they're very much seeming like the same guy. There is one God, and you shall not have any other Gods but me...and all that jazz.

Henry said he spent years with 001 in the Rainbow Room. Did anyone ever stop to consider that he may have meant that literally? Did we ever consider that we swap between Henry-hairstyle and Brenner-hairstyle throughout the Rainbow Room fight because El is being fucked with by Brenner/Edward/Vecna...and by extension so are we?

Some supporting evidence here: Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) is very much about swapping places and experiences.

To Summarize: Brenner/Edward are God and Henry is Lucifer. Hellfire club is the satanic cult fighting God....while being the protagonists who believe they're fighting a dark wizard because his actions are horrible.

A clue into this narrative fuckery is Will's painting. The Party is depicated fighting a red dragon, which reeks of the red dragon of Satan. This is likely the represent the fact that they all see Vecna as a demon/monster/Satan figure, despite his God-coding. They see him as Henry...when he is not Henry at all. Vecna is very much God-coded, but he's represented as Satan in Will's painting because everyone sees his deeds as evil...and they are horrible and unjust...and they're all pinned on Henry, our Lucifer.

If there is a physical dragon, it's not going to be biblical...because the biblical dragon does not exist here. There is no satanic dragon, we just discussed that. The dragon is going to be something else, and I'm going to touch on that later.

I want to bring in another source to speak to Henry's probable innocence: Paradise Lost.

Paradise Lost (documentary series) was an inspiration for ST4 and Eddie/The Hellfire Club, specifically in that Eddie was misjudged specifically based on his interests and the way he looks.

Paradise Lost, the docuseries, is about Damien Echols as part of the West Memphis Three, who were falsely accused of brutally murdering and sexually mutilating 3 local boys. The West Memphis Three were Damien Echols, Jesse Misskelly, and Jason Baldwin.

Paradise Lost was originally a poem about Lucifer and the fall of Man. Lucifer is presented as the tragic yet villainous protagonist. His motivations remain very much "evil". I recognize this.

However, the Duffers didn't reference the poem. They referenced the docuseries, in which our "satanic cult" was never proved guilty due to lack of evidence. Just recently, in December of 2021, evidence that was supposedly destroyed in a fire was discovered to have been kept and catalogued by the West Memphis PD (source). The lawyers of the West Memphis 3 now believe all of them may be exonerated when the DNA testing comes back.

We know Eddie is caught up in the timeline fuckery, given the age change between his physical age (19, likely) and his poster age (17), and he also has the whole satanic ritual thing, which wasn't the truth at all. He was trying to stop the murders. This ties into Victor's "demon", who we believe to be Henry based on how ST4 is presented to us on the surface...but based on the surface view, Henry would be Vecna and through him...God. That makes the demon label categorically incorrect. Victor also says he heard the voice of an angel, which drew him out of his trance. Lucifer was originally an angel. However, in the other retelling, Victor is freed by Edward (?) passing out. There is no mention of music.

The thing here is...we have no evidence which conclusively links Henry Creel to any of these murders. We don't have concrete evidence of anything, other than the fact that the murders happened and that a Creel was involved somehow. We don't see the killing of the children. There's no footage of Alice's death. We're not even given the Creel boy's name in the second retelling. We have no conclusive evidence that that's Henry. We do, however, see a blood-splattered 001 in the lab...and a blood-free Henry (?).

Just like the West Memphis Three, there's no evidence of guilt for Henry in any of the murders. However, we also don't see a concrete Henry again after the blood-free shot. It's highly possible that Edward (?)/Vecna killed him. We simply don't know what happened to him.

Lucifer may already be dead by God's hand. We just don't know.

I'd also like to point out a couple of details re: Paradise Lost and Stranger Things:

Jesse Misskelly: Miss Kelley, who was supposedly seeing all of Vecna's victims, and who wears a pendant of a clock on a key. She also shows up on the board beside the Library-Progress poster, the Drama Club/Monologues flyer, and the Tutors Needed poster. There's no evidence that she did anything wrong, and it's likely she doesn't know any more than anyone else, but it's suspicious that she's so connected to Vecna/The Creels in both plot and imagery. It makes you question the depth of her involvement.

Jason Baldwin: Jason Carver. The guy I said was a false prophet, but who I also indicated is more complicated than he seems. The thing about Jason is that he is not knowingly a false prophet. If he had all the facts, he'd likely be siding with Hellfire. He's trying to fight what he perceives as the evil in Hawkins...based on limited information. Even so, he's raising an army to fight the evil, and Vecna is aware of that because it's happening in Hawkins. Jason is an adversary. Adverary. Satan. He believes it's Hellfire who is responsible, that Hellfire is in cahoots with Vecna, who is perceived as Satan. However, Hellfire is anti Vecna. When Jason blasphemes Vecna via Hellfire...he's unknowingly blaspheming God. Thus, the fiery pit. There was no true false prophet, just some guy who went mad with grief and didn't have all the necessary information and wanted to fight the evil that killed his girlfriend.

Along those lines, I also want to talk about Nancy's beast.

Nancy's beast should at least be representative of Satan, then, right? Not necessarily. The beast in Book of Revelation is highly symbolic, and is thought to be representative of the oppressive Roman Empire.

There's one player everyone seems to forget in Stranger Things: The US Military.

The military, who consume most of our national budget like a gaping maw, and who are currently coming after the person committing murders in Hawkins. The believe it's El, but the person they want is Vecna. It's exactly the same as Jason and Eddie. They're all unknowingly coming after God while chasing someone who isn't God. Like Hopper says in ST1...they're chasing the wrong kid.

All those with the sign of the beast will be condemned. Guns don't work on Demogorgons. The military, who bear symbols that designate them as such...signs of the beast if you will...will be decimated.

That isn't to say a beast won't appear. It very much may, but it's not actually linked to Henry/Lucifer. The beast is more likely representative of the US Military as an adversary of Vecna, just like the dragon in the painting is only representative of Vecna via narrative fuckery.

The dragon in the painting will not exist in relation to Vecna/God, hence it doesn't appear in Nancy's vision. The military does exist as an adversary to Vecna/God, hence the beast appears in Nancy's vision.

Adversary. Satan.

In true Creel fashion, it's time to loop back to the very beginning of this post.

Jericho. The working title of ST5. What did I say about the Battle of Jericho?

There was no Devil. Lucifer exists vaguely, somewhere offscreen. We don't know where he is. Satan, though, simply translates to adversary.

It was just God, an earthquake, and Jericho.

There is no "Evil Devil" in Stranger Things' rendition of the Book of Revelation. Henry may exist, but he also may have been dead before the plot even began. We don't know where he is. Our figures of Satan are just a collection of adversaries against Vecna.

It's just Vecna, an earthquake, and Hawkins.

Right?

Well. We've missed a couple figures here, haven't we?

Jesus, the Archangel Michael, and the Holy Spirit.

Will Byers (Guillermo Maldonado?) and Mike Wheeler...and the Shadow.

This is where we come back to the tone of the Book of Revelation in comparison to the tone of the New Testament.

