#and forever live in a virtual reality

[agendratum]

the spirealm as text posts (2/?)

[aurosoulart]

candid footage of me and Tahnmeep (twitter) hard at work in multiplayer Figmin XR 😉 (with guest appearance by @fihyn-art, who created the Bugs Who Are Married, and who appears briefly as a floating oval during the ball pit jumpscare*)

*warning: ball pit jumpscare

[drdemonprince]

potentially triggering but ultimately harm reductionist statement about how people treat those with suicide ideation below, just a warning!

it's pretty fuckin rich that people tell suicidal people that they're "being selfish" by wanting to die, because it could not be more selfish to expect someone to just continue suffering through a life they do not want simply because their death would make them sad.

the people who say that kind of thing never want to offer any genuine help to the suicidal person that will change their life circumstances in a lasting way. they never want to house them, get them medical care, pay off their debts, introduce them to new friends, nurse them through a years-long trauma recovery process, get them a pet, drive them to a support group every week, buy them their groceries, clean their house, listen to them talk about their tough feelings for the millionth time.

lasting healing within a dramatically different and better life is never what they want for the suicidal person. they just want the person to not do anything that would make them sad. and not look too sad when they are around them, either, because even if they do white-knuckle their way through a painful existence, they are expected to also make it look easy.

but it's funny, isn't it, that by pushing away all thoughts of sadness, all thoughts of suicide, the person who says such a dismissive thing to the suicidal person is revealing how much they are on the brink of despair themselves. if, when faced with a suicidal person, your number one goal is to prevent their suicide for the sake of your own emotions rather than to improve circumstances for the suicidal person themselves, well, your own emotional grip on reality must be quite tenuous indeed. if you think the most important emotionally reality about a suicide is how it impacts you and not the person that has done it, well, you really must think that it's normal to expect other people to just constantly silently suffer for one another.

there's almost a bit of sick envy that i sometimes hear when people claim that they suicidal are "selfish." the statement almost seems to betray that everybody thinks of suicide at one point or another, that everyone has been in enough pain before that they've wished for it to end, but that since they have endured, they expect everyone else to endure the same for them, so that they don't slip into despair again as well.

it's so offensive because it is such a deeply missed opportunity. instead of batting away the statements of a suicidal person as if they were the greatest, most evil taboo, a person could really sit with them in their despair and say hey, I have felt that way too.

If only we lived in a world where acknowledgement of suicide ideation was not so taboo. Even psychologists and psychiatrists treat it as this untouchable thing, they freak out and jump into action and rob you of your body autonomy if you are willing to voice that you have thought of it. but virtually everyone has thought of it at one point or another, and some live with thoughts of it all the time forever but still have basically decent lives that they experience as worthwhile.

the legal apparatus that exists to prevent suicides at all costs have made it too risky for any kind of healthcare professional to allow the frank acknowledgement of suicide ideation to happen. hell, even the protections that have evolved online to supposedly "protect" suicidal people by filtering out content about suicide and redirecting those browsing for information about it to suicide prevention resourcse has, counterproductively, served to make the state of suicidality even more unspeakable. it cannot be spoken about, cannot be posted about, cannot be acknowledged, is not permitted, is never allowed to just be.

and that harms suicidal people so much.

we are so deeply selfish and cowardly in how we approach suicide and suicidal people.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

theorizing

It's still early in the event, but I'm already trying to think about what Hot Topic Issue this year's Halloween event might tackle (assuming it follows the precedent set by GloMasq and Playful Land). Here's the theory I present to you: the conflict will be about escapism and where to draw that divide between fantasy and reality. Why do I think that? Because there are lots of parallels between our shiny new guy on the block, Skully, and us, Twst fans.

Book 7 presents a similar idea when Lilia and Malleus discuss the life cycle of Gao-Gao Drago-kun, how short it is, and how convenient it would be if the virtual pet could live forever in a fantasy world. In the same book, Yuu has finally found a potential route home... meaning an end to their story and their time in their current world. Read another way, it can be said that we, the Twst fans/players, are like Malleus, not wanting anything about our lives in Twisted Wonderland to change. We want to stay here among these characters we have come to love and grow close to, not return to our boring mundane lives in our original worlds... in reality. Likewise, similar points of comparison can be drawn between these themes and Lost in the Book with Nightmare Before Christmas, even as early as part 1.

Now in this allegory, Skully represents us, the average Twst fans. Here's the parallels I noted:

Skully is notably a first year, which matches up with the grade level that Yuu (the player self-insert/POV character) is assigned to

Skully attends a school where his peers don’t understand him or his interests. This mimics the experience of some Twst fans, who may be misunderstood even within the anime fandom. How many times have people joked “Oh, you like the Disney dating sim?”/assumed that Twst is cringe? Can you talk to fans of traditional Disney about Twst? Twst may be somewhat niche in your immediate area. Chances are, you have to retreat to online avenues to find like-minded fans. In this way, Twst fans may feel isolated or not understood.

He does not like to talk about school because he doesn't have many people who understand him, perhaps due to his eccentricities. Again, this may not directly translate to all Twst fans, but rather it can be very relatable to those who lack social connections and seek to fulfill that through fandom or escaping into a fantasy world.

Skully is an otaku for Halloween. And what are we, as Twst fans, if not also otaku?

He looks mysterious but has excitable reactions. The behavior reminds me of someone who can be very sociable online or in special circumstances but might come off completely differently in real life or initially due to how their face looks and how they dress.

The strongest parallel, however, is the fact that he, like Yuu (again, the player self-insert character) ALSO gets isekai'd... into the world of The Nightmare Before Christmas. And what happens in this world that Skully gets isekai'd to? He... 1) meets lots of new people--people that don't know him in the "real" world, so he is free to act however he wants around them, maybe even befriend them, 2) gets to meet his Halloween idol, Jack-sama, 3) gets to be praised by his idol, and 4) (presumably) helps out his idol with putting together this year's Halloween. THESE LINE UP ALMOST EXACTLY WITH WHAT YUU DOES WHEN THEY'RE ISEKAI'D INTO TWISTED WONDERLAND... Yuu, who represents you, THE TWST FAN. You, as a Twst fan, 1) meet and potentially befriend these new characters (and maybe even explicitly made an OC to act however you like in your place as the one meeting these characters), 2) hone in on your favorite(s), 3/4) hyperfixate on the intimate voice lines and the moments you have with your favorite(s). It's total wish fulfillment for both Skully and the average Twst fan. In other words, Skully will get lost in living the fantasy that is literally being transported into the world of his Favorite Thing Ever, just like we, the Twst fans, escape to Twisted Wonderland. In the book/Twst, you can be yourself or whoever you want to be. But what happens when that peace and comfort is about to be taken away? Perhaps that's when Skully will snap 🤔 refusing to return to his old life, where he was awkward and misunderstood... wanting to stay in this endless Halloween night forever and ever. Maybe he even tries to prevent the NRC students from leaving too, since he has now formed a friendship (?) with them? Like, he's trying to keep them trapped in this fantasy of his (very Malleus-core of him, honestly). Then it would be up to us to try and knock some sense into Skully, reminding him that there are things in the "real" world to look forward to as well.

Looking back at previous Halloweens, the conflicts presented usually tie back to something relating to the Disney counterpart's own identities. For example, Frollo (in the stage version) lost his younger brother to sin and pinned the blame on an entire group of people. Rollo lost his younger brother to sin and now seeks to eliminate that sin (magic) from the world. Honest John and Gideon worked for a shady guy and lured away children, even though they themselves were terrified of what would become of those kids. Fellow and Gidel are similarly forced to do this dirty work because they are so impoverished they need the job, even if their boss disrespects them. I think my theory about what Skully's whole conflict will be could work from this angle too. The character he is twisted from, Jack Skellington, is known to be somewhat naive and an idealist. Jack pursues Christmas with all of his undead heart, sure that it will return the "spark" that Halloween has since lost. This could be reflected in Skully, our twisted!Jack, in his desire to pursue Halloween--or, more specifically, this novel world where his passion is reinforced and he has a place in it. He would be naive to the world he snubbed in favor of this new one, deeming this new world superior (like how Jack thought the "new" Christmas would enhance the "old" Halloween).

as3gro8yvq ;ngqemf; KJLBFIsIFSLFS ANYWAY, that's my game theory 🙂 Not sure if it'll actually be this, but figured I'd throw my guess out there since my previous "lmao Skully will kidnap Crowley" crack theory ended up being shot down...

[gunpowderdtim]

It's no wonder Out happened when you really think about it. Nastya doesn't like organic life because it's complicated, it can break, sometimes it's even unfixable.

quote from gender rebels

Nastya is in love with Aurora, and in saying that she is saying "you are not organic life, I can deal with you because you are metal and algorithm and predictable" - we can see this in bedtime story when she says she'll tweak Aurora's story creation algorithm

screenshot from A Bedtime Story

Aurora is not inorganic. She is not ai. She is a space moon made of flesh and blood and teeth and bone. She is not an ai. She is a body that was taken and stripped of autonomy, of the right to self identify, of the right to think- to be imperfect and organic.

The metal is a veneer that hides how messy and traumatized and unfixable she is. From the outside she is a starship. From the inside she can still bleed.

And this makes them fundamentally incompatible. But yet, they are in love.

And really, it's no wonder Nastya fell in love with Aurora. Let's take a look at Nastya's home planet, or at least home society:

"Terminals were scattered across the planet. There was one on every street corner, one beneath every lamppost and one in every commune block." "The midwife-machine performs a series of programmed manœuvres to quieten [the baby]. It cradles it and hums at several pitches until it finds one that seems most soothing. Mechanical arms stroke the baby’s flesh even as others start the process of implanting augmented reality interfaces into its nervous system." "The Czar an atrophied frame, never present in the real world and worn to dust by the chemical compounds that kept his brain alive so it could live forever in a perfect virtual paradise. The Rabotnik a copy, a mind preserved unchanging in the instant before its death and placed in an everlasting metal frame." (Cyberian Demons)

Its safe to say the world Nastya was born into, from the very minute she was born, was ridden with technology. She has augmented reality interfaces inplanted into her from birth. It would stand to reason that being taken from this society, wherein technology is everywhere, inside and out, would stand for a bit of a shock.

Aurora too had been augmented by the Cyberia.

While it is stated that the last time Nastya had used the ports themselves was directly before her death — "The last time she had used the ports, her tutor had ripped them out of her as the rebels stormed the palace" — Aurora is laced with Cyberian technology. I'd imagine she has something of a 'bluetooth wireless connection' with Aurora, rather than the physical data transfer of files between the ports and Nastya, it may as well be similar enough.

Imagine being Nastya, going from Cyberia, wherein there is augmented reality contantly, transplanted onto a ship with metal blood, a jonny, and a vampire. To Aurora, where the only bits of augmented reality run through Aurora.

Of course she'd fall in love with her. Aurora is familiarity. Aurora isn't organic. Aurora isn't human.

And of course when the undeniable part of aurora that is organic, that is a flesh moon plated in metal with her brain hooked to machines, when so much has broken and been replaced, when, presumably, aurora is less of an algorithm, nastya leaves with the brand cyberia left on her.

Because Aurora healing, becoming more of herself and less of a starship, is messy, and organic, and human.

and hard for nastya.

‘Think how long she’s been flying you around. Think how many bullet holes you’ve punched through her and how many atmospheres you’ve dropped her through. Think how many alterations and improvements we’ve made, Tim to her guns and Ashes to her storage and Brian to her engines and the Toy Soldier to who knows what. How much do you think is left of her after all she’s brought you through?’ Nastya held up the ancient, battered piece of hull plating. Just visible under the grime and scars of particles of space junk was a fragment of the Aurora’s original logo and serial number. Jonny honestly couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a version that hadn’t been painted by the Mechanisms themselves. ‘So she’s free, now.’ Nastya gestured around at the spaceship they were standing in. ‘This Aurora can take you where you want to go. I’m going to take my Aurora somewhere else.’

Aurora was ship of theseus'd. Aurora was improved. Aurora was no longer cyberian. (both literally, and metaphorically)

So nastya left.

[inklore]

🩸 — 𝐇𝐀𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐇𝐎𝐄𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍!

since the spooky season is fast approaching, and as a little kinktober appetizer, @psychedelic-ink and i have decided to do a little writing challenge to get us all excited and in the mood to be gripping the sheets from the spooky thrills of course.

and to keep this fun we have given you many many options! we have compiled a twelve day prompts list you can go by, or if that's not your thing we have listed twenty three different pick and choose options to create whatever kind of fic you want, even if you want to do half the days daily prompts but switch out this prompt dialogue for that au or trope or kink, you can literally do whatever your heart desires!

