#and i didn't even know about it until i did a random google search!

[dollypopup]

hi, I'm sorry, but I'm freaking out because what do you MEAN someone bookbinded my fic if i'm butter (then she's a hot knife) and it's BEAUTIFUL!? and it's MASTERFUL? and it's making me CRY!?

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gaze upon the absolute thoughtfulness, creativity, and BEAUTY of this bookbinding! the siblings represented as the tablespoons of butter? the net weight being the word count? the 'Penelope is 24, and this love' quote from the last chapter? the grade being the rating? the yellow pages!!!! I am SOBBING this may be the most gorgeous artwork anyone has ever done for my work, and I'm just so humbled and gracious and floored over it. please give her some love because this is a masterful bookbinding.

[ippipo]

self aware caleb

part 1 | part 2 | part 3

it was crazy. but it was fun. every weekday as soon as you were back home, you would call him and go about your day. doing the laundry, making dinner, cleaning the house, it just came to you naturally with caleb. it was all so domestic.

"yeah, and she was deranged the entire summer," you gossip with him. "and he kept spreading rumours that he was being abused by his ex to get her attention."

"weird way to get a girl," he remarks. "so fucking weird," you add.

"anyway, how's life in your gameland?" you ask, earning a sigh in response. "it's alright, playing out of script is so much better," he replies.

"i wish you were here," you let it out, the longing for a companion getting to you. "me too," he frowns.

the weekend was slow and slightly relieving because you got all the time in the world to relax. holidays were on their way in a bit, and you were so excited to spend it by doing nothing with caleb.

caleb would sometimes monitor your phone, using it to listen to music from your world and play games. sometimes he would search random things about humans on earth on google just for the sake of it. he couldn't care less about anyone except you.

but one day, he stumbled upon your notes app. he didn't know you used it as a journal, and accidentally opened a note of yours.

it was a note from when you were 13. the language wasn't too advanced but for a 13 year old, it was pretty great. he felt bad for invading your privacy, but he noticed the word 'boyfriend' and became curious.

p.s. this is an actual entry of mine from when i was 13 lmao

"dear notes (idk what to call you lol),

i finally got a boyfriend after a thousand years of waiting. he's a little ugly but he's funny, so it's okay. he is shorter than me but he looks pretty, so plus point. we nearly kissed today but i wanted to wait until i turned 16. but in case i end up realising he's too boring for me, this is what i want in a boy.

he should be taller, hotter, stronger, and waaaay more intelligent than these bozos at my school. please make him rich and fancy. i want generational wealth, not trauma. but even if he isn't rich, don't make him ugly and boring, guys at school already do that. if the spirits can see this, i swear to never kiss anyone until i turn 18,

thank you."

he was giggling like a school girl after reading it. he was so invested in reading some of your other notes until he heard your voice. you were arguing with someone, and he couldn't help but eavesdrop.

"no, i told you that i don't like her. she gives me the heebie jeebies," your voice booms in the room. "but she taught you in 6th grade, be nice and just meet her. her son is your age too, maybe you'll finally find someone to date!" an older woman's voice spoke.

caleb felt uncomfortable with the idea of you looking for someone to date. it didn't sit right with him. he shakes the thoughts away and focuses back on the conversation.

"her son is literally dating my friend," you deadpan. your mom, as he assumes her to be, is dumbfounded. "but be respectful and meet her for the love of god," your mom snaps at you. "she used to literally pick on me, if she died, i would wish everyone a happy new year," this remark of yours makes him snort.

".....y/n, do you have a pig in your house?" your mom questions you suspiciously, making caleb freeze. "no? uh...that was just- i farted!" you immediately cover up. caleb was trying so hard not to laugh. "i keep telling you to exercise to control gas but you never listen. did you know how happy i felt when you left for college because i didn't have to bear with the constant farting at home?" your mom nags.

you panic internally, not wanting caleb to hear about this part of your life. you wanted to crawl into a coffin and bury yourself alive. "it's just a natural process, mom. please, just go home now. i need to complete some work."

as soon as your mom leaves, you pick up your phone. "now listen here you piece of shit, you heard nothing, not even a single damn word," you aggressively tell him. "yes, ma'am," he responds from the other side. "but, i recently heard about someone having a farting problem, although i don't know who."

"caleb!" you warn him. you bury your head in your hands from the shame. he laughs out loud at this.

a few minutes later, he remembers what he did, guilty consuming him. "hey, uh, listen," he nervously calls out. "i might have accidentally read your notes, i didn't mean to. i'm so sorry," he frantically apologizes. great, another reason to kill yourself today.

"...what did you read?" you ask helplessly. "just something from when you were thirteen, about your boyfriend and stuff," he replies casually, as if he didn't just read about your inner demons. "it was cute," he remarks.

"caleb, my love, snoop around the notes app again and i'll make sure you don't see the light of day," you threaten him. he apologizes again, but was slightly amused. "i just hope nothing more embarrassing happens after this or i might just jump off the terrace," you groan.

later that night while caleb was once again, unfortunately curious, snooping around your phone. he was just finding out about different apps. he was about to listen to some music when he heard a gasp. alarmed, he began paying attention to the sound, thinking you were in trouble.

"oh, fuck!" you moan out loud when your vibrator's intensity increases. your body convulsing at the stimulation your clit was receiving. your soft gasps were ever so clear to him. his entire body begins warming up, his pants making him uncomfortable.

he intently listens to your whimpers and whines, imagining how it would be to eat you out. devour you fully and deeply till you're nothing but a beautiful mess, all because of him. his boner getting more painful as time passes by, but he just can't stop listening.

it gets worse when he hears your moans getting louder, indicating your climax. good lord, he was so in trouble right now.

if you knew he could hear every little sound you were making, you might have just gone along your earlier statement.

[steddieas-shegoes]

Hi! This may be a dumb idea, so feel free to ignore it.

I am a firm believer that Steve would have a flinch response of some kind to the word bullshit because of Nancy and would love to see him work through it? And all I can think of is the card game? So if someone (Eddie) had noticed his reactions to the word and tried to help him through it by having the gang play the game that would be cool? Especially if Eddie noticed pre-relationship, helps Steve through it, Steve figured out what he was doing, and by the end they’re together?

Once again, if this idea is dumb you can ignore it, I won’t be offended!

:)

THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! I kind of changed it up a bit because I didn't really think Steve would be super comfortable with everyone being involved because none of those kids know how to just let shit go and he wouldn't want them to look at or treat Nancy any differently. I did have to google the game because it's been a solid 10 years since I've played and I was probably not sober when I did 😂 Hope you like what I did here and will send more requests if you haven't already! - Mickala ❤️

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He’d gotten over it. He told himself he was over it. He convinced himself he was over it.

But he heard Nancy tell Mike it was bullshit that she always had to cover for him with their parents when he stayed out past curfew, and it was like she was spitting it in his face instead.

He visibly recoiled, the air in his lungs suddenly rushing out of his nose.

Nobody noticed, but it took him a minute to catch his breath, to focus back on the fact that Nancy wasn’t talking to him, wasn’t calling him bullshit.

—--

But then bullshit became Dustin’s favorite word and Steve didn’t know what to do about it.

He jokingly started saying “language” every time he said it, but Dustin was a stubborn kid, and Steve was too in his head to actually commit to getting him to stop.

He threw it around like it was nothing, and to him, it was nothing. He hadn’t had someone he loved call him bullshit.

He started to find reasons to avoid giving him rides. He would pick up extra shifts, pretend he fell asleep early, say he had a migraine. It all worked.

But he didn’t notice how Eddie started to get suspicious that he was now Dustin’s ride to everything, that Dustin was starting to worry that he’d done something to upset Steve, that Steve was ignoring everyone.

Eddie knew he had to talk to Steve alone, maybe get high with him so his defenses were down a bit, and find out what the hell was going on.

But Steve was good at this, avoiding people.

He was never completely alone at work, always a coworker or customer keeping him too busy to talk. He never answered his house phone anymore, and even though they all knew he was listening for the radio, he ignored that too. Eddie tried just showing up at his house at random times when he knew he wasn’t working, but he either wasn’t home or was doing a great job of pretending to be asleep.

Until he got lucky and caught him as he was walking out the door one morning, probably not expecting anyone to be awake this early and standing in his driveway.

Steve startled, but pasted on that fake smile that Eddie hated.

“Hey, Eds. Didn’t know you were stopping by. Everything okay?”

“I dunno, Stevie. Is everything good?”

Steve gulped.

“Everything’s fine.”

“That’s good. I just figured I’d check since you practically went invisible on us for the last three weeks. Dustin’s considered sending Hopper for a wellness check.”

“Oh. I’m fine. Just busy, ya know?”

Eddie searched his face, already knowing he was lying.

“That’s bullshit, Steve.”

He watched as Steve curled into himself, probably not even realizing he was doing it, and confirming at least some of Eddie’s suspicions.

“What’s going on with you?”

Eddie wasn’t leaving until he had answers and he certainly wasn’t about to let Steve hide away.

The kids missed him, Robin missed him, Eddie missed him.

Steve looked like he was fighting back tears when he looked back up at Eddie.

“I’m sorry I’m bullshit, it’s all bullshit, and I can’t make it better, make me better.”

“What? Stevie, you’re not making any sense.”

“I keep messing everything up. Even when I try to be better, to be good, it doesn’t fucking matter because I’m still bullshit..”

And now he was crying.

Shit. What the hell?

Eddie didn’t waste any time, stepping into Steve’s space and wrapping his arms around him, pulling him into his chest and making sure he had a safe place to cry.

He got the idea that Steve had probably never had a safe place to cry before.

He slowly walked them back into the house, frowning further when he realized the front door wasn’t even locked. Was Steve actually leaving his house unlocked? After everything they’d been through, he guessed maybe a regular old robber was the least of his worries, but still.

He managed to get to the couch in the living room, slowly sitting down and pulling Steve down next to him.

Steve wasn’t crying anymore, or at least he was being much quieter, his tears soaking the shoulder of Eddie’s shirt so much it was hard to tell if more was being added.

“Stevie? You’re not bullshit.” He felt Steve flinch against him, but continued. “I’m not sure who told you that you were, but you can’t let that control you so much. You’re the best guy I’ve ever met besides Wayne and I’m still thinking he’s just the Patron Saint of Patience.”

Steve let out a small snort of laughter and Eddie considered that a win.

But his brain was still going 90 miles a minute, thoughts running laps in his head as he thought about something Robin told him a few months ago.

She didn’t tell him any details, would never betray Steve’s trust like that, but she’d mentioned that any chance of Steve getting back with Nancy had been left in the bathroom of Tina’s party.

Eddie, despite what most people thought, was pretty intelligent. He could usually connect dots even when the lines between were spiraling to other dots as a distraction.

So this particular line between what Robin said, and what Steve was saying now about how he was bullshit, suddenly connected in his mind.

“Did Nancy say that to you?”