The Book of Revelation is very out of place in comparison to Jesus' teachings of love, peace, and forgiveness. God goes ham in Book of Revelation, to the point of frankly unnecessary pain, harm, and cruelty. So why would Jesus, Mr. "Loves Saves All", get involved in that? Why would Archangel Michael, "healer of the sick and champion of goodness", get caught up in that?

Logically, they shouldn't. Unnecessary cruelty goes against everything they seem to advocate for.

Everything Vecna does goes against everything Will and Mike stand for. Byler won't have a villain arc. Byler will not join Vecna. Jesus is not going to join God, here...and neither will Archangel Michael.

Archangel Michael fights Satan's red dragon, which we discussed as nothing but a narrative distortion of Vecna and Henry when present in Will's painting.

However, the painting is not biblical. Will didn't literally paint Mike fighting the devil. It's DnD. That dragon is likely Tiamat, the evil mother of all dragons. She is very similar in personality to the Whore of Babylon, who rides upon Satan's red dragon, and who reeks of Virginia...and by extension Karen.

Mike is fighting the mommy issues dragon. He's fighting the physical manifestation of his neglectful relationship with his mother, and Will is going to be be his side to help him.

Classic Byler W.

Finally...The Shadow, our Holy Spirit.

I'd like to call attention to some wording surrounding the Holy Spirit and the Shadow especially in relation to Jesus.

Luke 4:1: Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.

Matthew 10:20: For it is not you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

John 16:5-7: Holy Spirit cannot come to help you until I leave. But after I am gone, I will send the Spirit to you.

Acts 2:1-4: Suddenly a sound came from heaven. It was like a strong wind blowing...The flames separated and settled on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit. 

In ST2, Will is possessed by the Shadow via Vecna. One might say he is full of the Shadow. When Will first sees the Shadow in one of his visions, there is a strong wind. He becomes more and more replaced by Vecna/the Shadow as time goes on. Vecna speaks through Will. Joyce asks "What happens when my boy is gone?"

In ST3, once Billy is all but gone, when Vecna can truly speak though him, he begins to send the Shadow to others. They were filled with the Shadow.

Then, in ST4, we see the Shadow in Russia. When asked about the freed/revived demodogs, the Russians say the Shadow "went into them". They were filled with the Shadow.

Are we convinced yet? Do we need more? How about this:

The Holy Spirit acts at God's command; it is an agent of divine action.

The Shadow acts at Vecna's command; it is an agent of his action.

All this, all these hundreds of words to say a few things:

In Stranger Things, Jericho = Book of Revelation.

There is no "Evil Devil" figure in Stranger Things. God is the bad guy.

Vecna is God, and so is Brenner.

Vecna is most likely Edward Creel.

Via the canonical time-travel powers of at least one Creel boy, Edward Creel and Martin Brenner are likely the same person.

Henry Creel is Lucifer.

Henry Creel is also innocent.

We don't know if Henry's alive or not, and if he is alive we don't know where he is.

Mike's dragon is most likely Tiamat, the DnD Mommy Issues Dragon.

The Duffers ship Jesus and Archangel Michael. Deadass.

A few interesting but ultimately unnecessary details below the cut:

In 1984, the same year ST2 is set in, Depeche Mode released Blasphemous Rumors. It's a song about the perceived cruelty of God. In it, a girl attempts suicide and fails. She finds new life in the church, only to be struck by a car and killed. The chorus goes: "I don't want to start any blasphemous rumors, but I think that God's got a sick sense of humor // and when I die, I expect to find Him laughing."

U2 released Joshua Tree in 1987, the year ST5 is supposedly going to be set in and/or skip. It was immensely popular and jam-packed with biblical references. The Mormons (Suzie!) named the physical Joshua Tree is named after biblical Joshua...the same Joshua from the Battle of Jericho. Here's some more about The Joshua Tree:

Book of Revelation is a wartime piece. It's highly debated as to whether it's an actual vision, or if it's just John of Patmos, a second-generation disciple embittered by Jesus' failure to return as promised to save his people from the Romans, writing a fix-it fic where God brutally kills everyone except John's people. Is it a vision? Is it God? Or is it just the vengeance-porn work of a traumatized second-generation disciple who feels abandoned? No one actually knows. Is Vecna literally God? Or is he just a traumatized, abused boy who wants vengeance on the society that harmed and abandoned him? No one actually knows.

Kronos, in Greek mythology, is the god of time. He's the father of the Greek gods, all of whom he tried to consume. He is equated to Father Time in modern folklore. Edward (?) Creel has time travel abilities...god of time...Father Time...Papa...Brenner...consuming the Greek gods...consuming the numbers...just something to chew on.

Henry's costuming seems to be modeled after altar boy robes, both as a child and as an adult. We all know about the rape scandals with altar boys in the Catholic church. The Pope, God's official mouthpiece to the world, let it happen. Priests, also referred to as Father (cough Papa cough) were involved in raping boys...and the Pope covered it up. God, essentially, let it happen. Both our God figures being rapists, specifically of children/boys, may be a commentary on this scandal.

[1st-worldsaver]

My opinion on the various projects in Nicaragua in cooperation with China that were decided this week:

1) Building a new mercado Oriental is a very good idea. I am nostalgic about the old one disappearing, but that thing is currently a massive fire hazard that hasn't gone up in flames (or been washed away by rain) through a miracle.

Though I have to ask why they decided to build the new one 300 meters away from the existing market? (I hope the land from the old one turns into something good like more housing.)

2) Finally signing a tangible contract regarding the deep-sea port in Bluefields. A big step forward, since nothing's happened ever since its announcement 4 years ago until this monday. It sounds like a good idea all around to expand it, even though it most likely will have some ecological effects too.

3) I guess I'll have to give up on the interoceanic canal. That thing is getting built no matter what. At least they've changed the route so it doesn't go through lago Cocibolca, so that it won't get absolutely annihilated ecologically (though passing through lago Xolotlàn could only be conceived as marginally better. And god knows how much more forest will disappear because of it).

Cooperation with China truly always brings about big changes in every country they work with.

[duhragonball]

The Future of Dragon Ball

I was going to play Mega Man X5 tonight, but it's acting kind of buggy and I'm not in a mood to try to troubleshoot my copy of Legacy Collection 2, so I'll write about Dragon Ball instead. Specifically, what happens next?

Let me make this clear up front: I don't actually know the answer to this. I'm not an "insider" claiming to have "leaked" information. All I want to do is discuss the possibilities, and the culture of speculation that seems to persist in the fandom.

I tend to call this "modern" era of the Dragon Ball franchise a "renaissance", because very little official material came out between 1998 and 2012, and then after Battle of Gods ushered in this new wave of Dragon Ball movies, TV episodes, web series, and comics. I've been covering this all year in the #2023dbapocryphaliveblog, in case you're new to this blog, and while much of it hasn't been very good, there were a lot of bright spots. Battle of Gods, Broly, and Super Hero were classics, the Tournament of Power basically saved and otherwise lackluster Dragon Ball Super anime, and the Granolah Saga in the DBS manga is a fun read with a great cliffhanger.

However, things have slowed down a lot this year. The Granolah Saga ended and the manga began a long, long adaptation of the Super Hero film. There was some hype about a new Tenkaichi Budokai video game, but there's been no word on when it'll come out what we can expect to see. I get the sense that the fans are champing at the bit for some big announcement, like a new movie or anime series, but it hasn't happened.