THE RULES.

the challenge will go on from the 19th - 30th of this month. you can do as many or as little amount of days as you choose.

any fandoms are welcome, literally any characters, ships, but please no rpf.

no minors should be interacting with let alone posting for this challenge.

dark content, light content, dubcon/noncon, is all welcomed but please tag everything accordingly. grooming, underage, and incest however are not allowed.

there are no word limits but please use that readmore.

tag #hauntedhoedown so we can read and reblog your work!

DAY ONE: taboo au + "i'll be your dirty little secret, if that's what you're into."

DAY TWO: murder plot au (lets kill this person together) + "crawl to me"

DAY THREE: inspired by your favorite lana del rey song (if not a lana fan then any fav song of yours) + stalker / yandere au or love triangle gone wrong

DAY FOUR: artificial intelligence au + "here, you are. you tiny thing."

DAY FIVE: gothic au + “worship me. until i tell you to stop.” + a masquerade au or a good ol' priest au

DAY SIX: animal shapeshifter au + "he's a monster" + "he's perfect"

DAY SEVEN: stranded au or slasher / summer camp au + sex in the woods or somewhere public (added bonus if it includes knife, blood, hunter x prey kink)

DAY EIGHT: cosmic horror au + "you're a fucking nightmare. kiss me."

DAY NINE: “do you like it when i bleed for you?” + the toxic exes trope or cult au

DAY TEN: zombie apocalypse au + "every moment might be our last, let's make the most of it."

DAY ELEVEN: black swan au or inspired by your fav psychological thriller + “they die for love, you kill for it.”

DAY TWELVE: vampire court au + "forever isn't long enough for me to forgive you."

if following the above isn't your thing and you want to pick and choose yourself that's great! we also highly rec this random generator if you wanna live life by the edge, each category has 23 options to pick and choose from so customize the generator accordingly!

AUs:

steampunk / cyber punk

fairytale retelling

revenge

mythology / monster

virtual reality

gothic

taboo (see great options here)

slasher

game gone wrong

witchcraft

addams family

bonnie and clyde

spy / secret agent

assassins

x-files

circus / carnival

hitch hiking

basement wife

time travel

urban legend(s)

american horror story inspired

vampire / supernatural

pirate / mermaid

DIALOGUE PROMPTS:

"do you like when i touch you like this? i can keep going if you want me to."

"i can see how badly you want this, so i'm going to make sure you get it." 

“this fear you feel? it won't last.”

“you are mine, whether you agree or not.”

“why do you keep following me?”

"i can't stop thinking about how perfect we would be together."

"you're not actually scared are you? of me?"

"i'm so close, can you feel it?"

"tell me what you want me to do and i'll do it, no matter the cost."

"you're like a sickness, a disease, and the only way for me to be cured of you is to let you completely consume me until my body has no fight left."

"i want to see you bleed."

"they're dead...because of you."

“i will keep hurting. i will keep killing. anything to protect you.”

“everything i've done.. every horrible atrocity, it's been for you.”

"it's just a little blood."

“don't you know how sick with love i am for you?”

“i would burn the world for you.”

"this is so fucked up." "you like it."

"finders keepers."

"what's your favorite scary movie?"

"tell me you want me back. tell me i'm forgiven."

"you're a monster." "that's never stopped you before."

"i've killed for you, who else can say that?"

TROPES:

mob / mafia

soft!dark

dubcon / noncon

soulmate / fated mates

mind control / telepathy

cheating

final girl

once is not enough

haunted manor

dark academia

enemies to lovers

haunted object

vengeful ghost

coven

ritual / sacrifice / blood magic

unrequited love

creation / creator vs monster

'i'll find you in every universe / century'

reverse harem

cursed / fuck or die

curiosity killed the cat

theatre phantom

fate worse than death

KINKS:

biting

corruption / authoritarian

somnophilia

begging

dacryphilia

breath play

knife play / blood play

jealousy / sharing / possessive

aphrodisiacs

hunter / prey

humiliation / degradation

mirror sex

deprivation / immobilized / bondage

costume

size

orgasm denial / overstimulation / edging

body worship

shotgunning / swallowing / facial

gagging

torture / surrender

hate sex / make up sex / phone sex

magical healing [redacted]

soft!dom / pleasure!dom

ETC PROMPTS:

a summer fling gone horrible wrong, or right

1970s porno filming (turned into a blood bath)

touch her and die except who the hell are you and why are you obsessed with me?

a trip to the circus (or carnival) ends with you stuck there...forever

you just inherited this creepy mansion where people where murdered what could go wrong?

a ritual gone wrong and now i'm bound to a demon

if 'this person' ever found out about this they would kill both of us (literally)

oh no i'm dating the town serial killer

passionate professor tells me to prove my devotion to the craft / class by doing something insane

we're the last people on the planet and you will be mine

daydreaming about being with you is better than actually being with you because i missed all the red flags and now it's too late

i got casted out of my world and ended up wounded and bloodied in your backyard, convince me why i shouldn't destroy your world out of anger

vampire has a taste for specific blood and looks like you have it

the creepy neighbor is too hot to be insane, right?

i keep seeing them in my dreams and i wake up with bruises and marks on my skin, it's definitely just wild dreams, right?

loving you is easier than hating you

got stranded in some little town that seems so cute, until night hits

'this person' ordered me to kill you but i actually think i'm in love with you

my lover is wearing the same costume as you and i can't tell the difference but i'm pretty sure it's them i'm fucking in this closet...pretty sure

confessing to a murder via a silly little ghost story around a campfire (but someone reads through the lies)

how far would you go for love? for the one you love?

in a past life you were the cause of my death so i'm here to exact revenge now that i've found you

we're at a fun little horror movie reenactment except people are really dying

we tried to make this writing challenge as fun and very 'choose your own adventure-like' as much as possible because we know how hard it is to stay motivated when doing these things.

so please feel free to use any and all of the prompts, tropes, kinks, etc as you wish. we're just super excited to see what ya'll come up with!!

so good luck and stay slutty spooky <3

[nights-at-crystarium]

on authenticity

My mood in the recent months keeps going from bad to worse. Today I randomly fell into the rabbit hole of checking out other patreon artists, which always grounds me in reality and cheers me up, perhaps in a weird way. Essay incoming \o/

Authenticity is a blob of a word that sounds almost pretentious nowadays. It gets sneered at. You either sell your soul, or you don't earn with your art.

What's authentic, being true to yourself, will vary from person to person. It's like a sliding scale of suffering that you will tolerate in exchange for a coin, while convincing yourself that you have fun.

The harsh truth of modern world is that if your art pays for your living, you've already reached success, no matter how you may feel about the type of content you actually make for that money. Insert the meme furry nsfw art here. Or not furry. Or even sfw, but comms, lots of comms every month. Or merch. Anything that sells. Products first, art second.

Marrying passion and profession is virtually impossible, yet I'm doing it, only thanks to your support. I'm acutely aware that, even as I choose to be "real" and talk about an artist's money-making in a raw way, it's still patreon talk, and yes, I'll plug the link as well, so technically this entire post is an ad *fingerguns*

I just feel so privileged being able to create whatever the fuck I want, literally, I take no comms/requests/guidance on what and how should I draw/write, I post experimental, sometimes provocative stuff, and still make enough to survive. This sole fact should get me through the day, whatever other struggles I may be facing currently (I am. I don't wanna talk about it rn, instead I distract myself with this text), I should always remember the unique place in life I managed to carve for myself.

There are madmen (gender-neutral) who toss $10-20 at me every month. The majority "only" pledges $1, the notorious tier that gets treated as a tip jar with no rewards by many other creators. All of my rewards are the same at $1 and $20 (save for the one-time digital artbook download at $10, just to be perfectly clear), it's a conscious choice and a risk I continue taking because it's how I am. I used to split rewards between tiers in the past, before xiv, and it was a lot of busy work while it made me treat my art less as art and more as product. This pic goes into the cheap box, this pic goes into the expensive box. Every month. It's. Definitely not for every artist.

Logistic hell of splitting and delivering rewards, different posts with less comments per post, also my discord roles/channels would have to be split, nowadays it's just patron, whether you give me $1 or $20, there's no visual disparity, you're hanging out in the same cool kids' club, and collectively making happy noises on Fragments Fridays.

Could I be making more money if I got rid of the $1 tier? Yeah. But, mercifully, after 2 years I don't need to. I legit make enough currently, my only worry is to keep what I have. Patrons don't stay forever, 2-5 people would leave every month, about the same number would join (hence my patreon ads, I need to keep people reminded of it, even if it makes me feel guilty every damn time). I did Research (tm) in the past to find out that my "bleeding" numbers are below average, i.e. it's good, people generally tend to stick around.

I put a lot of emphasis on the $1 because I'm kinda proud of what I managed to accomplish while staying self-detrimentally humble. Literally doing an impossible thing in a world that keeps burning down. So yeah if you've been feeling bad for only giving me $1, what matters is that there's enough $1s to make a difference. Together you're creating a phenomenon, and you should be proud.

There are many stupid little principles, hills that I'll die on, that make up my authenticity. I chose to speak of it here and now in order to sorta sell myself, so it feels hypocritical x'D But if I don't shine a spotlight on this, who will. I'm old and jaded and increasingly terrified of how insincere the internet's becoming. Everything's fake, sugarcoated, polished for sale. My art's always been a scream of defiance against all that, now that I'm more or less established, I wanna scream louder. Thanks for hearing my screams. You can scream with me too if you want.

[matsmi13]

Devoted to his club forever

I have always been a big fan of the Paris Saint Germain football club. So, when I won a contest for an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of the Parc des Princes stadium, I was over the moon. A whole day to explore the secret nooks and crannies, meet the players, and maybe even get a first-hand look at the world of professional soccer.

The visit began in the classic way. I discover the dressing rooms, the press room, the benches where so many legends have sat. It's all fascinating, but it's at the end of the tour that things get really interesting.

“For the more passionate like you, we've prepared a never-before-seen immersive experience where you have the opportunity to “live in the skin of a player”. Would you like to try this experience ?” announced the guide with an enigmatic smile.

I accepted immediately, all excited. I thought it was a kind of virtual reality simulation, an interactive experience where I could feel what it's like to play for PSG.

I had no idea what was going on when I was taken to another part of the stadium, an area normally off-limits to the public.

Once inside an ultra-modern room, I was taken aback by the atmosphere. The room is filled with high-tech equipment, complex machinery, and scientists in white coats bustling around various devices.

“Before we start this experiment, we need you to sign a few waivers. It's standard procedure to make sure everything goes smoothly” said the guide. He handed me a stack of documents to sign. The sheets were dense, full of legal and scientific jargon I didn't really understand. But my excitement won out. I told myself it was probably just a formality.

I signed without hesitation, then was ushered into a small booth off to one side.

“ Please enter this cabin. We need you to undress and leave all your belongings here, including any digital devices”. I obeyed, thinking it was to put on some special equipment, maybe even real PSG match gear. But once undressed, one of the scientists took all my stuff and closed the cabin door behind you.

The cabin I was in was simple, with white walls and soft lights. I was starting to feel slightly nervous, but I pushed those thoughts aside. After all, I was here for a unique experience.

But something wasn't right. The cabin began to emit a dull hum, and the walls around you lit up in a strange way. Suddenly, a breath of fresh air escaped, followed by a strange tingling sensation on your skin. The buzzing intensified, and waves passed through your body, leaving you with a sensation of warmth, first slight, then increasingly intense.

I felt strange, as if my body were reacting to something invisible. My skin began to stretch, my limbs lengthened inexplicably. I wanted to move, but I felt frozen in place, unable to control my movements.

My heart was beating faster, but it seemed to be beating outside me, as if my body had become a mere shell. Sensations multiplied as I gradually lost the perception of myself as a human being. My muscles contracted, then relaxed, slowly breaking down, fiber by fiber.

My mind was in total confusion. I didn't understand what was happening to me, but I felt that something irreversible was happening. My thoughts scattered, your identity slowly faded away as your body was transformed into malleable matter.

Once the dissolution was complete, my remaining residues were transformed into fibers. I was stretched, twisted and reassembled into a continuous thread. During this process, I gradually lost my human consciousness, turning into a textile material. I became a material, a textile substance ready to be used and shaped for a new creation.

Once the thread was formed, the machine stopped and the cabin opened. The scientists reappeared, exchanging satisfied glances.