Steve pulled away, face suddenly blank.

“It wouldn’t matter who said it if they’re right.”

“I can’t believe I thought you were still in love with her this whole time.”

“What? No. I haven’t been in love with her in years.”

“Why are you even still friends? She really said that to you?”

“We’ve moved on. We were both going through a lot and she didn’t mean it.”

“I hate to say it, Stevie, but it doesn’t seem like you’ve moved on at all.”

“What do you mean?”

Eddie watched as Steve tried to work it out on his own. Eddie loved the face he made when he was confused. He loved every face Steve made.

Snap out of it, Munson.

“Well, if hearing it in passing upsets you so much that you avoid your entire family for weeks, you aren’t over it.”

He let that sink in, watching as Steve’s face went through all the stages of grief in less than a minute.

“I’m not avoiding everyone.”

“Steve, you are. And I’m sure everyone will understand if you just explain.”

“I’m not doing that.”

“Okay, then you can just say you had a busy few weeks and now you’re not.”

“Dustin says it a lot.”

“Says what?”

Eddie knew, but he needed Steve to say it. He needed him to stop associating that word with himself.

“Why are you gonna make me say it?”

“Because you need to stop thinking it’s an adjective that describes you. You’re the farthest thing from bullshit.”

Steve flinched again, but recovered quickly.

How long had this been happening that no one noticed? How long had Eddie not noticed?

“Alright! I have an idea.” Eddie got up and went to the closet in the hall that held all the stuff for when the kids came over. Movies, tapes and records, extra blankets and pillows, changes of clothes, books, school supplies, cards. Eddie grabbed the closest deck of cards and walked back to the couch. “We’re gonna call Robin and we’re gonna play a game.”

“What game?”

“Bullshit.”

Another flinch.

God, Eddie felt so stupid for not noticing this sooner, not putting the pieces together earlier.

“How will that help?”

“Because you’re going to hear the word so much, and we’re going to have so much fun, that you won’t be able to think negatively about it anymore.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

That was a possibility. It could end up making things worse, causing more stress for Steve. But if there was anything he learned from his months of therapy, it was that exposure to something negative enough would leave you feeling indifferent to it eventually.

“If it doesn’t work, you can push me into the pool with all my clothes on in the middle of winter. Deal?”

“Fine.”

They shook on it, Eddie letting his hand linger for a bit too long in Steve’s, only letting go when Steve raised his brows at him.

Eddie called Robin, who was not thrilled about having to get out of bed on a Saturday before ten, but did it anyway when Eddie explained what it was for.

She’d finally gotten her license two months ago and her mom let her use her car on weekends, so she promised to leave as soon as she was dressed.

Eddie immediately called Dustin, just to let him know Hellfire was off for the day and to tell everyone. Dustin threw a fit, said it was bullshit, said he can’t just cancel with no intention of rescheduling, and Eddie hung up on him.

He’d have a conversation with him later.

Steve had gone upstairs to change, said he wanted to be comfortable for this and his jeans and polo weren’t really lounging around clothes.

So Eddie waited for Robin, and he waited for Steve to come back downstairs, and he thought about how much he hated Nancy Wheeler in that moment.

He’d gotten close to her when he was trying to graduate. She helped him study so he could pass the finals he needed to, even without being able to be in class because of being stuck in the hospital for so long. He helped her pack for college, offering up his van as a thank you for all she’d done to help him. He called to talk with her weekly.

All this time, she was at least some of the reason that Steve had negative feelings about himself.

Sure, Eddie could guess that his parents had a lot to do with it too, but this was somehow worse.

He’d trusted Nancy.

Steve came down just as Robin was walking in the front door, bag of chips in hand.

“It’s nine in the morning. I can cook breakfast,” Steve said to her.

“Nah, chips are a necessary staple for card games no matter the time.”

No one argued with her as they sat around the kitchen table.

Eddie dealt the cards out, explaining the rules as he went, though they all had played before. He added a rule though.

“Every time someone calls bullshit on Steve, we have to say one thing that we like about him. Good with you, Robbie?”

Robin smirked. “Perfect.”

Steve didn’t argue, probably because he knew he wouldn’t win against them, so they got started.

The first round went pretty smoothly. Steve ended up never having to lie, and nobody called bullshit on him. He barely flinched when Robin called it on Eddie the first two times, and didn’t at all the third time.

But the second round started and Steve was not having any luck. He got away with his first lie, but he knew Robin could tell he got away with it and she wouldn’t be going easy on him next time.

Next time happened to be his next turn.

He placed down the card that should’ve been an 8, but was actually a Jack. He confidently said 8. Or thought he did.

“BULLSHIT!”

He felt his hands shaking, but he did his best to ignore it as he turned the card over to show she was right.

It was bullshit.

“I love that you always try to show interest in what we all like even if you don’t really like it. Like when El started crocheting and nobody would help her understand the instructions, but you sat with her for hours while she worked it out and helped read the instructions to her when she had her hands busy.”

Eddie was smiling and nodding along like he agreed.

“That’s just what friends do.”

“Maybe. But none of her other friends were doing it, were they?”

Yeah, okay. Steve nodded and they moved on.

But his luck was long gone now, and his next card had to be a lie too.

“Bullshit.” This time Eddie called it.

Steve was doing his best not to cry, but something about hearing that pointed at him from Eddie made him feel worse.

“I love that you always hug the kids. Saying hello, saying goodbye, when you’re proud of them. You aren’t afraid to show them affection.”

Eddie was giving him a fond smile, but Steve couldn’t do anything except nod.

He couldn’t say that Eddie’s plan was really working, but maybe he needed to give it more time.

He made it through the rest of that round fine, not having to lie again, and only having to call bullshit on Robin once.

But their next round seemed to turn into them calling it on him every turn, regardless of if they thought he was lying or not.

“The way you make us all feel important.”

“Your laugh is contagious and it’s fun to see how easily it spreads through the group when you get started.”

“You always have dinner for us when we come over, and it’s always so good. Like you’ve spent the whole day making sure it’s perfect and you want us to enjoy it.”

“You never let us face anything alone. We can always rely on you to be there in whatever way we need the second we need you. No questions asked.”

Steve still flinched every time they called bullshit, but it was getting easier to move on from it and hear their compliments.

Finally, on Steve’s last turn, Eddie called it on him.

He watched as Eddie glanced over at Robin, then back at Steve, blush coloring his cheeks.

“I love that you hold my hand when we’re smoking outside because you know it helps me stay grounded and not get lost in my thoughts too much. I love that if I fall asleep on the couch, you cover me with a blanket and lay down next to me so I don’t wake up alone. I love that you always pack an extra cookie in your lunchbox just in case I visit you at work. I love that you put your entire reputation on the line to make sure I got the best care a person can have in the hospital, and even after with the physical therapy and regular brain therapy. I love that you keep finding ways to show me that sometimes popular and mainstream things are okay.” Eddie gave him a more confident smile. “I love everything about you.”

“That was more than one,” Steve said breathlessly.

“Yeah, hard to pick just one thing when I love you this much.”

“What?”

Steve was so confused. Eddie had been nice saying the things he did before, but this? There was no way he meant it.

Not the way Steve was hoping he did.

“Can you two just kiss before I puke?” Robin complained.

Eddie looked at him, a surprisingly calm smile on his face.

“Only if Stevie wants me to.”

“Mhm. Yes. Please do that,” Steve rushed out, not sure what the hell was happening, but not wanting to wait for it to change.

Eddie was up from his seat and kneeling in front of Steve in seconds, one hand on his knee and one on his cheek.

Steve wasn’t breathing. He was barely even able to focus on Eddie on his knees in front of him.

Eddie leaned in slowly, giving Steve a chance to back away if he wanted to.

But he didn’t want to.

He wanted to feel Eddie’s lips on his more than anything.

And he did.

They were surprisingly soft, but firm and demanding, making sure Steve followed him instead of the other way around.

He could distantly hear Robin eating chips, but didn’t bother to tune in to whatever she was complaining about, just enjoying the sensation of having Eddie’s lips and hands on him.

It did end though.

“You know what’s bullshit?” Steve asked.

Eddie’s eyes widened in question.

“The fact that we have to stop kissing.”

Eddie let out a loud laugh and leaned in to kiss him again.

“You know what’s bullshit to me?”

“Hm?”

“That you ever thought for one second that you weren’t amazing.”

Steve blushed, but looked at the way Eddie was looking at him.

Like he loved him. For real. No bullshit.

[maggplays]

Bio? Something like that.

How did I start modding? Literally no one has asked this, but here's my story, don't worry it's not long... I guess that depends on what your definition of “long” is, haha! Hang on, here we go.

On a random day in January, 2024, a few days before my birthday, I might add... I woke up to stars in my right eye. A few days later, I was told I had a very rare injury and it would never heal. Those are not words an artist/gamer wants to hear! Long story short, I am now legally blind in my right eye. If you think, oh that's not a huge deal, you can still see. Humor me, get a cheap pirate eyepatch, put that on, then pour yourself a cup of coffee. Not as easy as you thought, right? Depth perception. It’s a thing. Anyway, on with the story. Suffice it to say, I was depressed. Majorly. Then, through some random conversation somewhere, I found Stardew Valley.

Perfect! 2D animation, cute pixel art, story that's not sugar-coated anime, I love it! Got to year 3, TBH I've never played past year 3 because ADHD, and realized the dialogue was quite lacking. Then I discovered mods. What the-, it's a freakin' goldmine! Downloaded a lot of things, mostly dialogue, and tossed half of them. While playing through a Sebastian run, I saw it. Oh. My. God. It's a coding error glaring at me in my dialogue box. This is NOT acceptable. I tried to ignore it, but then it happened again. Okay, time for some investigation. I opened the folder and found... json files. Interesting, I wasn't entirely clueless since I do know HTML code from back when the internet was a baby, Facebook had no ads, and dinosaurs roamed the earth. Okay, okay, the internet was more like a spoiled toddler. Yes, I'm old. Shut up. But I digress. It didn't take long to discover the misplaced punctuation and go on my merry reality-avoiding way. Until I got bored again.

I looked for more Seb mods, but there were like seven. Three were yandere, not my jam, and only 2 were updated for 1.6 and were dialogue-only. Solution? Make my own mod for myself. I spent six weeks downloading mods, learning code, Googling to very little effect, writing dialogue, learning how to make an event, discovering I knew nothing, and on and on. The perfect distraction from the whole eye thing. I finished a decent draft, loaded it up, and praise Yoba, it worked! And on we play. At some point, I saw a comment complaining about the lack of Sebastian dialogue mods. Huh, yep, they're right. Too bad. Oh. Well, I guess I could load this thing I made, it's really just my own internal story monologue while playing the game, I'm NOT a writer, and most people probably won't get it. But I did spend a lot of time on this, and maybe someone out there will like it. Heck, no skin off my nose since it's free. So I took a deep breath, made peace with my inner demons, and threw it out into the void of Nexus, expecting it to be swallowed up and ignored. That... didn't happen.