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but back in my day you just had to wait and see, and accept the possibility that you may never get what you were hoping for. The vibe I get from DBTwitter is that people think they can somehow manifest a new animation through sheer force of will. News will spread of some Toei panel and fans will cling to the hope that there must be some big Dragon Ball announcement, and it must be nothing less than a teaser trailer for Xenoverse 3, a DBZ remake, and release dates for the next five movies. Then the panel will come and go, and it just ends up being a fluff PR thing where a spokesperson says "Dragon Ball is very fun and Goku is cool." and that's it. And all the fans get upset until the next panel, where they put their clown makeup on all over again.

"No, this can't be happening. Dragon Ball 2uper is real..."

When I was still new to the fandom, I always wondered how Dragon Ball AF could be such a potent fantasy for so long. But now I've lived through the Dragon Ball Super era, and seen fans chasing similar dreams. People have been waiting for Xenoverse 3 for over six years. They've been expecting "Dragon Ball Super II" ever since Dragon Ball Super I ended five years ago. And I'd say it's a pipe dream, except fans held out hope for Tenkaichi 4 since 2010, and it looks like we're actually going to get that one? You never can tell with this franchise. My kneejerk reaction to Dragon Ball Magic is to dismiss it as fake, but I can't be completely sure.

The weird thing is that 2uper, Magic, and XV3 have been hyped up during a boom period for the franchise. Dragon Ball Super had a 131 episode run, followed by two feature films. It's still going, but people want 2uper to animate the Moro Saga. People want a new web anime, but there's already a web anime. Super Dragon Ball Heroes has been running since 2018 and it's still going. Xenoverse 2 is still releasing DLC packs. I recognize that some of this content isn't what everyone wanted, but it's weird how fans are demanding new projects before the old ones have run their course. At least when AF became a legend, there weren't any official works to compete for its attention.

It occurs to me that maybe this is just part of the fan culture, and every so often fans will collectively agree on some imaginary premise and Goncharov their own series. Maybe that's what AF was then, and what Magic is today. They're not hoaxes, but rather some sort of mutually-agreed-upon daydream. I'm not sure I get it, but it is what it is.

Anyway, my position has always been that Dragon Ball has ended before and can end again, so there's no reason to assume that there will be some new anime or movie or video game to look forward to. I watched Super Hero fully believing that this could be the last one, even though the box office numbers suggest that a sequel is probably inevitable. But nothing is guaranteed. Dragon Ball GT started strong in the ratings, only to get canceled about a year later.

And yet, there seems to be some kind of guarantee, because of this guy:

I think there are a lot of fans who believe that Dragon Ball Super has a lot of loose ends to tidy up, and the series can't end until Goku and Vegeta surpass Jiren, Beerus, Whis, and Orange Piccolo. And maybe this is true, but I'm not so sure. But Black Frieza isn't just a loose end. This seems like a pretty big honkin' deal, and it would be pretty weak if they wrapped things up without some kind of reckoning here. Frieza's the main villain of Dragon Ball Super now, and in his most recent appearance he revealed he can defeat Goku and Vegeta with frightening ease. And yet, he spared them. Why?

So that seems like the obvious direction going into 2024. This is why fans are so burned out on the manga this year, because they know a Black Frieza arc is coming, but they have to wait for Toyotaro to retell Super Hero before we can even find out when it's happening.

My guess is that Toei/Shueisha decides to tease this out even longer. We get to chapter 100 of the manga and it starts some bullshit arc about Goten and Trunks playing superhero park rangers on 17's island. Or... that dumb android from the Moro Saga comes back and they jerk around with that guy for 18 chapters. They'll get to Black Frieza eventually, but I suspect that they're holding off until they can set up a Black Frieza movie. Then the manga can just adapt that movie and everything gets paid off around the same time.

Either way, I'm a little skeptical about it just being Goku and Vegeta training to beat Black Frieza. I keep coming back to how he let them live at the end of the Granolah arc. Ostensibly, he just wanted to frighten them, and make it clear that he no longer sees them as a threat. But maybe there's more to it than that. Maybe Frieza needs them alive for some reason. Like he plans to use them to achieve some goal, or he needs their help to stop some even greater menace that we haven't seen yet.

Maybe that's what Frieza was talking about at the end of the Broly movie when he said he wanted "one other". I kind of thought he meant to use Broly as an ally against Goku and Vegeta, but maybe he's planning a campaign against some other guy, and he sees Broly as a potential resource. And maybe that's why he spared Goku and Vegeta on Planet Cereal. If he kills them, he might not be able to find Broly when the time comes. Or maybe he just needs all three Saiyans, so he has to pull his punches.

Or maybe I'm overthinking this, and it just turns out that Black Frieza ends with a manga arc where Goku turns "Ultra Instinct (Defined) (Remastered)" and wins a paint-by-numbers battle. Or Roshi beats Black Frieza, because that sounds like something Toyotaro would do.

So what would happen after Black Frieza? See, that's where I wonder about the future of the franchise, because so much work has gone into mining past arcs. The first DBS movie was about bringing back Broly, Bardock, and Gogeta. The second movie brought back the Red Ribbon Army, the androids, and Cell. Frieza will almost certainly get another turn, and then what? What's left?

I mean, let's break this down by the major antagonists we've had so far.

Pilaf Saga. The Pilaf gang are still living in Bulma's house, apparently, so that comic relief bit from Battle of Gods shows no signs of ending.

Red Ribbon Army. DBS Super Hero brought them back and opened some interesting doors for future Red Ribbon stories. It's hard to imagine the Army making another comeback since Cell Max destroyed their secret base and all their top leaders were killed. But the Red Pharmaceutical Company still exists and someone must have taken over after Magenta's death.

Tien Shinhan. Tien never left, and while I'd be down for a Tien-centric saga, it seems pretty unlikely after all these years. At best, he gets a prominent role in a story featuring some more important player.

King Piccolo/Piccolo Junior. Piccolo never left either, and now he's got his own movie in Super Hero.

Saiyans Saga. Vegeta never left, and DBS: Broly pretty much covered the idea of "here are some new Saiyans we didn't know about before."

Frieza Saga. Resurrection F, Tournament of Power, DBS: Broly, this upcoming Black Frieza thing, I think this has been covered.

Androids/Cell Saga. 17 and 18 never left, and the idea of more androids and a new Cell was already covered in Super Hero.

Majin Buu. It's been 27 years and no one seems to want to do anything with this guy. Maybe 2025 is the year when Akira Toriyama finally does some big Buu story to justify keeping him around this whole time.

Zamasu. I mean, the dude got erased, so it'd be pretty bullshit to bring him back. Then again, it was pretty bullshit of Toriyama to create this idea in the first place, so I can't rule it out. "Whoops, more Zamasu" might be the storyline that would force me to quit the Dragon Ball fandom for good.

Tournament of Power. I mean, they could do another Tournament of Power for funsies, but it probably wouldn't live up to the spectacle or the novelty of the original. More likely, I could see some adventures featuring prominent characters from the event, like Jiren, Hit, the U6 Saiyans, etc.

