#and having that on a loop during the making of all this would have driven me up the wall

[antigonenikk]

What it would actually be like to date various HBOWAR men (modern au):

by me and @guarnerepdf

Speirs:

-is a cokehead finance bro

-you wake up in the middle of the night to him watching you sleep with no explanation given, just an eery smile

-is gaslighting you for purposes unknown (moving your furniture one inch to the left etc)

-buys you the fucking tackiest expensive jewelry and designer clothes as random gifts but half of it is fake

-you justify staying because he takes you to NOBU but you’re afraid to google him

-malarkey keeps telling you he's a serial killer but he has such beautiful hair

-lipton keeps handing you domestic violence brochures when he thinks no one is looking. you throw them away because you want that fucking ugly gucci belt! and the staring is sort of charming after a while

-possibly has a secret child that he is hiding from you. you're not sure.

-the first time you have sex he chokes you without asking and is confused when you get mad at him over it.

-does coke while eating dry fruit loops cereal in the morning. somehow looks hot while doing it.

Liebgott and Webster:

-challengers level toxic throuple, these two come as a pair!

-liebgott is xanned out so badly on the regular that he does not remember the last time he washed his hands.

-lieb met bill and toye in rehab and now all his friends are undergrads even though he's going on thirty.

-lieb won't kiss you in the morning "goddamn it woman, brush your teeth" but will kiss webster no problem!

-lieb likes webster more, but web likes you more because you don't call him slurs and you let him rant to you about sharks.

-you and web unionize at some point to get liebgott back into rehab. when he's gone you realize your relationship is 200 million times healthier but also extremely boring. you take him back the minute he releases himself AMA.

-lieb cannot figure out how to work tiktok, meanwhile webster has 100k subscribers on youtube and does grwm story time videos.

-you once had to be driven home by babe from the gas station after lieb kicked you out of the car. the fight was because he didn't believe you when you said you were allergic to gluten. babe lets you play cinnamon girl by lana del rey on the way home.

-lieb keeps trying to weaponize therapy language against you, 'baby you're fucking gaslighting me!' webster just makes it worse when he tries to explain what the terms actually mean.

Bill:

-you start dating Bill after he steals you away from Babe. Babe was nice, but you got the ick immediately after realizing he's not the leader of the friend group.

-bill sends you disgusting dick pics with extremely poor lighting. you can see his bottle of lotion in the background.

-you think it's sweet that he brings flowers when you go out until you realize they're stolen from the neighbor's flowerbed.

-you have an extremely lavish jersey shore wedding that culminates in a horrible fight when he shoves cake in your face ruining your 400 dollar makeup (that you paid for) and your 2000 dollar dress (that you paid for). during your vows babe has to hold himself back from saying something when the priest asks if there are any objections.

-DIRTY fingernails! does not wash his hands. gives you a UTI but doesn't understand that it's his fault.

-Doesn't cheat but is always on the brink of it.

-Follows multiple swimsuit models on Insta, claims it's okay because 'sweetheart, listen, it's all on the screen!'

-Is so cheap he refuses to pay for extra sugar for your coffee, 'you've had it bitter before, babe.' you are ready to murder him. takes you to chili's and acts like it's a michelin star restaurant.

Talbert:

-cheats on you immediately. within the first week.

-sends you anonymous texts to get STD tested, too scared to actually go to the clinic but is certain he's dying of syphilis.

-cries to lip for an hour when you leave him for speirs.

Gale Cleven:

-'sweetheart. are you really gonna wear that out to dinner? it's a bit...well... risque.'

-accuses you of being an alchoholic every time you drink, but Bucky has done four Jeagerbombs tonight and isn't getting any lectures. Also. Why is Bucky with you two on your date night?

-is straight but keeps stringing Bucky along because he reminds him of his father and for narcissism reasons.

-marge messages you on facebook to warn you about him, and also to sell you on her new MLM scheme.

-bucky keeps giving you mean little grins as he hangs off your man....you are very close to murdering him.

-you finally leave him after he calls you daddy in bed. not mommy. but daddy.

Bucky:

-gives you chlamidya three weeks into dating. gaslights you into thinking you got it from sitting on a public toilet seat.

-drives drunk while you're in the passenger seat, goes above 90 and almost kills the both of you.

-is in love with gale and you both know it but refuses to talk about it.

-laughs when you start crying over your new STD diagnosis.

-is the worst boyfriend in the entire world. do not date this man!

Leckie:

-cheats on you with vera, but has a jealous meltdown everytime you talk to hoosier at house parties. you were literally just asking the man for a lighter.

-hoosier is stirring shit up for shits and giggles. he keeps liking your thirst trap insta photos, commenting 'photo cred'

-cries when you confront him about cheating. writes a poem to you about how badly hurt he was by the whole situation. says he only did it because that's how he was raised! no one taught him how to love properly!!

-exploits his family trauma at any given opportunity, shameless about it

-writes you sweet yet cringy love poems

-chuckler keeps trying to warn you but is so awkward about it that you just end up super confused

-blows up the minute you try and critique his writing

-tells you you're acting 'just like you're mother!' during arguments

-eventually you break up because you cheat on him with hoosier and he cheats on you again with vera

Hoosier:

-completely emotionally unavailable

-laughs at you in the middle of a fight, then when you storm out he stares at the wall for four hours straight. no blinking. no moving.

-goes to chuckler thinking he's dying because he has a 'weird feeling in his stomach.' the feeling is literally just a crush.

-catches leckie flirting with you. doesn't cause a scene but DOES immediately cheat on you as a retaliatory action. has no idea why you're mad about it.

-determined to hurt you before you hurt him.

-somehow makes you think you're in the wrong due to the sheer FORCE of his conviction that it was okay for him to cheat on you.

-you two break up but get back together after having a baby. the baby is possibly not hoosier's but he's a genuinely good father. (the baby very obviously has leckie's face. no one is fooled.)

-during your wedding ceremony leckie has to be thrown out after making the worst best man speech of all time.

-parent teacher conferences are a nightmare because your child is biting the other kids and is failing all her classes. hoosier blames you for not helping her with her homework. you all go out to souplantation afterwards and he keeps dropping barbs about you being a dumbass.

-the two of you stay married for 40 beautiful years before dying of old age. within those 40 years you separate and get back together a total of 5 times. leckie somehow outlives you both.

Luz:

-is sweet and lovely and handsome and makes you laugh a lot but

-you're banned from six movie theatres, three bars, the pier, disneyland, and a froyo shop

-you don't even LIKE froyo but the fact that you can't fucking go there anymore is driving you up the wall

-you got kicked out of disneyland because he got into a fistfight with donald duck

-his mother HATES you. she is the ultimate boy mom. they are constantly talking about you in Portuguese behind your back. she wears white to your wedding.

-cannot go grocery shopping because he's stopped every five feet by some old acquaintance. you have no idea how he knows any of these people!

Eugene:

-you're his beard but he doesn't know it

-is the ideal gay boyfriend/husband

-buys you flowers and takes you out on beautiful dates. cringes when you try to kiss him

-everything would be PERFECT except snafu keeps creating dummy accounts to harass you, drives by your house at all hours of the night, and you're pretty sure he's planning to SWAT you.

-eugene has no idea why you hate snafu? he's such a sweet guy!

Babe:

-you're a bit embarrassed to tell your friends you're dating him....he's sweet but just so dorky

-almost puked on you after taking a dab at bill's house. you had to comfort him for ten minutes

-long suffering angel who you cheat on because you know he's just too good for you.... better to hurt him before he leaves you first!

-is popular on tiktok somehow. you have no idea how this happened but it did

[snoopyana]

one night.

the sequel.

“can i be with you just one night? i can wear you out inside.”

in which you meet eunseok at a basketball game, after your boyfriend, wonbin, left you alone during a heated argument— and eunseok swoops in to temporarily take his spot.

song eunseok. smut. darkish? eunseok drops his whole “i care for you” facade and blames you for the whole situation in the end.

everyone knew what was going on behind the bleachers. it wasn’t necessarily a private place to argue. definitely not to argue about you eyeing his teammates a bit too long for wonbins liking. you had no ill intention behind your gaze, but he thought otherwise. his voice gradually rising in volume when you denied having any interest in any of the other guys. it was almost as if he wanted to say you had a thing for his members.

“oh my god, what’s your problem??” you cut the man off mid-sentence. the bickering had gone on for so long that his members would peek their heads in to make sure anything was alright. “my problem? my problem is how you were basically glazing them with your eyes.” that was far from the truth, and he knew it. wonbin only said that once he finally saw the other men listening in.

“are you SERIOUS right now? you ASKED me to come and watch you guys practice and that’s what i’m doing. do you expect me to only look you? god forbid i’m not an airhead all the time and actually act interested in what’s happening around me??” wonbin stared at you dumbfounded. his eyes blown, fist clenched. “i’m done.” walking past his teammates, he snatched up his duffel bag before storming out the gym.

rubbing your temple, you finally let go of your emotions. eyes stinging as the argument looped in your mind. “oh my fucking god.” slipped past your lips as you made your way from underneath the bleachers. quickly being were surrounded by the rest of his team and bombarded with “are you okay?” which only tipped you over the edge. going from a small stream running down your cheeks to full crocodile tears.

their words quickly turning into hesitant hugs as you broke down in the middle of the court. eunseok lead you over back to the bleachers, this time to sit down and most importantly — calm down. the others stood in a semicircle around you two. you face falling into the palms of your hands as you continued your small emotional crisis. silence followed as eunseok rubbed your back, the others standing there simply for emotional relief. looking at their phones, sungchan was the first to speak up.

“hey, we gotta get going. but if you ever need anything, i’m pretty sure we’d all be willing to help. right? just call or text.” his sentence was followed by a bunch of “mhms��� and head nods. stepping over to your side, sungchan ruffled your hair before walking to pick up his stuff. signaling for the rest to follow. “you coming eunseok?” anton turned back to you two, realizing eunseok was still seated. “no, she still needs a way to get home, wonbin had driven them here and clearly he left already.”

nodding his head, anton waved goodbye to his friend, giving you another glance before letting the door close behind him. the buzz from the overhead lights and your sniffles echoed through the open area. he continued to draw circles on your back until light cries and sniffles turned into light breathing. searching his pockets, eunseok pulled out his phone. ‘8:46PM’ stared back at him. it had been close to an hour since wonbin stormed out, and 20 minutes since the boys left.

as he looked at his screen, he could feel your body shift. finally lifting your head up from your hands — glancing over, eunseok put his phone down to move small pieces of hair that stuck to your face. wiping your cheeks with the back of his hand as well. “you alright now? i can take you home or we can just sit a little longer.” moving his hand from your back to your shoulder. “i don’t wanna,” you spoke in between sniff ,” see him right now.” it had completely slipped his mind, you two lived together. “oh yeah, sorry. i can just drive you around if you want.”

giving him a quick nod, eunseok helped you to your feet — slipping his hand around your waist as he led you out the building and into the parking lot. opening the passenger door for you, he made sure you were situated before going to his respective seat. starting the vehicle, the first part of the drive was filled with silence and eunseok making random turns as you stared out the window.