In the first few hours, several people downloaded it. Huh, Nexus must have a decent search algorithm. That was literally all I thought about it. The next day, 300 downloads. And comments! Mostly positive with the exception of one wild demand I subsequently ignored. At one week, it had 3,000 unique downloads. I was floored, 3,000 weirdos downloaded my mod. Add to that, people seemed to actually like it! I've never gotten so much positive feedback for anything in my life. Seriously. Apparently, my oddball internal monologue, thanks ADHD, is quite entertaining. Heck, might as well make another one... and here we are. Yes, I've gotten negative comments and unreasonable demands, but I do my best to ignore them and practice staying positive. Trolls be damned! It's a lot harder to do that for yourself than for other people, turns out.

So, bottom line, found something interesting? Try it! Does it make you happy? Keep doing it! Even if it's only for yourself, do the thing and let it make you smile. Share it with the world if you're so inclined. Get out there and kick ass!!

[bruh-anator3000]

CAT-astrophic

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A/n: *pushes rock I live under over and peeks out of the black abyss* Hey, have you guys seen a Car Wash Miguel fic anywhere? I don't know what happened to it but it's no longer here. Might've escaped... anyways, watch this cat for me while I look? Thanks. And don't mind the hot homeless dude who talks to him, they're bonding. *returns into the depths of the void*

Summary: A hot dude won't stop talking to your cat, it's kind of freaking you out.

WC: 1.7k, edited by google docs...

Pairing: Miguel x GN!Reader

Warnings: crack fic, Spider-cat's real name is Sir Jeffords bc i said so, clueless reader, pro outdoor cat (i'm not actually, keep ur cats safe pls), future-ish?, accidentally snuck in some world building, in Lyla we trust 🙏, Miguel in tight clothing bc I also said so, and wait wtf are you doing with a dead rat miguel, AND WTF IS THIS WHITE STUFF DUDE?!

Also no Spanish bc I've done some research and those who do speak it have asked non-native speaker to avoid it, to prevent bad google translations and maintain respect!

Okay, enjoy~

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You were about to head in for the night when you were not tripped by your cat for his dinner. After a quick search around your apartment, you sighed upon realizing he was still outside. Shrugging on a coat, mismatched slippers, and grabbing a flashlight, you went out to look for him.

Plenty of people told you to keep your cat inside. That it was vital to their health to keep them safe indoors. There were plenty of articles stating the cons of letting a domesticated cat roam freely outside with no supervision. They were also written 80 years ago. The world has changed since then, drastically.

Sure, it would still be smart to keep Sir Jeffords inside. Less late night searches for him, no more worrying if that scratch on his right paw was from running too fast along pavement or something worse. But he came from the life of an alley cat, and no matter what you tried, he had to be out there for a few hours a day. Last time you tried to stop him, he went under your radar for three days. You had a panic attack, worried he didn't love you anymore, but he did eventually come back. Chipper and eager, and he made sure you left his cat door unlocked.

The streets were cleaner than 80 years ago. The people were kinder. The city more accommodating to everyone, even stray animals. Sir Jeffords was mirco chipped, and even if it didn't work for tracking half the time, the shelter folks could scan his neck and drop him back home.

There were no pounds or pest controls anymore, just volunteers who helped poor animals stay warm. And find whoever left them in the streets. It was a crime to leave them now, resulting in 6 months of detention if caught dumping your animal friend into the alleys.

Jeffords was a smart cat. He knew what he was doing. You trusted him. In the event of something bad happening, you made him swore he would come find you right away. Though he couldn't speak, his tail wrapping around your pinky seemed solid enough.

You called out his name, followed by a few 'pspspsps's to really seal the deal. Your flashlight shining in the darker corners of the streets he may be hiding in. Cats and their dark, unreachable corners, Sir Jeffords fell victim to any cozy spot he could barely tuck himself into.

It wasn't until a few blocks away, a little past the bank, when you heard a meow. Very similar to his, you quietly sped your pace, wanting to grab your kitty and go home. The closer you got, it seemed more like he was responding to someone else more than you.

"-and your service is always appreciated." You heard a deep voice whisper. Their voice a grumble echoing through the alley they hid in. "You're one of our best." Your brows pinching together, you turned the corner of the bank, flashlight illuminating your fluffy orange cat. Who was rubbing up against the shin of a random man.

He looked up at you, eyes darkened as he blocked your flashlight with his large hand. They almost seemed red as he stayed squatted, Sir Jeffords head butting his knee. His face pure sharp angles, with a scowl permanently in place. His black shirt a tight, compressing fit. Clinging to each muscle and vein in his arm, stopping halfway down his bicep. His calves just as impressive. His shorts doing nothing but making him look even hotter.

Wait, no. This was a random man, he wasn't hot.

You lowered the light and gave an awkward smile. Seemingly unimpressed, his hardened gaze turned back to your cat. "He's yours?" He asked, voice rumbling low in his chest. With a nod, he added, "He's... cute."

Okay, maybe he was a little hot.

"Right?" Your smile smoothed into something more natural. "He's the cutest cat to ever exist." You lowered yourself down onto your knees with a soft baby call. Sir Jeffords trotting into your lap happily, orange fur swaying with his steps.

Your hand ran through his silky fur. Tension easing from you as you held him close again. Though his three day disappearance had yet to happen again, you still worried. He was your precious baby, after all. The one you shared everything with, and he never once judged.

Your fingers caught on something sticky, stopping short of his lower back. Pulling your hand away, strings of white followed, sticking to your fingertips. The feeling moist and far too clingy for comfort. A disgusted shiver ran up your spine at the horrible sensory.

The man stood then, tossing a tissue at you as he did. His gaze stayed on your cat, never faltering. He pushed his dark hair away from his face, still scowling.

Glancing between your hand and the man that now towered over you, you almost gagged. This wasn't... his, right?

"It was the rat." Like he read your mind, the mysterious stranger held out his other hand. A dead rat laid in his palm.

"That... doesn't make me feel much better." You suppressed another full body shake, quickly wiping your hand off. This guy may be extremely attractive to look at but the longer you stayed there, the more uncomfortable you got. "How would a mouse... And what is this?" You felt yourself getting sick as you held the tissue out, the white stuff now sticking to the paper instead

"Webs. And, it's a rat." He stated with a straight face. More angry at your confusion than anything. "Chased him through some spider webs."

You let out a soft 'oh.' But that didn't explain why he was holding onto the dead rat.

And he let it stay that way. Instead of reading your mind like he had been this entire time, he just... walked off. With a dead animal in his grasp. Without a word.

Your confused gaze turned to your cat, knees beginning to ache from the pressure of concrete beneath. Sir Jeffords purred into your stomach loudly.

"You're not allowed to hang out with that guy, ever again."

...

"Christ!" Miguel tossed the rat at the wall, hearing him curse. The small animal glitched into a grown adult, body morphing sickly. "That..." The villain panted, rubbing at his neck. Bruises from how tightly he was held already forming there. "... was not what I was expecting."

Miguel squatted back down, balancing on his toes as the hologram of regular clothes shifted back into his suit. "You chose to become a rat, in a world whose Spider-Man is a cat." He slammed down a disk, red netting encasing the fool. "That was your own fault."

"It was the only way I could get into the bank!" The villain squeaked. Miguel tuned out almost immediately, eyes turning to his watch. Setting the portal to his universe, and making sure he wasn't needed elsewhere. He entertained the villain in a tacky grey suit with distant hums and 'oh, yeah, uh-huh's. It was best to just let them get it out of their system then try to shut them up.

"And I would've gotten away with it, too! If it weren't for you and your cat!" The shape shifter writhed in the nets.

"Sound like a damn Scooby-Doo villain." Miguel stood up with a huff. He would never admit it, but Hobie used the term so often, he had to look up what he was referencing. Only to end up watching the first few seasons. He had to stop around the third season, a sick sense of deja vu hitting him with a bat. The cartoons reminded him too much of the daughter he never really had.

With a sigh, "Lyla," He called.

The AI appeared before him, wearing a shit eating smirk. He opened his mouth to command something else when she beat him to it. "You should've asked for their number."

"What?" Miguel's head snapped up, eyes wide.

"They were cute, should've asked them on a date." She glitched to his side with a teasing laugh.

"Lyla, I... no." He grumbled, flicking at his watch.

"Oh, you know?" Miguel tried to smack her away, only for her to reappear on his left shoulder. "You should go back, then."

Miguel glared at her, ignoring how the tips of his ears began to burn. "I can't, its-"

"Not a canon event." They said at the same time. Lyla rolling her eyes behind her heart-shaped glasses, Miguel focusing on creating a portal. "You're such a loser, you know that?" She huffed and puffed, spawning with her back turned to him.

He tried to reach out with a heavy breath, but she moved further away. This time sitting with her arms crossed and pouting.

"They were cute." The villain nodded from his fetal position on the ground. Earning a glare from the two. Shrinking further into himself, the shape-shifter apologized.

Miguel thrust his forearms forward, his mantis blades catching on the fabric of time. Ripping them apart with a grunt. Orange and purple twisted in front of him, and he grabbed a hold of the red netting the anomaly was in.

"Meet me back at HQ," He spoke to his AI with a nod. Foot already in the portal, he turned to cast a menacing glance at Lyla. "And do not try anything."