Moro. I did not enjoy the Moro arc much at all, so it kind of bums me out when people suggest that Toei should do an anime adaptation of it. To me, that would be just as big a waste of time as the DBS manga doing the Super Hero adaptation that's going on right now, but it would be even worse because Moro kind of sucks. In the same vein, doing stories that follow up on the Moro arc would be difficult because you'd have to refer back to the Moro arc, which only appeared in the manga, which not everyone read. So it's this difficult spot where you'd have to animate the Moro arc first, just to do a new arc about Merus and Jaco or whatever. It's probably not worth it.

Other Z Movies and GT: The success of DBS: Broly sort of opens the door for similar reboots of guys like Cooler, Turles, Janemba, Baby, etc. But honestly, this seems pretty far-fetched to me. Broly was a much, much bigger star than any of those other characters, so what worked for Broly isn't necessarily a road map for a guy like Bojack or Omega Shenron.

Looking over all of this, I kind of wonder what's left to do. Maybe something with Majin Buu, or the big shots from the Tournament of Power, and after that, I think they'll have used up all the viable nostalgia. After that, Dragon Ball will probably have to come up with something brand new, which is kind of a dicey proposition, because they've been hit-or-miss with that. Granolah and Tournament of Power were good, Moro and Zamasu were bad, so when I hear they're doing something all-new, I get kind of nervous.

But in the end, I don't know what will happen, which brings us back around to where I started. We'll just have to see what shakes out.

[pocket-luv101]

Flowers Lost to Time // Chapter 1

Fandom: Genshin Impact Ship: CynoNari

Summary: Each Valuka Shuna are blessed with a mark that will tell them who their soulmate is. Tighnari has a flower tattoo but he couldn’t recognize what it is. (CynoNari, Soulmates AU)

(Ch.1) // Ch.2

“Papa, is this flower a Sumeru rose? I saw a picture of it in a textbook.” Tighnari traced his chubby finger over the rose on his father’s hand. For his eighth birthday, his father gifted him an encyclopedia and it sparked an interest in plants. He would spend hours in his parents’ study and read every book he could find. There were times he wished that he wished he had a Dendro vision so he could create a vine ladder and reach the higher shelves.

“You’re learning quickly. This is a rose.” His father patted his head and the praise made Tighnari grin proudly. “Your mother gave me one on our first anniversary and that’s how I knew she was the one. Us Valuka Shuna have a mark that can tell them who their soulmate is. Valuka Shuna are born with a tattoo that will be the first flower our soulmate gives us.”

“It’s the first flower they give you. But what if someone aside from Mama gave you a rose for the first time? Will they become your soulmate? Do I have to marry the first person who gives me flowers? What if someone gives me a bouquet of different flowers? How would I know?” Tighnari voiced each question as they came to mind but the overwhelming amount didn’t bother his father.

His father brushed his ear and patiently explained: “I already thought your mother was the woman for me. The rose only made me more confident of that. It’s a strange predicament. The heart knows so much but it can take a while for you to understand. More perplexing, it can be something as simple as a flower to make you realize the truth.”

“I still don’t understand how a tattoo can tell me who I love. The gods can see our fate but they’re awfully vague. Why don’t they just write the person’s name instead of giving us a flower?” Tighnari pouted, clearly unsatisfied with his answer.

“You’re only eight years old and far too young to marry anyone.” He chuckled and turned his hand to show him the Sumeru Rose on his hand. “I hope your soulmate will be a kind person who gives you every flower in Sumeru. That will help your dream of becoming a botanist come true.”

Tighnari pulled his long nightshirt over his body and paused at the tattoo adorning his hip. He recalled the legend his father told him about the flower years ago and how it would help him find his soulmate. At the time, he had many questions about love and soulmates. Now, the most pressing question was: What species was the flower?

He didn’t recognize the flower even though he was a renowned scholar from the Amurta Darshan. He drew a copy of the flower and showed it to his master and peers. Yet, no one could confidently name the flower. He thought someone would know from its distinct design, five green petals shaped like diamonds. His search eventually came to an end as he moved onto other research projects.

Occasionally, he would try to discover the identity of the flower on a whim. Tighnari’s fascination with plants only grew since he was eight years old but there was something different about his tattoo. He couldn’t explain his determination to find the flower. Romance wasn’t a focus for him since his job as a Forest Watcher and research kept him busy.

Cyno came to mind and his heart stumbled over the thought. Tighnari quickly pushed the thought away and then tugged his shirt down over his tattoo. When they were in the Akademiya, Tighnari had a crush on Cyno. He forced himself to set those feelings aside. He recalled the night he overheard a girl confess to Cyno. I cannot accept your confession. For the General Mahamatra, a relationship with anyone in the Akademiya will be a conflict of interest.

His words to the girl broke Tighnari’s heart as if he were the one being rejected. He tried to console himself that it was better that he never tried to start a relationship with him. They became friends and he learned how important the role of General Mahamatra was to Cyno. He couldn’t ask him on a date even after he left the Akademiya. A criminal could use their relationship to threaten Cyno. Tighnari was happy that he was able to stay by his side at least.

The door opened behind him and Tighnari saw Cyno enter through the reflection of his mirror. Cyno’s face became red and his gaze dropped to the ground. Without looking up, he quickly closed the door behind him. His reaction confused Tighnari because they were close enough with each other that they would often enter each other’s homes without knocking. Then, Cyno said: “I’m sorry, Nari, I didn’t know you were changing.”

“This is why I tell you to knock. I’m almost finished changing so come in. I was about to go to bed but I’m guessing that you’re visiting me for something important.” Tighnari said and slipped on his pants. He knew that Cyno wouldn’t visit him so late at night unless he wanted to check on them or if he was injured. Since he didn’t appear hurt, it was likely the former.

Cyno finally lifted his face when Tighnari took his hand and pulled him away from the door. His hut was small and it only took a few steps for them to reach his kitchen. He set down a flower on the table. “I was visiting my father when I overheard his conversation with Sage Naphis. He mentioned you were looking for a flower with diamond petals. I saw this flower on my walk and I picked it for you. Although, I don’t know if this is the specific flower you wanted.”

“This is a hibiscus. It’s beautiful. Liyue uses this flower to make paper.” A fond smile spread across Tighnari’s lips as he picked up the hibiscus and listed trivia facts. Cyno could listen to him for hours. While the flower was commonly found in tropical areas like the rainforest, Tighnari carried it as if it were made of diamonds. He placed the single flower in a vase set on his desk. “Thank you for the flower, Cyno. The flower I was searching for is green.”

“I travel often so I might come across the flower. I’ll bring it back for you.”

“You don’t have to go through all that effort, Cyno. I’m uncertain if the flower I’m looking for even exist.” Tighnari didn’t tell him the legend of the tattoo on his hip. He thought that it was pointless to do so. “So, what else did you want to tell me? Someone as busy as you wouldn’t visit me in the middle of the night just to deliver a flower. You would’ve waited until lunch when we’re both free.”

They sat across from each other and Cyno could see the dark bags under Tighnari’s eyes. He felt a tinge of guilt that his visit would keep him from sleeping. He did the work of a Forest Watcher, scholar and caretaker all at once. “I won’t make you stay up much longer, Tighnari.”