“so,” he finally decided to break the silence after nearly 10 minutes, “what happened back there?” coming to a stop, the red from the light illuminated your face. “he was being fucking stupid. saying i was ‘checking you guys out’ when i was just watching.” huffing, you let your head fall back onto the seat. “like does he not trust me around other dudes or something? but if i started to act like that when he’s around women i’d be in the wrong!” crossing your arms under your chest as you thought about the whole situation. tears threatening to roll down your face for the second time tonight. “hey its okay, calm down.” reaching over, he rubbed your leg — thinking nothing of it for the time being.

“god. i swear he just wants me to cheat or something.” looking ahead, you took notice to eunseoks’ now still hand. eyes darting over to him, his eyes were glued to the road. “what’s stopping you?” the question caught you by surprise. “because i..”

you wanna say love him. don’t you?

eunseok pulled into a vacant lot. “because you what? you love him?” he was now facing you, waiting for a response. eunseoks hand lingering on your thigh. you sat in silence.

spit it out. you don’t. at least not right now.

“no. i.. i don’t.” humming in response, eunseok leaned over the center console. lips ghosting yours. he stayed like that in silence, his eyes glued to your lips. you were quick to close the distance. lips colliding with his.

when was the last time you felt this way? this desperate. how would wonbin feel if he saw you right now?

eunseoks hands found their way your neck, pushing you closer into him. his lips curling into a smile when you whined. pulling away, a quiet snicker slipped from his lips as you caught your breath. eyes blown and lips already puffy. “get in the back.” opening the car door, eunseok walked to the back while you quickly crawled through the center. once he was seated, he tapped his lap — which you eagerly sat down in. thighs on the sides of his while his arms stretched over your waist.

it’s not too late to stop you know.

pushing the thoughts to the back of your mind, his lips found their way back to yours. feeling a little more relaxed, arms wrapping around his neck. a few minutes passed before the sound of your phone buzzing snapped you out of your trance. reaching for your purse, eunseok started to grind his hips into yours.

it’s him, isn’t it?

guilt started to kick in, this is cheating. “he’s asking where i am..” looking at eunseok, your eyes quickly started to gloss over. “tell him you went to a friends house. he doesn’t need to know you’re with me.” there was hesitation in your eyes, but you did as he said. throwing your phone to the side, his lips found yours again. a slight tremble in your touch while your hands snaked through his hair, and he noticed. his hand slipped under your shirt, massaging the skin — while his other cupped your cheeks.

it felt so intimate. would wonbin do this? did wonbin do this?

that feeling would quickly fade as eunseoks’ once gentle hands roughly pulled at your jeans. helping him, you tugged at the material, pushing it down until they laid on the car seat. pushing you to sit on his knees, the man pulled his sweats down just enough for his dick to spring up. “come on, we gotta make it quick.”

he seemed so much pushier now, what happened?

shuffling up to his lap once more, eunseok spits in his palm. giving his cock a few pumps before tapping onto your thighs — causing your body to automatically hover over his. lining himself up, the male pushed you down onto his hard-on. the stretch being even more intense from the lack of prep.

seems like he doesn’t care anymore.

he was now buried deep inside your cunt, giving you the bare minimum of time to adjust before snapping his hips into yours. eunseoks head resting in the nook of your neck — biting at the skin. “hey, no.. no marks.” but did he listen? of course not. biting harder as his pace increased. he didn’t even bother to talk to you. wasn’t this supposed to be distressing you? why aren’t you enjoying it as much now?

he was quick to finish, pulling out and jerking his way to his own climax. but you hadn’t reached yours. opening your mouth to speak, your words were cut off before they could even come out. “he’s outside, hurry up and get out so you can go home.” pushing your body onto the seat next to him, eunseok was quick to stuff himself back into his pants. opening the car door, wonbin stood just outside. eunseok slipped out, standing next to the other male. a small smile plastered on his lips — your lip gloss coating his face.

“this is your fault by the way. should have gone home.”

note- hii. i wanted to try and venture out of my comfort zone a little with my writing style AND themes. nothing too intense for now. i kinda liked writing this though. i will say it’s not one of my best works but hey, we live and we learn. if you guys enjoyed, please do tell me. i’d love to hear some feedback. also, can we tell i’m a little head-over-heels for car sex? like woah.

note 2- ALSO, took me less than 10 days to write another fic? are we proud of me guys? i feel like thats an accomplishment, im getting more confident in my craft.

[thissying]

Max Verstappen has been in the Red Bull factory regularly in recent weeks to find a solution to the problems with his RB20. How can a driver help his team in the factory? Former Formula 1 test driver Ho-Pin Tung explains.

Red Bull and the 26-year-old Verstappen have been trying to solve the problems with the car for months. The Dutchman has not won a race since the Spanish Grand Prix and has now gone six races without a win. That happened to him for the lat time in 2020, when he failed to win eleven races in a row.

Verstappen said in Monza that he had been in the Red Bull factory in Milton Keynes to help his team. He would also visit the English city for the race in Baku. "I read that Verstappen spent hours in the simulator," Ho-Pin Tung told NU.nl. "To find a solution for the balance problems in his car, I think."

The former test driver explains that Formula 1 teams basically work with two different simulators. "One of them is the so-called driver in the loop, which the teams also abbreviate to DIL. In that simulator, a driver sits in a monocoque that is identical to the race car. With that, the driver drives around a virtual circuit."

"That is what Verstappen is referring to when he talks about 'the sim'. You can make adjustments to the setup there, just like you would in a normal race car."

"The other simulator is only software," says Tung. "A certain setup is entered into it and it calculates a certain lap time. However, that simulator does not take into account how easy a car is to drive for a driver. A lap time is produced, purely on static data."

"In that simulation, the car can be very fast, but for a driver, a car with that setup may not be drivable at all in reality. Which is why the difference between the results from the simulator and what actually happens on the asphalt can sometimes be very big."

That is probably why Verstappen has spent so much time in the factory in recent weeks. "In principle, the correlation between the DIL and what actually happens on the asphalt is very good. But in this case, Verstappen will have driven in the DIL with the same set-up as at Monza to see if the feeling was the same as in reality. This is to check the correlation and improve it where necessary."

If the correlation is OK, the findings in the simulator are the same as those on the asphalt. Then the teams can start working on a set-up for the car. Tung: "They also do this with their own simulator drivers. They can imitate Verstappen's driving style to a certain extent, but it is not completely identical. In Formula 1, it sometimes comes down to hundredths or thousandths of a second per lap, those subtleties are important."

"How a car reacts or feels is different for every driver," Tung explains. "A solution that works well for one simulator driver does not necessarily feel good for Verstappen in the car. In addition, certain balance problems in the car can be solved in several ways."

"For example, if you experience understeer halfway through a corner, you can solve that by lowering the ride height at the front. The lower the car is, the less understeer and the more grip you have. You can also choose to make the front a bit softer with the suspension or by setting the differential differently. A combination of all of these is also possible."

"That's the tricky part. Of course, everything works together. And which solution works best without causing the most side effects and creating new problems? The trick is to solve that."

Verstappen can only partially solve these problems during a Grand Prix weekend, because time is limited. "Not only because you have to deal with the time of a session, you are also limited by the number of tyres you are allowed to use," says Tung. "In a simulator, Verstappen can work with multiple constants."

Incidentally, other test drivers of the team also drive in the simulator in the factory during a race weekend. It is not the case that Red Bull is panicking and that is why Verstappen himself does a lot of simulator work.

Tung: "Something like that always happens in preparation for races. It just struck me that Verstappen has been emphasizing in recent weeks that he is very busy with this. He has invested more time in it this time than usual, it seems. Red Bull hopes that this will give him a better idea of ​​the solution in the setup for Verstappen."

[capybaracorn]

These children left Gaza but still suffer mental trauma from Israel’s war

Through art and bonding with each other, 68 children evacuated to Bethlehem are working through their pain.

19th of March 2024

Bethlehem, occupied West Bank – A group of children from Gaza are in an art workshop in Bethlehem’s SOS Children’s Village, 102km (63.4 miles) from Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip.

The children are working on depictions of the three-day journey they took from Rafah to Bethlehem, a convoluted journey to cover a distance that could be driven in an hour.

Like all Palestinians, their movement is constrained by the Israeli government, which severely limits the ability of Palestinians to move around in normal times, a situation made worse by the war Israel is waging on Gaza.

Sixty-eight children were evacuated this month from Rafah’s SOS Children’s Village to the charity’s facility in Bethlehem, accompanied by 11 caregivers who were looking after them in Gaza with the support of the German government.

Expressing pain and fear

For their comfort and privacy, the children – aged two to 14 – cannot be interviewed or photographed directly, but Al Jazeera was allowed to observe their workshop and interactions.

One girl was focused on cutting out the word “Rafah” and glueing it to a corner of her sheet with a sad, scared, frowning face glued sideways next to it.

From there, she wound bright yellow yarn down the page, wrapping it in a loose knot around an angry face, then winding it in big loops until it reached “Bethlehem”, which she had glued in the opposite corner.

[See embedded video in article]

Already close-knit because of how SOS Villages are structured, the children seem to have gotten even closer during their long journey to Bethlehem.

One boy leans over and patiently helps a younger boy figure out what to do with his sheet, explaining that the different faces were there for the little boy to express how he felt at different points in the journey and waiting for his younger friend to position them before explaining the glue stick.

At the other end of the room, a five-year-old boy has gotten tangled in his jacket because the sleeves are inside out. His 14-year-old buddy takes it off and sorts it out, putting it back on him and pulling him close to her for a big hug once he is ready to join the activity.

Dr Mutaz Lubad, an expert in art and psychological therapy, says this guided art session allows the children some release, to open up a space for them to express what is on their minds through their art.