“Let's see the final result” says one of them. He runs his fingers along the wire I've become, while another scientist checks data on a screen. “The transformation is very conclusive. The texture is homogeneous, and the molecular structure is stable. The yarn is very strong, yet light. This is exactly what we needed for the rest of the process”. “We finally have the perfect organic material to make what sir has been waiting for. After several attempts, this person was the right one. And to think that this young supporter didn't even take the time to read the documents he signed. His blind enthusiasm and unthinking devotion have led him to a unique destiny: to become a piece of clothing for his club forever. Send the wire to the factory for assembly. We have to meet the deadline”

I was wound into spools, taken away and transported to a new destination.

I was shipped to a specialized textile mill, woven into a solid, uniform navy-blue fabric, cut into pieces according to a precise pattern and assembled to create the undershirt. The sewing process finalized my transformation into a ready-to-wear garment.

I was carefully packed and sent straight to the Parc des Princes stadium. I arrived in the dressing room, where the kitman in charge of the players' equipment unpacked me and placed me carefully folded in Kylian Mbappe's locker.

The locker room was quiet as we waited for the players to arrive. Not a sound. It took forever. Then the players arrived, including Kylian Mbappe. I felt his hand close over me and inspect me for a moment, his fingers gliding over your surface, before slipping me under his main jersey.

“Hmm, this feels really different” Kylian murmurs as he adjusts the sleeves, testing the sensation against his skin. “It's light, but it's like it's breathing with me” He makes a few movements to check my flexibility. “Not bad at all. It's exactly what I needed. The fabric is soft, but it has this... sturdy feel. I feel like I'm going to be able to move freely without it bothering me”. Kylian continues to test me, raising his arms, bending down, jumping slightly on the spot. “It keeps me dry. Even here, in the changing room, I can feel it regulating the temperature. I don't get that clammy feeling you sometimes get with other undershirts”.

On the pitch, the sensations run wild. Every time Kylian sprints, makes a technical move or changes direction, I'm subjected to compression and stretching forces. The constant pressure and friction are new sensations for me. Every impact has to be absorbed in such a way as to minimize disruption to Kylian.

My fabric, designed to wick away moisture, is in constant interaction with Kylian's sweat. This persistent absorption seems crucial to maintaining his comfort and performance. As an undershirt, my fabric body have to effectively manage this moisture, distributing it throughout my fabric to avoid accumulation that could cause discomfort.

As an undershirt, I have to provide constant support. The cut and seams are made to fit Kylian's body perfectly, offering both support and comfort. Every seam, every insertion must be impeccable to avoid chafing or distortion that could affect his game.

The match is over. Every fibre of my being is saturated with sweat, soaked in Kylian's warmth. I've been worn, I've been useful, I've been... his.

But the happiness was short-lived. In one swift movement, Kylian pulls me off and throws me in his locker, like a worthless object. The air is now freezing. I lay there in the corner of his locker, motionless and useless.

Time passes... or maybe not... because the notion of time is escaping me more and more.

Finally, a hand grabs me. It's that of the person in charge of the equipment. I'm handled and tossed into a dirty clothes bag. I find myself among other clothes, all soaked with sweat, all marked by the effort of the person wearing them. We're crammed together, pressed against each other.

The bag starts moving, carrying me towards the launderette. Each jolt reminds me of my new reality. I'm just another garment to be cleaned, stripped of all traces of life and human warmth.

I'm thrown into a machine without the slightest consideration. The cold water overwhelms me and cleanses me. Every fibre of my body is abused, turned inside out, wrung out. Kylian's sweat is washed away, his musk erased... and with them, that little feeling of belonging disappears. I have become a simple piece of cloth, washed and disinfected, with no soul, no memory.

The spinning compresses me, crushes me. I'm emptied, compressed, reduced to a state of pure fabric, without warmth, without life. Drying... the hot air passes through me, making me lighter, but also emptying me of any trace of what I once was. I'm nothing more than an undershirt, clean, dry... and empty.

Finally, I'm taken out of the machine. I'm folded, put away and placed in a dark closet with the other undershirts. I'm no longer struggling. I'm in the dark, motionless... but this immobility, this waiting, is no longer important. Waiting... that's all clothes do.

The closet is silent. I am among the other clothes, perfectly folded. Time no longer has any meaning for me.

Where am I ? Who am I ? What is my real nature ? I'm... what ? An undershirt ? Yes, an undershirt. But… where do I come from ? What have I become ? The questions float unanswered, in the void. Here in the dark, all I know... is wait. Wait…why ? Why wait ? My role... is... to be a piece of clothing.

My only thoughts are of serving, of being worm. I want the sweat. I need the musk... need to comfort and support my owner. I no longer have conscious thoughts, desires or dreams. My humanity is gone, replaced by the pure essence of a piece of clothing. I no longer feel the emotions and thoughts of a human being.

I am an undershirt, a simple fabric, entirely devoted to serving my master, Kylian Mbappé. When the time comes, when he wear me again, I will be ready. But until that day, I remain here, still, accepting my destiny as clothing.

Thanks to @inanimatetffantasies for his support and advice in writing this story

[georgiapeach30513]

Now Jen…I LOVE your blog and your posts but I respectfully disagree about your Steve comments. Again, I use the word respectfully, because I don’t want you or your other followers to take it too seriously. But I think it needs to be said.

First of all, Bucky fans love to make virtually everything about him, especially when it comes to Steve. Please do not at me, Bucky fans never want to admit this but some of you even bleed onto the actors and like to make things about SS when it’s about CE. Think about it. Why do these two people always get compared?? Maybe because it’s a bunch of Steve Bucky fans who can’t get over it and don’t want to. And then it becomes competition and Bucky/SS fans need to make it a sticking point into virtually everything and I’m TIRED. CE fans tend to get upset because they keep having to defend Chris doing random movies instead of doing or following what Sebastian is doing and I think some of them are tired too. Or maybe I’m just projecting.

Steve in the movies did everything for this guy and he also does everything for everyone else. But the moment he does something for himself WW3 happens. I’ll agree that the ending for his arc should have been different because the endgame storyline left too many questions and as a Steve fan I find it extremely annoying. But Why is it his duty to be his friend’s butt buddy forever and always? How come Bucky fans can’t ever seem to let go? And they’re fine when Steve world revolves around him but when they have to deal with Steve being his own person and thinking about his own life for once it’s verboten. I don’t think Bucky is perfect in the slightest and mostly he annoyed me 10 fold in the falcon show. But I will allow it since he has been through a lot, he’s allowed to be grumpy. I don’t expect him to live his life for Steve and tbh I also think he should have gone back in time and relive his own life differently. But that’s a different story and clearly about whose marvel contract is still active and whose is expired.

But Steve needs to be a ray of sunshine that doesn’t do anything except exist for his friend 24/7? Also…why are we getting this “he left him for a person who aided in bucky’s demise?” How did Peggy do that? Why, once again, is it not about Steve and Peggy, but about Bucky and dumping it on Steve and Peggy???

Even now salty bucky fans make their dislike about endgame and MCU about Steve not being around for Bucky, even though the storyline literally was just writing Chris out of it. If it was in reverse and Bucky went back in time I’d 1000% bet none of you would be crying about it. You would say, good for him he deserves to lives his life over. But Steve deserves just as much if not more, he has had no life of his own and was barely existing even in his own movies, as…oh yeah, even marvel was making his story about other people, so no I don’t agree with this constant needing to be mad at Steve over Bucky, when you could just admit that you want it to be about Bucky always and Steve second.

That being said…that is just my opinion. Your opinion is valid as it is your blog. You are my favorite blogger on here but this is one thing I can’t stay silent on.

I love conversations like this, so NEVER apologize. I think the beauty with cinematic universes are we get to know the characters a bit more. And every character is going to resonate with different people in a different way. So let’s get into this, and of course I respect your take, but let me explain a bit more where I’m coming from.

I am aware that we Bucky fans love to make him the main event. As do Steve fans do that, and Loki fans do that. And I do think that there are some people who go bleed the lines of reality with fiction. Obviously when I joke around about Sebastian and Chris I do not think that they are romantic at all. I do think that Chris and Seb equally are aware that the other is attractive. And everyone knows that I am a big hater of people comparing Chris to Seb. I don’t like it. These are two different actors who have both carved out their careers very differently, and for them. Sebastian has always shown that he wanted awards, and is looking at acting as an art form, while I think Chris enjoys what he does, but maybe doesn’t center his whole life around it. As far as the random movie, Seb has done random shitty movies as well. I am not going to dive into why Chris has chosen the movies he does, because I’m not Chris.

There is a big reason why I hate time traveling movies, and honestly, this is a prime example of one of them. I’m also aware that Chris’ contract was up, so they thought they would be clever with his ending. I actually think it was a cop out, personally. It’s not just for the Bucky aspect but for the Sam aspect. Maybe Steve being a white man didn’t understand the weight he put on Sam’s shoulders. I don’t think Steve understood Sam’s position as a black man, and I think that reigns true with most white folk, including myself. I will never understand the injustices that POCs feel, I can be empathetic, but I am aware of the privilege the color of my skin has. Again, Steve’s ending left so much to be desired. And then if you think about it, Steve knew that Peggy died having a full life, and he still selfishly went back. Furthermore, he went back, and stopped the life Peggy would have had. So therefore it alters the future/present. Again, I hate time traveling movies for this reason. I think at the end of the day it was the finality of the decision, but also I feel so many people weren’t given closure with it. That includes fans, Steve, Bucky, Sam, and all the other Avengers.

I personally do not think that Steve needs to live his life for his friends. But this was the life he was given, he should have moved forward, instead of going backwards, but again, Chris’ contract ended, I get it. It was lazy writing. As far as Peggy aiding in Bucky’s demise, who was the one who allowed Zola to live? Who allowed Zola to not just live but work for SHIELD? Peggy Carter AND Howard Stark. What did Zola do? He rebuilt Hydra. What did Hydra do? They tortured Bucky. Remember when Steve learned all of this? Learned what Zola did, and who allowed Zola to live? How he built Hydra to be more powerful than ever? They created the ultimate weapon, The Winter Soldier. Bucky was no longer human to them.

I can’t speak for everyone else, but had the roles been reversed, I would still be irritated. Again, lazy writing. In my ending, Steve had his dance with Peggy, but he returned. I actually wish that Steve made a bargain with Red Skull, a soul for a soul, and he retrieved Natasha. He got his dance, and he said his goodbye, but he came back to the time he was supposed to be in. Take Bucky and Sam out of the equation. Steve still should have stayed in the present even if those two characters died. He rewrote Peggy’s history, and therefore the present. Don’t get me started on Marvel making his story about others, Civil War still irritates me. That was just a lower scale Avengers movie, and we deserved better. I enjoy the movie, just not as a Cap movie.

Now as to the last comment, I jokingly say I can’t ever look at Steve the same. I actually choose to believe my ending for him over what happened. I don’t want him to constantly live to serve Bucky. I want Steve to have his time to grow into Steve. Oddly enough, Steve is also my number 8 Chris character. I don’t think I resonated with him as much as Bucky, and I can admit that this is why I put Bucky on a pedestal. It’s funny that the two best friends had very similar and yet very different lives. I wish that Marvel would have dove into that more. I would love to see a piece where it explores both Steve and Bucky’s mental health. We got a bit of that with TFATWS, but not enough, and without Steve. I guess I love the Cap trio so much, including Sam, I selfishly want more and more of all three.

Again, I love these conversations. And I think all your statements are valid.

[defectivevillain]

home where

pairing: Wally Darling/Reader (can be platonic or romantic)

reader's race & gender are ambiguous; no pronouns or physical descriptors are used.

summary: You wake up in an unfamiliar place. The only other occupant, a friendly man named Wally, seems to think it’s home. …You disagree.

word count: 1.5k | ao3 version

warnings: canon-typical derealization

author's notes: I know virtually nothing about Welcome Home and its characters. It seems really cool, but I just didn’t have enough energy to commit myself to another fandom when I first wrote this (and I still feel the same). Maybe I’ll come back to WH and do a deeper dive someday! Who knows. I certainly don’t.

On a related note, I’ve decided I want to do some sort of Halloween oneshot collection this October. I have quite a few drafts for various movies and series that I wrote up a few months ago in preparation for this Halloween… and when I stumbled upon this draft, I realized it would be a great way to kick things off. So yeah! I will admit, without shame, that many (if not all) of the works in this "collection" will be slightly unfinished (aka less detailed than I may want them to be). But I still wanted these fics posted, and I know that they’ll likely just rot in my docs forever otherwise.

