#and i say 'seemingly' because i don't know their process but. the way that beautiful sentences just seem to flow out of them

[power-handmaiden]

Chuck Tingle interview

OK, here is the FINAL 2024 Tingles My Butt post, which I've been pretty hyped for. I still kind of can't believe this. While I was figuring out how I'd move on from 2024, @drchucktingle generously offered to answer some questions of mine to commemorate the end of my tingler project! Here they are!

-Considering that your process for tinglers is just to write it out and not stress about proofreading and editing, was it weird for you to see someone decide to go back, examine, and contemplate every single tingler published in the past decade?

the whole dang project was really wonderful for me, for exactly the reason you have just said. tinglers are very STREAM OF CONSCIOUS and only edited with one quick pass so while i think this adds to their honesty and rawness it also means that my time with them is limited. really watching someone go back through them at this depth was like reading a diary that i have not opened for many years, and it jumps around through time in a very beautiful way. it was very moving

-I love tingler character names. I personally admire how many great ones you come up with. (I never know what to name my ttrpg characters.) You just come up with all these great names that seemingly spring from nowhere, how do you do it?

DANG great question cant believe i have not been asked this before but yes there is a type of name that shows up in the tingleverse that is unusual and has a certain feeling and cadence that is very specific. if i am trotting along with sweet barbara and there is a name of a product or a place or something that has this tone we will say ‘oh thats a tingleverse name.’ the reason i wanted to do this in the books was as a very subtle way of saying these stories exist on a timeline that is RIGHT next to ours, so in some ways it is exactly the same as our world but there are these little cultural differences with things like chocolate milk and spaghetti and then with the names. you will have buckaroos like justin and sarah trotting along next to buckaroos named corb torbins-quill or borto lart.

-So, as a reader, reading from 2014 to now, old tinglers and new tinglers feel different to me. I believe you when you say tinglers have always been sincere, but they feel MORE sincere than they used to be. Like, I feel like there was some self-consciousness and irony in some of the early tinglers that you've since let go of and embraced the Chuck Tingle voice more. I don't know, am I imagining this, or does this square with your tingler writing journey? If it does, what has that process been like for you?

i think you are absolutely correct. the intention with tinglers was always to be a place for me to express myself with complete sincerity, but the practical way of HOW to trot like this took a bit of an evolution to arrive at. in other words i knew the basics, but actually refining the best way to express yourself and perform your art takes time. maybe in the same way goin back and watching season one of a tv show can feel very different from season three, even though they are part of the same expression. 

similar thing happened with in my chuck PRESENTATION as well, where my main focus was to stay anonymous so the metaphors i used to talk about my life were still true but laid on much thicker. even my attire was a large gi so that you would not even be able to see my shape, which has obviously changed now because i wear suits these days. all of this was a process of starting in a place i knew was important to me and then peeling off the parts that were not helping the message or expression over time

-Is there anything you could tell us about the significance of Borson Reems? I feel like he's more than just another Buck Trungle/Chuck Tangle/etc but I'm not sure what exactly...

yes borson reems is god. not that i believe in GOD in the way that most buckaroos talk about god (i am agnostic) but within the tingleverse, borson reems is an avatar for the creator of that world. technically i am borson reems, because i am writing the books. the question is: are we all the gods of our own little worlds that we create? i do not know, but when i look around at my buds and the joy and love they bring to various timelines they sure seem like gods to me

-A lot of no-sex tinglers (especially ones that aren't romance-focused) vary in terms of plot and structure a lot more than erotic tinglers. Is your writing process for these stories any different?

same process actually, but the sex scenes in tinglers are about 1500 to 2000 words long, and total tingler length is 4000 words which means if you are not including that portion you are going to have to come up with some creative way to fill that space in the story and a new axis for story to turn on. so the variety comes from me getting creative and trying out different axis points

-In "Not Pounded By My Book "Pounded In The Butt By My Non-Fungible Tingler That Is Literally This NFT" Because Of The Current Catastrophic Environmental And Ethical Impact" there are references to an earlier draft of the story that was never released because you ended up disagreeing with the message. Are there any other tinglers that never got finished and/or published, if you'd be willing to talk about any of them?