The loose knots show points in their journey from Rafah to Bethlehem where the children were confused or scared, Dr Mutaz Lubad says [Monjed Jadou/Al Jazeera]

“Because children often find it difficult to express what they’re feeling verbally, we work on looking into their struggles through their art,” Lubad told Al Jazeera.

In guided art activities like this one where everyone is asked to produce the same thing, the children are able to choose their colours, the expressions on the faces they pick for different points in their journey and how convoluted they make the glued yarn to represent their three days of travel.

Asked about the significance of some children putting loose knots into their yarn journeys, Lubad said: “The knots represent points where the children were exposed to situations that confused or scared them, but the fact that they by and large used loose knots shows that these are things they feel they are able to overcome.

“One boy’s piece was especially expressive. When he was told he would be moved from Rafah, he feared the unknown, feared leaving his room and home. Then during the trip, he was worried and stressed by turn until, finally, he was relieved to be safe in Bethlehem. All that is shown in the expressions on the faces he chose.”

Protecting the children

The Rafah SOS Village is still open and receiving children whose families have died in the war or who have become separated from their relatives. There are several children who remained in the Rafah facility after their legal guardians refused their evacuation from Gaza.

[See embedded video in the article]

Maintaining contact with the children’s families – if they have any – is an important part of maintaining their community ties, but trying to find out which relatives have survived and which have died has been nearly impossible, Sami Ajur, programme manager at the Children’s Village Foundation in Gaza, tells Al Jazeera.

Despite the difficulties the foundation is facing during the war, it is continuing its work, he adds, pointing out that the Rafah facility is actually seeking support to expand its operations so it can receive more of the children being orphaned or separated from their families every day in Gaza.

The trauma the children are experiencing due to the war on Gaza manifests in many ways, including anxiety, incontinence, nightmares and insomnia, Ghada Harazallah, national director of the Children’s Villages in Palestine, says, adding that their mission – protecting the children – has not changed.

At sunset, the children from Gaza and the children who live in the Bethlehem Village will have a group iftar to break their  Ramadan fast.

The structure of SOS Children’s Villages worldwide encourages a family-style relationship among the children and between them and the adult staff. One staff member is assigned as a “parent” to each group of children, who are raised in “family” clusters where they can bond with each other.

[See embedded video in the article]

[the-kr8tor]

Mudwood Manor

Pairing: Fae! Hobie Brown x fem! Reader

Word count: 3.1k

Tags: no use of Y/N, no specific physical description of the reader, CW food mention, TW Blood, CW injury.

The Fall Masterlist

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Part I >>> Part II

You lay awake alone on the plush mattress that's not your own. Morning light filtering through the curtains, shining warmth right on your cheek. Your hand roaming around the soft fur of the blanket as the clock ticks slowly to eight. Eyes above the detailed swirling patterns on the bed's canopy, mind drifting back to the home you've left just a few days ago.

Tick.

Taking the ad for this house-sitting gig went better than you thought it would be. Thinking the house you would be watching over will just be a regular house in an urban subdivision. Not an estate full of ancient history situated in the middle of nowhere with only an elderly dog as a companion.

Tock.

At least it's better than your dead end job that makes you feel your soul is getting sucked with every hour you stay on the eighties musky carpeted floors, tapping away your entire life on the grainy screen of the corporate issued computer. The pay's good, better than what you were getting before anyway, even though it's only five months of house sitting it's way above your salary grade. You thank whatever entity out there that blew over the newspaper that literally landed on your lap while waiting for the bus stop, the 'help wanted' page open and glaring right at you. You only wish the job's longer though.

Tick.

The house being nice is an understatement, all oak and narra floors, fixtures and furniture made of the same wood. No sign of modernity in the entire estate. Even the kitchen is in an old style, well except for the coffee maker and microwave. Every hall and wall is covered in oil paintings, portraits of people dressed in old garb keep watch of your every move. The house creaks and shrieks during the late hours of the cold autumn night, always prompting you to keep your eyes tightly closed in an attempt to tamp down your curiosity.

Tock.

It's secluded enough that the air here feels crisp and cleaner than in the city. Trees whisper in the wind, moss clinging to its trunks. You suspect the house is as old as the woods that surround it. With vines curled and looped around the house's exterior and curved stained glass windows decorate its walls. Mudwood Manor they call it for every time it rains, mud gathers around the estate, threatening to swallow you like quick sand.

Chime!

The old grandfather clock's hand reaches eight, the sound echoes around the large room you've settled in. With an exhale, you reluctantly sit up, feet cold from the icy floor. Yawning, you wipe the sleep off your face, bones crying out in protest.

Lumbering your way through the usual morning routine, you change out of your pajamas even though no one else would see you in it, you still wear your usual day clothes, always feeling like you have to dress appropriately in this opulent house. If jeans and a jumper is considered appropriate in the massive estate.

The bathroom is no different than the rest of the house. With the large stark white bathtub in the middle of its tiled floors, twin sinks covered in dark marble, golden faucets squeak open as you turn the knob to brush your teeth. The entire bathroom is as big as your flat back in the city, you scoff at the extravagance of it all.

You like to think the owner of the place fits well with the manor, as eccentric and elegant as their home– all pearls and gold rings, silk and cashmere on their body. But alas you've never met him or them personally, only talking details on the telephone, his gruff voice vibrating against the receiver. They leave the key under the large mat after you've driven three hours to get there. The only clue you have of them actually existing is the instructions they've left you. The note now pinned on the fridge stocked full of food that could last you the entire five months, not to mention the large pantry that could feed an entire village.

You've got everything you'll ever need to survive five months alone. The thought scares you for a bit, but with the silence, fresh air and an entire library of books that you've never thought you could read in your lifetime, the loneliness isn't all bad, the place calms you down; if not for the bouts of sadness, you could see this place as your home for the time being.

The old border collie waits for you in the kitchen, mismatched eyes staring at your form, her tongue lolling on the side, greeting you with what you see as a smile.

"Morning, old Nellie" you greet back with a quick pet on her fluffy head, taking the time to scratch behind her ears. She wags her tail happily, while her eyes are closed in content. You've decided to talk from time to time so that you don't lose your voice, which Nellie appreciates the chatter.

You feed Nellie her breakfast first before fixing one yourself. She eats it in glee. The instructions written in neat cursive jumps at you every morning before opening the fridge.

You can't help but read it again.

1. Do not let anyone in.

You thought that was reasonable enough, it's not your place to invite people in here anyway.

2. Do not wipe the salt line on the doors and windows.

Now that's weird, you've always thought, but to each their own. The salt probably helps with keeping out the smell or rodents. Right?

3. The house is old, the sounds at night are from the metal pipes and scaffolding. Nothing to worry about.

Creepy, it's not like the place needs an extra creep factor added in it.

4. Feed Nellie three times a day without fail. Take her on walks around the estate every morning and before the sun sets.

That's alright, taking care of pets was part of the deal anyway. And it doesn't hurt that Nellie's a good dog to hang around with.

5. Do not in any circumstance go to the woods.

6. Wear the necklace at all times.

Your eyes drift over to the simple circular metal necklace sitting on the counter top, scoffing, you chose not to wear it just because an eccentric millionaire tells you to.

7. Only eat and drink the food I have provided.

You don't think you want to meet the owners now with how creepy they are just based on his instructions. Possessive much?

8. Be wary.

A shiver runs down your spine by just reading those two words.

You shake it off, opening the fridge, nothing piques

your interest this morning. Huffing, you have a hankering for fresh bread, alas you've eaten the last loaf yesterday. The strawberry jam inside the fridge mocks you. You recall on your drive to the manor you've passed by a small village, you're sure the place has a bakery or even a café in it. You crave a different scenery, and to use your voice other than for talking to Nellie.

Turning around, you put your hands on your hips, smiling at your companion who licks at the last bit of food in her bowl.

"What do you say for a stroll, Nellie?" She tilts her head in question, ears perking up, tail wagging excitedly.

—

You've never felt more isolated from civilization while walking towards the village, no houses run along the bumpy road, just miles and miles of trees with its aging wood, wild violets swaying around its trunks. The tall grass makes it hard to see the path. Mist blanketing and moistening the soil.

The walk was a lot longer than you thought it would be, now you're absolutely starving after walking for almost an hour. Nellie wasn't complaining though, for an older dog she seems to have so much energy in her. The village has clearly seen history, with its cobblestone streets, iron lampposts and ancient bricks. The fog thickens, blanketing the roofs of the village like marshmallow fluff.

You tie her leash around a lamp post, petting her fluffy head, you instruct her to sit and stay. She obliges, staring happily at you through her blue and brown eyes.

"Good girl, I'll be back in a flash" you make a mental note of buying her a treat for being such a good sport while you drag her from the manor.

Entering the shop, the bells chime signaling your arrival. Freshly baked bread wafts your senses as various meat is on display over at the counter, waiting for your perusal. You smell the soup of the day, judging by the aroma, you deduce it being butter squash soup, your stomach rumbles at the thought.

The modest shop has quite a few people in it. They chatter amongst their friends whilst eating breakfast and drinking their morning tea. Another patron enters behind you, she greets everyone by name, while the others immediately greet her the same. Well, except for a group of strangers sitting at the far end, they pay her no mind at all. It's a small village, you never doubted for a second that everyone would know every person that lives here. You've anticipated it actually, so used to being alienated from the crowd, you haven't noticed the old woman beckoning you over with a smile.

"Bonnie?" She calls for the third time.

"Oh! Sorry, I was thinking what to order" you move closer to the counter, the chill from the cold cuts display seeps through your jumper.

"You're the new caretaker at the old manor I presume?" She grins sweetly, showing her smile lines around her lips.

"House-sitter, I'm only here for five months" you're wary about telling her vital information, but she's an old woman. What's the harm in telling her that?

"Oh, I see he's going for a quick business trip this time. He would usually take an entire year away, y'know" her thick accent makes it hard for you to understand some of her words. Nonetheless, you don't miss the vital information about your mysterious employer. "But I don't gossip" she chuckles, "what will it be, deary?"

"You know Mr. O'hara, the owner?"

"Aye, known him since he was a lad. Good kid he was." She shakes her head. "There I go gossiping again, what are you havin'?"

You want more answers to feed your curiosity, but you don't want to pester the poor woman. "A BLT with cheese if you have them, lightly toasted and some of the soup, please." she nods, heading over to her station to prepare your sandwich when an older man chides in your conversation.