“Do you need to return to the city immediately? If not, it might be better for you to stay overnight instead of hiking back in the dark. That’s my advice as your friend and not just a Forest Watcher. It’ll also be better to not rush through our conversation if you need to talk to me about something urgent. Don’t worry about me staying up late. I’m used to it.”

“That’s the problem.” Cyno muttered beneath his breath yet Tighnari heard him. Unfortunately, any rebuttal he could’ve made were stifled by his own yawn.

“Can we compromise and say that we both need rest tonight?”

Tighnari stretched his arms above his head and his shirt lifted enough for Cyno to see his smooth skin. Cyno knew only a few inches lower would be the unique tattoo on his hip. He had imagined himself biting that mark more times than he should. When he accidentally walked into him changing, he looked away out of respect. He continued to avoid meeting Tighnari’s eyes to hide how flustered he made him.

Cyno forced the flower tattoo out of his mind and turned his attention back to the reason for his visit. “I was thinking about your desert expedition to find the City of Sapphire.”

“You can’t go with me? Do the Matra need you to oversee an investigation?” While Tighnari tried to hide his disappointment, Cyno could easily read his expression. He reached across the table and laid his hand over Tighnari’s tense fingers.

“No, I arranged for my subordinates to take over any upcoming cases so I’ll have the next few weeks free. I came to talk to you because I think it’ll be better that I go by myself. The desert is dangerous and the heat is difficult for you to handle. I will bring back as many things as I can find for you. I only need a list of things to search for in the ruins.”

“I’ve been planning this expedition for months, Cyno. The City of Sapphire could have a way to cure Collei’s Eleazar. Do you think I’ll stay behind? You’re intelligent but your expertise is leylines, the gods, and Genius Invokation. I’m a Forest Watcher and doctor. I can find the information at a glance.” Tighnari argued.

When he started his research into the City of Sapphire, he was curious about his ancestorial home. Then, he read that the city was once plagued with a disease similar to Eleazar. They were able to recover and continue to thrive for another hundred years. The records didn’t say how they cured Eleazar though. Tighnari wasn’t deterred. While it was unlikely, there could be medical documents in the City of Sapphire that could help Collei.

“We’ve been to the desert before and this time shouldn’t be different. You asked me to take care of Collei and the expedition could be our best chance to cure Eleazar. This can help other patients too.” Tighnari didn’t understand why Cyno would suddenly change his mind. Cyno cared for Collei as a sister the same way he did. He bit his lip and added: “It’s dangerous for either of us to go alone. That’s why I wanted us to go together. However, if you plan to go on this expedition by yourself, I will too.”

Cyno knew that it would be difficult to convince Tighnari that he shouldn’t go on the expedition. He thought he prepared himself for an argument until he looked into Tighnari’s steady eyes. He was braver and more strong-willed than most of his Matra. Although, those traits drew Cyno to him, he didn’t want him to run into danger.

“You’re my best friend and Collei’s teacher.” His words only made Tighnari’s frown deepen. Cyno gently caught Tighnari’s chin between his fingers and lifted his face so their eyes met. He ran his thumb over his lower lip, slightly swollen after he bit it. “If something happens to you while we’re exploring the ruins, I could never forgive myself.”

“Have you considered how I feel?” Tighnari gripped his nightshirt in a tight fist. His hand hovered over the flower tattoo on his hip. “You’re always so quick to endanger yourself in the name of the General Mahamatra. You don’t have to go into the desert alone to protect me. That’s the last thing I want! We can protect each other if we travel together.”

His green eyes pleaded with Cyno far more than words could. Even though he had a thousand logical reasons why it was better for him to go on the expedition alone, it was difficult for him to say no to him. He only wanted Tighnari to be safe and happy. The dejection and disappointment in his expression made him worry that he could be hurting him. While Cyno would be reassured of Tighnari’s safety, it wouldn’t be the same for him waiting in the rainforest for his return.

“The desert is dangerous.”

“So is the rainforest that I patrol every day.”

“You could get hurt.” The words were more for himself than Tighnari. Cyno tried to remind himself of why he needed to convince him to change the expedition. Tighnari took Cyno’s fingers from his chin and moved it so his hand cradled his face. He didn’t let go of his hand as he turned his face into his palm. Their fingers brushed together and Cyno could feel the calluses he had from years wielding a bow.

“That won’t happen. In an unlikely scenario where you’re hurt, I’ll treat your wounds and bring you back here. I expect you to do the same for me.”

[brandwhorestarscream]

Oooh, just go for any and all timelines you'd find interesting for the son-in-law ask? I'd love to hear any of them!

I'll just go down the line then!! :D

So, timeline 1 is canon: Galvatron and Terminus are dead long, long before Megatronus ever even meets Orion Pax. Terminus dies from infection after losing his legs in a mining accident, and Galvatron dies in the gladiator pits after a rigged match.

Timeline 2, the Destructicon timeline, Megatron dies when he's the equivalent of like. 2 months old. So that's out

Timeline 3, the self imposed exodus. Because the warframes abandoned cybertron about a 100 million years ago, Sentinel Prime was never assassin mated: i.e. he's still alive and kicking so Orion isn't ever selected for Primehood. In this one, he and Megatron don't meet until they're both far, far into adulthood--roughly where the first season of Transformers Prime starts--and ol Megs is actually in a committed relationship with someone else. Any guesses as to whom? (It's not Soundwave, though they did date for quite awhile)

Timeline 4 is where we actually get our first look at Megop! Big bad is still the corrupt Primacy and the Senate, so while Orion may never become the Prime in name, he's still a beloved leader of the resistance. Except this time 🤭 he and Megatron are on the same side, leading together as one. In this timeline, Galvatron and Terminus fled from Kaon with their sparkling after being warned of the horrible future by Galvatron-2: Megatronus and Orion met when they were children, and were close friends all while growing up. To be honest, those two were the absolute last ones to figure out they were in love: everyone and their carrier and also their turbohound knew they were going to end up together. In TL4, Galvatron and Terminus have watched Orion grow up alongside their son and are very fond of him: they're perfectly supportive of their relationship and probably also had a bet going on about how long it would take for them to realize their feelings.

Now, timeline 5... here's where we get into the really complicated stuff. In this one, the Senatorial system is abolished before war can ever break out, and that includes the Prime as a figurehead. This is a timeline where all of the civil rights issues are solved peacefully: the Matrix is returned to the gods' Acolytes for safe keeping as a holy relic, and as there's no war nor anymore Primal figurehead, the Matrix isn't called upon to take a new host.

Orion and Megatron meet when they're teenagers-to-young adults, and this is the one with the rapunzel-esque situation for Megatron. Except instead of a tower, he's kept secluded within the walls of Iacon's main Temple of Primus (it makes sense it context I swear, but that's a whole other post of its own). Galvatron keeps him confined out of fear for his life: he's lived through so many lives and has been visited by his previous selves so often it's made him incredibly paranoid and obsessive. Isolation is his greatest love: keep Megatronus away from anything and anyone that could hurt him, sequestered in one of the safest buildings on the planet. As a holy place of worship and frequented by the Chosen Ones of the gods (aka the Acolytes) the Temple is under constant watch from the Primal Vanguard. No one gets in if they're not supposed to be there. It's safe. Megatronus has never set foot outside since being brought in as a sparkling and is extremely sheltered: cue Orion getting dragged there against his will for a research project and falling helm over pedes for this pretty holy virgin type.