oh this is a VERY good question. the story of the NFT tingler is that when buckaroos were first talkin on nfts online and nobody really knew what they were, my first thoughts were just ‘oh this is interesting what the heck is this?’ this is my way with most CURRENT EVENTS. and i thought ‘this would be an interesting tingler, i suppose maybe i should make the tingler an ACTUAL nft’. this was in VERY early days so i did not really even understand what an nft was (neither did 99 percent of buckaroos yet honestly). so i looked into it just enough to actually MAKE a nft tingler that was a real nft and put it out. lasted for about thirty seconds before buckaroos were messaging saying ‘oh this is bad chuck you should look into what this is’ and i DID look into it and thought’ oh yeah this is terrible nevermind’. i took down the original and thought ‘well THIS is what art is all about. this is where i thrive in a world of moving living art that is in communication with itself’. so i dove into the research and actually started to understand NFTS and then i repurposed the story into a strongly anti-nft tingler and put that on out instead.

as far as OTHER tinglers that kind of move and breathe and live like this, in communication with the audience, GAY T-REX LAW FIRM is another very good example. that one i wrote early on and i think it was kind of in the model of something like fifty shade of grey, where issues of kink and consent and communication are not really handled well. i think at the time it came out the story was okay, but as time went on it always kind of bothered me and finally i thought ‘i love art that exists in the REAL WORLD and changes and evolves, so lets rewrite that story and fix some of these mistakes.’ honestly it is something i wish more artists would be open to. its okay to let something hold strong against a changing timeline, but it is also okay to explore what its like to take the notes that time gives us

-This one is about Chuck Tingle that exists in deeper layers of the Tingleverse that operate on tingler logic: what does the location inside his/your butt look like?

probably a nice mid-century modern home up in laurel canyon neighborhood of los angeles. kind of quiet and small like a cabin but also very cozy, like the kind of place where you would put on a crosby stills nash and young record on vinyl and gaze out into the woods for a while then walk down the hill for dinner at a little cafe where you spot some actor from a 60s tv show also having dinner in the corner booth. this basically sounds like the start of a tingler and in that tingler i will say the actor would be a bigfoot.

-OK this one is very self-indulgent but if you could help settle this frequent point of discussion I have with my wife- where do the following fit in the Tingleverse bigfoot/dinosaur/unicorn/living object(/human/does not apply?) taxonomy?

-a ghost of a regular human

-a regular human vampire

-a human/fish mermaid

-a sentient winged horse

-a sentient centipede large enough to wrap around a mountain several times (she is handsome)

alright lets trot through these. a GHOST is not one of the four tingle types so you can have a ghost racecar or a ghost unicorn or a ghost bigfoot. ghosts are outside of the four types and do not have a classification

a VAMPIRE is also outside of the four types. so you can have a vampire bigfoot or, of course, a vampire night bus. does not strictly fall into any of the four main categories

MERMAIDS are technically a long lost species of unicorn I DONT MAKE THE RULES I JUST EXPLAIN THEM. this makes the MERMOPED tingler a little confusing but i had to pick a category and that one went into living object. now that i mention it possibly the only tingler that is technically a double category of unicorn/living object.

WINGED HORSE is easy, thats a pegasus which is a species of unicorn just like a mermaid

a SENTIENT CENTIPEDE LARGE ENOUGH TO WRAP AROUND A MOUNTAIN is an ancient creature, therefore dinosaur tingler

-My other self-indulgent question: do you have a favorite bug? (Or second-favorite if you count Mothman as a bug)

i love finding spiders in the house and giving them a pet because they are doing a good job livin their lives doin their thing. close second would be a pretty ladybug

-Any thoughts on what tinglers will be like in 2025? Do you expect to be writing a lot of political tinglers again, like post-2016?

honestly i really do not like writing specifically political tinglers anymore, and the amount that i write has gradually dropped over time (i think ALL tinglers are political but in a different way). so honestly i think i will write a few political tinglers but not many. my hypothesis on this is that my HORROR NOVELS are very very political and so maybe i get a lot of these ideas out of my system that way now. when it comes to tinglers i just wanna explore my OWN mind and heart and butt more

THANK YOU for these wonderful questions and thank you for your tingler-a-day project it was so moving and powerful. what a treat it was an honor to be a part of something so beautiful. THIS PROVES LOVE IS REAL

[secriden]

Something that really struck me about Style this episode is how real his fear was.

And I don't just mean his fear of the inevitable conclusion of the path Fadel's hurt and anger has set them on; although this, too, was so very real and honest and tore me to pieces in ways I can still barely process.