Your eyes are stinging. You rub at them roughly, letting out a quiet sigh. It’s been a pretty long day. You stumble through your nighttime routine with a bit less finesse than usual, counting down the seconds until you can collapse into bed. When you finally get back to your room, you move to turn off the lights—only to realize you forgot to close your laptop. The screen’s vividness immediately sears into your eyelids. Blinking tears from your eyes, you close it and head back to your bed to go to sleep. 

Fortunately, you’re tired enough to find sleep rather easily. But even when your eyes slip shut, remnants of that bright light from moments ago burn through your vision. 

When you wake the next morning, sunlight stretches through the gaps in your curtains—illuminating your room in a dim glow. You blink several times to make your eyes feel less dry, before taking a deep breath and pushing yourself up to a sitting position. The bedspread is weirdly scratchy. You look down at it, entirely perplexed when you find a multi-color patchwork quilt instead of your normal comforter. You run a hand along it, trying to rationalize how you could’ve gone to sleep and woken up in a bed with different dressings. 

But your bedspread isn’t the only thing that’s changed—as you glance about the room, you realize that everything looks slightly different. The posters and photos adorning the walls are unusually colorful, and any harsh corners on your furniture have been smoothed over into neat curves. And as your hands investigate the quilt on your bed, you realize that you look strange too. The mirror on the wall casts a familiar reflection, but with softened edges and vivid coloring. Your clothes are far too bright than you remember them being—the same goes for your eyes. 

After a lot of exploring, you come to the unfortunate conclusion that your surroundings are drenched in technicolor. Even more surprising and inexplicable is the unshakeable fact that you’re not dreaming. Several hard pinches to the skin on your forearm cement that unfortunate reality. 

You step outside of your living space, only to find that the surrounding town is just as blindingly bright-colored. Vivid trees in neon colors surround the various buildings. With a churning stomach, you walk through the waving grass and desperately look for a clue to explain your unfamiliar surroundings. Some time later, you’ve explored the entire area—only to yield no new information. 

It’s only when you approach the outskirts of the humble town that you hear a voice. “Where are you going?”

You freeze. For a moment, you contemplate ignoring this new presence; then you realize this may be the only way for you to understand what’s going on. You turn around to find yourself staring at a man with yellow fleece skin and blue hair styled elegantly above his head. He wears a bright blue shirt and multi-colored pants. Looking at him makes your head spin. 

“I’m trying to go home,” You respond, watching as the sidewalk stretches into the distance. You shove your hands in your pockets to quell some of your restless energy. It doesn’t work as well as you’d like. 

“This is Home,” the newcomer frowns. He looks confused but sympathetic.

“My home, I mean,” you clarify. Surely, if this guy is a local, he should know you’re a stranger. You don’t belong here. 

“This is your home,” he insists. For a moment, his voice almost sounds forceful. “Our home!” He then chirps, as if attempting to distract you from his brief slip in composure.

You stare at him for a moment, unable to shake the strange feeling of foreboding running down your spine. “Who are you?” You finally relent and ask. 

“I’m Wally Darling,” he responds. “Who are you?” Wally peers at you curiously. 

You return his gaze, struggling to find an answer to the question. Who… are you? What’s your name? And, most importantly, why are you here?

You try to deflect. “Where is everyone?” You ask, looking around at the quiet town. It feels weirdly empty. There’s almost something… sinister about it: this cute little town, entirely vacant. How can something so colorful be so lifeless?

“They’re sleeping, I think.” Wally responds smoothly, breaking you out of your thoughts. You swear you see his smile falter for a second, but the expression vanishes just as quickly as it appeared. 

Adrenaline courses you at the thought of being trapped in this unfamiliar place with no one but this stranger for company. You try to take another step towards the forest, but it feels as if some invisible force is fighting against you. You’re then shoved backwards, colliding with Wally in the process. 

“Easy there,” he smiles, steadying you with hands on your shoulders. The gesture doesn’t reach his eyes. 

You nod and quickly excuse yourself from the conversation, citing your growing headache as justification. In your defense, you do have a rather painful headache growing to inhabit your temple and stretch through your cheekbones. Wally seems to sense that you’re telling the truth, because he just smiles and bids you good day, after one final remark welcoming you to the neighborhood. You continue to explore the town throughout the remainder of the day, despite the uncanny feeling of eyes on your back. 

As time passes, you start to notice that there’s a friendly sort of malice in the way Wally carries himself. He’s a bundle of contradictions: misery behind a paper-thin smile; glee behind a disparaging frown. He’s always lingering in the corner of your vision: when you’re getting up in the morning; when you’re taking a walk. He tells you virtually nothing about himself, yet he seems eager to learn anything and everything about you. You can’t help but be wary around him. 

But somehow, he wants to be friends with you. Wally’s idea of friendship seems to bleed into something far past platonic, though. He regularly makes remarks about how his life has changed for the better since your arrival; his eyes gleam with something close to envy when you talk about your friends outside this colorful town. You don’t want to overanalyze things, but then you notice the rapt attention he pays you when you speak. Then you notice the freshly trimmed flowers in the vase on your front porch—the one you’ve walked past every day without a second thought. 

Although Wally’s behavior is a bit puzzling, he dominates your thoughts for a different reason. Safe to say, he unnerves you sometimes. And you can’t shake the conviction that he’s hiding things from you. Sometimes he’ll look at the other houses with nostalgia in his eyes; he’ll reference people you’ve never heard of and then clam up when you ask about them. 

He greets you every morning, without fail. The first few times, you smile and wave back. But as time passes and you still can’t find a way out of this place, you start to ignore him. However, this behavior only seems to encourage Wally—as he begins to tag along on your morning walks. 

And it only takes you so long to break. After all, he’s the only other form of human (?) contact in this place. You need to talk to someone about something—anything—and Wally is your only choice. It’s only natural that you stop resisting. Not to mention, Wally is a superb listener. He’s almost too good at it. You get the feeling that he would let you talk for hours, content remaining silent and digesting all the information you give him. You’ve made sure not to reveal too many private details about your life—your real life, outside of this town—but Wally seems to know you anyway. He knows things about you that you’ve never told anyone; sometimes, he even references conversations you think you’ve had with friends over direct messages. 

Ultimately, it doesn’t take you long to come to the conclusion that Wally is the key to leaving this place. You’re not deluded enough to think he’ll let you leave, but you can’t deny that he knows more than he’s letting on. He is far from innocent in this whole affair. He must be pulling the strings from somewhere, somehow. You can only dismiss these thoughts as paranoid for so long, before the dots begin to connect and you’re faced with incontrovertible evidence of his malevolence.  

And while you relented and allowed Wally to join you on your morning walks, you never stepped foot inside his residence or took him up on his offers to spend more time together. 

At least, not until now, when you find yourself standing on the doorstep of Wally’s home with your heart racing in your chest. Despite the dread prickling along your skin, you extend a hand and ring the doorbell. You don’t understand what’s happening here, but you know one thing for certain: Wally is at the center of it. 

The door creaks open ominously. Wally stands in the doorway, an easy smile plastered across his face. You both know it isn’t genuine, and within moments, it starts to melt and slip off his face. A crooked grin shudders over his lips. “Hey, neighbor!” He says brightly. A thick tension descends across the space. A stiff breeze ruffles your clothes and sends chills down your arms. Wally’s dark eyes almost seem to engulf you; there’s a faint ringing sound echoing in your ears. “I’ve been expecting you.”

thanks for reading! <3

check out my other works, sorted by fandom.

general taglist: @its-ares @excusemeasibangmyheadonawall @kingkoku @the-ultimate-librarian @gayaristocrat

friendly reminder that i don't give permission for my writing to be shared to other sites, stolen, copied, translated, or used in any way. thanks!

[tarhonk]

AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS THEORY ALERT

WEEOO WEEOO THEORY ALERT

So this is gonna connect to that "everyone in the circus worked for C&A" theory

Alright so just yesterday Glitch posted this in the community tab on their youtube channel

Despite it being funny af I couldn't help but notice how much 80's memorabilia was in here. All these items (minus the digital circus stuff) were very popular or invented in the mid 80's.

So I decided to check back on that scene where Pomni is running through the exits. Specifically that moment where she stares at the desk and I noticed something.

That straight up looks like an old and dirty Commodore 64

All this equipment just screams 80's to me. Everything in that office seemed like stuff from the 80's.

And I haven't seen anyone else talk about these but I noticed a few other things

One

We see the headset that all the characters have put on to get in the circus right on the desk.

Two

We see several computers on as Pomni runs past them. I counted 4 but that light on the floor in the first picture could be a 5th. In that case, that's one for each human currently not abstracted in the circus, minus Pomni. And what do we see when Pomni is back in the circus at the end of the pilot?

The computer she had a mental breakdown over is now on.

She's back online

Finally, three

A poster can be seen in the back that seems like the same colors as the digital circus logo. This could definitely be a hidden reference to something I don't know but this looks very digital circus-y to me.

So with all that, here's what i'm adding on to the office theory.

C&A (Caine & Abel) was a video game company in the 80's that was experimenting with creating a virtual reality headset for gaming purposes. The world of gaming had slowly begun to rise in popularity, and they decided to stay on top of this trend with a very ambitious strategy. VR gaming was just beginning to make a statement in the world as well, so the C&A company began working on something new.

They create this idea for a wacky game called The Amazing Digital Circus. A VR game where you'd get an avatar and go on adventures lead by a ringmaster character. All was going well, but at some point during development, something (who knows what) went wrong, causing anyone who wears the headset to have their consciousness sucked into the game. They'd lose the memories of their lives, only knowing that they were human, and now they're stuck there forever.

This was less of a theory and more of pointing out stuff that I haven't seen people mention yet, but I think its useful.

Please feel free to add on with theories on how you think their bodies are affected in the real world and stuff about the digital circus. Expand upon this please. I feel like i'm onto something.

EDIT: https://www.glitchprod.com/thewackywatch

Just remembered that the wacky watch commercial proves like everything I said.

They reveal it on an 80's computer

"New experimental hardware that gets you awesome visuals and lifelike audio" experimenting with VR!!!!!!

I'm going crazy

[icedteaandoldlace]

36 + Barry and Cisco! Either as a ship or friendship is fine by me

36: “I’ll do anything. Anything at all. Just let my friend go.” (from this list)

Here it is, hot off the Google Doc: one angst loaded prompt fill, with an extra side of "ow" just for you. 💝

Links for AO3 and FFN.

.

.

This Can't Be How It Ends

Cisco really didn’t need any help having a terrible year. Losing Dante was already the hardest thing he had ever had to go through, and that alone was enough to upend his entire world, leaving him feeling hollow and incomplete as he struggled to process how someone who had been a part of his life since the day he was born could be gone forever. He would still be just barely holding it together if that was the only problem he had to face right now, but while Dante’s death was certainly the worst of his current troubles, it was also only the first thing on a growing list of reasons why he felt like his life was falling apart. His powers were getting stronger, for one, and developing new uses for him to explore—which should have been exciting (and to a degree, it was), but it was hard to focus on the positive aspects when the whole experience was inundated with its own unique and very unpleasant set of growing pains; more unwanted visions, more headaches, more nosebleeds, and more fear of what becoming too powerful might do to him. Especially with grief making him more irritable and impairing his sense of humor, he feared he was at an even greater risk of losing control of himself than before.

The icing on the very crappy cake that was Cisco’s 2016 had been learning about Flashpoint, and then dealing with all the fallout that had come from that. Now he got to worry about his best friend as she fought off her own powers, and with them a dark side that had emerged within her and was trying to take her over like a cancer; only instead of killing her, its intent was to turn her evil. And as for his other, former best friend…well, he was the reason that Dante was dead and Caitlin was struggling in the first place. And thanks to an arrangement Cisco had agreed to before he’d known the full story, he was also his roommate—which meant that he was virtually unavoidable, given that they both worked and lived together now.

Cisco had gotten past his previous beef with Barry, and he understood now that trifling with time was loaded with risks that were too dangerous to take. He also understood that healing through grief wasn’t attained by rejecting the reality of the loss, but by learning how to embrace his memories for what they were, and to be open to a future that was different than the one he had imagined. He didn’t expect Barry to change the timeline for him anymore; he knew that that was asking too much, and he didn’t harbor any resentment toward him for refusing. But getting Dante killed in the first place—not even telling Cisco that he’d been the one responsible—and then acting like it was no big deal, and like all it would take was an apology to make everything okay again? That was too much for Cisco to forgive. He didn’t seem to even care that he had made Cisco’s worst nightmare a reality, or that he would be missing Dante and regretting letting their relationship deteriorate for the rest of his life. Now not only had Cisco lost his brother, but he had lost his friend and his confidant and his hero as well. The person he should have been able to lean on when he was at his lowest was instead the person who had put him there.