"Oh please, Orla y'know stopping yourself from gossiping just hurts you more" he laughs from his belly, white beard bouncing as he guffaws with his friends sitting him with.

"This" Orla, gestures from you to her. "Was a private conversation, where's your manners?"

"Don't know where I last put it!" He laughs again, shaking the wooden table in front of him. "Miss, let me guess, O'hara gave you those crazy rules?"

You perk up at the mention of the list. "Yeah, he did. How'd you know?"

He shrugs while the other patrons listen in, "he does the same thing to his other caretakers, there's a 'be wary' one, right?"

"Yes, it's really creepy"

The old woman pipes up, talking over her shoulder as she slices your sandwich. "It's a necessary evil after what happened to his daughter"

"What happened to his daughter?" You ask with trepidation.

"Don't tell me you actually believe that, old woman?" The older man argues back.

"Believe what?" You feel like there's an inside joke you keep missing.

"She was taken by them." Orla, turns around with your soup packed in a tupperware. You look at her questioningly.

"Bullshit if you ask me" the old man mumbles behind his mug. He sees your confused look, "she's talking about the fae" you thank him with a nod.

"It's true!" She wraps your sandwich inside foil, carefully putting it inside the paper bag. "There's no logical answer on where she is! Now it's just O'Hara in that massive estate."

"Kid just ran away, that's all!" Another older man argues back.

"Pssh," Orla swats him away with her hand, he turns away with a scoff. She turns back towards you, ringing your order up in the cashier. "Just do what his list says and you'll be fine" she says it like a warning to never stray far from the rules.

"Why do you think it's the fae?" You give her the payment she needs.

Humming, she clicks her tongue. "Just know it's them."

"Okay, um thank you" drifting away, she holds your arm back, taking your attention again.

Orla looks at you with wide eyes. "You know about them, yes?"

"Yes, like don't eat their food or you'll get stuck or don't give them your name or say thank you. I've heard the folk stories"

"Not just a story. The wood sings and they crave an audience." she lets go of your arm, your breath hitching, goosebumps appear on your skin.

You shake the thought, or try to at least.

The door chimes as you leave. Nellie lays on the pavement, tail wagging as she sees you come back to her side.

"Hi, got you something" she stands up, barking at you in excitement. "Okay, okay, here" Chuckling, you take a slice of bacon from your sandwich, giving it to her.

Nellie carefully takes it from your hand without biting your fingers, she chews happily.

"Good?" You scratch behind her fluffy ear. "Let's go back" untying her leash, you juggle the sandwich and her lead with your hands. The horror stories you've been told in your youth echoes in your mind, as your soft footfalls on the moist pavement. Wind rushes past you, pushing you back towards the manor.

—

Arriving inside the gates of Mudwood Manor, you gaze at the large brick building. It casts a shadow over you, its stature imposing. Fading bricks and trellises crawling with overgrown vines that's starting to wither and turn dark with bits of oranges and red still clinging to its last life. The large red door of the main entrance adds to your uneasiness. You attribute the fear from what the deli owner told you, the woods don't look much better. Tall trees with leaves so thick it blocks sunlight from hitting the undergrowth. From where you're standing, darkness seems to prevail inside. The thick fog added to the eeriness of the scene. It drapes over the treeline like curtains, swirling smoke falling down to the tips of your shoes, hiding something behind you can't quite see.

Just staring from the woodland edge gives you a sense of belonging with every second you stand idle. You have no idea why this feeling encapsulates you. The wind tries to push you towards the dark, flashes of autumn colored leaves swirl past. Eyelashes fluttering in the wind, your lips part as you listen to the flora dancing in the wind, as if it beckons you over. Daring you to cross the edge.

You wake up from the trance as Nellie growls at a squirrel taunting her from the ground. She pulls at her leash, the rope taut, your hand aches at the burn. You let go of the paper bag, half eaten soup spills over the grass, now holding the leash with both hands, you struggle to control the border collie.

"Nellie, calm down!" You yelp in pain when Nellie lunges, escaping your hold. The rope leaves angry marks on your palms, skin aching from the piercing pain. Nellie runs, following the grey squirrel into the woods. You can hear her barks fading in the distance. "Nellie! Come back!" You yell but it's futile as the old dog disappears from view.

"Fuck!" Without thinking, you run after her, legs carrying you further into the thick trees. The fog parts, opening the way. Eyes roaming the moss covered soil for her footprints. "Nellie!"

You're gonna lose your job, the thought makes you run faster. Tripping on a rock, you land on your already injured hand, dirt and grime sticking to the angry gashes, blood mixing with soil. Ignoring the pain, you push through the thicket.

Running, muscles aching, there's a stitch on your side as you stop to catch your breath. Hands on your thighs, you inhale and exhale. Nellie's footprints are barely visible under all the green and orange. Standing to your full height, your heart thumping like a drum under your ribcage. Eyes widening at the darkness that envelopes you, whirling around, fear overtakes your entire being.

You're lost.

Everywhere you look, identical trees fill your vision, cold seeping into your bones, smoke escapes your parted lips. Fingers turning stiff, you turn around when you hear Nellie's familiar bark.

"Nellie! Come here, girl!" You clap your hands to get her attention. "Nellie!"

Another bark echoes out in the dark, with only bits of sunlight filtering through the thicket, you let your other senses guide you to the sound. Speed walking, dry leaves crunch under your shoes, you call out to Nellie again. Narrowly avoiding a tree root protruding from the ground, you step over it so you don't land face first into the moist soil.

You stop when silence permeates the woods again. Standing still, a ring of mushrooms at your feet, you breathe heavily. "Nellie!" Frustrated, you yell again.

Instinctively stepping past a mushroom, you move your neck around, eyes roaming, looking for her white and black fur. Your palms land to your clammy forehead, wincing when you graze your injury.

"Fuck!" You stop circling around when the woods seem to expand right in front of your eyes, moving, flinging away, adding to the acres of wooded land. Vision focusing and unfocusing as the expanse extends further away. Fear once again blankets your nerves. Your mind claws at you to keep running.

"Lost?" A deep voice asks behind you. Alluring, tempting you to answer back.

Your blood suddenly runs cold. Primal fear makes your heart leap out of your chest.

Light suddenly appears behind you, your shadow gets taller and taller until it finally leaves you. Alone, you don't dare look behind you. The hair on the back of your neck stands up despite the warmth radiating from behind. Trepidation howls inside you.

Blood rushes in your ears, knuckles tighten, nails digging into skin as crimson drips on the tall grass below.

Swallowing the lump in your throat, curiosity wins over you.

You dare look behind.

[alteredsilicone]

Reddit once again delivers a really nice write-up about lore.

The Man in the Wall is Weak to Love

"The opposite of love is not hate; it is indifference."

- Elie Wiesel

The Man in the Wall is defeated, unironically, by the power of love. His goons are called "The Indifference", which is neither love nor hate, but rather a lack of feeling altogether. Let me break down the theory.

Albrecht was afraid of telling Loid how much he loved him, but this was more a symptom of his rigid Orokin upbringing than him being aware of the Man's weakness. Loid also was bitter over never hearing Albrecht say "I love you" ("I could never say to him the words he so needed to hear"). When the Man uses Albrecht's vessel to attack the Lab, only an act of love, a gentle caress of the face, repels him. This caress is the very same one Albrecht performed to Loid before he left; this makes Loid remember and understand just how much Albrecht loved him.

The Grimoire's final page is a love letter from Albrecht to Loid, and it is poison to the Man. He tries to get the page from the Tenno so that the Grimoire can't be completed because he knows that it is the one thing right now that can hinder his efforts. During Netracell missions, destroying the Man's minibosses (like the Mocking Whisper) will trap them within the Grimoire. Tagfer says that the Grimoire is a "predator", which could mean many things:

Love is depicted as not exactly positive in many mediums. In the Green Lantern series, Love is represented by an animalistic dragon entity called "The Predator". The Greeks depicted Eros using a bow and arrow as his weapon because they felt that love was "violent, all-consuming, it strikes you suddenly and drives you mad". In fact "Eros", or romantic love, was seen as a sickness or madness that plays a major part in Greek stories (and we know Warframe loves Greek roots, looking at Duviri). The Void itself is also a madness; perhaps Love is the counter-madness?

Additionally, Tagfer is currently suffering the loss of his mate Minn, who he loved very much. Albrecht was perhaps starting to realize that love is the cure for the Man in the Wall, and sent in Minn as an experiment to see if Tagfer's love would protect her or have some kind of effect. It could also be that Minn was targeted specifically by the Void because Tagfer loved her so much.

Albrecht never told his daughter Euleria (a.k.a Mother) how much he loved her, and they both suffered for it. His lack of outwardly-expressed love made him very vulnerable to the Void, so much so that he swore off of Kuva entirely because he was afraid that the Man had replaced him completely without him knowing.

In Duviri, it is love that cures the Void madness. The Drifter expresses empathy and kindness to Thrax, and this calms him down enough to stabilize the time loop and allow them to escape. Thrax is the Drifter themselves; by forgiving themselves and accepting what happened and loving themselves anyway, they are able to dissolve the Void trap keeping them in Duviri.

The Lotus' love shields the Tenno from the Man's escape at the end of The New War, despite the Void being literal poison to her Sentient body, she survives. The Man and a form of Albrecht are plucking the petals off of a lotus flower at the end of Whispers in the Walls, implying that they are going to target the Lotus herself and remove her love-protection from the Tenno.

Teshin loves the Tenno like they are his own children, just like the Lotus, and it is this love that enables him to survive and continue to assist the Tenno across The War Within, The Sacrifice, and The Duviri Paradox.

In the Zariman Incident, the parents of the children are driven mad by the Void and turned against their own offspring. Who loves more than a parent loves their child? The Void/the Man is aware of how powerful love is, especially when used against him, and seeks to turn it against people at any given opportunity before they wisen up and start to weaponize it.

In conclusion, love is the opposing force to Void energy.

[princesssmars]

wildfire

some starmora x reader nsfw headcanons

wc : 1.162

cw : nsfw content! triad poly relationship (fmf). dom!gamora, switch!peter, sub!reader. some sex position links bc i think they're fun. strap-on sex. anal. pda with butt slapping. masturbation.

an : watched gotg 3 and definitely not broken. new gamora is cool but im always gonna miss og gamora so expect more starmora stuff to come bc im bisexual and sad <3

so lets say you joined the guardians early, peter and gamora already have that spark between them and now you've arrived and thrown them for a loop.

while you and gamora are still mostly trying to deal with your romantic feelings, peter is being driven crazy by his sexual ones. he's not stupid enough to jeopardize the budding relationship he has with the both of you by sleeping around.