She held up her hands in defense, watching the portal close behind him. It wasn't like she even had to do anything - not anymore. She already slipped his multiversal number into the collar of Spider-Cat. All that needed to happen was you either found it, or it fell out. Lyla just had to wait to see which option would be canon.

~~~◇◇◇~~~♡♡♡~~~◇◇◇~~~♡♡♡~~~◇◇◇~~~♡♡♡~~

Check out my Masterlist!

[louisisalarrie]

Often, some antis/solos do not realize how much the narrative surrounding Louis's fatherhood is manipulated to attract the public. From the moment the child was born, their meetings have been widely shared on social media and through the press. And the other moments together were recorded to be sold in a film. Many of these moments seem perfect, but the reality can be very different. Louis appears to want to show himself as an exemplary father, but there are aspects of the situation that are beyond his control and tell a different story (like the "boobiegate" and the fact that the child didn't have health insurance). Moreover, he and his family (and obviously B's family too!!) have not always respected the child's privacy, despite the public discussion on this topic. Sometimes, it seems that these situations are exploited for personal ends rather than prioritizing the child's well-being.

The difference with Zayn and Liam's children is stark. We’ve never seen their faces; they protect their kids’ privacy and don’t use them as a means to sell something or cover up issues. Sometimes, I even forget they’re parents. Louis, I hate to say, has built his entire persona around being a father in recent years, and it’s been a foolish move because those who have really followed him know that he hasn’t seen that child more than once a year for many years. I don’t want to blame L, of course, as I believe the real victims here are L and little F (I can’t even imagine how many traumas that child might develop to this situation, and I hope they’ve taken the right precautions).

This outburst was just to show how untrue this story is, which is portrayed as perfect when in reality it’s just a collection of poorly managed situations and moments of false perfection created deliberately for sale.

Thank you for the big chat here anon, and yes, I very much agree. If you google search for Liam or Zayn’s kids, you get very little photos of them. I too forget they have kids lol, they’re rarely in the spotlight. Also, those kids were from long time relationships. Pretty sure Zayn and Gigi ended things like less than a year after Khai was born, but they were together for quite a while. Same with Liam and Cheryl (big fucking yikes to that woman), they broke up about a year after Bear was born. And neither of those kids have been pushed into the spotlight even close to how much F has been - which was from a drunk one night stand.

When we talk about the image of one direction, and the individual boys, you’d be really quickly covering up a kid being born from a drunk one night stand (horrible image for their demographic), but celebrating kids that were born out of longer term dedicated relationships (yes I’m aware Khai and Bear were born after 1d though, but point still stands). It’s such a different thing, ya know? BBG did not help with louis’ image whatsoever, and was a total smear campaign, and was never meant to end with an actual child. It was meant to end with a DNA test and a see ya later. The foreshadowing was all there, the articles seeding the end, everything was very clear until all those articles that claimed he was seeking a DNA test just kind of… disappeared.

So, 23 year old heartthrob boyband member has a drunk one night stand, gets a random chick pregnant, and that’s announced to the world? Come off it. Also such a weird announcement and tension and just all around awkwardness about the whole situation from everyone involved.

So then louis and B/family posts a bunch of photos of this kid’s face, and how good louis is for sticking around to be a dad to a kid he had as a result of a one night stand. And wow, what a good guy! He trusts people so much he refused to get a DNA test! He’s taking accountability! Annnnnndddd a bunch of pap pics from leaving the hospital and nonstop content of this kid for 9 years. It’s embarrassing. It was scandal that, rather than be celebrated, would’ve been swept very quickly under the rug if it were true. But they used it as a closeting tool and it was never meant to go this far. Preeeeetttyyyy sure it was originally to be with Eleanor anyway.

And yeah, Louis has had kind of a poor image at times, so he keeps up the good dad image so that’s something the fans and gp can justify. But god it just would’ve made sense to be like “yeah Louis is a part of F’s life and he’s there for him” and then we just don’t see the kid again. You’d still have the argument that Louis can go near a vagina without vomiting. But, alas, he signed on with SC for a little while after 1d and therefore gave up more image rights etc.

I’d kinda understand continuing this baby thing if 1d were still active together because it would be there to balance out Harry’s sexuality and the way they interact with each other onstage. But since they’ve been solo, they’ve kept it up, gotten timelines wrong in AOTV, have his sisters post a kid’s face on Instagram a million times, and just have him far more in the spotlight than he should be.

Also, this most recent time is just… fan service. There’ll probably be an article or two if we get a photo of him with the kid on holiday, but as of now, there’s nothing really for the gp. They better be gearing up to an end or something though - maybe a final push to everyone that he’s a good dad to solidify the positive image ready for public empathy and sympathy and then drop the bomb?

(Also I adore your final paragraph here, this was all very well written. Thank you for the chats!)

[hislittleraincloud]

More Random Bitching from a Tired Gen Xer

...Am I just missing the pics, or did Emma Myers not show at the Emmys the other night?

I mean, y'all RPF Jemma ppl make a big deal about how they're so close n' all...but it's weird that we would see the little J meet up with the Core 4 the other night at the gala, yet...

Don't gimme the excuse that she wasn't personally nominated, Joy Sunday (BIANCA! BIANCA I LOVE YOU GIRL, I'M TRYNA BRING YOUR CHARACTER SOME JUSTICE 😭) was there and she wasn't personally nominated either.

Loved her classy outfit, too:

I just love her 😭 I love Bianca so much, the show really needs to not just let her storyline die. But with this whole "I'm promising more action and horror!" thing, I have little faith.

LOOK AT THEM. I LOVE THEM. I LOVE THEM MORE THAN WENCLAIR.

The Addams Family was comedy and satire. It was never meant to be gory/horrific. Even in the 90s movies, the gore was more comedic than horrific (e.g. the school play where Wednesday and Pugsley sprayed everyone with fake blood...or when Wednesday electrocuted Pugsley (that was off screen)).

Maybe that's just another reason why Ortega irritates me. The way she talks about the Addams Family makes me wonder if she ever even watched any of it before she opened her mouth about wanting to change it. She had to have watched some, since she incorporated OG Wednesday's dance moves (then again, you could find that with a simple Google search).

I dunno, maybe I'm overly sensitive to the negative stereotypes of 'goth' or 'weird' people (which is what they are, they're weird, not necessarily all goth) being associated with horror and violence, and that's what ticks me off. There's far too much violent shit in the world, why must it permeate our entertainment so much? Put out something that makes us laugh and has heart, and smack it up with a little gore. That's all we really need. Fandom can do the gore thing for ya, bb (and trust, fandom can do horror and gore better than these shitty Mummy writers). Don't Sabrinafy this IP. I will be so painfully disappointed if that happens that I'll probably disregard an S2 that has too much of a dark tone change from S1.

I will say one thing, as an honest fic writer/writer: I wouldn't put it past the writers to make Donovan a big part of the problem. Without any goggles on, I can say that Sheriff Galpin is anti-outcast (despite playing cozy with his Addams in canon, until the beginning of Episode 8). He's actually the one who put it into Wednesday's head that "Maybe it was one of your classmates." at the beginning of Episode 2 when he knew full well that there was a possibility of Tyler being the same kind of monster that his mother was.

My (non-goggled) hypothesis is that Sheriff Galpin suspected that the murders were Hyde related from the beginning because he most certainly had to have seen something similar happening when Francie was turning and killing. And McShane's expression once the Hyde photo had developed on its page was one of confirmation, rather than surprise or fear. I think it was right at that moment that Galpin knew it was Tyler.

Lots of crap that Wednesday comes up with happens to be wrong, like when she opens her mouth in front of Weems with "How long have you known...when I gave you that claw from the cave, did you already know?"

Yes woman, because you suck at looking through photos or looking at a photo that the man compared Xavier's drawing to the second you gave it to him.

But I digress, I was talking about Donovan.

Watch the writers make him into some kind of Goodmen-like douchebag, since he doesn't like outcasts. I'm going to hate that if that happens, because deep down we know he doesn't totally despise outcasts, having married one and--despite openly grumbling about them to Noble--he was open to working with one...the daughter of his enemy, no less. (Though the OG script has him calling Francie a liar, so maybe she didn't tell him.)

Bleh. What was I talking about? Ah yeah, Emma Myers being absent for Jenna's loss. Ah whatever...at least Bee was there. Afterburn Bianca will get her justice, hopefully.

[golbrocklovely]

i screen shot your ask just bc it was super long and i wanted it to be a bit easier for ppl to read your ask and then my response, so i hope you don't mind !

as for your opinion about the last video being somewhat scripted…. i don't really agree. but let me explain. first and foremost, there is too much riding on snc constantly telling the truth. if they were ever caught lying or faking evidence, they would lose their career. obviously there would be fans that stick by their side no matter what, but a lot of the fanbase would dip out if they thought snc were truly faking shit. and it would call into question every single investigation. so unless you believe that they also scripted/faked other videos, i don't think they would start now. and especially not at some random location most ppl have never heard of/isn't as popular as some of the other places they go to.

tbh, i think this was just a severe lack in research. snc aren't exactly known for doing the most thorough research on these places. prime example being the winchester house. it took until their third visit to finally find out that sarah winchester wasn't a crazy lady building room after room like a sims game. they believed what the caretakers said but also what the legend or folklore was, bc that's a lot more interesting than the real story. so, personally, i believe that snc just took the caretaker's word for this place and did no research after it. last time snc talked about having a team, they said they had one person that would help them with research, and with the amount of places snc go to, it might be easy for that one person to get a little lazy at times (or possibly they might not even have a person anymore since they haven't mentioned a researcher in a long time).

now, is it possible that celina knew and then embellished on the story? yeah, i guess so. i don't think that's impossible. but correct me if i'm wrong, bc i don't feel like going back and rewatching the video, but i thought she was saying that ed shot himself thru the top of his head, not the side (like the actual reports say). that way it would look like someone killed him, not that he killed himself. that way the murder could be placed on the doctor - according to celina's theory. i thought that was what she was pointing out in the drawing too. that it was a guy pointing a gun down at his head from the top and blood was running down his face. i might be misremembering so if i am, my apologies.

also if i'm completely honest, and sorry to snc if they ever see this, i don't think they are smart enough to script something like this. and i mean that with respect, even if it doesn't sound like it lol writing out a story that makes cohesive sense is very difficult - take it from the fanfiction writer who also majored in film and theatre in college. and that's a lot more difficult if it's based off a place that has actual evidence that point to the contrary. if snc were the first to go there, and there was little to no reports on what actually happened, they could kinda make shit up and no one would really know. but clearly it's a quick enough google search to know what the reports really said. i think they just took the caretaker's word for it and didn't give it much more thought. i also kinda think they just don't have the time to do it. bc again, this would assumingly not be their first scripted video (bc why start now, especially when you have so much proof that you don't need to script things to be entertaining?) so then that means how far back did they start? and if so, when they were pumping out multiple videos in a month, they were scripting those too? and since they collab with so many ppl, nobody - not a single person - has let it slipped, even on accident, that they script things?? it all relies too heavily on too many ppl keeping their mouths shut and snc don't have enough money to be paying off that many ppl sksksksk