So Cisco really had enough to deal with right now without anyone else coming in and adding more turbulence to his life. As his luck would have it, someone did, anyway.

It would have to be a break-in in the middle of the night, and it would have to be when Barry was the only other person around, and the last person Cisco wanted to be handling a break-in with. Yet here they were, crouched in the hallway outside Cisco’s bedroom, following the sound of someone rooting around in his kitchen.

Barry reached the doorway to the kitchen first, and he peered around the edge cautiously, while Cisco hovered right behind him, both grateful and annoyed that Barry had taken the lead on this mission. He definitely didn’t want to be the one to come face to face with the intruder first, but the thought of having to wait until a fight broke out to see what they were up against was not a desirable position to be in, either.

A moment later, Barry drew back, turning slowly to Cisco and motioning to him to stay where he was. Then, facing forward again, he took a deep breath, and in an instant, his presence beside Cisco was replaced with a sudden breeze, a streak of yellow light trailing in his wake. There was a sound of rapid whooshing in the other room, and intermittent flashes of speedster lightning coloring the walls—until a crash somewhere in the kitchen brought it all to a stop.

Cisco tentatively inched forward, checking to see if Barry needed his help or if he had been the victor in the fight—and then he jerked back immediately when the whole room became flooded in light.

A familiar female voice laughed as the sounds of Barry groaning and an upset chair rocking against the floor reached Cisco’s ears, and he slowly leaned forward again to see what was going on.

Barry grabbed hold of Cisco’s countertop as he pulled himself to his feet, and a look of bewilderment crossed his face as his assailant came into view.

“Trajectory?” Barry let out in disbelief.

“In the flesh once again,” Trajectory returned with a satisfied flourish at herself. “And you still can’t keep up with me, Drag.”

Barry shook his head, still looking a little thrown. “But you—you died,” he stammered confusedly. “That’s how we discovered that Velocity—”

“Uh, wrong,” Trajectory snapped over him, still smiling, but shooting daggers at Barry with her eyes. “You put me in Iron Heights after I poisoned your little friend. Remember?”

Barry’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement, and then they shifted to the side as he visibly tried to make sense of what he was hearing.

Oh god, Cisco thought, realization dawning on him. This was another thing Barry had changed in Flashpoint. His memories were all remainders from an earlier timeline.

Trajectory had almost died, running into a wall at S.T.A.R. Labs and knocking herself unconscious after taking a dose of Velocity 9 that Harry had willfully made too strong. And short though that run had been, it had taught Team Flash that Velocity 9 was what caused speedsters to have blue lightning. That had to be what Barry was talking about; her head injury must have been fatal in the original timeline.

“Okay, but you’re out now,” Barry said in a measured tone, eyeing Trajectory cautiously. “And you have speed again. How’d you manage that?”

Trajectory smirked. “Paid a little visit to your lab again after my release. Yeah, that’s right,” she added before Barry could ask, “They let me out on a technicality. Gotta love seeing our justice system hard at work. And you know, I’m not the only person you put in there that has unfinished business. Does the name Edward Clariss ring a bell?”

Cisco swallowed, fighting back the memory of the speedster that he and Barry had so recently taken down together. It had seemed so great at the time, working together as partners in the field, playing off each other’s strengths to stop a criminal who would have been too much for either of them to take on on their own. He wished working with Barry still felt cool and satisfying like that. Now it was a chore just to get through the day with him by his side.

Something that looked like sadness briefly crossed Barry’s face, but he kept his focus on Trajectory and just shrugged. “What about him?”

“Even in the women’s wing, word travels about what goes on on the men’s side,” Trajectory continued. “And before Clariss died, he had rambled to one of the guards that the Flash had taken a better life away from him—with time travel.” She shrugged. “Everyone else brushed it off as insanity, but I’m smart enough to know that speed is the key component in every credible theory on how to make time travel possible. And now I wanna know how you figured it out.”

Barry shook his head. “Eliza, time travel is dangerous,” he started.

“Trajectory,” she corrected testily. “And don’t think your noble hero act is gonna convince me you’re not just gatekeeping this ability for yourself, just like you did with the V9.”

“No, no, it’s not like that,” Barry explained. “I don’t even use Velocity 9—and I don’t time travel anymore, either. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Oh, Flash,” Trajectory chuckled. “I’m not asking for anything.”

Cisco frowned. That sounded like a threat. He drew a slow, silent breath, and kept his eyes fixed on Trajectory as he waited for her to either continue speaking or make a move on Barry. If she was going to attack him, he would have to move fast if he wanted to block her from hurting him.

All of a sudden, Trajectory was standing right in front of Cisco and looking him dead in the eyes, and he jumped back in fright. She had moved faster than he could even blink, and now he had nowhere to hide. It felt like a moment taken straight out of a horror movie, complete with the creepy, malicious grin she was giving him right now.

Everything that happened next was too fast for Cisco to process. One second he was standing face to face with Trajectory in the hallway, the next he was on the floor in the living room, his arms behind his back and the omnipresent vibrations around him now undetectable. A pair of hands grabbed him and drew him up to his knees, and it was then that he saw that his TV and multiple shelves had been knocked over, his whole apartment in disarray from what looked like a knock-down drag-out that he had never heard happen. Barry was once again on the ground, this time under a pile of broken model spaceships, and he was clutching his head in pain as he tried to reorient himself.

Cisco registered that it was Trajectory holding on to him now, and he tried moving his arms to get her to let go of him, but they wouldn’t budge. Something was fastened around his wrists, fettering them together.

Of course. Cisco rolled his eyes in frustration. She had found his spare power dampening cuffs that he kept in his junk drawer. Lovely.

The matter of not being able to move his arms quickly became a lesser concern, however, when she curled one arm tightly around his neck, and pressed her opposite hand against his head, forcing his neck into a tense, rigid position.

“You even try to fight back, you’re dead,” she snarled directly into Cisco’s ear.

Cisco remained completely still, taking his breaths slowly and deeply in an effort to keep calm.

Barry looked up at the sound of the threat, and he scrambled to his feet, nearly falling again as he stumbled over half a model X-wing and the now-smashed Millennium Falcon. “Eliza, don’t!” he exclaimed, starting forward.

“One step toward me and your friend dies!” Trajectory snapped, compelling Barry into freezing where he stood. “Get. Back,” she commanded then, and Barry obeyed, lifting his hands in surrender.

“Okay,” Barry said slowly. “Okay, I’m not gonna fight you anymore. Just let him go. He has nothing to do with this, alright? This is between you and me.”

“He has everything to do with this,” Trajectory retorted. “Because he’s the reason you’re gonna tell me exactly what I need to know. You teach me how to time travel and I let him live, that’s the deal.”

“Eliza,” Barry started again, a desperate look in his eyes. “Eliza, you don’t know what I know. You could end up destroying your life if you start changing time. Altering just one moment is all it takes to irreversibly screw up everything.”

Trajectory hummed boredly. “Sounds like you want him dead,” she said, and made a loose twisting motion that made Cisco’s stomach drop.

“No, wait, wait, wait!” Barry cried.

Cisco breathed in shakily as his heart began to pound. She was gonna kill him. She didn’t have the patience to deal with Barry’s attempts to talk her down, and there was no way Barry was giving another evil speedster the ability to toy with the timeline. Cisco’s life was about to end before he had the chance to see it get better.

“I’m trying to protect you here,” Barry continued.

Trajectory snorted.

“No, I mean it!” Barry said desperately. “Just hear me out, I can explain everything!”

“Yeah, you know, I’m not really interested in some big speech about speedstering responsibly,” Trajectory said. “I just robbed a big mall before I got here, and security cams will’ve caught the lightning, and y’know, if I could go back to before that moment, I’d still have all the money I took without any evidence that could send me back to prison. So if you could spare me the lecture and just skip to the part where you give me what I want, I can be on my merry way without having to snap this guy’s neck.”

Cisco honestly didn’t know which would be worse—Barry standing his ground and letting her kill him on principle of protecting the timeline, or actually breaking his own no-changing-time rule for him and making an even bigger mess of things by creating a Reverse Flash 2.0. Not that he actually expected him to care enough to do the latter; saving his life couldn’t be worth the risk it would pose to everyone else’s, especially the people he loved.

“I’m not trying to lecture you,” Barry said, “and I’ll help you any way that I can, honestly—but I’m serious, it’s not a good idea. You could die if you try to time travel.”

“And how’s that?” Trajectory asked. She gave Cisco’s head a slight push, straining the muscles in his neck uncomfortably, and he began to tremble involuntarily as the threat of death loomed ever nearer. “Better make your argument good, and you better make it fast.”

Barry nodded, breathing heavily as he hurried to make his case. “I have powers because I’m a metahuman,” he explained. “My speed comes from an organic source, so my body’s equipped to handle running at high speeds. Your speed comes from Velocity 9—you’re putting something into your body that makes you a speedster temporarily, but you have no natural defense against the force you’d be running against in a wormhole—which you would have to do if you were traveling through time.”

“Except the V9 gives me speed healing,” Trajectory rebutted, “so anything that happens to me in a wormhole would be quickly reversed.”

“Theoretically, maybe,” said Barry, “but at the speed you would have to reach to open the wormhole in the first place—”

“Blah, blah, blah—Caity already gave me the ‘don’t do speed drugs’ talk, and I didn’t buy that any more than I’m buying this. The V hasn’t made me sick or weak any of the times I’ve used it, it just makes me powerful, and if you think you’re gonna convince me that if I run too fast—”

“Damn it, Eliza, I ruined Cisco’s life!” Barry shouted, startling Trajectory into silence, and nearly making Cisco’s heart stop.

This was the first time he had acknowledged the damage he’d done. He had tried to apologize once—in a tired, halfhearted sort of way, right after Caitlin had outed his secret about Dante’s death. And then he had asked Cisco if their relationship would be okay later, and passively walked away when Cisco told him that he wasn’t sure. But he had never once given any indication that he grasped the full weight of what he had done, or that what Cisco was going through had any effect on him at all.

“I went back in time to save someone that I love,” Barry continued in a rush. “My parents—I created a timeline where they never died, and I thought that meant that everything would be okay—but I was wrong. I lost my brother in that timeline, and other people that I love lost him, too, and my friends didn’t even know who I was. So I changed it back—I thought I could fix everything, but I just ended up screwing up everyone’s lives even more, and it’s impossible to reset things to the way they were before. Every time I change time to try to save one person, I risk losing everyone else in my life, and I can’t—I can’t keep doing that. My last stunt cost me my best friend, and now he’s the one having to go through life without his brother—something I couldn’t handle going through even for one day—and if I try to use time travel to fix things, he may not even be alive next time, and I’d rather have him hate me forever than never get to see him again. I am stuck in this horrible paradox where I want to go back in time and undo all the pain I’ve caused him, but I can’t, because trying to fix things with time travel is how I hurt him in the first place. So trust me, you don’t know what you’re asking for. Even if you manage to survive the initial journey to the past—and there’s a very real chance that you won’t—it’s not worth risking everything else in your life and the entire rest of the world, just to change one thing that didn’t go your way!”

Cisco bit down on his lips and blinked back tears as his heart pounded in his chest. All this time, he’d thought that Barry simply didn’t understand or care how his actions had affected him. And here it looked like the Barry that he’d thought was his friend might still exist after all—but it was too late for it to matter now. Because he had just unwittingly shown his whole hand.

“So, just so we’re clear,” Trajectory drawled, “you’re definitely not teaching me how to time travel? Because if that’s the case, then there’s no reason for me to stand around and keep your friend alive—”

Barry’s eyes widened. “No, stop, I’LL DO IT!”

He was lying—he had to be. Even if he did care about Cisco, he had already made his stance clear, and there was no use trying to backpedal now.

“I don’t believe you,” said Trajectory. “You’re just bluffing so you can stall some more, and I’m not gonna waste another—”

“No, I’m not! Really! I’ll do anything. Anything at all. Just let my friend go.” Barry’s breath caught, and he was on the verge of tears himself now. “Please—please. I’ll show you how to time travel, I swear, I will. Just please don’t hurt him. I couldn’t stand to lose him forever. He’s too important to me.”

There was a pause as Trajectory seemed to consider his offer.

Cisco’s jaw clenched anxiously, and he locked his eyes on Barry’s, silently pleading for him to have a plan. They could not let another evil speedster learn to time travel. But even so, he wasn’t ready to die.

Please. Please get us out of this. Please be the hero I want you to be.