...Again. I promise you it makes sense in context. I'll sexualize my religious trauma as much as I want tyvm lmfao 😂

ANYWAY. The first time Galvatron meets Orion it's hate at first sight: via several little misunderstandings he thinks Orion is an invader in the Temple trying to hurt his only child and kinda goes ballistic. Even after everything has settled down and he's knows Megatron is safe, he still despises him. He wants the little upstart to stay far, far away from his baby. Wants everyone to stay away from his baby, really. No one is safe. No one can be trusted. It takes a long, long time for him to be even slightly ok with Orion's presence, and even longer for him to accept it when a relationship does bloom between them.

Terminus, on the other servo, quietly adores Orion. Megatronus really only has one friend growing up in the Temple: the only son of a rather religious Senator, little Shockwave. But he can't visit often so their boy rarely gets to speak with peers his age, and it makes him happy to see Megatronus interacting with another youngling. Orion is polite and sweet and genuinely a good kid, seeing them spend time together warms his old spark. He's really not at all surprised when Orion presents his first courting gift, and gives the young mech his blessing to pursue his only child.

Timeline 6 diverges pretty late and much of TL5's canon carries over. This timeline split comes when they're already married adults, so there's no change there

Timeline 7 is just. Universal oblivion: there is no more universe. So uh... moot point

I hope you enjoyed this! I hope I answered your question ok. I know I didn't exactly touch on High Lord Protector stuff, but honestly it doesn't ever really crop up in Hindsight. I can say, independent of timelines and individual canons, they'd be very proud to see their son ascend to such a position, but would also be scared to death. That's such a big change, after all! And a dangerous position to take on 🥺 they worry about their baby

[random-thought-depository]

A very preliminary, low-detail, and tentative outline of important events in the expansion of hominids through near-Sol space in my main science fiction setting (will likely be subject to some change before the "final draft" that will inform my actual stories):

2-.5 million years ago: Aliens transplant some early hominids to some Earth-like worlds in other solar systems. I have a few different models of how this might have happened:

It was a Star Trek Preservers sort of deal: the aliens did it as part of a much bigger project of encouraging the diversification and spread of intelligent life in our galaxy.

Aliens came to Earth and established a colony here. These aliens were giant beings, at least comparable to elephants or T-Rex, maybe even as big as the biggest sauropod dinosaurs. They domesticated early hominids, finding it useful to have servants who were much smaller than them, had hands, and were smart enough to follow simple commands (so a little like @o-craven-canto's Gods of Salt scenario). They found their new domesticate useful enough to transplant some to some of their other colonies.

Similar to 2), but instead of being domesticated, a population of early hominids infiltrated the alien colony on their own initiative and became something roughly equivalent to urban racoons. Some of them eventually followed the aliens to the stars in approximately the same way mice, rats, and cockroaches will likely follow humans to the stars.

2) and 3) are compatible and might both have happened: domestic animals often go feral and survive as ferals in urban environments (see: pigeons, stray dogs, stray cats, etc.), and domestic dogs and cats probably started out as wild hangers-on attracted to the resources of human communities.

In the case of 1) the aliens would have had only scientific interest in Earth, the entire point of the relocation effort would have been to establish viable "wild" hominid populations on multiple worlds, and the relocation program probably looked kind of like our wolf re-introduction programs and the like. Once the aliens made a thorough study of Earth and were confident that the transplanted hominid populations were doing OK, they stepped back and let nature take its course.

In the case of 2) or 3), the aliens eventually disappeared for some reason (I have one idea that we'll get to later), leaving behind populations of hominids who survived by returning to something much more similar to the lifestyle of their "wild" ancestors. The alien colony on Earth might have existed during an era when sea levels were lower than they are now and been on what's now the Sunda Shelf or something like that, hence why its remains weren't found before the twenty-first century.

Significantly, all this happened long before our ancestors got as smart as we are. The hominids I'm talking about here might have been early Homo erectus who peaked at intelligence roughly equivalent to a human toddler. Or maybe this was even farther back and I'm talking about Homo habilis or something like that. Modern humans tend to pre-empt biological evolution with cultural innovation, e.g. faced with a cold climate, we invent warm clothing long before we might evolve fur, and therefore humans living in cold climates have no evolutionary impetus to evolve fur. Less intelligent early hominids probably did that to some degree too (control over fire is pretty old), but, being less smart than us, they'd have been less insulated from environmental selection pressures. So when these hominids were exposed to alien environments, they tended to start to evolve in different directions from their ancestor species on Earth. There was usually a tendency toward increased intelligence and self-domestication over time, eventually resulting in species about as smart and social as Earth humans, but a lot of these transplanted hominids got kind of weird before that happened or during that process (example: these people). So my setting is a bit All Tomorrows-ish.

15-13,000 years ago: One of the species descended from the transplanted hominids developed a high-tech civilization of their own.

Significant and relevant digression: in my setting, I think I'll go with a multiple filters explanation for the Fermi Paradox - with one of the filters being the Berserker option. I think the history I'm about to outline makes more sense if these not very successful interstellar colonization efforts I'm about to describe were more-or-less waves of refugees. I don't have a clear idea of what The Threat is at this point, except that it's something that's destroys emerging starflight-capable civilizations. I'm tentatively thinking it'll be something similar to the Omega Clouds from The Engines of God, but I don't have anything firm yet.

If I go with options 2) or 3) for how early hominids got transplanted to worlds in other star systems, The Threat is probably what destroyed the civilization of the big aliens. In that case, my guess is the hominids survived but the big aliens didn't because, with their high-tech civilization gone, the large size and hence large caloric requirements of the big aliens made them much more vulnerable to, well, a lot of things that kill off long-lived slow-breeding species.

The Threat destroyed this first hominid civilization to develop, probably within a few centuries of them developing interstellar travel capability, but before that happened this first hominid civilization managed to send out at least one slower than light colonial expedition, aimed at Sol.

Travelling at maybe .1-.2 c, the colonists endured a voyage of maybe 2-400 years by spending that time in a form of suspended animation. They arrived at Sol maybe 14,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene great warming. They found a cool and wild but warming and relatively inviting planet, mostly thinly populated by hunter-gatherers, though a very early agricultural society existed in the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent. The colony ships were parked in orbit and the settlers descended to the new world and established a colony; tentatively, the primary colony site was near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, in a lowland that's now part of the Persian Gulf (I'll have to look up exactly how the coast in that region changed over time - I'm aware that technically the Shatt al-Arab is less than 10,000 years old, but I think there'd have been a similar river running through the lowland that's now the Persian Gulf in the ice age?).