if you really feel like snc did script this video, that's fine. you're allowed to think that. i don't personally believe they did. i think they just didn't research this place enough bc it wouldn't be the first time they got information wrong.

also i did the quickest and laziest of research aka i just googled the mansion, and the wikipedia page even says allegedly committed suicide so….. it might be possible that snc were trying to figure out did he actually do it or was he killed and then they just worded everything incorrectly. this also doesn't explain how celina knew if assumingly she didn't google anything beforehand. idk, either way i still don't think they scripted it. but if you disagree, i get why. i just don't think it would make sense for them to do it.

[mcalhenwrites]

Are they named after trees and plants and such? Idk seemed familiar

Some are, yes! :D Long post ahead. :') So simple explanation but dragons are keepers/protectors of their region, which could be a section of a continent or an entire planet. Depends on the dragon's experience and size of region/planet. Now, humans have sometimes named dragons, and those names stick. Humans don't know about all dragons, so you'll have some with more complicated names. Tessa's name? Not her actual name! No one would be able to decipher it. ;) Here's a conversation between Niven and Tessa:

          “Did Methla teach you how to talk in human tongue? And what is your real name?” Nearly all the humans who had ever heard the language of dragons lived thousands of years ago. Not even priests and priestesses could claim they had ever heard it.

          She responded to the last question first, using a guttural noise that filled the air like the rush of a waterfall. Niven had to clap his hands over his ears. Despite that, he grinned.

          “And yes, I learned your language from Methla,” said Tessa casually as he lowered his arms.

          “Humans could not speak their names, and so placeholders were found.” Niven paraphrased the common knowledge all children learned in the nursery. He giggled. “Does that mean you didn’t know we called you Tessa until Methla told you?”

          Tessa snorted so much that it created small waves in the water in front of her. They lapped against Niven’s rock stack.

          “It’s a simple name, yes. So is your language. It has had so much time to evolve, and yet you have not the words for some emotions, no word for the tickle of a tail touching scales.” Her lips curled into what must have been a dragon’s smile.

Anyway, humans sometimes go with "what a dragon seems keen on" too. One of my dragons, Dirkka, likes... Dirks. Swords. Knives. Sheathes. (Dragons, hoarding? Yes haha~) Mind, he's equally touched when humans offer him sentimental items of no monetary value, like their children's first cut locks of hair. My art post included Bircha, for instance, and the birch tree influence. I'm glad I finally got to draw him. That led to a funny convo with a friend, who didn't know the word for birch tree in English but still sent me a picture of birch trees to say Bircha reminded her of them. :') Afensi isn't really in a fen, but it's a marsh-like area, and I came up with a name around "fen" easiest. Mydas is interesting, because if you look at his design and hop on google images to search "mydas"... okay wtf I'm getting bugs now, I'll add "sea" - AH THERE WE GO:

(Apparently google has figured out I like to identify bugs, so that must've skewed my results.) Mydas is the name of the planet he built, and the seasons are divided by sea turtle breeding patterns. (Which aren't super realistic, based on my research, but it's a fictional world/that's the system I wanted.) I also have Tempra, who looks over a region called the Spicewood, and it is a temperate rainforest! So yes, location/plants/etc usually do have a lot to do with their names. Just not for all of them. There are a lot of planets. Dragons have had planets destroyed on them (main plot of The Hostile Credence, and it's an unfortunate ending to the planet the first story, The Will of the Whispering, takes place on) and have to rebuild, or they go work on a new one, what of it? Their looks often change if their tastes do. :') They're basically a bunch of artists having a blast with building planets in space together. They also make space highways by the time humans start traveling in space. :D Some are named really affectionately, I think that's where Affie's name comes from. She's about the size of a bobcat, maybe slightly bigger, and just walks into random houses in her region and spends the night. Basically like a neighborhood cat that no one owns. She accepts wine offerings. So drunk aunt cat who crashes at random houses? (They love her, and she's one of the most commonly seen dragons on that planet, whereas others are elusive. No one actually knows Vionne exists.) I love talking about my dragons so much, sorry for the huge reponse haha

[orlissa]

The newest episode* of Getting Published Might Not Be So Hopeless After All

*As if there were earlier episodes

I finished a book the other day--it's a recent publication (came out last month), currently at 3,61 on Goodreads with nearly 6000 ratings

It's titled My Roommate Is a Vampire, and the title just about tells you everything that you need to know :D

But in a nutshell: after spending the last century or so in a magic induced coma, our vampire main guy has a deep seated desire to be able to blend in in the modern world, so he places an ad for an unsuspecting human roommate. Cassie (our main female/POV character) is a down-on-her-luck artist currently being evicted from her apartment, so she jumps on the opportunity. Time goes by, not so much stuff happens, and they fell for each other. The end.

Literally. There isn't much else that happens in the book.

That being said, the novel is not without its virtues. The start off situation is funny, especially since while Cassie doesn't know that she is moving in with a vampire, even with the guy's erratic, but heartfelt behavior, the audience does, so there are a bunch of endearingly hilarious situations. I honestly thought this setup would make a great sitcom. Plus all of the chapters start with either a letter/letters, chat messages, google searches, diary entries, etc., which was a narrative choice I really liked, especially since it allowed a glimpse into other characters' thoughts beyond Cassie.

The rest is under cut, because it got long

But holy crap, everything else in this novel was so underdeveloped I can't even express. It was like that author had this fun idea, but nothing beyond it, but was still determined to make it work. Like the publisher saw the opportunity in the setup, and had an editor work on it with the author, but then accidentally ended up publishing the original manuscript before the edits.

The author never took the effort to properly work on the lore. Basically the whole "presenting the lore" part is the two main characters watching Buffy, and the vampire guy (who is named Fredrick J. Fitzwilliam, btw) saying that yeah, the show got some things wrong, got other things right, and there are like 2 examples. We never actually learn how he, himself got turned (or how vampires get turned, for that matter). Also, there is his "mother" in the story - is she his maker? His actual mother? Both? We never learn!

Not to mention his whole backstory. At the point I have to compare it to All Souls, since we have a guy turned into a vampire hundreds (thousands) of years ago, when he was in his mid-thirties. In All Souls (okay, that's a bit longer story, I know, but still, it would take like, what, 5 pages?) we learn who Matthew was in his life, what he liked, what he did, we learn about his family, his tragedies, how he was turned, and, as a vampire, grew from an artisan into a de-facto nobleman. Fredrick, in contrast, started out from a humble home (we never explore how he ended up with upper class demeanor), and apparently did nothing until he was turned in his mid-thirties. Apparently he had no job, no family... And honestly, why wouldn't a guy in his mid-thirties be married in the 18t century? It's just such a lazy job, such lazy writing.

Also, there a scene (there are a bunch of scenes, really, but let me use this one as a example) where Cassie takes Fredrick to a party hosted by her best friend (she has a gay best friend, of course XD), and he prepares by memorizing a bunch of stuff about Taylor Swift, because he did his research, and apparently she is very popular in this age group.

The problem here is that, once again, the author didn't think it through. Reciting random facts is not just odd, but it's like the guy has zero frame of reference--but it's not just he doesn't have a frame of reference, it's that his frame of reference is drastically different. If I wrote it, it wouldn't be just reciting facts, and haha, it is funny, because Taylor is a big deal and I'm resonating with the audience. Instead, let's have Fredrick compare her to the great singers of his era. Like "I read about this lady, and I'd like to hear her sing--what do you mean it's all recorded? And what about live? In which establishment does she sing? In a stadium?!"

(And, yeah, btw, Frederick is said to have been in a coma for a hundred years, but that would mean that he went to sleep in the roaring twenties, and yet he acts Victorian/Regency period, which is, once again *just lazy, unrefined writing*)

The big conflict is supposed to be that Fredrick mother wants him to marry some vampire chick, and he is against it all. I have some many problems with how this plotline is excuted. Like 1, the vampire chick (called Esmeralda for some reason, which somehow sounds really tacky) is never seen in person. She is literally a non-character. Also, throughout the whole book she is super adamant about wanting to get married, then suddenly has a change of heart off screen in the last chapter. 2, Fredrick pulls himself together at some point to go and tell the families in person that he won't marry her, and... he gets taken hostage. And held for days. Which we never see, because he is not the POV character. There is zero tension, zero stakes (not even, you know, the kind you kill vampires with). Cassie figures out after some time that she is missing, she writes an e-mail to his mother that if they don't release him she'll expose vampires on TikTok (wheezing), and then Fredrick mother just backs down and releases him and HAPPY END! Honestly... that's the whol conflict. The sex scene is written with more details.

Talking about sex (because of course there is a lot of longing, and talk about erections, and then a long ass sex scenes, which I did not enjoy, because by then I was done with both characters): when Fredrick is released, he has wounds on his wrists after being tied up, and he is like "don't worry, it's just my heart doesn'T beat, so my blood doesn't flow *like that* so I heal slower :)

Like... okay, listen to me here... if his heart doesn't beat... and his blood doesn't really flow... you know what is highly unlikely to happen, right? RIGHT?!

So yeah, it could have been a good book, but it's just So Damn Badly Written from a technical point of view that I just can't. Nope. I can't.

But if this can get published, then who says I or you can't?

[loaexmachina]

I personally mostly use searx. I checked 4get.ca, which I didn't know about upon reading this message; it seems good indeed. Tho it did make me pass an "IQ test" (more of a capcha) as it's apparently been target of bot abuse (something searx avoids by being decentralized).

Other engines I like to comment on : wiby is really fun to explore the web without any expectations, trying to discover small websites (they even have a randomizer link to help with that). Not for general use tho.

[mojeek(mojeek.com) I've so far found less efficiemt than google for finding specific things. I guess crawling the web isn't done in a day, gotta give them more time, tho i've added them to the list of source for searx.

Qwant, i've heard a lot about, and not just in good, it was fairly controversial in the 2010s:

In Europe, and particularly in France where it was made, it largely marketed itself as a fully European search engine, to break free from the monopoly of American tech giants.

However, people soon realized the results were exactly the same as those of Bing. Called out on it, the company admitted that it had struck a deal with Microsoft to use Bing's results as a basis until their crawlers had enough... Which is also what duckduckgo does, but the fact that they had hid it and the way in contradicted their advertised image meant they were soon seen as untrustworthy liars... Which is the last thing you want from an engine of which the other main selling point is privacy. This is why Qwant never really took off even in its domestic market, make of that what you will.

Before I finish, I'll elaborate a bit on searx, which Prev glossed over a bit quickly :

It is a meta search engine, for which there are many instances you can pick here and if there's a problem with the one you're using, you can go back and pick another. You can also create one, tho it's not something I've tried myself yet using someone else's instance also lets you edit the sources you take results from for each category.

[zorosmalewife]

Chain Reaction Notes - General

Want to know about my writing process? Want to see my POV style guides and areas of concern? Discussion of the writing of the fic, the writing of my notes, an old outline of the fic, and some other random shit under the cut!