But it's interesting how Style talks about being afraid of dying generally and specifically how harm could come to them from an external source. How the way his fear is orientated puts Fadel on the inside ("a murderer is gonna come after us"), on Style's side and someone Style wants to keep safe.

And when Fadel makes the kind of snide joke about letting the hypothetical cannibals kill and cook Style, Style's solution still involves staying by Fadel's side. At no point does he ever stop referring to Fadel and him as a single unit, even after Fadel very explicitly frames Style as the only victim.

I'm bringing this up because I think as a fandom (myself included!!) we may have mistaken Styles unshaken confidence for a lack of fear. We saw Style stare down the barrel of Fadel's gun with an unimpressed look of disdain or the way he casually discusses Fadel killing him at the end of their journey, and we (understandably) think this is evidence of his fearlessness, of his boldness and sense of wild optimism that admittedly fits his character quite well -- but it isn't.

I think Style is very afraid, actually. He has many fears and chief among them at this point is that he does not want to die. He does not want to leave his life or is dad or his friend or his cars or his boyfriend who still thinks he doesn’t love him!

And those tears?? Those tears were real because lying next to Fadel with a metal handcuff digging into his wrist was a painful reminder of their broken trust; the terrible chasm hidden in the scant inches between them, all as the result of Style's past choices and the pressures on all our main characters.

And I think part of it was also Style finally coming down from the adrenalin rush of: (a) Kant and Bison going missing, (b) being chloroformed and kidnapped and stripped naked and tied up, (c) being threatened at gunpoint whilst still reeling from the knowledge that Fadel knows and perhaps has known since the first warning signs of his sudden affection, and (d) not being shot and then being told to drive for hours on a seemingly impossible quest with no real destination.

But I also think this was the core of why Style is so sad. Because even if Fadel forgives him, there's a very real possibility that Style's actions and choices could lead him to dying if not at Fadel's hands then maybe because Style is now at risk of getting caught in the crossfire too. Because Style may well find himself standing between a bullet and Fadel one day, and that choice has repercussions beyond Style himself.

But his fear and his sorrow makes Style's choices on this journey all the more poignant and beautiful. Because Style commits to his love at the end of the day. He is unapologetically honest with Fadel and gives him not just the weight of what it means for Style to choose him, but the right for Fadel to keep his anger in spite of it. At no point does Style demand Fadel's forgiveness or trust or the relinquishing of the distance Fadel keeps between them.

Because Style's heart is his to offer, but equally it is Fadel's to take. And I think to fail to recognise the reality of Style's fear is to undervalue the weight of what it means when Style says "You own my life" -- when this took everything Style had in him to give.

[flushwithdarlings]

"My uh...whiff...is very faint thank you. Nothing a little bergamont, rosemary, and a hint of fine aged brandy can't hide. It's the perfect olfactory disguise for a corpse. Honestly, I think I missed my calling as a perfumer!" - Astarion to Shadowheart I don't know if anybody has analysed Astarion's perfume or if the ingredients were even thought of this hard by Stephen Rooney (I am kicking myself for not asking when I met him at MCM 2 weeks ago). I, however, have read about them and thought about them quite hard.

So, my findings and ramblings about Astarion's perfume:

Bergamot - From the bergamot orange. Ironically, it's phototoxic - it makes skin more sensitive to sunlight/UV damage so I guess you could say it's associated with the sun? I dunno if Astarion should be wearing it tbh...

I also saw the fruit called 'Aphrodite's apple' and 'the most beautiful fruit' but the source was kind of flimsy.

Rosemary - Used in funeral rites throughout history, it symbolises death and remembrance but also fidelity in love.

The Ancient Egyptians used it in their embalming process to mask the scent of death (makes sense that Astarion uses it to mask his faint whiff of undeath), and it used to be (and still is?) placed on or in graves.

It's also mentioned a bunch in Shakespeare's works, specifically in scenes to do with death, which is quite appropriate and ironic for this silver-tongued, theatrical vampire who hates poets.

FRIAR LAWRENCE:

Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary

On this fair corse

- Romeo and Juliet

OPHELIA:

There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love,

remember.

- Hamlet

Aphrodite pops up again here because in some versions of her creation myth, she arises from the sea adorned with rosemary.