(not to say he didn't get tempted, there was this one chick with blue skin, big doe eyes and four arms and-)

still. he's not that stupid. but, he does have needs, so he jerks off. a lot. every time he does it he thinks about the both of you. the feel of gamora's skin when his hand brushed against it that morning, the smell of the new shampoo you pick up on the last planet. even just the memory of you two laughing at one of his shitty jokes is enough to make him finish.

not to say gamora doesn't get herself off as well. i don't think she would have that much sexual experience or at least not as much as peter does. just a brief hook-up occasionally to take the edge off. but when you complimented a new armored top she bought that complimented her arms and peter agreed with that stupidly charming yet sleazy smile of his, she couldn't help but lay in her bed that night and rub her puffy clit until she had to bite down on her hand as she came.

it wasn't long after that you all became official.

in the bedroom, gamora is a dom and peter is a switch. to her, there's something about quill commanding the team during missions and casual settings and being reduced to a man on his knees begging for you to touch him anywhere.

but don't for a second think you're off the hook. if you ever get too cocky when she's dominating peter, she won't hesitate to put you in your place. her favorite way to do it was sitting you on a cushion with a direct view of the bed, your hands bound behind your back with a vibrator stuffed inside you as you were left to whimper and beg as she rode peter into oblivion. she keeps eye contact with you while she has her hand around his threat, teasing you about how flustered you look.

gods help you when they're both in a dominating mood. it's mostly after they got roughed up after a mission or the person who hired you was more of an asshole than usual. on those days they don't hesitate to toss you around like a ragdoll and do with you as they please.

one time you were left behind to take care of the ship while they negotiated with the person who hired you, which must have gone wrong with the looks on their faces when they got back. before you know it you're pressed into an arch on your bed, gamora's hands pushing your mouth and tongue deeper inside of her pussy, as peter grabs your hips and helps you throw it back on his dick.

peter would love positions where he can make eye contact, loves the intimacy of it and loves to see the facial expressions you make. doing the counterblow or fireworks in the pilot's seat, a deck chair, or python in bed when your both craving contact. right before you both cum he'll pull away from sucking on your tits or neck to look you in your eyes, whispering "i love you"'s and "cum for me, cum all over me baby"'s as you both reach your highs.

gamora will take you in any position she can. not to say she doesn't love the intimacy occasionally as well. there have been more than a few times where she gently drags you to her room, places you on the bed, and eats you out agonizingly slow for over an hour before crawling on top of you and slotting herself over you, riding your cunt until neither of you can move from overstimulation. her faves would be 69, eagle, plain, and a full nelson if she's feeling pent up.

oh and gods help you when she gets her hands on a strap-on. she found it in a sex shop on a little excursion to a shady planet for rocket to find some rare materials for an invention. quill had seen it first, practically begging the two of you to go inside with him. while he and you were pointing at different beads and gadgets and giggling at the obscenity and absurdity, gamora is busy stalking along a back wall, looking at the different dildos and harnesses with piqued interest.

when she tells you that she booked a hotel room for the three of you for the night, you can't help but get a little giddy at the idea of another night of pleasure with the two of them without having to quiet yourself by biting or gagging. you don't expect gamora to come from the bathroom, a black harness around her hips with a long and thick dark red dildo attached to it. after she gets your consent and gets you prepped, your body is held up and squished between the two as peter thrusts into you from the front while gamora takes the back. you didn't leave the hotel room for two days.

they are very different in how much pda they like to show in public. gamora is more subtle, still wary to let others know how much you really mean to her, plus she likes to keep the romantic and sexual side of her life more private. she'll settle for soft smiles across the room, brushing her hand across yours when she walks by. if she's feeling devious she'll come up behind you while you're doing something under the guise of "helping you", when in reality she's pushing her entire body against yours and maybe throwing a small little thrust in there too. nine times out of ten it will leave you flushed beyond belief and she'll walk away satisfied.

peter is. a whore (affectionate). he is not afraid to be affectionate with you in public. hand holding, hugging, kissing, etc. you already know he's fond of slapping your ass, and will do it every opportunity he gets. if you do it back to him he will literally go like :0. definitely doesn't get a boner.

their aftercare is unparalleled. while you're coming down from your high, peter will rush to get a rag for you all to wash off the liquids and sweat, while gamora will whisper sweet gentle praises while making sure the both of you are hydrated. no matter how rough or quick the sex was. they will always end it with you cuddling in their arms as they whisper to you how much they care about you. <3

[icaruskey]

I wrote this last night but I still kinda want these to have their own posts. No writings tonight; my head aches from irl stress.

@pillowspace

It's... after.

You had funny little names for the loops before, jokes for yourself to deal with the ever increasing dread that you would never figure out the trick to get out of them. You don't name this one. The creeping dread you feel when you remember is enough.

You almost don't go that first day. You love them, you know them, you know that couldn't be their default, and it's only the bright, fragmented memories of that first meeting that drags you out of bed and getting there nearly an hour late. No one really cares that you're late. You're a warm body, and that's all Fazbear Entertainment cares about.

It's easier when the kids are around and awake. You don't think Sun notices you avoiding them, avoiding the dark spaces where he might change. Avoiding those long, delicate, powerful fingers that make your throat close up without ever touching you. Despite the lack of bruises you're driven to wear turtlenecks, close fitting layers that can't be grabbed. You think about trying to get in shape but what's the point? It'll just reset.

You'll just reset.

He had warned you, you reason with yourself during naptime. You're hiding behind the security desk. It's still early, Moon is still allowed to come out if you're there, and he's checking the children. You are pretending to be on your phone, but you are uncomfortably aware of where he is at all times. But you must've dozed off, just for a moment, because there's a sudden tug on your hat as it catches on your hair. You open your eyes and recoil.

They're not supposed to be able to reach you back here.

Moon doesn't know how to react when you move out of pure panic, shoving away from the security desk, the chair catching on some phantom nothingness so it falls over backwards and none too gently tips you out. You crawl back, against the wall, staring at Moon as your heart beats rabbit fast, and it's panic, panic, panic, cold and hot and you need to run.

"It was a joke," Moon says, and he puts down your hat and backs away, hands up. Long, delicate fingers, made for storytelling and puppets and changing soiled clothes.

Your throat hurts. You close your eyes and cover your face with your hands, willing the panic to go away.

---

It's after.

You're sitting in your bedroom. The curtains and blinds are open, letting sunlight pour over you and the nest you've created of blankets and pillows in the middle of your bed. There's mugs on the nightstand with your phone and a small day by day paper calendar, the days past torn and crumpled and scattered on the floor. You don't have your hearing aid in. You've barely left bed since the loops broke.

Sun enters, and if you were yourself, you might've laughed. He looked silly, wearing an oversized shirt with a photorealistic kitten on it and his striped jester pants. He's carrying a new mug, and you can smell the tea, chamomile and cinnamon maybe. He offers it to you and you take it mechanically, sipping and scalding your lips and tongue. You feel the heat sliding into your belly, but there's no taste.

Sun sits next to you, the bed shifting, gravity drawing you into them. They weren't built for this world, of human sized rooms and doors, and already there were little scrapes and scars in the ceilings and trim from Sun's rays when he would move without thinking. It wasn't the daycare anymore, and he looked as out of place here as you had felt over and over again.

It's hard not to flinch when he reaches out to you, and you can see it hurt him, hand held midair before it lowers to his lap to fidget. You ought to comfort him, but it's hard to move. Like you're swimming through molasses.

We're sorry. Sun is signing. The one good thing about the loops was you'd finally learned more sign language beyond fingerspelling or hello. Of course they were fluent. We've been remembering and the times we, Moon...

You don't let him say it. You grab at his hands, squeezing them, movements clumsy as you stretch and overexert yourself. You're off balance, painfully stretched, but they catch you, adjust you until you're in their lap, a hand between your shoulder blades, the other held in your own small hands against your chest.

His fingers rest mere inches from your throat and there's still a dull panic, somewhere deep, deep down when you still felt things beyond exhaustion and whatever it'd been driving you forward. But mostly there's comfort. These hands that'd taken care of children, that'd killed you who knows how many times... now they held you so gently, bringing you close to their chest where you can listen to the quiet hum of their mechanics, closing your eyes as fingers curl around your hands.

The sun shines through the window and Sun cradles you in his arms and you know you're safe, you know those hands will protect you until you come back to them.

You'll come back to them. You will.

[shadowy-suitcase-herring-neck]

Please, send the info dump. I WANNA HEAR THE FERAL NIGHTMARE AU STORY

you my friend have no idea what you have just started :)

(nightmare) The Feral nightmare au is kind of a what if to how the corruption might work differently. Essentially The corruption essentially inhibits the mind and erases memory. like thinking through a fog if that makes sense. The corruption also enhances negative emotions.

so instead of just gaining tentacles and going tyrant mode during the apple incident he just goes feral beast mode who is currently powered by fear and anger.

After the incident nightmare doesn't have the same drive most of his counterparts would have. also his memory is pretty much wiped. though he does remember certain emotions based on objects. apples make him feel anxious so he stays away from them while he collects other things such as books because they trigger a positive emotion even if he doesn't quite remember why. or how to read. His mind is much more survival driven and doesn't really care much about multiverse domination or even revenge.

he lives in an underground cave network under Dreamtale which by this time has been transformed into a shadow Forrest full of creatures that have been affected by the corruption and negativity. The place where the village and the tree of feelings was in completely barren though and everything avoids it. The cave network is mostly long twisting tunnels nightmare has made with a few massive natural caves that the tunnels connect.

Nightmare is still well known across the multiverse as he has the ability to travel between au's and he tends to cause a bit of a panic. You see nightmare feeds entirely off of negative emotions, mostly being fear. the usual way he get fear is by finding a random person and proceeding to scare the life out of them. he tries to find people who are alone because groups tend to attack more than a lone individual. Nightmare isn't exactly murderous as... he has no need to be. he doesn't eat people so. after he gets his negative emotions he usually leaves. unless the individual decides to attack then nightmare will probably kill them.

(the gang)

the gang only involves horror, killer, and dust. idk if you could really call them a gang because they are really just... well a group of sanses nightmare has kidnapped and brought to his burrow. none of them know why. none of them know anything about nightmare. they don't even know his real name or that he has one. he just kinda kidnapped them.