As you all know, the last chapter of chain reaction that I wrote before the hiatus was chapter 9. I finished chapter 9 mid December 2022. I was working on chapter 10 soon after that, but my hyperfixation had shifted and I was more focused on other projects. That being said, I was still plugging away at chain reaction, and ended up finishing chapter 10 about 5 months after the hiatus started. At that point I had already decided not to post anything until the whole piece was completed, though, so it just lived quietly in my word processor.

Once again, I slowly worked on it in the background, and after a little over three months, I finished chapter 11. That puts us in early September 2023. I had started reading the One Piece manga around that time and it really inspired me to pick this piece up and try to finish it. By the start of November, chapter 12 was done, and I'd decided to take part in NaNoWriMo with the goal of finishing the fic by the end of the year. 10 days after finishing chapter 12, 13 was done, and I was really picking up steam. Two and a half weeks later I finished chapter 14. Three weeks after that I finished chapter 15. Eight days after that I finished chapter 16. Ten days later, I finished chapter 17. Three days after that, on January 19th, 2024, I finished the epilogue. After writing 50k in three months (a lot for me!) I took a nice long break from looking at or even thinking about the fic. Then, in late February, I started my final round of edits. I sent it to some friends and got feedback. And now we're waiting for my beta to check for grammar and other minutiae I tend to fuck up on my own.

Ultimately, this piece is 107k. Depending on how edits go, I expect it to end up pushing 108k, maybe more. That's long! The longest thing I've ever written, in fact! That's a lot to keep track of, especially considering that half of the fic was written over a year ago, so I kept a lot of notes, especially during the hiatus.

While writing the first half of the piece, all my notes lived in a single Google Doc. As you may remember, chain reaction is actually based on someone else's fic, so in the early days, the Doc was filled with a basic summary of that fic and what I was keeping, what I was changing, and what I was getting rid of entirely. Then my piece got farther away from the source material and I used the Doc to plan out my story beats. Even before chapter 9 was finished, I had the whole fic outlined, though that outline ended up changing significantly. (More on that later.) When it came to actually writing the hiatus chapters, though, I was getting frustrated with my notes in the Doc - they were wordy, and I find it very annoying to scroll through a long document in search of specific information. By the time I was working on chapter 13, I was starting to get genuinely frustrated. My Doc notes just didn't have what I needed - specific details about what I'd written, not what I planned to write. It was essential that I knew what happened in each previous chapter without having to reread prose every time I wanted to check a small detail. And I certainly didn't want to keep scrolling on my computer, clicking in and out of my word processor with my little trackpad. So I broke out an old sketchbook and started to take notes the old fashioned way.

Step one was figuring out what I needed to keep track of while writing the new chapters. What did these notes need to say? What was worth writing down? The more I wrote, the harder it would be to find what I needed, so I had to be selective.

Mostly, the answer to that was character dynamics. It was essential that I kept track of how the characters felt about each other, so everything progressed naturally instead of happening arbitrarily when I remembered to include it. I also created a list of things that needed to happen regularly that I regularly forgot to include. I'll list out all the variables I tracked at the end of this post, as well as the POV style guides I created for Ace and Zoro. I'll also put the original fic outline down there, too, one from November 2022. The final fic ended up much different, so it might be interesting to see how things were originally supposed to go!

Once I decided on the Essential Variables and Information for my sketchbook notes, I started writing them out. The first page was filled with the important variables, the POV style guides, some doodles, and a color coding guide. Then I set up one page per chapter. Each page had the chapter's theme at the top, followed by a summary of each scene in the chapter and all the relevant information for it - the scene's POV character, its corresponding number in the outline doc, how long until they have to return to Sabaody, how long Ace and Zoro have been together, and any of the Essential Variables that were included in that scene. Then, at the bottom of the page, after I'd written the chapter and finished writing up its notes, I'd pick the title!

Despite the fact that I was working on chapter 13 when I started keeping the sketchbook notes, the first chapter I took notes on was 10 (the first hiatus chapter and second timeskip chapter). This was because chapter 10 is the first one that's unpublished - if there was a variable I forgot to include, or if I made a mistake with the continuity, I could still change it! On top of that, chapter 10 functions as a baseline; the theme of the chapter is literally 'learning our new normal'! So it was really important for the progression of the piece that I kept good notes about what, exactly, that baseline is.

Then, once my notes on chapters 10, 11, and 12 were done, I felt ready to continue with 13! I wrote the scenes from my Google Doc outline while regularly checking the sketchbook for variables. Honestly, I was often changing the order of scenes in the Doc, or changing their contents, or deleting them, or adding new ones, but I was still (generally speaking) following the outline there. Eventually, I abandoned the Doc, copying the scene ideas right into my word processor and organizing the outline in the drafts of this very tumblr!

By the time I was writing chapter 16, things had changed so radically from the original outline, and I was so close to the end, I got a little lazy with the notes. The notes for chapters 16 and 17 share a page, and all I did was reorganize the outline again, as well as change the way certain scenes played out. For the epilogue, though, I ended up writing 3 pages of notes. This is largely because I hadn't decided what it was going to look like until I got to writing it - I had one scene in mind, but that was it! So I had to decide 1. how much time I wanted to cover 2. what happened in that time frame 3. how much of that I was actually going to depict and 4. how I was going to structure it. I ended up going with something radically different from the body of the piece, but I think it's both effective and fun!

In the near future, I'll be typing up those pages of chapter notes. I'll post them here one chapter at a time. They'll have spoilers, obviously, because they're a summary of the events in the unposted chapters, but they're not very detailed, so it shouldn't actually ruin anything for anyone. They'll be under a cut so only those who wish to see them will!

Wow, okay, this post ended up really long. Wow. I'll put the POV style guides, Essential Variables, and original outline under this, and that'll be it, I promise. Thank you to everyone who has read any of my posts on this silly tumblr account about my silly fic. It means the world to me, truly.

POV STYLE GUIDE - ZORO

a lot of cursing

gets poetic sometimes (often)

holy mother of parentheticals!

a lot of "oh my God"s

calls people assholes / dickhead / fuckhead

says [word] ass

repetition girlie (in twos)

POV STYLE GUIDE - ACE

more casual voice (IN DIALOGUE)

um, uh, etc. (IN DIALOGUE)

doesn't really say fuck unless it's about sex

more hypothetical questions

loves 2 spiral

milder insults like jerk

repetition girlie (in threes)

can't feel heat

more formal prose

VARIABLES I TRACKED

Perona + Zoro's relationship

Mihawk + Ace's relationship (they are @ odds until a particular chapter)

Mihawk + Zoro's relationship

Perona + Ace's relationship (they become besties between two specific chapters)

Acezoro relationship obviously but this was the Point of the fic so the progress was baked into the outline. That being said, I did make sure to write down any instances of either of them using the word 'love' or something similar in regard to one another. The scene summaries contain information about the progression of their dynamic

Perona calls Mihawk 'boss'

Ace falling asleep in his food (I WAS SO BAD AT REMEMBERING THIS ONE)

Ace spirals. Always guilty

Zoro Autism Meltdowns (tm)

Zoro's always drinking

Perona shoots negative ghosts at the drop of a hat! (I was bad at remembering this one also)

Zoro calls Mihawk 'hawk eyes'

Zoro's training progress. esp w haki

Ace can't feel heat. (Really important!!)

ORIGINAL HIATUS OUTLINE - FAR DIFFERENT FROM FINAL PRODUCT - ANNOTATED TO SHOW WHAT STAYED AND WHAT DID NOT

The numbers are from the full timeskip outline, so the first 5 scenes are in chapter 9. The hiatus starts with chapter 10 so we'll start there

Chapter 10:

6. The alpha humandrill. Ends up being easier than anyone expected (zoro does it by himself) bc he's not fucking stressed out about his crewmates or ace or anything. He's like Back On Form and fully healed and everyone is like um. Okay. hello [stayed!]

6.5. Spar interlude! Happens right off the tail end of 6 and ace is like. Distracted and flustered and ends up getting cut because of it. Ace explains that you have to consciously transform to avoid hits, but if you're good enough at observation haki you can pretty much do it automatically. Admits to 1. Being distracted by how sexy zoro is and 2. Not being good at anything other than armament haki [stayed!]

7. Farming! This is supposed to be an all 4 of them activity but perona quickly fucks off to go make lemonade and snacks for everyone so she doesn't have to slum it in the dirt. Mihawk makes her anyway. They have kind of a fun time time throwing dirt at each other and eventually manage to goad mihawk into throwing zoro into the lake [stayed, with less dirt throwing but zoro definitely still goes into the lake!]

7.5. Family Dinner interlude! Mihawk complains about how little work they got done that day and zoro grumbles about not being able to train and mihawk's like look idiot taking breaks is important. What do you think about this wine. And the two of them go back and forth about it and ace and perona are watching like :pogchamp: father and son…… [stayed! though it ended up shifting a bit to focus on mihawk and ace being at odds, and happens the day after 7 instead of the same day like i originally planned]

8. Mihawk explaining haki. The canon scene, expanded. [stayed!]

8.5. Spar interlude! This one is obviously zoro trying to get better with haki. Ace gives him tips and kind of accidentally teaches him ryuo [stayed - sort of. it's zoro practicing, but it's ace pov. he frets about being a bad partner, doesn't actually help zoro much]

9. Ace and zoro drunk convo number one. this one is about their relationship and what they want from it. also they go camping. Trying to figure out what it means to be together, what they want that to look like. [stayed!]

Chapter 11

9.5 Family Dinner interlude! Set up 10 [stayed!]

10. Perona doing zoro's nails. He won't let her do his fingers bc they'll chip from his workouts but he'll let her do his toes. They talk about his ankle scars and she can't decide if that's funny or infuriating. Ace thinks it's hilarious but does ride zoro's ass about it later lol. First inkling of zoro's sword throwing tendencies [stayed - sort of! perona does his fingers first, actually, bc she talked him into matching with her. then, when she's doing his toes, she see the ankle scars. instead of the reactions in this outline, they both freak out - they're upset that his first impulse in that situation was to cut his legs off. and they're even more upset when zoro is dismissive of their feelings and concerns about that. perona has to leave the room and ace and zoro have their first argument as a couple]

10.5. Spar interlude! Zoro's first spar w mihawk [changed! this became a resolution for 10, involving zoro examining his own tendencies, a mushy apology, and intense makeup sex]

11. Mihawk bonding! He and zoro go spearfishing [stayed!]

11.5. Family Dinner interlude! Talk about baths nd the devil fruit user feeling of powerlessness. Ace esp hates being cut off from his fruit bc it's become an essential part of himself [stayed! focused on ace's Issues]

12. Zoro and ace take a bath! Mihawk probably has a huge huge (room-sized) marble tub around somewhere. Ace agrees to heat the water up with his powers but zoro convinces him to get in. A very tender trust exercise. First inkling of ace's deflated sense of self worth [stayed but was moved to chapter 12!]

Chapter 12

12.5. "Spar" interlude! (it's just naked wrestling) [changed! this became a spar with mihawk to show the progress of his dynamic w zoro]

13. zoro lets perona give him a piercing… that's right. zoro nipple piercings. Ace gets his navel done in solidarity. Love wins [stayed! expanded a bit to cover the change in the dynamic the three of them have, and also to reassert the bond between them]

13.5. Family Dinner interlude! "Roronoa your nipples." [stayed!]

14. Drunk convo…… 2! They talk about sabo and kuina. ("so. Why three swords" "the honest answer?" "i think i deserve that. We're together, aren't we?" "yeah. It's just… i've never told anyone." "how about i tell you something in return?") They learn about each other's baggage. This, too, helps them get stronger [stayed!]

14.5. Spar interlude! Z spars one on one w mihawk again. Appreciable progress [stayed, but was moved down into chapter 13]