“Okay,” Trajectory said smoothly after a little while. “If you really mean it, then let’s do this. But first you gotta say the magic word.”

Barry just stared at her in confusion for a moment, then he tried hesitantly, “Please?”

“Wrong,” said Trajectory. “Panda.”

Barry looked even more confused at that, and Cisco was right there with him.

“Go back in time to the exact moment I knocked you into that shelf,” Trajectory explained, “say ‘panda’, and I’ll know you’re a man of your word, and we can go somewhere else, you can teach me how to time travel, and your sad little friend will never have to get mixed up in this. You have three seconds after I say it to change the timeline, or no deal. Panda.”

The panic on Barry’s face was clear, and Cisco swallowed back a sob as it sank in that Trajectory had won. Barry had never intended to let the timeline change again, and now that she’d proven it, she had no reason to bargain with him any further.

“I—wait,” Barry stammered desperately. “How do I know that—”

“Too slow,” said Trajectory.

And then she did it. For one horrible second, Cisco was in excruciating pain as his neck jerked in an unnatural direction, and he had just enough time to hear Barry scream out his name in anguish, only picking up the first syllable, before he lost consciousness. If there was any more to Barry’s reaction than that, Cisco didn’t live long enough to see it.

-

Cisco’s whole body seized up as he awoke with a gasp, shivering uncontrollably as one form of darkness was replaced with another. He continued to take his breaths in heaves as the shape of his bedroom door appeared before his eyes, and he started to pull himself into a sitting position, instinctively reaching up one hand to feel his neck—which was straight and unbroken, and not in any pain.

“Hey—hey, hey, hey,” a gentle voice came through the darkness as two hands lightly took his shoulders. “It’s alright. You’re okay.”

Cisco blinked, and the glaze over his eyes cleared up and he could make out Barry’s features hovering in front of him. He could also make out the other shapes in his bedroom, and he quickly looked around in a panic. “H-how am I—where did she—?”

“It’s okay, Trajectory’s not here,” Barry soothed. “It was just a dream. You’re okay. You’re safe.”

Cisco deflated with relief as his words sank in. Just a dream. Just another dime-a-dozen nightmare from all the stress and sorrow that had persistently overwhelmed him for the last few months. Exhaling a heavy sigh, he dropped his head into his hands as adrenaline beset his whole body with tremors. He was alive. He wasn’t in any danger. He was okay. It was just a dream.

He could feel Barry still gripping his shoulders in a familiar, protective way, and massaging them soothingly with his thumbs. The instinctive urge to lean forward and let himself be enveloped in a warm Barry-hug nearly took him over, as he wanted to be held and comforted as the residual fear from the nightmare faded away. But as his memory of the dream began to fog over, his view of reality became clearer, and a heavy feeling settled in his chest. If dying had been a dream, then so had everything Barry had said just beforehand. From the speech about regretting changing Cisco’s life, to the way he had begged Eliza to let him go, insisting that he couldn’t lose him…

With a shudder of resistance, Cisco wrenched himself out of Barry’s grasp and slid away from him. None of it had been real. He wasn’t really that important to him, and Barry didn’t really care how deeply he had hurt him; he had just been saying what Cisco had wanted him to say because he’d been a figment of his unconscious imagination.

“Cisco?” Barry said in a soft, hesitant voice.

Cisco hugged his arms to his chest, turning away from Barry and forcing back the tears forming behind his eyes. Nothing in reality had changed; Dante was still dead, Barry was still acting like everything was normal, and everything still hurt, and Cisco was never going to get the friendship he had thought he’d had with Barry back. They were still just coworkers temporarily sharing an apartment, nothing more.

“Hey, man—” Barry reached out a hand to touch Cisco’s shoulder again, but Cisco promptly shrugged it off.

“Can you please just leave me alone?” Cisco said shakily, his voice coming out more fragile than he would have liked.

There was a pause. For a good while, neither one of them said anything. Then finally, Barry answered quietly, “Yeah, alright.” And he left it at that.

He then began to make his way back to his side of the room, and Cisco swallowed another upsurge of emotion as Barry once again gave in too easily. It was what Cisco had asked him to do, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt that he wouldn’t even try to object.

Cisco honestly didn’t know what he even wanted from him at this point. Maybe he really did want to be left alone, or maybe he wanted Barry to try to fight him a little, because then at least he wouldn’t feel like he meant nothing to him. As it was, Barry was always more interested in assuaging his own guilt than he was in really being Cisco’s friend, and even though it hurt to be around him right now, it hurt even more being abandoned. Though on the upside, at least leaving him to grapple with his late night demons alone wasn’t as bad as letting him die.

Cisco let out a small, bitter huff of a laugh with no humor in it. That was one thing about the dream that had been accurate at least; no way would Barry ever put saving Cisco above protecting the timeline. His priorities had been made clear, and his friendship with Cisco was not one of them. He had covered up the truth about Dante’s death, he let himself be pushed away, and he never made any effort at all to try to mend things between them. He just didn’t care.

As Barry settled again onto the couch at the end of the room, Cisco curled up under his blankets, and tried to calm himself enough to be able to sleep again. His mind was full and his heart was heavy, and he could only hope that he wouldn’t fall victim to any more nightmares tonight; the first one had left him rattled enough already.

If only he weren’t so tired and if only he weren’t so distraught, it might have occurred to him to question how Barry knew that his nightmare had been about Trajectory.

[emilija04acer]

Cartoons and Anime from My Childhood (part 1)

Born in 2004 in Serbia, I cherish the memories of a time when cable TV was a luxury that only became available to us when I was about 12 years old. Most of my cherished shows were watched at my grandma’s place. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane with this list!

This is part one; I'm not certain how many I will create, but I'll begin with some that have significantly influenced me. They are listed alphabetically, and most are anime.

(I included a short description of each show)

Of course please share your favorite cartoons!

>>>

“Angel Friends”: Angels-in-training, Guardian Angels and Demons. First Angel x Demon ship that I sailed.

“Angelina Ballerina”: A dancing mouse with big dreams and a passion for ballet.

“Atomic Betty”: Intergalactic adventures with Betty, the space-faring superhero.

“Avatar: The Last Airbender”: “Water. Earth. Fire. Air.” A beautifully crafted world, elemental bending, and Aang’s quest to restore balance—this 2D gem blended adventure, humor, and wisdom.

“Barbie Movies”: Every Barbie movie—magical adventures from princesses to explorers.

“The Secret World of Benjamin Bear" Heartwarming adventures with this lovable stuffed bear.

“Bibi Blocksberg”: A young witch named Bibi and her magical escapades. Also Bibi and Tina.

“Bratz Movies”: Fashion-forward Bratz dolls navigating high school and friendship. That one with Paris traumatised me. ( the bone ageing thing)

“Captain Keroro” (Sgt. Frog): Frog-like alien invaders attempting to conquer Earth.

“Code Lyoko”: Virtual reality, secret codes, and a group of students fighting digital threats.

“DelTora Quest”: Lief, Barda, and Jasmine’s quest to restore the seven gems of the Belt of Deltora. (Barda was one of my first fictional crushes guys… 😭 don’t ask)

“Digimon”: Digital monsters, DigiDestined, and epic battles in the Digital World.

“Dragon Ball Z”: “Kamehameha!” The battles between Goku and his formidable foes kept us on the edge of our seats. The iconic transformations, energy blasts, and the quest for Dragon Balls fueled our imaginations.

“Galactic Football”: Futuristic football matches in outer space—goals, teamwork, and cosmic challenges!

“Holly Hobbie and friends”: The adventures of Holly Hobbie, a creative and kind-hearted girl.

“Mermaid Melody”: The enchanting story of mermaid princesses who use their voices to save the ocean. (Other first crush…)

“Mia and Me”: A girl named Mia discovering a magical world with unicorns and elves.

“My Little Pony (MLP)”: Friendship is magic in Equestria with Twilight Sparkle and her pony pals.

“Naruto”: Believe it! Naruto’s ninja journey, friendships, and determination. Who didn’t watch this?

“Nodi”: The little blue train Noddy and his friends in Toyland. (This and Strawberry Shortcake where my everything at like 6)

“Pokémon”: “Gotta catch 'em all!” Ash Ketchum’s Pokémon journey, Pikachu’s thunderbolts, and Team Rocket’s antics—this show captured our hearts. The Pokémon theme song is forever etched in our minds.

“Postman Pat” (Postman Pete): Delivering mail in the charming village of Greendale.

“Sailor Moon” (Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon): “Moon Prism Power, Make Up!” Magical girls, cosmic battles, and the power of friendship—And of course censorship!

“Strawberry Shortcake (2003)”: The sweet adventures of Strawberry Shortcake and her berry friends in the magical land of Strawberryland. (Logorovanje/ camping episode was my fav

“Tokyo Mew Mew”: Magical girls with animal DNA fighting to protect Earth from alien invaders. (Ren can get it)

And of course as I lived in Vojvodina, “Hungarian Folktales”

Here are some links... Sadly I couldn't include the images that I wanted...

Strawberry Shortcake (2004): Wikipedia, IMDb, MoviefoneWonderful Galaxy of Oz: Wikipedia, IMDb, Oz Wiki

Mermaid Melody: Wikipedia, IMDb, Trakt

Tokyo Mew Mew: IMDb, Wikipedia, IMDb for New Series

Galactic Football: IMDb, Wikipedia, SideReel

Sailor Moon: Wikipedia, IMDb, JustWatch

Winx Club: IMDb, Wikipedia, Netflix

W.I.T.C.H.: Wikipedia

As you see I had great taste! Please share yours!

If you are from Serbia... Do you remember ULTRA?! Half of my nostalgia comes from the ads that were on that channel!

Do you remember this people!?

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I’m a little in denial about everything with Lilia but I gotta ask: Do you think Malleus OB can “fix” Lilia in a certain way? Like how sometimes hibernation gives second wind to animals (or how humans feel better after naps.

I am very well aware I’m grasping at straws. I just don’t want my tied for favorite boy to die.

I… don’t think that’s possible, no matter how much we may want it to be.

When Vil greets Lilia at the farewell party, he asks Lilia point-blank if there “really is no other way”. Vil recalls his own predicament returning from Styx HQ as a withered old man and how Malleus was able to restore him to his youth. He asks if Malleus can do the same for Lilia so he can retain his magic and stay enrolled at NRC. To this, Lilia explicitly states that is isn’t possible. “Malleus said it himself: he cannot turn back time.” The only reason Malleus could help Vil was because some external factor robbed Vil of his time; the same is not true of Lilia, who is losing his fight with time (something everyone will naturally succumb to eventually).

Things in the world of Twisted Wonderland are destined to move forward and change, in spite of how much one may wish to remain in their current blissful, carefree school days. All Malleus is doing now in his OB state is prolonging the inevitable because he cannot accept, nor reverse, that change. The whole point of these events and the buildup to it is that “no matter how much power or magic Malleus has, he cannot do anything to change his circumstances”.

Now, I don’t know if that necessarily means TWST will actually permakill Lilia (because he is an integral part of the main cast and marketing) 💦 If time loop or dream theory turns out to be real, then it’s possible some external forces or other deux ex machina could save Lilia…? But at the same time, saving Lilia would kind of detract from what Malleus would have to learn about mortality, friendships, and change. I have no idea what direction the story is planning to go with him from hereon out or how dark the devs will be allowed to go. We’re waiting with baited breath for what’s next 🥲

Side note, I wanted to share something I noticed while thinking about how to respond to this question. So… the wording of the ask is very telling and reflective of the current state of the TWST fandom. “I’m a little in denial about everything […]”, and, “I am very well aware I’m grasping at straws. I just don’t want […]” Don’t we realize it???? We sound exactly like Malleus. We’re in denial about what’s happening and we don’t want things to change.

I wonder if this was planned out from the very beginning. The devs getting us invested in the world of TWST and its characters, only to threaten to take it all away at the very end. This relates exactly with lines Malleus drops about his beloved virtual pet: “Gao-Gao Dragon-kun is fictitious, he more or less exists in a fairy tale. If that is the case, then I don’t see a reason to put a (30 day limit) on his lifespan.” Lilia chimes in, agreeing that it is like a “never ending fantasy”, but then points out that it is because you need to eventually say goodbye that you will cherish the time spent together all the more. Notice their phrasing, all the references to desiring a fairy tale which never ends. That is what we, the players AND Malleus, want. We want to stay like this, forever and ever, locked in one place. We don’t want Lilia to go, we don’t want the third years to leave on their internships, we don’t want the students to graduate and leave us.