Not that they really mind that much. killer and dust where pretty much in an empty world at that point. and Horror had no more desire to go back anyway because his brother had died due to starvation.

Horror was the first of the gang that nightmare surprise adopted. he has been living with nightmare for about two years now. the underground river has a abundant amount of fish plus nightmare regularly goes on supply runs and grabs whatever he thinks the smaller skeleton creatures he shares a home with would like. horror is pretty good at navigating the tunnels by now.

Killer was actually the second one to be kidnapped by Nightmare. he finds living with the equivalent of a demon dragon (minus most of the dragonish part) to be rather cool. he calls nightmare Beasty but not in a bad way. he is the only one who can call him that and makes sure everyone else knows this. spends a lot of time carving wood but nightmare takes him to the surface of the au to make sure he doesn't get to bored. nightmare has to be nearby though so "the shadow creatures" don't attack killer.

Dust has only been in the burrow for about 6 months. please help this man he is so lost. what is this place and who are these people, who knows! why is this weird slimy skeleton creature keeping him hostage? he sure doesn't know. all he knows is that at least he isn't trapped in a loop anymore.

(star sanses)

Dream doesn't know what happend to his brother. he holds onto the hope that maybe he is alive out there somewhere in the multiverse but ultimately has no idea. he made friends with blue and ink and helps them protect the multiverse from all the other dangers to the multiverse because the gang wouldn't be the only one. Dream doesn't really know of his position as guardian... no one knew... he's just the guy that was also that statue Blue found in that weird desolate au.

Blue has been a sort of multiverse guard since learning about all the au's. he always wanted to do somthing like this and finda the travel and protection of the denizens of the multiverse to be quite rewarding. though he makes sure to still spend plenty of time back in under swap with his friends and brother. Dream lives with him and his brother as he needed help adjusting to modern society and stuff. Blue has a bit of a fued against nightmare as he is attempting to figure out where he keeps coming from and why he is randomly attacking people, nightmare has not been much help in this regard.

Ink id just there because Dream and Blue are his friends. and their adventures and "quests" they go on is fun and he likes spending time with them. nightmare doesn't really care about ink. Ink can just sort of watch him do stuff and he could not care less. Ink takes this opportunity many times to draw the weird goop creature. Nightmare is a little intrigued by the fact he cannot sense any emotions from ink.

(other stuff)

this au is mainly focused on how nightmare is able to slowly find himself after the corruption shattered his mind. which he is able to do somewhat. he will never be the same though.

Dream and nightmare have an interesting relationship. neither know at first that the other is their brother. Nightmare doesn't even remember having a brother beyond a vague collection of fragmented memories and sensations. but Dream definitely feels familer... and nightmare wants to know why. Dream can sense there is something familer about nightmare as well.

for anyone reading this feel free to ask any questions. it is how i share more about an au :D this ramble is just skimming the surface of lore and stuff >:3

[zeraphiimm]

to be honest i have been really bummed i cant get any drawings done lately. i am working full time now and its just made me realize how slow of an artist i already was. looking at all the freetime i do have, it just doesn't feel like free time anymore. for some reason i thought having allotted time to draw during a busy week, would help me grow as an artist and push me to do things faster, but well it really has done the opposite. Instead of finally sitting down on my off days to draw, its driven me to sit down and worry and worry and worry about trying to get something out and then ultimately fail and give up and go oh well, theres always next week. and then i get stuck in that loop of well i can't do anything today, maybe I'll do something tomorrow. um well i dont know if theres something wrong with the way i work or if im growing up and realizing i have to chose between making art or working. Misery.

[nathaaaan]

I just thought of something else for the AU from my last post.

If Anne gets tired of Amphibia, eventually, she’ll let the original story play out, then she’ll cross the portal with Sasha and Marcy, saying goodbye to Amphibia. Once she discovers there’s a story beyond the story, she’s almost delighted, and she continues to live through life, even when Marcy moves away and she and Sasha start to drift apart. It’s something new, and it’s exciting. The only downside is that she has to go back to school. 🤮

This next part though… it happens a few years down the line. Either as an adult, or late teens, but someway, somehow, somewhere, Anne finally comes clean—telling Sasha and Marcy that she’s a God, and that she’s been reliving the same memories again and again. Some good, some bad. I don’t know how Sasha and Marcy react to it, but it rubs off on Anne negatively, and she nearly breaks the world again, but Sasha and Marcy tackle her before she can, telling her to stop.

Somehow, they get Anne to calm down, and they tell Anne that…. They’ve known the entire time. Anne may remember it all, but Sasha and Marcy know snippets of what happened each time because of their connections to the gems, remembering when Anne opened that box and they landed in their respective areas. They were actually relieved when Anne didn’t erase this world when their adventure was over in Amphibia.

(They were still driven by their motivations, like, Marcy wanted to stay and Amphibia with her friends, and still makes a deal with Andrias and stuff. Sasha still tries to take over Newtopia, blah blah blah. It’d be funny, but even The Core remembers because Marcy remembers. They see their death over and over again, but they don’t know how to stop it, and they can’t comprehend it either, so they’re extremely cautious around Anne. The idea of killing her is more compelling than it was in the canon. But it’s not like a fake God can kill a God.)

Anne feels extremely guilty and apologizes a bunch, explaining that she accepted the role of Guardian, not thinking about how mortal lives end. And when she saw Sasha die, she realized just how much she wanted them to stay alive, and the only way of doing that was making sure they were young forever. Even if it meant playing the same game over and over.

This can end really good, or really bad.

Marcy and Sasha encourage Anne to continue living this life and leave the space time continuum alone. It was okay if they died because that’s how life is, and Anne would still have those good memories during the rest of her godhood. Anne will either accept these words, and let live continue. Watching as everyone around her slowly grows old and dies…

Or, she’ll go behind their back and erase this world again. Right back into the loop!!!

[carefulfears]

okay the hank & mia ask i've been struggling with: i genuinely have no real thoughts about this show, just intense feelings. like i truly love it, all the characters and relationships, but especially these two. and i just wonder at all the ways they're similar. i always go back to the scene on the balcony

i have intense feelings about this show too and a hard time articulating so many of them, this topic included. it's funny because this is something that i've talked about absolutely non-stop for coming close to a year and have broken down from seemingly every angle and i still don't know how to pull it all together or what to say, where to start. most people who would care have heard me run the talking points through a thousand times over.

they asked duchovny this question too ("is mia at all similar to hank?") on the season 2 DVD and i literally hopped out of my seat when i heard that in my longest "i've been saying" ever, because it's something that i find very interesting and emotional but that i was a little surprised to find was as intentional as it is in the text. one of the first times that i talked about it was this tweet: "they're very similar people and it drives me crazy...when you have a dead mom, an absent dad, and you act out by putting yourself in dangerous disrespectful sexual situations."

and i used the word "disrespectful" because there's a quote of duchovny's that always reminds me of mia: "hank's lack of respect is really for himself, not for anybody else." which i think is an insightful observation about mr. moody and his relationship to women and culture and himself, but that also relates a lot to this idea of "acting out" and of sexual encounters as infringing on something personal. which is an experience familiar to that of a young woman trying to develop those relationships and sense of self, during a very spongy time where it's easy to infringe upon.

and so yeah what i'm saying is basically that hank moody has the constitution and coping mechanisms and vulnerabilities of a teenage girl (or as i put it in this tweet: "he has abandoned 16-year-old girl swag")

or how duchovny answered when they asked, is mia at all similar to hank, on the DVD: "you kinda know that there's...that her behavior is being driven by some problems, you know, and you wanna reach out and try to help that. and i think hank has a little of that too. you know, obviously they've got a history that makes everything complicated. but i think that he feels paternal towards her more than anything."

or how madeline zima put it: "mia is a wealthy girl who has had every luxury and is now probably really bored. she's been touched by hank's writing- it may be the only time she's been affected or stimulated in that way. so she's looking for something new, something exciting, and she finds that. and i don't think hank has found many people who are on his wavelength."

mia is the only character on the show that can really go toe-to-toe with hank and match him and never waver to him, which is why she's so diabolical to a certain demographic. they even call it out in the show: "did you see how completely unfazed she was by hank? i mean, no offense, he's a cool guy, but it was kind of pathetic, right?" (dani to charlie after the book meeting)

the only times that hank ever really surprises her or throws her for a loop or catches her off guard is when he's genuinely investing in her. (like when she's struggling in her writing class and he tells her that he'll help her if she just writes something and lets him read it, her eyes go SO WIDE when she has the "really? you'd do that for me?" line.)

and for the most part, outside of the obvious, mia doesn't surprise hank either. he is the only person in the world who really knows her and what she's doing and what her life is like.

we were talking in the group-chat the other night about the scene in season 2 when karen says that mia asked her opinion ("it was like she was kind of asking my approval") on dating an "older man," a scene that's one of my favorites of the series and such a delicious example of dramatic irony.

hank is instantly on offense ("i hope you shut that shit down immediately." / "why would you say something like that?" / "that's foul." / "this gross 'older man' thing.")

while karen is so much more relaxed and talking about her own times in college and how it can be a "valid life experience" with "the right guy."

and what i love about this scene is that they aren't having the same conversation, they aren't talking about the same thing, but so much of that difference is what we said: karen thinks that mia is her, hank knows that she's him.

the kind of dynamic that karen imagines when she hears her 17-year-old stepdaughter who is about to graduate and travel the country say “older man” is a world away from the reality that mia actually inhabits, and that hank knows about. as jaden pointed out when we discussed it, when karen finds out that mia is having sex with lew ashby, she freaks the fuck out!! she goes and throws shit at him and yells and cusses at him and rants at him about how she’s a child. (and hank has the nerve to go “you’re the one who condoned it” during their “parental units” phone call L.M.F.A.O.)

karen tries to look after mia and be there for her (“we are meant to be taking care of her”), but they have such a strained relationship always. and she really isn’t equipped, especially as kept in the dark as she is. it’s honestly really sad the way that you can tell mia regrets pushing karen away.