15. The first "i love you" and it of course comes from ace. Happens during very tender sex. Zoro does not say it back (yet) [stayed, was also moved into chapter 13]

15.5. Family Dinner interlude! This is where perona drops the infamous "he sacrificed his eye for you, the least you could do is give him your last piece of fish" and ace is like he WHAT. he and perona start freaking out and screaming at zoro and eventually zoro is like OKAY. BYE. and jumps out the window. [whew. okay. this scene stayed in the fic with a few changes, but ultimately ended up being the final scene of chapter FOURTEEN. this is because i wanted to expand more on zoro's reaction to scene 15, so i added 5 new scenes between 15 and 15.5. details on the new scenes will be in the notes for chapters 13 and 14]

Chapter 13

16. Zoro doesn't come back like they expected tho and by day 2 ace is like i'm going after this mf fr. ace repeatedly tries to play charades w the humandrills to get them to tell him where zoro is and eventually they lead ace right to him. [stayed (sort of. he only has to play charades with the humandrills once) but, because of all the new scenes, this ended up being the opener of chapter 15. i also added a new scene after it]

16.5. Spar interlude! This is actually a genuine fight between them, not really a spar. Ace tries to talk to him during it but zoro shuts it down. "But your eye!!!!!" "but nothing. You were going to die and now you're here, alive. That's all there is to it." they don't exactly work it out but ace does start to understand zoro more completely. He is going to make his own decisions independent of everything and then always double down [stayed - sort of. they do fight but it doesn't last that long. it's more of an icebreaker than anything. they eventually work it out (tho zoro doesn't say it back) and have more makeup sex. the dialogue in this outline was heavily edited in the final piece. again, so much stuff was added that this ended up being the final scene of chapter 15]

17. Cold snap. Lots of everyone following ace around bc he's a furnace. Even mihawk seems to always end up in the same room. It's very funny [deleted!]

17.5. Family Dinner interlude! Mihawk thanks ace for ^ but is like. Super cringe abt it. Perona starts sniffling [deleted!]

18. Perona gets sick :^( zoro takes good care of her. Ace hovers. Mihawk make soup. They're all being cute about it and graciously ignoring that abt each other [deleted!]

18.5. NO spar interlude! They worried about perona [deleted!]

19. Zoro, ace, and mihawk cooking (fail) compilation [deleted!]

19.5. Family Dinner interlude! Perona's all better :) [deleted!]

Chapter 14

20. They get a news coo that finally announces the fact that ace went missing. His bounty is increasing to a billion and the "He's Gol D. Roger's Son" thing is dropped, an attempt by the gov't to make ppl more likely to hunt ace and turn him in. he has a whole Mega Breakdown over everyone knowing, over ZORO knowing, and zoro finally hits him with the completely earnest "i don't fucking CARE!" "but you sacrificed your eye for me, someone with bad blood in their veins!!" "you think that matters to me? Do you think for one second that something like that would've made me okay with leaving you for dead? I love you! I'd DIE if it would keep you safe, bad blood or not!" "but i'm the son of–" "I DON'T CARE!!! YOU'RE MY PARTNER!!! YOU'RE MY CAPTAIN'S BROTHER!!!! YOU'RE THE ONLY MAN I'VE EVER LOVED!!!!!" (first time he's said it and not "me too" or some shit equivalent) and he Storms Out and ace has to really wrestle with how much he's allowed roger to cloud his vision. Mihawk is like well i met roger once and he seemed chill. Perona is like i really don't see why it's such a big deal now. You're twenty one years old. Like, would you care if the roles were reversed and zoro was the one who was roger's kid? And ace is like :O no…….. I wouldn't…… Wow Thanks Perona [wow okay so this scene stayed. technically. but only so far as the premise - they do get a news coo announcing that ace is still alive and has a one billion berry bounty and is also roger's son. but it plays out totally differently. more details on what actually happens in the chapter 16 notes!]

20.5. Spar interlude! Swing over to zoro, who is frustrated. Who feels unseen, misunderstood. It's him against the humandrills and he goes so wild that mihawk comes out and is like fucking. Stop. and zoro raises a sword against him in earnest anger and while he still cannot win, he pushes mihawk back. [okay so this scene kind of stayed, but it was moved into chapter 15 between ace's charades w the humandrills and their reconciliation spar. zoro does go crazy against the humandrills, but when mihawk comes out to stop him, he stops. and they talk]

21. Epic reunion. They understand each other and are like okay sorry for being dismissive of ur position. Let's both agree to not let this shit we can't change bother us. They will have to accept these things about each other (zoro's need to throw himself on the sword, ace's complicated feelings about himself and his value and history.) Finally get the "thank you for loving me" speech (edited of course) which zoro meets with "thank you for living. Thank you for letting me stay by your side" [this got deleted, mostly. some of the ideas were pulled into the highly edited version of scene 20]

21.5. Family Dinner interlude! Everyone is like um okay that was awkward. Why don't we own mihawk over his music tastes now [deleted!]

22. Drunk convo the third. What's next for us? Can this really survive beyond the shores of kuraigana? Do we want it to? [changed and moved - not a drunk convo anymore. combined with 25, ended up the penultimate scene of chapter 17]

22.5. Spar interlude! Zoro and ace spar. Zoro wins decisively. [deleted - didn't need to be a scene. it's a milestone that happened and is mentioned but that's it]

23. zoro doing perona's hair. Maybe ace's too bc it's been growing out [stayed - sort of. moved to be the first scene of chapter 14. he only does perona's hair]

23.5. FD interlude! Mihawk "are pigtails in season…?" [deleted!]

Chapter 15

24. Mihawk bonding! Ace talks to him about what his next step should be. What he wants it to be. They talk about whitebeard and legacy and what it means to want the best for your children [stayed, with significant changes - still a conversation between mihawk and ace about the future, but it doesn't really hit the beats in this outline. ended up in the second half of chapter 17]

24.5. Zoro and ace spar. It's Very Fucking Intense and when zoro pins him ace gets heart eyes and they smash on the forest floor like animals [deleted </3]

25. Ace and zoro have a serious talk. Ace "i'm staying by your side. Let's get married" "THAT'S how you propose to me?????" "yes?" "yeah ok. Let's get married stud" [stayed! dialogue changed slightly. ended up the penultimate scene of chapter 17]

25.5. Family Dinner interlude! Announce their plans + engagement, talk about how they're gonna get to sabaody [stayed!]

CHAPTER 16 - Epilogue [Not a breakdown of scenes, but basic notes about it]

– + them getting back to sabaody. All 4 of them go. Intentionally about a week early to make sure they can get married and have a little honeymoon lol. Perona and mihawk are their witnesses for the wedding. [true]

– + mihawk and perona say they're leaving but definitely stick around and watch to make sure everyone leaves sabaody together. They're both too aware of the straw hats' luck [kind of true - perona sticks around at least]

– + ace notices this by day 4 and is like hey. Let's go to the amusement park, as one final hurrah! [untrue - ace and zoro do go to sabaody park, but it's just the two of them and it's also off screen]

~ ace has to be in disguise. He has a whole Thing abt covering his tat, but it's also like c'mon brother. [kind of true - they do wear disguises but ace is not seen caring about covering the tat]

– + eventually they get the call from rayleigh that's like "ok everyone is back. You should head to the ship." and they're like :thumbsup: and they make it to the sunny first. When nami rolls up, zoro and ace are making out against the mast [kind of true - no call from rayleigh happens on screen but they ARE making out against the mast when nami rolls up]

~ nami "what the FUCK is going on???? Is that ace?????" and they're like "yeah. We're married now." namigetstrolled.png [true!]

[insomniaink95]

Uuuugggghhhhh… okay. Proship/Antiship discourse. Inky's got opinions on this...

Okayso, I have never known what the terms proship and antiship ACTUALLY mean. I know about the issues SURROUNDING what the terms mean but not what they actually 100% really mean at all. I did not grow up on tumblr. I had an account for, I think, three months once before deleting it, and didn't come back until I made this account a couple months ago. I also have only ever read fanfiction written by close friends and a single Final Fantasy VII fic from the ancient internet days of 1999(I barely know how to navigate Ao3 to read friends fanfics even). I have never had any real interest in any kind of shipping with the only caveat being a VERY mild fascination involving GriffGuts… So basically no real exposure to any community that was dealing with this.

So about a decade ago(give or take) when I first heard the terms proship and antiship, my understanding of it without looking anything up was that there were people who were against shipping in general and people who generally enjoyed it. I had no outside input and no impetus to go find out because I had heard the terms in a complete vacuum without their actual meanings. It just sounded like another random internet argument that I had no interest in whatsoever.

Several years later I FINALLY started hearing a few people's negative opinions on proshippers as well as other people's negative opinions on antishippers and realized my understanding of this was completely lacking and that it wasn't just some dumb argument and it was based on very important societal impacts. …so I went looking for what the two terms actually meant.

And the reason I have never known what the two terms actually mean is because depending on who's words you're reading the two terms can mean any number of different things with wildly different negative connotations for one group or the other. And it can be any DEGREE of negative connotations depending on who's explaining it as well!

On the most negative edges of the definitions I have heard proshippers described as those who enjoy fictional CP/incest/abuse who don't care that the propagation of that material in a positive light can have a real negative impact upon society and what other's perceive as acceptable irl.

And I have heard antishiipers described as censorious puritans who are against sex-positivity and are often also anti-LGBTQ+ and have even been compared specifically to the "burned furs" movement.

And of course from that level of negative connotation on either side all the way down to some folks thinking it's just a mild difference of opinion and no big deal…

I've got a good idea of what the terms SHOULD mean these days. but I just did another quick web search to see what any young people would run into if they were curious about the term's meanings after just hearing them for the first time. Y'know, what're the KIDS gonna learn these two terms mean today if they go to look it up like I did several years ago.

It's the same jumble of definitions that I ran into several years ago. Both from random people who gained their opinions on what the terms meant from the SAME jumble of definitions to news articles in which the writers did a cursory glance at what the meanings were(basically looked at whatever the first google search result on the subject said) and wrote authoritative articles on the subject.

pulling my hair out!!!

The ISSUE is deadly serious. But these terms have no useful application in society. I don't know the history enough to say if they ever DID, but they don't anymore at least. There's been so much muddying of things by those who don't want their interest in hardcore muppet babies porn to result in reasonable people giving them the side eye and hitting the block button AS WELL AS online "news" content mills doing their best to make a quick buck by churning out articles on the subject that are authoritative and "well researched" when the authors don't know jack and had no interest in ever knowing jack in the first place!

asdlkfja;dfja;kfja;ldfja;sdlfkj

Also, does anti proship mean the same thing as antiship or is that a new term with a completely new meaning??? I am an old man who doesn't even have a smart phone, someone take me back to my room, my grand-kids are supposed to visit soon!

[fangirl-life]

My Final Thoughts on Mayans No Spoilers

So boom...I finally finished Mayans MC last week. I know I'm late. I wanted to binge the last two episodes together and wanted to find the right time to...but it feels so surreal!

I legit stumbled upon that show a few years ago through tumblr because I had a random thought about what Edward James Olmos was up to at the moment. Any new projects? Did he retire? Maybe I was watching a Miami Vice rerun with my dad or that episode of Portlandia he cameo'd on. Either way, instead of googling that man like a normal person, I searched him on tumblr and found screen grabs of him and these two fine ass men who were playing his sons in this ongoing tv show called Mayans MC.

I didn't even think about looking into the show until I found out it was related to SOA (I was just happy EJO was still out there working) and I had a crush on Jax when that show was out even though I barely watched it, so I was like "lemme give this one a try".