This is what fiction like TWST provides for us, an escape from reality, where magical things happen and we’re surrounded by fun people who always stay with you no matter how much you change in the real world—and now TWST is challenging that notion. Is it really right to want to live in an eternal dream like this, at the cost of fabricating your happiness?? Or is it better to wake up and face reality, no matter how harsh it may be?? Even if our loved ones will leave, even if Lilia will die? This is both what Malleus and we, the players, need to come to terms with, rather than continue to delude and convince ourselves to stay in “the dream” with a false sense of security.

[battleangel]

This Barbie Is Pro-Abortion!

The Barbie in the Barbie movie is pro-abortion and finds herself by realizing that Barbie Land is a fake reality, discovering the real world, rejecting the programming and conditioning she received all her life in Barbie Land and scheduling an appointment with a gynecologist at the end of the movie for an abortion.

So, whats the Barbie movie really about?

I am sure thats not the ending Mattel wanted but Greta Gerwig fought for it.

Before we talk about the ending, we need to talk about the movie itself.

What does Barbie Land represent?

Barbie Land is our current virtual reality simulation, what we refer to as "the real world". Where I am typing this and where you are reading this.

Where we are now is a virtual reality simulation, just like Barbie Land is.

We all originated from an eternal dreamscape.

We are all limitless eternal energetic beings.

When our parents had sex, and procreation occurred, our limitless eternal energetic being selves temporarily manifested as physical human beings in this virtual reality.

Where we are now is a simulated virtual reality of the actual dreamscape that we all originated from.

When you dream at night, when you enter REM sleep, your consciousness shifts and you re-enter the dreamscape temporarily.

Its why dreams are so lucid, vivid and surreal. They are the dreamscape. 10 dimensions all existing simultaneously at once vs the 3 dimension virtual reality we currently inhabit.

Its why in a dream you can fall through the sky without dying, walk through walls, walk on water.

Its why in your dreams, you can do anything. Its why we all dream, even if we dont remember our dreams.

Then we wake up, and we are back to our virtual reality.

Wash, rinse, repeat for our entire human existence until our physical bodies perish and we return to our eternal energetic selves in the dreamscape.

Figuring out that you are actually a limitless energetic being, not the temporary human being you are currently physically manifested as, is the entire point to our existence.

Barbie had the same journey in the Barbie movie.

She had to figure out that Barbie Land wasn't real, it was just a simulated reality made to appear real, but it wasn't.

In the film, she then found out about our current reality (which represented the dreamscape) then she ascended beyond her Barbie doll self at the end of the film and self-actualized into who she actually was by asserting her bodily autonomy and personal freedom and scheduled an appointment with a gynecologist for an abortion.

Barbie rejected the myth and demands of feminity, the societal demands to martyr oneself on the altar of motherhood, rejected the feminine ideals of self-abnegation, self sublimation, subservience, submissiveness, putting the self last, sacrifice to the point of obliterating the self, sacrificing career, dreams & freedom.

Barbie rejected all of this societal conditioning and programming and fully accepted her actualized self, completed her self ascension and self awakening journey.

Barbie the doll was dead, Barbie the actual self had finally been realized and self-actualized.

Through an abortion appointment with a gynecologist.

In most films, Barbie would have found herself and completed herself at the end of the movie through love for a man, Ken.

They would have lived happily ever after in Barbie Land together forever in their perfect Barbie mansion.

The end.

Except she left his ass and got with America Ferrara and her daughter to take her to a gynecologist appointment for a motherfucking abortion.

Theres your happy ending.

I am in my 40s so I lived for all of those cheesy late 90's & early 00's romance comedies -- How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Wedding Planner, Shes All That, What A Girl Wants, 10 Things I Hate About You -- the list goes on and on.

If Jennifer Garner, Amanda Bynes, JLo and Kate Hudson were in it and it was a romance comedy, bet I watched it. And missed literally all of the societal grooming, messaging and conditioning inherent in all of the above movies (Julia Stiles consistent takedown of the patriarchy in 10 Things I Hate About You is a notable & rare exception which went totally over my head at the time as I was 17 and a lot more focused on how cute and endearing Heath Ledger was).

At the end of the Barbie movie, Barbie is dressed professionally in a stylish and chic business suit, so one assumed she was going to a job interview, to find her "true identity" in the hallowed halls of corporate America.

Barbie doesnt need a man, she has her career!

That she then sublimates her entire identity for, replacing who she is with a job title, stock options, clout, prestige and a 401k account instead of pursuing true knowledge of the self.

Remember the LinkedIn posts after 250k people got their asses unceremoniously brushed out the door of big tech last fall?

Who are they if not an Amazonian, Googler or Metamate?

They dont know as their big tech career became their entire identity.

Thats the point of capitalism.

You are a worker first and foremost. Your job defines you. Your work is who you are. Your work is your worth.

You're nobody without Amazon, Google or Meta.

At Amazon, on top of the world, impressive, six figure salary, unrestricted stock, envy of your LinkedIn network, impeccable credentials, career that speaks for itself, untouchable.

Laid off from Amazon, unemployed & jobless loser who scrambles to type "Ex-Amazon" in your LinkedIn headline befofe you're even walked out of the building.

Exchanging one false identify -- Barbie the perfect living doll -- for another -- Barbie the corporate executive -- and still never finding and pursuing the true self.

Who are you and why are you here?

What were you made for?

Had the movie ended with Barbie going to a job interview, ostensibly to ascend the ranks of corporate America in her stilettos, her newfound corporate identity would be nothing but another superficial Barbie outfit.

Barbie, the corporate ballbreaker! Pantsuit sold separately.

Still with no knowledge of who she is, just another false persona to put on.

But the last line of the movie reveals that Barbie actually isnt there for a job interview, she is there for a scheduled appointment with a gynecologist.

Presumably to have fetal tissue scraped out of her uterus.

Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice hits.

The end.

So, what was the Barbie movie really about?

When you figure out our reality is actually a virtual reality simulation, and its not real, you will actually start to experience the same glitches Margot Robbie did during the "Hey Barbie!" musical number.

Her realization that Barbie Land wasnt real and that there was a real reality outside of Barbie Land and her slowly waking up to the patriarchy, paternalism, myth of femininity, toxic feminine idelas, toxic masculinity, society's dystopian obsession with beauty, unrealistic beauty standards nearly impossible to attain, obsession with image and appearing perfect, obsession with impressing people and keeping up with the joneses, hypercompetitiveness, constant comparisons, emptiness within, shallowness and superficialty, lack of substance and introspection, not knowing who she is as a person outside of "Barbie", suppression of "negative" emotions like sadness, existentialism, questioning why she is here, why she was born, what she was made for, hopelessness, malaise, boredom, always having to appear happy, always smiling, subservient submissive pliant obedient attractive sexy willing feminine ideal -- and her becoming her actual self after meeting her maker (Rhea Perlman) and leaving the virtual reality (Barbie Land) and ascending to the actual reality (our current world in the movie which actually is an allegorical stand-in for the dreamscape) and then becoming her true self and shedding her Barbie persona by scheduling the appointment with the gyencologist at the end of the movie for an abortion.

So, what was the actual message of the end of the Barbie movie?

By freely choosing to have an abortion, Barbie chose bodily autonomy, rejection of the feminine myth & feminine ideal, rejection of the societal mandate that all women martyr themselves for motherhood, rejection of societal programming that children complete womens identity by turning them into that enigmatic mystical all-consuming figure of "mother" and that a womans highest calling is to be a mother.

Barbie chose to be her complete self as a woman by choosing not to be a mother and she chose not to fulfill her identity and personhood through procreation as society dictates and demands all women to do.

Being pregnant doesnt mean -- at least it should never mean -- that you have to give birth.

A lotttt can happen where youre pregnant and you dont want to be.

Barbie refused societys demands that she now sacrifice herself on the altar of motherhood -- her dreams, her life, her sexuality, her body, her appearance, her career, her freedom, her income, her lifestyle, her independence -- all to become a sacrificial mother lamb to be put on a false pedestal like all the mothers who came before her to be endlessly used and abused for free labor.

Cooking, cleaning, laundry, rides to school, sports practices, games, dance recitals, dance rehearsals, doctors appointments, school plays, birthday parties, parent teacher conferences, sleepovers, grocery shopping, meal planning, vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, car rides, car pools, help with homework & school projects, advice, discipline, punishments, teaching them, educating them, raising them, reading to them, bathing them, dressing them, teaching them manners, socializing them, singing to them, brushing their teeth, blowing their nose, changing their diapers, potty training them, putting them to bed every night, giving them medicine when theyre sick, bandaids when theyre hurt, staying up when they have a fever, picking them up when they cry, burping them, sterilizing bottles, washing dishes, emptying the dishwasher, finding recipes, placating picky eaters, fixing childrens broken hearts, dealing with toddler tantrums, making them eat their vegetables, picking up legos, limitless endless patience of a saint, never complaining, never being tired, limtless boundless energy, putting away toys, slavery, drudgery, scrubbing stains on carpets, unpaid labor, no benefits no time off, cleaning up spills, messes, urine on the floor, vomit in the hallway, blowout diaperas, diarrhea everywhere, buying decorations, responsible for creating holiday cheer, planning the 1st birthday, organizing the family calendar tracking all games, practices, parent teacher meetings and conferences, dance recitals and rehearsals, school plays, boy scout and girl scout meetings, registration for summer camps, taking them to the library, coming up with and planning all fun family activities, ensuring good grades, good behavior, good performance in sports, dance, gymnastics, cheer, teaching and instilling teamwork, friendship, generosity, kindness, sincerity, genuineness, honesty, defending the vulnerable, empathy, creativity, imagination, fostering an open mind, band camp, music lessons, playing the piano, private tutoring...

The mother is primarily responsible for all of that, and if the father deigns to help, he is lauded for "helping to babysit" and take care of his own fucking children!

Just because a condom broke or the bitch refused to wear one, just because he coerced her to have sex, pressured her, forced her, just because she had an amazing meaningless fuck and enjoyed every second, just because she had sex with her soulmate and she loved every moment, just because she didnt know how to say no because she was never taught how to, just because she was intimidated, just because she didnt want to piss him off, just because she wanted him to like her, just because shes proudly promiscuous, just because she likes to fuck, just because she forgot to take her birth control, just because she was on prescription medication that rendered her birth control ineffective, just because she couldnt get to the pharmacy on time to buy Plan B -- that should never ever ever mean that any woman should have to submit to the tyranny and sublimation of motherhood if she doesnt want to.

In rejecting the ultimate societal programming of all females which mandates that all women were meant to be mothers, you arent a woman if youre not a mother, motherhood is femininity, being a mother is a womans highest calling, only selfish women choose not to have kids, you complete & finalize your identity as a woman only by becoming a mother -- nothing else you ever do or accomplish will ever compare in any way to expelling a fetus from your uterus, she became Barbie, herself, her self, because now she knew her self, and not the Barbie she always was in Barbie Land.

This Barbie is pro-abortion.

[smackthedevilwrites]

As the year comes to a close, almost, I just wanted to take some time out to say thank you to everyone who reblogged, bookmarked, shared, liked, read, left kudos and comments on my fics. I’m very lucky to have found myself as a writer within a community of really nice, genuine people from all over the world.

I love writing. I really should be spending time on my novel, which is unrelated to J2 but here I am, publishing a fic a month about these two yahoos who have really gotten under my skin. What can I say, I love them. There is just something unending about J2, no matter what other people say or do, J2 are eternal. As ships go, the aesthetics are heavenly and the chemistry of an almost 20 year friendship are the gifts that keep on giving. And with that, my brain will not stop until every trope, every occupation, every situation has been explored with J2 at the helm.

This year, Jared has been a lighthouse keeper, a multi-media management employee, a ghost, a Christmas tree-topper, a vampire, a hooker and a porn star in training amongst other things. Jensen has been a vampire too, a Greek soldier, a book-store owner, an ice seller from the 1920’s and a virtual reality coder. I keep them busy, is all I can say.

There is just something magical about creating worlds centered around the two most beautiful men on earth. I have a new fic lined up for the new year but I am going be (reluctantly) taking a break which is good because Christmas is fun but bad because I write literally every day of my life. I’m sure I’ll survive it.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

Here below is the complete list of every J2 fic of 2023 – 666,130 words – make of that word count what you will. 😦

Very long list under the cut -

THE LOVE LOCKER

Jensen Ackles buys storage units for a living, it's a lucrative business which has made him a comfortable amount of money. One thing he learned on the job is that one man's junk is another man's treasure. People leave all manner of things in abandoned lockers; money, comics, designer clothes, sports equipment, antiques, books and sometimes (maybe just the once), people.