but hank knows her. he says it himself in mia culpa: “i know you. you’re a mischievous little fuck, but you’re not malicious.” (in the same scene where he tells her that she can do better than her exploitative boyfriend, that karen loves her, that becca looks up to her. holds her hand when she tears up)

and they’re able to say anything around each other. it’s this twisted thing where no one else knows their secrets. i was thinking about the other day, how duchovny always says that his favorite thing about hank moody is that he always tells the truth, and his favorite thing about mia lewis is that it’s the one time he doesn’t. it’s this pervasive exception to a rule that bonds them. the most devastating thing about it all, to me, is that there comes a time when you realize that there is no one else looking out for this girl. there is no one else who looks at her teacher and knows there’s danger. there is no one else that she feels she can call to come get her when she’s in trouble. there is no one else to read her writing or ask where she’s going when she leaves the house. (“my own father has never so much as helped with my homework” / “my dad’s always out of town, i don’t think he cares about my whereabouts”)

but they can tell each other and joke with each other and ask each other (loser shit for grown ass mr. moody but still). one of my favorite moments is when the print review of “mia’s book” comes out and she hops on his bed to wake him up so they can read it together: “it’s our review in the times!” (so much talk and discourse over her stealing his manuscript, it’s their story, it’s their book.)

in more ways than one, considering that both books (hank’s “modern day answer to lolita” and mia’s “nabokov meets judy blume”) are responses to their big secret that they intend for the person closest to them to read. hank is heartbroken when karen won’t read his new book, and we know from charlie that all it takes is “the first page” to figure out the truth. mia wants her dad to read hers, and when he calls it a “fantasy” about hank, she nearly blows the whole thing when she gets upset and snaps “who said it was fantasy?”

these are ultimately two people who want to be seen, who want to be understood, who want to be taken seriously- and they both put that pervasive truth on paper then immediately in the hands of the person that they each should fear ever finding out. it’s the defining moment of their lives, and they both try, and they both are still left with just each other. (what a trap it can be when the person you relate to the most is the most regrettable thing that ever happened to you)

it's these circumstances that lead to the scene on the balcony, my favorite of the series. they haven't seen each other since the arrest. she's back in town for the trial. and everything is so awful. each character is so much darker and weighed down. and every single time that we see mia in season 4 she's drunk or drugged or crying or all of the above.

it always makes me sad to think of her at 16 or 17 or even 19, joking around and being her "mad as a hatter" self, and then to see her on that ledge. hollywood's latest victim.

in a couple of weeks she'll be shaking in a court room, looking over at him from the witness stand, but for today she's on the balcony. remarking how easy it would be to just let go, just fall off. and still, no less tragically, there's only one person to come get her, and know what to say.

"you know what we need to do, mia?"

"what's that?"

"we need to forgive our fucking selves. you understand?"

[givemeanaccountalready]

Points of Origin & Paths to Take (Part 1)

1

Milgram sure does love its pairs, and boy do I have some thoughts on the matter. Namely, what I think connects each pair of prisoners and predictions for their third trial videos (and Kotoko’s second trial song since Mikoto’s second video just dropped).

I am not the first person to say this and I won’t be the last, but I think I figured out how the prisoners are paired: it’s under the broadest definition of their underlying motives. And unsurprisingly, their motives seem to guide the path they take at Milgram. I was worried that Mikoto’s “Double” would throw me for a loop, but it’s confirming my feelings instead.

All of the motives seem to be driven by the absence of something in the prisoners’ lives that led up to them committing their respective murders. This is how I think the motives are paired:

Haruka and Yuno: the absence of love

Fuuta and Muu: the absence of connection

Shidou and Mahiru: the absence of knowledge

Kazui and Amane: the absence of authenticity

Mikoto and Kotoko: the absence of accountability

These definitions are a bit broad but I will explain in each section. For each pair, the motives start out along a central idea, and then branch out in different directions that foil each other in some way.

Haruka & Yuno: the Absence of Love

"If you forgive this sin, you're as good as an accomplice / I'm alone and lonely, please give me love"

"I feel emptiness inside me, we agreed to seek each other out / I wish I could do something about it, FUTURE!"

-"Undercover"

(I feel like I said a lot about Haruka already when I did my 'Haruka is Peter Pan but not the Disney one' comparison a while back.)

Haruka is the easier of the two to pin down for this motive. The line played over Haruka's introduction in "Undercover" says it outright. It is also clear during the first trial that he wants to someone to love and take care of him even though he sees himself as bad or useless. Haruka craves affection, and in turn, validation. Despite Es striking him, Haruka can’t stop smiling because Es has focused their attention on him and swore that they wouldn’t be scared off by what Haruka did. That they are going to focus on him until the very end. I think this is probably when Haruka decided that Es would serve as his new mother figure. Es has promised not to leave him; unlike his mother, who did leave him behind when Haruka became undesirable.

During the second interrogation, Haruka admits that he killed his victim to get his mother’s attention back to him, thinking that she’d love him again like she used to. Before this, Es had pointed out that there still are two trials left to go and asked why Haruka is acting like he has been fully absolved. Haruka is rather volatile during this part of the interrogation, and accuses Es of bullying him. He then goes on to revoke Es’s status as his mother and gives the title to Muu. Es, like most people in their shoes would be, is confused and asks what the fuck is Haruka going on about. Unbeknownst to Es, his promise to Haruka and his forgiveness from the first trial solidified them as Haruka’s new mother figure, and Haruka is now taking condemnation for what he did as Es behaving as his mother did. He is not doing this betrayal shit a second time. Muu and him became close during the inter-trial period, and since she still likes him even though he still perceives himself as a useless, good-for-nothing, she now gets the mother title. Now, I don't like Muu but for her sake, I really hope this doesn’t come back to bite her in the ass. Prisoners cannot fight while Es is awake, but Muu loses that protection once the second trial is finished and Es falls asleep again. I doubt she'd cut ties with him if he doesn't succeed in killing himself to avenge her Guilty verdict, but I could see her accidentally making a throwaway comment that could trigger his volatile side.

Yuno is a tad harder to pin down because heaven forbid our girlboss say it outright like Haruka, but I do think the absence of love in her life led to her choices both before and during Milgram. I don’t think she was abused or intentionally neglected like Haruka was (he is at least the latter), but I do think she was trying to find herself by becoming a sex worker. Let me explain, I don’t think Yuno loathes herself and did sex work to fill a void of some sort. I think she wanted to explore different facets of herself, enjoys sex and dating, and decided to make a little money off her unorthodox journey of self discovery. Yuno does not care what other people think, and she seems to be trying to find the version of herself that she likes best.

“Teardrop” emphasizes her not caring about external validation. Yuno does not shy away from what she did before coming away to Milgram and is angry when the audience tries to take her autonomy from her by saying she had no choice or was manipulated into it. Her actions were her choices that she made because she wanted to. She chose to put on a mask and be the girl each of her clients wanted, and she’ll spit in the faces of those who say her sense of self was so weak she was easily manipulated into. She's stated in both of her interrogations that she does not care if she is condemned for what she did, but she does care about losing her agency.

Yuno is perceptive and socially intelligent. While she may find wearing a mask for too long to be bothersome (like when she talks to Mikoto about letting his guard down and being less self-conscious or breaks the happy-go-lucky act in her first interrogation), she understands the reasoning behind them (she know why Kazui lies so much and that there are people like Kotoko who take their first impression of someone as infallibly right which could spell harm for her). She knows sex work, adultery, and the like are looked down on and that society tends to come down harder on those scandalous things compared to other acts, so her sex work is hidden. (I’m not sure if Yuuko Kashigawa is the alias she gave to just the doctor who performed her abortion or the name she used for when she was with clients).

So, what does this mean for Trial 3? We know that the prisoners’ next song depends on the previous trial’s verdict. Haruka went from Innocent to Guilty while Yuno received her second Innocent verdict. Neither are going to be pleased. Haruka will be angry because he’ll see it as another betrayal by Es, while Yuno, might still see the Innocent verdict as Es continuing to not take her seriously/not respecting that she is a person capable of making her own decisions.

If you compare their Trial 1 songs to their Trial 2 songs, both Haruka and Yuno become more explicit about what they’ve done. And the explicitness seems to be in response to how they interpreted their Innocent verdicts.

In “Weakness” we get to see teenage Haruka kill something offscreen with a rock. Young Haruka is horrified by the blood on his hands, but the blood is censored by crayon scribbles. The most violent thing we see is Haruka strangle his younger self, but we don’t see him finish the act. No bodies, human or animal, are in his first music video. He seems ashamed of what he’s done. The Innocent verdict seems to validate him (which he seems to take as love), and so jn “All-Knowing All Agony” he doesn’t hide what he’s done. We see him launch a chair through the fish tank and watch them flop on the ground. We see animals that he has presumably killed, ranging from butterflies to dogs. We see him stand up and beam while the things he’s killed litter the ground, and for a split second at the end, we see him strangle somebody. Our “love” gave him a kind of strength he didn’t have before and now he’s excitedly showing off what he’s done. He’s like a little kid showing off his new skill for the adults. I think in Trial 3, Haruka is going to take his Guilty verdict personally and I think he’s going to try and win back our “love” (pity) by showing how he got so screwed up he ended up killing someone. He equates pity with love and validation with acceptance and encouragement, so I don't think he'll close himself off from Es, and by extension, us, entirely. He killed to win back his mother’s love, you think he won’t show worse to win back ours?

As for Yuno, “Teardrop” is her middle finger to the “poor girl” assumptions people made. It’s as if she’s saying, “Oh, you love the ideal me so much, right? How about now? Do you still love me, or just your overrated, ideal me?” We see her accept money in return for her services and dressed in lingerie, we see her in several scenarios where it is implied that she either had or is about to have sex with a client, we see her show off those different facets of herself and stand proudly beside them. Unfortunately, at least with the Western audience, she’s been met with a resounding “Girlboss, slay queen” rather than the condemnation she wanted/expected for showing off her true self. She’s going to be even more pissed with us and she is more likely going to be even more direct so the other shoe can finally drop (get the rejection she expects to receive).

These are just my thoughts on these two and what I think is going to happen next. That’s a lot of spinning my wheels for just these two, so I’m going to be breaking this thing up into segments. Next up is Fuuta and Muu.