Two seasons was already out by the time I jumped on the band wagon, so I binged and fell in love. It caused me to meet great people on this platform and interact about our shared interests instead of just reblogging and liking content like I did with any of my other fandoms. It allowed me to open up and create my own content. It exemplified my admiration for motorcycles. And quite frankly I was getting bored of having no active celebrity to be infatuated over. All in all, the Mayans fandom is really special to me.

So yeah, it feels surreal. THE ENDING of it all feels surreal. all I'm gonna say about it is that I'm not dissatisfied by how Elgin tied it up. I still wish it went differently and think that it could have and still been realistic with other pathways, but maybe because my expectations were low, I thought that how it ended wasn't really all that bad. To me, it made sense given the path we knew Elgin chose to go down and he surprisingly managed to tie up a lot more loose ends than I expected. Not all of them and some of the ones he did tie up were, imo, rushed, but again, I was expecting every plot but the main one to be completely ignored and abandoned, so I was pleasantly surprised.

[free--therapy]

so like i mentioned in earlier asks too, I've been having many random worry thoughts from two years back pop up again since last week as I've been home for a long time now without nothing much to do haha. this is the kind of scenario when I start to overthink if i look back on the past few years or something like that. similar something happened this same time last year as well during my vacation but i got over it pretty soon too when university started.

but since its something I've been thinking about recently, i wanna share it with you and ask for your thoughts on certain things.

i was in therapy for a few months in late 2021, and honestly i had a lot of worries about many different unrelated stuff that i would talk to my psychologist about. one of them was my health anxiety especially about mental health disorders and specifically OCD since that was what i was worried about a lot after i google searched it and ended up convincing myself i had it. this was because back then, i had this one thought pop up in my head one day which made me remember something i had read about mental health before on an online forum and then that thought kept popping u pin my head so I searched it up and it lead to random articles and forums where people talked about how intrusive thoughts/images were a symptom of OCD which triggered me but lead to me googling even more about it and eventually just getting scared and sort of convincing if i had it.

the thing is, that initial thought was a very minor problem because after reading so much stuff about people having OCD and their symptoms and stuff, it's almost like i internally subconsciously started looking for reasons, and eventually ended up with thoughts/memories especially from my past that started popping up which lead to me thinking about it and worrying about it.

this is where my thoughts about me being a bad person and my past mistakes and all other worries about other things started. i would talk to my therapist about these individual worries and whether the fact that i keep having random images or thoughts or memories or what ifs due to all that reading meant that i had OCD. it's like i picked worries up after reading stuff on the internet.

my therapist said I'm only reacting to what i read and it doesn't mean i have OCD but i kept thinking "but i have all different intrusive thoughts and what ifs too, so what does it mean?" my therapist asked me to stop reading forums and articles until i could process it without getting triggered. she also vaguely described to me how her previous clients with OCD were or their symptoms. she explained how more than anything else, i was simply overthinking.

the thing is I didn't have any official diagnosis and anxiety induced overthinking in that sort of uncontrolled way was new to me so i didn't know what to think of it. plus to add to that, it was like i was anxious about the idea of having an anxiety disorder more than anything else.

my therapist never gave me any diagnosis but she did confirm that my worries over having OCD were just me overthinking due to reading too much and me reaching to conclusions by connecting dots that didn't even exist actually.

she was very helpful and with time, as i learned to manage my thoughts much better, my overthinking reduced. i stopped therapy in February 2022 since university was finally starting physical classes again and i couldn't afford therapy anymore either.

but because of this i never knew if i had any anxiety disorder at all or was it just anxious overthinking due to me having nothing else to do. and even if i did, what disorder was it or was it just general disordered anxiety.

like i mentioned in earlier ask, whenever normal life resumed, this overthinking and all these worries and thoughts always disappeared from my mind. even if i did remember them from time to time, they didn't bother me. it only affects me when I'm home for a long period of time with nothing else to do. i think my therapist recognised that maybe?

Hey Anon,

I'm going to try my best and consolidate everything you asked up until this particular ask! Sorry it took me a while to respond

Like I mentioned to you, as well as your therapist, it definitely does look like you have a tendency to go back to these old worries that you had, especially when you have a lot of free time on your hands. It's funny how the mind works, just when you think you're over something, it comes back to haunt you. What you want to do is not let yourself feel guilty for the same thoughts coming back. It's going to happen, but you defeated them before so you can do it again. It's all about repeating the same things you told yourself before to have these reoccurring thoughts stay away. When these things would happen to me, I would often catch myself in the cycle and interrupt myself by saying something like, "wait a minute, we've already discussed this. why am i wasting my time again on the same thing?" proceeds to challenge the thoughts again with the same methods as before I would even tell myself things like, "girl, I thought we were past this, there's no reason to keep thinking these things again when there's nothing we can do to change the outcome!".

You should absolutely forgive your younger self for doing things you regret now and let the past go. We cannot learn from our mistakes if we don't let them go and try to do better. You definitely know better and I'm sure your younger self would be happy to know that you were sorry for having yourself be exposed to such things. You're definitely not alone in these kinds of feelings either.

I think it's normal for people pleasers to pretty much overthink every little think, so it's not surprising that these thoughts would return to you. You have to keep working towards training your mind to not worry so much about the things you can't control or change. What's done is done and no amount of worrying about any of it will change anything. You don't owe anyone any sort of explanation for the things you've done in the past because every single person in existence also has things in their past that they don't bring up or talk about either. No one is innocent of that really. We're all so much a like than we seem to realize. If someone reacts negatively to you if you ever do bring something up to them, then let it be. Again, no one is not guilty of doing something regrettable in their past that they don't talk about because of fear of rejection or embarrassment. You definitely don't deserve to be treated badly because of it either and I wouldn't accept that from someone if I were you. Just keep in mind that they likely have something they wouldn't want to share and if people knew about it, they'd feel ashamed too. The fact that they're so quick to judge and react would tell me that they lack self-awareness or any sort of compassion for people making mistakes. No one is perfect. No one!

Honestly, social media is the worst for judgmental people. Thankfully people in the real world are a lot nice and a lot less judgmental than the people you can find on the internet who spend all of their time hiding behind screens so they can be nasty to other people. Not everyone will treat you like that thankfully. You're entitled to your opinions and preferences, and you should never let the "crowd" decide how you should think, especially when you disagree. At the end of the day, a lot of these people are either miserable or they're just like you and they want to fit in. You should never sacrifice yourself and what you like or believe in, just to fit in with others. There will always be people out there that are for you and are just like you, even when it feels like most people may not think that way.

ALWAYS treat yourself with kindness. The only person who can really give you that is yourself. Once you know how to treat yourself with the love and kindness you so very much deserve, then you'll know what is and isn't acceptable when other people treat you in a way you don't like. Everyone in this world is worthy of love, kindness, respect, and compassion. No one should ever have to earn these things, and sadly a lot of us have been raised by parents who made us feel like we have to earn their love. This is not right and very messed up. That makes love a conditional thing when it was designed to be UNconditional.

[the-gayest-show]

You intrigue me. You never heard of or seen many of the cartoons of the 90’s/2000’s and you are part of the 1% who doesn’t….**gulp** care about the Spider-Verse movie? (even though many non-Marvel fans love it, it’s just that versatile)…

May I ask: What were your interests growing up? I had a typical media consumption childhood, so that’s all I know. What did you know growing up?

I suppose I am quite weird that way.

I mean I'm not very old so that probably contributes to my lack of knowledge of 90s/2000s stuff (i know names and stuff now but never actually seen the shows or even heard of them before a year to even a few months ago),

But it's also the fact I grew up without cable television and the media consumption I had was TVOkids, occasional bits of CityTV (I watched a bit of Modern Family sometimes), and CBC (I watched a Murdoch Mysteries thru the ages of 9-11). I LOVED CBC Marketplace and Murdoch Mysteries as a kid, I still do watch both of them to an extent and they're the two things that stuck with me.

I don't entirely know what "typical media consumption childhood" means to you, but I don't entirely think I had it very "typical", considering if I mention the shows I grew up with (Jack, Science Max Experiments At Large, Odd Squad, Wild Kratts, etc) I bet you'd know a few of them but certainly not all of them lol. Some of them I can't even find properly on google unless I actually try and some of the shows I've watched feel like a fever dream and I sometimes doubt I actually watched the shows simply because they're so unknown, even to Dr. Google.

I even watched some of the typical "adult" shows (well, shows that you don't find the average kid watching but aren't gore-y or swearing or anything like that), because TVOkids didn't go on forever and ended at 7pm on the dot and transitioned to normal TVO, which had boring stuff like documentaries and The Agenda (i still don't know what that's about, but I never stuck around to find out). Even CBC had a CBC Kids section but that went on for even less time than TVOkids so I rarely spent much time on that channel. So as a kid who only went to bed at 8pm you found other things to watch on the other channels on your TV (we didn't have normal streaming services so there wasn't even that lol).

I even watched a bit of Just For Laughs with my family because it was essentially visual comedy with 0 sound and my parents have english as a second language so it's something anyone could understand without needing to understand certain concepts. Just For Laughs is essentially just pranks that these hosts (they're always the same people) play on random street people and then they show them the camera at the end. It's rlly funny, check it out lol.

I literally never had access to channels like Cartoon Network, Disney, and your typical cartoon channels because being Canadian shuts it down almost immediately. Even now when I specifically try to access it legally (for free) I can't. I've only in the recent few years learned about the magic of piracy and getting what you want, when you want but otherwise I wouldn't have even been able to watch the shows I do love atm.

As a side note, I was also raised with Ukrainian/Russian shows like vinnie pooh (the russian one, i didn't know there was an english one until i was 11 lol) and cheburashka. Both of these even upon google search bring up core childhood memories and I do love them so much. Also buratino (the movie i think, don't remember whether it was cartoon or live-action) was something I remember watching (there's a certain song which I can recite with lyrics and tune is something I still carry with me as a very crystal clear memory).

Edit: Wow. The English names of the russian shwos I watched are very disappointing. Wow. Also here's another gem I remembered. One of my favorites growing up.

Even then I guess I'm not really... interested in most of the 90s/00s shows unless the concept is good (also bc I'm already watching so many shows rn I don't I'd handle more than I'm currently watching/planning to watch).

Anyways this answer turned out to be much longer than I thought this would be but that's basically the rundown of my very interesting media consumption. I am "Gen Z" by all accounts but even then I don't think my interests were very usual lol.