The colony did OK at first, including establishing good relations with the native humans. With their advanced technology, it was easy for the colonists to gain favor with the native humans by giving them things from plastic bottles to vaccinations against common local diseases. The various major and minor colony sites soon developed satellite settlements of native humans attracted by the benefits that could be obtained from association with the colonists. There weren't all that many colonists, so the colonial society had a need for labor, so this arrangement was beneficial to the colonists too. Though technologically primitive, the native humans were as clever as the colonists and could be trained to operate and repair high-tech machinery, and their children could be educated to do the same. The colonial society and their native human associates soon began to merge into a mixed society. Though separated by something like a million years of evolution and biologically distinct, the colonists and the native humans were still similar enough to interbreed, so the two populations soon began to merge biologically as well, forming a hybrid species (a bit like the hominid equivalent of coydogs). Even including assimilated native humans and their descendants, the colonial society was never very big (maybe a few hundred thousand people at its peak), so there was plenty of room and resources, especially since the colony continued to maintain some space capacity and supplement their resources with asteroid mining.

Things might have gone OK for as long as a few centuries, until The Threat followed the colonists to their new home. Anticipating this possibility was a big part of the reason the colonists had chosen to maintain their space program, and many of them chose to respond to this development by fleeing again, seeking another, new world where they hoped they would finally be truly safe. The old colony ships, which had been maintained and used as orbital platforms, were refurbished and refueled for another centuries-long journey. It would be a riskier journey than the first one; the ships had deteriorated, and they would need to be modified to carry more passengers; the cryo-tube bays were dutifully expanded to accommodate the results of generations or centuries of population growth, including cultural assimilation of native humans; this meant the fuel tanks would need to be expanded too, or some mass of supplies and equipment would have to be sacrificed, or a lower delta V and hence extra decades of travel time and a proportionately increased risk of equipment failures on the journey would have to be accepted; every extra pound of passenger or cargo meant fifteen extra pounds of fuel; in the end, a mix of all these sacrifices was made.

A minority stayed behind, taking their chances on Earth, not trusting their survival to overloaded decayed rockets that would be called on to operate centuries past their best-by date, not trusting their survival to the hope that The Threat would not follow that exodus to its destination in turn. They watched the brilliant comets of the departing fusion rockets slowly dwindle in the night skies.

It would take centuries for the departing rockets to reach their destination system (tentatively, the star 82 Eridani). When they arrived, they might not have dared send a transmission to notify the ones left on Earth that they'd made it; they were running from an enemy that had found the refuge on Earth, after all. Even if they had dared send such a message, by the time it arrived there might not have been a working radio receiver on Earth capable of receiving it. The exodus had taken much of the colony's population and equipment with it. There was The Threat. And then any remnant of the colonial society that survived that was finished off by the Younger Dryas cold snap and the end-Pleistocene sea level rise. The rising oceans closed over the primary colony site near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab and the secondary sites in Sundaland and Doggerland. The orbits of any remaining satellites decayed until they fell into Earth's atmosphere and were destroyed. The last descendants of the colonists mixed with the native humans and interbred with them and disappeared into history. On a few near-Earth asteroids some traces left by colonial mining operations remained; they would sit undisturbed for the next 13,000 years.

The exodus from Earth was successful, if one sets the bar for success at survival. The decaying colony ships held together all the way to 82 Eridani. When the time came for braking, the magsails unfurled and charged and caught the interstellar medium, making rockets with exhaust velocity equal to the flotilla's forward velocity, slowly bringing the flotilla to a velocity that would allow it to be captured by 82 Eridani's gravity. The colony ships came to rest in orbit of the Earth-like world in 82 Eridani's habitable zone, and the refugees from Earth went down to their new world in shuttles.

But the effort exhausted the colonial society, which's resources were never very large. The new society on the new world in the 82 Eridani system was unable to maintain a viable high-tech civilization; they had the tools, but they didn't have all the tools they needed to make the tools anymore. So they slowly regressed to a society of low-tech subsistence agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers, not much more advanced than the society that now existed on Earth. In the process, the descendants of the colonists and the descendants of the Earth humans they'd mixed with fully merged into a single hybrid species, though a regionally heterogenous one with different traits in different regions resulting from demographic differences between the initial settler populations of various initial colony sites.

The remaining societies on Earth and the 82 Eridani planet may have survived because The Threat is programmed to destroy starflight-capable societies (and societies with technology advanced enough that they could easily become starflight-capable) and they were now too primitive to trigger its target-recognition systems.

4-3,000 years ago: the Eridani civilization: The humans on 82 Eridani's Earth-like planet eventually developed a high-tech civilization of their own, though it took them about 10,000 years.

The Eridani high-tech civilization followed the same general trajectory as the hominid civilization that came before them: lasted some centuries and then was destroyed by The Threat, managed to send out some slower-than-light colonial expeditions before being destroyed, but these expeditions were launched in desperation and weren't well-equipped to form a viable self-sustaining high-tech society in their destination system, so most Eridani colonies regressed to relatively low-tech agricultural societies within a few centuries of their founding.

The Eridani and/or the Pleistocene hominid civilization may have invented hyperdrive shortly before the end of their civilization, but if so the invention came too late to do them much good, basically just allowing them to send out a secondary wave of refugees.

The Eridani weren't able to give their colonies the best start, but they were fairly prolific at sending out colonial expeditions. Most present-day human populations are descended from Eridani colonial expeditions.

3-4,000 years is long enough for a lot of cultural change, but not long enough for much biological evolution. However, the Eridani were the product of a regionally heterogenous hybridization between Homo sapiens and another hominid species, and the genetic bottlenecking of interstellar colonization sometimes interacted with this in ways that gave the populations of certain colonies a distinct "look." Also, early in their development Eridani colonies sometimes anticipated the loss of high technology (they had the tools, but they didn't have all the tools they needed to replace the tools) and decided to use the window in which they still had functional space age legacy technology to genetically engineer their descendants to better tolerate the conditions of their new world (e.g. colonists on a high gravity world might genetically engineer their descendants for better tolerance of high gravity); this meant Eridani expansion caused a considerable increase in human physical diversity.

The Eridani were recent enough that present society has relatively good records of them and most of humanity has a relatively strong cultural memory of their society (present day Earth humans are one of the major exceptions regarding the second thing). The civilization that sent the colonial expedition to Earth in the late Pleistocene might be about as mysterious as the Minoans, the Eridani are going to be about as mysterious as the classical Romans or ancient Egyptians (that is to say, there's probably going to be some significant gaps in our knowledge about them, but their society will be basically pretty well understood by present humans, we'll know the names of a lot of their leaders and so on, we'll be able to read their literature, and a lot of people and institutions will have used continuity with them as a prestige claim over the centuries).

The Eridani probably sent a colonial expedition to Sol, but the Eridani colony on Earth did not thrive, eventually went the way of the Greenland Norse, and had minimal effect on Earth's history and cultural development. There might be a record of contact with them in some ancient Egyptian tomb inscription, if you know what to look for.

[fanfic-fairyy]

Asheiji fanfic recs pt. 3

Pt. 1 and 2 , 4

you keep me without chains by ADreamingSongbird(10k)

They say time heals all wounds. If that's what it takes, Ash is just about ready to throw himself into a fucking hourglass.