2 / 3 / 4 / 5

[guerrerense]

Tunnel District, Southern Style por David Blazejewski Por Flickr: Here's another in this continuing Steam Sunday series presenting sequential shots from this location featuring my most memorable experience shooting 'The Queen of Steam', Norfolk and Western Class J 4-8-4 611 during her round trip from Spencer to Asheville and return via the S Line and the famed Old Fort Loops across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Though she traveled this route many times during her first excursion career in the 1980s and early 90s this trip would turn out to be her one and only time traversing the route during NS' short lived 21st Century Steam program revival. I missed her first rebirth in the 1980s and early 90s and fell in love with her when I watched one of the first railroad programs I'd ever seen on TV...National Geographic's stunning 1984 production, Love Those Trains. She had a brief presence in that show along with other legendary sights of railroading that I had no idea then that I would someday get to see for myself! If you're at all curious and haven't seen that classic program it is a available on YouTube here: youtu.be/JhD-V2tXlYg But I was too young when she was retired for the second time in 1994 and promised myself a few years later that if she came back for a third life I wouldn't miss her! And indeed I didn't. I was there in Spencer when Wick Moorman turned the ceremonial first wrench on the turntable at Spencer in 2014 and then again in 2015 to see her first revenue run as she stormed the Blue Ridge on 'home rails'. But the best show ever was the following year when she made this trip from Spencer to Asheville via the NS S-Line and the famous Old Fort Loops. We hiked in on the Point Lookout Trail to this spot between High Ridge Tunnel and McElroy Tunnel. In these views I'm an shooting railroad east as she marches first through the 589 ft Lick Log Tunnel, catches a splash of sunlight then approaches us through rhe short 77 ft long McElroy Tunnel. This is a legendary eastern mountain railroad that was little remarked except by a dedicated few. I always wanted to visit this place and made it on two occasions....and I'm glad I did. Because in May of 2020 thanks the closing of the Linwood hump as part of the continued PSR driven traffic changes all through trains were removed from this route leaving only the daily round trip passage of the Asheville to Bridgewater local, which itself lost most of its traffic with the closure of the massive Canton paper mill in 2023. But seven years ago there were still two daily pairs of trains that traversed the length of the route along with occasional unit trains, extras, and re-routes. The line is generally flat from Salisbury 111 miles west to Old Fort where suddenly it meets the thrust of the Blue Ridge Mountains and climbs 1000 ft to the Eastern Continental Divide at Ridgecrest, elevation 2535 ft. The top of the grade is only three miles as the crow flies from Old Fort, but it takes about 13 rail miles to get there. There are seven tunnels (including the 1832 ft long one at the summit) on the line and grades as steep as 2.9%. The train is seen here approaching MP 121 as it makes its way thru the second and third of five found in a mini tunnel district in the span of about 1 1/2 miles. Completed by the Western North Carolina Railroad in 1880 the route ultimately came into the Southern Railway fold and was an important through route for nearly a century and a half. But now times have changed and the future is uncertain. However, the state of North Carolina has longed to bring passenger rail to Asheville via this route, so with the shift of freight traffic away now may be the time. I'm confident the rails here will remain, though the main focus of their economic utility may shift. Only time will tell. To learn more find yourself of a copy the September 2006 issue of Trains magazine with a fabulous cover story on this line by the late Jim Wrinn. For a good map detailing this remarkable stretch of railroad check out this link from Trains: cs.trains.com/trn/b/staff/archive/2016/01/19/trains-chase... McDowell County, North Carolina Wednesday May 28, 2016

[sweetchcolate]

I know both series have already started, but between Doctor Elise or 7th Time Loop which one do you like the most and also have you read their manhwa and light novels respectively?

Ooo tough question tough question!

Mind you, I read 7th Time Loop (the LN) around late summer 2023 or not too long after the anime was announced, while I read Surgeon Elise (the webtoon adaptation) about 2-3 weeks ago, so the latter is fresher in mind. Keep in mind that a lot of what I will say is also subjective and up to personal taste.

tldr: I prefer 7th Time Loop best. If I had to sum things up simply, I started reading Surgeon Elise for Elise and stayed for Elise (and Linden to an extent), whereas I started readin 7th Time Loop for Rishe and stayed for Rishe, Arnold, Theodore, Rishe's previous lives, the intrigue and the world building.

More under the cut for details:

Imo I prefer 7th Time Loop because it does a great job of balancing and progressing its plot, its world building and its interpersonal relationships.

Rishe is a wonderfully competent, sharp, and kind female lead. It's always a surprise to see how Rishe'll react to meeting familiar faces, and her dealing with people she knows from previous lives (yet who aren't quite the same as she remembers) and it makes you excited to see what's next. Trying to gauge how much of herself and her knowledge to reveal and how much to keep under wraps is also part of the mystery and the charm.

But the characters who surround her (Arnold, his brother, the people from her previous lives) are just as interesting and important in the story. They all shape the world Rishe lives in through their actions/words, and their existence has repercussions on the story.

On the other hand, the most developed characters in Surgeon Elise are Elise herself and Linden (which makes sense, they're the main couple, so of course both parties will get developed). The other characters kinda take a back seat or only serve a purpose for early plot points before kinda... being forgotten? For example, in early Surgeon Elise when she's doing volunteering at the hospital, Graham is lauded as a medical genius and prodigy and is meant to serve as a way to measure/showcase Elise's prowesses. He supports her early on, but is quickly pushed to the side once Elise progresses past his skills (he does show up again during the war arc, but his role is much more minor to the point you could write him out without missing much).

(In other words, if you gave me a bonus chapter focused on Graham or other side characters in Surgeon Elise, I guess I would read it, but if you gave me a bonus chapter focused on Theodore, Michel, Kaine, etc, I would devour it asap).

Another element which 7th Time Loop does incredibly well is the world building: it plays a very important part in everyone's lives instead of just being relegated to the background. Political, religious, geographical and economical considerations all come into play because they give rise to the obstacles Rishe and Arnold must face while also shaping the solutions they come up with (this makes more sense if you've read V3 or V4 of the LN). However, it's all introduced gradually and always tied with new characters (so let's say if chara X from country Y shows up in the story, Rishe will give a brief description of that country and its ties/importance to Galkhein), so it doesn't feel like a lore dump.

You couldn't just swap country X for country Y, because each country is unique in its geographical location, its environment, its natural resources, and its relations to Galkhein and other neighboring nations.

To be fair to Surgeon Elise, the focus of the story is on Elise herself and the advancements she brings to medicine, so there's not quite as much place or importance for her country's internal or external policies compared to 7th Time Loop. It's a much more self-contained and character-driven story, so the span of the world buiding is also more concise and focused on the roles/classes of the immediate people around Elise (for example, her brother getting circumscribed in the war because he's a noble in order to bolster the army's manpower)

(In other words, take out the lore in Elise and you wouldn't miss much, but take out the lore in 7th Time Loop and there would be a lot of holes/missing pieces).

It's important to note that I've compared 7th Time Loop the LN to Surgeon Elise the webcomic. It's very possible that some of the things I found lacking in Surgeon Elise is because of its medium (I suppose a webcomic has less time and space to go into details into characters's personal motivation, backstories, world building, etc than a light novel), but the story was still cute and entertaining enough :P

[rockinracket]

It's Kind of Like...Oh, You Know!

Stepping up as Art Director when you’ve never Directed Art

By Gwen Hall - Art Director of Rockin' Racket (2023)

What's in an art style? That which we call a raccoon by any other name would look just as sweet – or so I thought, working alongside three other artists with Pop Punk Paws Productions, LLC to create Rockin’ Racket, an angst-filled, story-driven, band-management simulator (releasing this Spring, 2024! Shameless plug). As Rockin’ Racket was conceived just last September, we’ve seen the game grow from more than just humble beginnings. The project was born from a pair of designers – me, a writer and artist, and my coworker, a sound designer semi-proficient in Unity – with no other people to worry about onboarding. 

Starting strong with no thought of onboarding and the assumption that we would both jump ship, our duo scuffled through months of troubled time management and lacking project production. However, these things started to patch themselves up as we pushed through our first round of pitches presenting to fellow game designers, Indiana University faculty, and industry professionals: representatives from Herringbone Games, Freehold Games, and Mommy's Best Games. Things were looking up for Rockin’ Racket…aside from the fact that we were now looking at an additional year and a half of content creation. For a larger team with a more coordinated game plan – pun intended - less of a problem. For our team? We swiftly fell back into the weeds; back to the drawing board, I went.

2023 has been a time of development for the art team, especially in the Art Bible and Style Guide department. I grew up during the Renaissance of “Art Instagram” and Tumblr networking, where art style was EVERYTHING. Creating a set of rules for a style entirely fabricated for a game – for other people to copy, at that – was a large and exciting task. It also meant defining what I mean when I say, “2007 Fall Out Boy meets Scott Pilgrim if Scott Pilgrim was Lemonade Mouth, and also the board game Root”.

That's what our game looks like, duh. Isn't the image so profoundly clear? Of course, these things are not actual rules. During the first pass of concept art and asset production, not even I knew what *that* looked like, and it existed in my mind! Putting my nose to the grindstone, how do I define what something looks like with hard and fast rules when visuals aren't enough? What does “soft” mean? What differentiates “textured” from “grungy” from “nasty”? For the love of all things, what brush do you use???  

Working alongside the Pop Punk Paws Prod. Art Roadies (isn't that a cute team nickname), I realized a few things that would help us along the way.

Reference, Reference, Reference! Whether something is based on fantasy or reality, there are rules to how it moves. Create references for the rules of the world so we don't have anthro nudists on accident. “Don’t”s are just as helpful as “Do”s, if not moreso.

The best designers steal – I mean, take inspiration – from things they love. New things are an amalgamation of old things, making them a collage of ideas. Keep those ideas pinned somewhere safe! If not “official references”, at the very least they'll keep a team on track for the final look. Is the art channeling “2007 Fall Out Boy” yet?

Communication is key, and what better way to communicate with artists than in a visual medium? 

Paint-overs are never personal. Yes, “fixing” art is controversial because creating is a personal practice. On a project, however, it’s about the unification. It’s the same idea as proofreading; paint-overs help us all improve!

Touching base with non-artist teammates helps keep everyone in the loop, especially the teams who might never touch the art aside from implementing it.

Art Directors make art. When I entered a leadership position, I assumed my primary responsibilities as “Concept Artist” would leave in place of “Creative Director”. That’s not true! If anything, it means more art. That’s a good thing!

Art Directors mean Art Direction! Thoroughness is helpfulness in nearly every case. Deadlines, deliverable lists, critique, technical specifications, and teamwork. One can only get away with so many “bshdbsjd(2).png”’s before we start tripping over each other.

At the moment, I am not an industry veteran (YET!), so take my words with a grain of salt. It is safe to say that these notes may be obvious now, but were not as obvious to me before my experiences on an art-focused team; maybe this will help an eager artist gather their bearings while diving headfirst, onboarding-prep-free, into a project.

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