THE PURPLE IRIS

In 1926 Louisiana, twenty year old Jared Padalecki has been forever searching for something to fulfil him. The youngest of four sons born into a rich and privileged family, Jared is ignored by his mother, father and brothers who think him wild and believe him to be of no use to them. In a desperate bid to inject excitement into his life, Jared spends his formative years seeking thrills but finds nothing that suits his character, until he comes of age. Jared is a late bloomer, lonely and questioning his sexuality. Through self-discovery, Jared opens himself up to the world in the most intimate way possible, attracting the attention of the mysterious 'iceman' and a rich older friend of his father's who takes advantage of Jared's vulnerability and loneliness.

FOREVER SEVENTEEN

Jared Padalecki was well-traveled for a sixteen year old and had lived in many different countries around the world. His passion was history and joining his parents on archaeological digs, standing on the sidelines and watching as the past was slowly revealed. When Mr. and Mrs. Padalecki decided to take on regular jobs and settle down in Santa Cruz, it gave Jared his first taste of high school in the US. With only two weeks until summer break, he had little time to settle in and even less time to make friends to keep him busy during the summer. However, on his very first day, Jared was taken under the wing of the very mysterious but shockingly handsome Jensen Ackles. At seventeen, Jensen had a worldy air about him and an intelligence to match Jared's. Soon, they became insperable and during that crazy hot summer, they became eternal together too.

GLOW IN THE DARK STARS

Have you ever met a terrible person and wondered why they did the things they did? What happened to them that turned them into a bad person? Were they born like it? What kind of trauma led them to become such an a-hole? None of those questions are answered here. Instead, what you will find is what happens to terrible people when they realize that they’re terrible. Jared Padalecki is young, not particularly dumb (actually pretty smart, eventually) and definitely full of come. He’s also full of himself too. When his car-crash of a mother announces her marriage to Jensen Ackles (lol), Jared actually couldn’t care less but Jensen is harboring a secret. Mmm, I wonder what it could be?

BERRY PIE

1969 - the summer of love for young people all over the world, the moon landings and the last year of the swinging sixties. In Jared Padalecki's small world, none of that figured as he battles to make sense of himself and a girl called 'Juliet' in an unloving home. The Padalecki farmstead had always given the impression of a happy home; it was beautiful, the heart of the community and the family were well-respected. Jared had always felt a little different to what was expected of him and most of the time, his life and future felt hopeless and carved out for him. But there was something about him that said determination as he quietly and privately tried to bring 'Juliet' to life, the other part of him, the girl he so very often needed to be.

EROTAS

When Jensen was fifteen, he was selected by the Gods and the elders of the Sacred Army temple in Thebes to one day fight alongside a same sex lover as part of the three-hundred strong company of the most beautiful men in all of Ancient Greece. His looks, strength and sexuality was noticed by Zeus but the Theban council elders were hesitant to enlist him, worried that his peasant upbringing would not be the right fit for the army. At twenty-two, Jensen finally left his modest home to join the army, four years later than he should have. His beauty was much admired by his superiors who urged him to form a union of love and strength with the rich and equally beautiful Jared, who was plagued by prejudices of status encouraged by his biased mother. Jensen was loathe to chase after a man who did not want him despite Jared’s obvious beauty and soon Jensen’s eyes were eventually drawn elsewhere; love came swiftly to him in the arms another, leaving Jared seething with jealousy and the council left with no other choice but to take the matter into their own hands.

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE

Jared Padalecki is the most popular of all the boys at The Cactus Club, an all-male brothel in the state of Nevada. He’s good at his job because he needs the money and has big plans for his future, just like all the other young men in the club. At twenty-two, Jared is a veteran of sorts, the ‘mother hen’ of the brothel. Independent and quite strong-willed, Jared’s life is turned upside down after a tragedy rocks The Cactus Club but he soon learns that there is a much nicer world outside of Jared’s sex oriented existence and Detective Jensen Ackles is the reluctant cop who teaches him the ways of kinder way of life.

PRET A AIMER (READY TO LOVE)

Jensen Ackles is the most powerful man in the fashion industry, editor-in-chief of ‘Sync’ magazine and an all round uncompromising hard-ass. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Jensen notices a leggy young man propping up the ‘Power House’ building where the ‘Sync’ headquarters are housed. Eventually, curiosity gets the better of him and after finding himself displeased with the models whom had been sent his way, he sends his assistant to drag the young man off the streets, a young man who turns Jensen’s world and the world of fashion upside down.

THIRTY YEARS IN AUGUST

After finding himself alone in a city he had always hated, amateur photographer and almost college student, Jared Padalecki takes himself off to Coney Island for the day in search of much needed adventure which he finds in the shape of one of America’s finest.

MIAMI & YOU

Miami based Jensen Ackles is a veteran porn star with a new venture on his mind and no plans to quit his career. After finding the perfect young man for his dubious project with the help of his manager Matt, Jensen’s unprepared body and mind are sent into turmoil.

WHOA, WE’RE GOING TO IBIZA

Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles had been together for four years but life decided to throw one pile of crap after another at them which led to a sad and bitter break-up. A few months previously, Jared had booked a vacation for himself, Jensen and eight of their best friends to Ibiza. Not wanting to let the side down, Jared and Jensen agreed to allow the trip to continue despite their messy relationship. It turned out to be just as awkward as everyone had expected and fraught with drama none of the friends saw coming.

A TOWN CALLED KISMET

It was 1994 and Jensen Ackles was doing his best impersonation of someone who didn’t constantly have thoughts about other men on the brain. It had never sat right with him, being gay. He had never said it out loud, even to himself and then spent the rest of his time, burying it all under a false life which he hated with a passion. At thirty-two Jensen was seen by the people of Kismet, Iowa as successful. He had a good job, his own home, his own car and kept himself in favor within the community by lying about being a good little Christian too. His ‘friends’ and neighbors had taken to the version of Jensen he had created to hide himself away from the world and for seven long years, he had just about managed to keep it all neatly tucked away. But then, life has a funny way of throwing boys off buses in the middle of ‘Bumfuck Nowhere’ and into the path of closeted gay men.

THE BOYS WHO USED TO BE US

Jensen Ackles had moved on and so had his very private high school crush, Jared Padalecki. Jensen hadn’t gone quite as far as the star student he quietly wanted and for years, Jensen had always wondered what had become of the boy he once adored. We all leave echoes behind us wherever we go; discarded family and friends, legacies of achievements and memories left behind in the minds of everyone important who peopled our youth.

Jared Padalecki may have gone but for Jensen, there was something of a whisper of that boy wherever he went, a blanket of memories wrapped around him for all of his adult life. Little did he know, that soon, he would be making new memories with the boy who finally came home.

GOOD MORNING LOVELY

Jared Padalecki is a writer of ‘smut’. He gets paid for it but it’s not all that fulfilling. After being given a new project from his demanding publisher, Jared decides to go and research what it was really like, living in a small picture perfect town during Fall. He soon finds out that it’s much more meta than he was expecting.

IT’S ONLY A PAPER MOON

Jensen Ackles doesn’t believe in ghosts but then who does in the real world? When he returns home after a disastrous night out dressed as the ‘Leather Man’ from The Village People, Jensen discovers that he’s not alone in his apartment and hasn’t been, for a very long time.

PUMPKIN WARS

Jensen and Jared are newbies in a neighborhood they had no business being a part of but after a Hallowe’en themed run-in with the bossy leader of the Home Owners Association, they soon bring the community together by scaring everyone’s kids shitless.

THE LIGHTHOUSE

Jared Padalecki had shifted his life from city chaos to small town comfort because even at twenty-six he decided he needed a quiet life. Rockfort, Maine was precisely what he needed. The place came with views, beauty, endless seas, an unlikely friend and the peace and quiet Jared had been craving for a long time. The towns most prominent feature, the old but majestic 1800’s lighthouse which had been guiding and keeping people safe for almost two centuries became one of Jared’s many places of work and his favourite thing about Rockfort and he didn’t realize at the time, just how significant the lighthouse would become in shaping his future.

JARED WITH A HEART

Jensen Ackles had never been a lover of social media. He just couldn’t see the appeal of posting every detail about his life online for a bunch of strangers to see. Didn’t care what that bunch of strangers were doing either. Jensen lived in the real world and he liked it there. However, during his nephews birthday party, Jensen found himself in possession of his sisters phone, a self-proclaimed social media addict herself. Leanne had only meant to show him something but that small gesture led to Jensen finding love exactly how he always hoped he would.

VIRTUAL INSANITY

The year is 2073 and Cherry Computers have taken over that other fruit-based tech giant. A largely ethical company, Cherry know how to look after the employees who work in ‘Earth X’, the world’s first virtual reality world. The perks are great and endless and working inside a beta VR means that employees can be whoever they want and create their own worlds. However, living in a fantasy-land can lose its shine when human beings forget to live in the real world.

ANGEL FACE

Jared Padalecki had a problem but it only appeared to a problem for everyone else. Jared was a professional sugar baby and cam boy and he embraced it. After breaking up with his long-term sugar daddy, Jared is ‘head-hunted’ and offered a dubious job by a mysterious yet gorgeous man who had been watching him from the shadows.

NUTS ABOUT YOU

The town of Chestnut Hollow famously held a Christmas Carol Contest every year to coincide with their wholesome Christmas Market. Bookstore owner, Jensen Ackles who loved his hometown to pieces wasn’t always that enthralled by the influx of visitors to the sleepy, picturesque town he called home but after a frosty encounter with enthusiastic choir conductor, Jared Padalecki, Jensen is forced to find himself thoroughly and festively enthralled!

THE BOX OF DELIGHTS

Recently single and not by choice, Jensen Ackles also found himself stranded alone in New York after a bitter break-up. Being alone and away from family was the worst at any time of the year but the holiday season hit harder. After a talk with his mother, Jensen is encouraged to inject a little Christmas spirit into his life and so finds himself one Sunday morning at a flea market with Christmas decorations on his mind. Everything is old and tatty but an intriguing box takes his fancy which turns out to contain more ‘delights’ than he could have ever dreamed of.

HOT SANTA

Jared Padalecki was used to having everything fall into his lap. But he had never been lazy and had proved that by excelling at the life he had been handed. No one was ever truly one hundred percent happy though, even the privileged. Money could solve a lot of problems but not all of them. With only his therapist and endless hook-ups aware of his secret, Jared lived his life around his family firmly in the closet and money really couldn’t fix that problem. At the annual Padalecki Christmas party, Jared had always been in charge of supplying the visiting Santa Claus to keep his nieces and nephews happy and festive. With work being crazy that year, Jared forgot and found himself on page two of Google, desperately trying to find a last-minute Santa. As luck would have it, he found one and he wasn’t ideal, at least not as far as the kids were concerned.

LET’S FALL IN LOVE AND DO NOTHING

Self-proclaimed ‘North America’s Laziest Man’, Jensen Ackles has just quit his latest job. At the age of thirty-six, he suddenly realizes that it’s about time he made some changes to his life. After applying for a new position suggested by a friend, Jensen gets a job working as a house boy in Aspen over the Christmas holidays. All he has to do is cook the family meals, serve at the dinner table and not, under any circumstances, diddle the boss’s son.

STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT

It was Christmas Eve and trucker Jensen Ackles had found himself at his familiar truck stop in snowy Minnesota. Not wanting to spend the holidays alone, he expects to find the boy he often paid for sex to keep him company on Christmas Day but when he arrives the boy is nowhere to be found. To console himself, Jensen sits down to eat at the truck stop diner but is interrupted in his solitude by a disarming French fry thief who winds up changing the course of both of their lives.

BATTLE OF THE BALLS

After the chaos of Hallowe’en, new ‘gaybors’ Jensen and Jared have sunk perfectly into their blossoming relationship and successfully ousted evil Wendy as their HOA ‘dictator-in-chief’, almost. With the holiday season on the horizon, Jared is determined to take their festive decorations to another insane level. During that time they clash with Wendy once again and wind up as reluctant therapists after another neighbor seeks their advice.

FROM LONDON WITH LOVE

After moving to London, England for work and on the cusp of regretting his decision, Jared Padalecki finds himself alone at Christmas in a city with no friends. With work colleagues occupied for the duration of the holiday season and his family overseas, Jared can do little else but keep himself busy by exploring the city. On a rainy evening a few days before Christmas, Jared stumbles across a market and decides to try some warm spiced to cheer (and warm) himself up. While taking in the view of the River Thames, Jared is approached by a devastatingly handsome man who has a familiar cadence to his voice and within only minutes of meeting him, offers Jared a very festive but decent proposal.