I Met My Soulmate at Starbucks by scarletvisionforever(4k)

“Why the hell do you want a drink like this?” Ash asked before he could stop himself. Blanca would’ve slapped him upside the head for being so rude. However, Ash believed that given the circumstances, the question was completely called for. Because who the hell wanted this much crap in their drink?

-

or an au where ash works at starbucks and eiji is an innocent customer who comes in and orders the most ridiculous drink ever

won't even wish for snow by ADreamingSongbird(2k)

It's the stupidest hat Ash has ever seen. Who would even buy something that tacky? It's ugly and ridiculous and so, so dumb. What a waste of money.

...but Eiji would love it.

God dammit.

the half life of what we become by StarSailorDen(14k)

Ash just wanted Eiji Okumura’s attention.

He couldn’t justify it, couldn’t unravel the logic of why he always craved the older boy’s dark eyes on him. Ash had spent most of his life being the centre of the show; the disgusting old men in Golzine’s club, the patchwork of gang members who followed his every move like he was a messiah. Even simple passerby seemed to watch him like they were cataloging something glamorous, something other worldly.

He always hated the attention he drew, and yet—he would do anything for Eiji to look at him, to focus on him, to stay with him just a little bit longer.

[Ash's need and Eiji's unconditional love, in four snapshots.]

cinnamon and spice by kybelles(6k)

Helping Yut-Lung and Sing as they organize the 15th year anniversary party of Max Glenreed and Jessica Randy could be fun for Eiji.

If only he didn't sleep with the famous couple's adopted son Ash a week ago.

Hours later, as they’re lazily cuddling on the bed after a shared hot shower, Ash speaks against Eiji’s heart. “I have a confession to make.”

Eiji’s fingers still on Ash’s hair for a moment and Ash curses himself. Without a doubt, hearing something like this from the person you’ve just slept with must be a little concerning. But Eiji just continues petting his hair. “Yes?”

“…I wasn’t planning on having dinner at the hotel restaurant tonight,” Ash says apologetically. “But you caught my eyes just as I was leaving and I… I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to talk to you.”

a tall tale get it? haha wait eiji don't leave- by equinoctial(2k)

“We don't say the H-word in this household.”

“Heck? Hell? Hfuc-”

“No that's not it,” Ash spared a quick glance to his husband innocently cooking up some noodles, huffing and puffing as he tiptoed to get the spices from the top cupboard, even though the stepping stool was right there--

cool cool cool cool no doubt no doubt by equinoctial(2k)

Oh. Oh. That did it. Ash had absolutely zero tolerance for insults involving his beloved husband. Let it be known that he was highly allergic to Eiji-related bullshit.

Surprisingly, the next scathing comment wasn't from Ash.

He blinked owlishly at the girl in the oversized jacket as she engaged in verbal combat-- with the old grumpy neighbour two times her height no less. It was like a little round baby penguin squawking at a ruffled flamingo. Needless to say, Ash was really impressed with the newcomer.

mom said its my turn to use the brain cell by equinoctial(1k)

"For someone who had the same smarts as Einstein and the reflexes of a professional hitman, Ash Lynx could be a real dumbass."

– Eiji Callenreese-Okumura, driving his husband to the hospital at speeds that made Grand Theft Auto look like church

love, ristretto and other midnight miracles by immaturesoybean(27k)

Precocious college sophomore Aslan 'just Ash' Callenreese has a problem, several, actually. His best friend won't stop shoving his newly invented pastries down Ash's throat, his partner for the dumb journalism project is an insufferable jock, and he is seriously finding it hard to prove to his adoptive parents that he does, in fact, want to live.

Meanwhile, athletic failure but infectious optimist Eiji Okumura is starting over, he's snagged a great part-time job as a barista, he finally has time to focus on his course and life is looking up! At least, it should. He just has to get through this year and everything will click into place. It should. It has to.

--

Or: A quaint café, a ridiculous coincidence, and a whole lot of coffee.

sanguine prospects by ihavenomorals(1k)

“I look…” Ash frowns. “Odd.”

There’s a small strand of hair that’s fallen from behind Ash’s ear, like spun gold in the sunlight. Eiji reaches out, slowly - but not hesitating, not any more - and tucks it back into place. His knuckle brushes Ash’s temple, a quiet hollow of worship.

“You look beautiful.” Eiji sits back. “You always do.” Ethereal would also be an apt word.

Ash smirks. “Eiji, are you flirting with me?”

“I would hope you know that.” Eiji steals back his camera. “Considering how long we’ve been together.”

“Is that what this is?” Ash looks aghast. “And here I thought we were only very good friends-”

1986 by bathandbodyworks(15k)

It’s 1986.

It’s hot, vaguely humid, and New York seems less full of life than ever, especially as Dino continues to control Ash’s every move.

But there’s a new boy, staying at the same hotel as him, with a funny accent and wide, brown eyes, and Ash is starting to think he might be a little cute.

or,

in which Ash think it’s too hot, Eiji thinks Americans are weird, and two boys fall in love.

who needs stars? we've got a roof by selfetish(17k)

Ash closes his eyes. Years of waiting culminate in weightless dust, soon to be swept away by the living. This earthen smell will fade. It will be overtaken by home-cooked meals and citron peels. Silence will forsake to Sunday radio static and the slow turnings of a page. Behind curtains, it’ll be the push and pull of their noses as they love each other sore, cutting into the pristine sheet of white starlight.

Slowly, they’ll imprint this house until it has become theirs. Ash waits for that day.

Or, the steps to remedy a fragile soul.

come be lonely with me by StarSailorDen(10k)

“Oh,” a soft voice to his right startled. Ash drew in a sharp breath as he turned to catch the silhouette of a man at the end of the aisle, backlit by the window and washed in the same radiant auburn of the setting sun that cast the stacks so warmly. “Sorry.”

|| Ash Lynx meets Eiji Okumura on the fifth floor of the university library on a Saturday evening. It's a disaster. ||

miso soup for the soul by selfetish(7k)

Ash Lynx was the sort of cool that oozed Schlitz and lemon-lime seltzers. Was the sort of rad that left Tootsie wrappers and denim under the soles of his Converse wherever he stepped. He was as smart as an apple in the way that he was both street and pillow fluent, and that he didn’t need to rely on his trigger fingers to rip and tear. Was cruel, calculating. Always on target. Always one shot, one kill. He was Ashie on the weekends, Aslan Jade behind closed doors. He was as bitter as sumatra beans, sweet as molasses once you got to know him physically, emotionally, spiritually.

To many, Ash Lynx was a conniving bastard. Tortured genius. Stone cold fox.

To Eiji, boyish.

Stories from Apartment 705 on 59th Street.

August by suffragettecity(2k)

“I love it when you look at me like that.”

The sun warms Ash’s back. “Like what?”

Eiji cards through his hair, knuckle deep in fields of blonde. “Like that,” he whispers, tucking the bangs behind his ears. “Like you are seventeen again.”

Ash and Eiji talk about marriage.

[Part of a series]

Darlings by suffragettecity(56k)

Crunching leaves, cashmere sweaters, rich mens' sons and uniform ties. The autumn the valedictorian fell in love with the athletic scholar, and poetry was carved out of circumstance.

[Read the tags before reading the fics<3]