Brandy - A biiit of a stretch maybe but there is a category of brandy known as eau-de-vie - water of life - so-called because medieval alchemists would ascribe miraculous properties to alcohol such as immortality.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, brandy was also used as a cardiac stimulant (so an association with life?) because it seemingly increased cardiac output and blood pressure. Which doesn't really help Astarion in any way but hey he is wearing it, not drinking it or getting it injected up his butt (that was one way it was used to resuscitate patients apparently yeah idk).

SO basically, his perfume ingredients are associated with life, death, the sun, immortality, devotion in love, and maybe the Greek goddess of passion, pleasure, beauty, and sex.

It also smells amazing.

[lking-creation-hub]

So I'm replaying Slay the Princess now that the Pristine Cut is out, starting with a quick run of the game mostly to get the Stranger's ending in the heart of the Princess. Somehow that was the first Ending I found in my first playthrough of the original game, and I wanted to recreate it in this new 'universe' and keep a save file with her there right next to the original save file, before I go back and comb through for new content, so I was playing through a first run pretty quickly (and still somehow got to the new Damsel content, those who have seen it will know).

I'll admit I cried a lot of times in my first playthough, and I know I would probably cry again in this one. Maybe not at the same places, but probably the new content.

But even in my first playthrough, when I cried, I kept going. But just now I've come up on one line that made me have to fully stop for a few minutes (which is what I'm doing now, processing by posting this). I don't know if this line was in the original version, I think I would have remembered it, but...

(Spoilers below)

In response to the Princess saying 'It took courage for you to make your way down here, away from the paths others would have had you walk. We find that courage beautiful,' The Contrarian says this:

And something about that line damn near broke me just now. I could (and maybe will) go on a huge ramble about how heartbreaking it is for the seemingly-confident and seemingly-lighthearted Contrarian to so casually describe himself as 'the worst part of us', as if that's a fact. I'm genuinely sobbing at that thought, partly because I do relate to it. He has such a factual tone when he describes himself as just completely bad, the 'worst part of us' in his entirety, and god I know how much it hurts to think of yourself like that, to believe that every part of yourself is awful and makes things worse. This was the last character I'd expect to relate on that, but it adds so much depth to him.

And past that, the complete compassion in the Princess calling that part of them beautiful. The idea that these things we look at in ourselves and hate can be held with such compassion by someone else. I just can't describe how light and kind of overwhelmed it feels. Like I'm still typing mostly because I don't think I'm ready to go back into the game and see the next line. The game is still sitting on the screen I have screenshot above, because this scene is just so overwhelmingly beautiful to me that I actually need a break to process it (in the MOST complimentary way, of course).

@blacktabbygames You nailed it the first time around and from what little I've played of the Pristine Cut you've somehow improved on what I had previously considered a perfect game. I can't wait to explore all of the rest of it (and probably pick up Scarlet Hollow after I've fully explored Slay the Princess).

[slightlyhozy]

“Through the Cold, I’ll Find my Way Back to You” || Chapter One - “Honey, Don’t Feed it, it Will Come Back.”

Characters - Púca! Andrew Hozier-Byrne x Original Female Character

Summary - Maisie Quinn, after inheriting a home in Ireland from her late grandmother, slowly learns a dark past about the land in which it was built on.

Word Count - 2,184

Warnings - Nothing for this chapter other than light animal death!

A/N - SO EXCITED FOR THIS!! I will try to be consistent and write interesting chapters, we will get a real introduction to Andrew in the next chapter, I just wanted to introduce Maisie first and the setting. Please leave thoughts!

If you don’t know, a púca is a monster across European mythology that tends to be a shapeshifter, commonly taking form as a horse, goat, dog, cat, ect. They also take forms of humans which tend to have animalistic traits. They are known to play tricks on humans but never truly harm them. There’s a lot on them, so if you’re interested, I recommend looking into it. I am pretty consistent with the traditional idea of them but I will add my own elements as well. I will also explain any important information or facts if I feel is needed, feel free to ask as well!

“What’re you doing now?” I can hear Elsie snacking on carrots through the phone.

I sigh, hauling another box off of another, using my earbuds, we had been able to call all day despite the time difference. “Right now,” I grunt, setting the box on the ground, moving to search for my box cutter. “I am unpacking everything for the studio…” The room in question was a beautiful conservatory with beautiful glass windows curving upward. Outside, bushes with thorns and small berries could be seen, desperately in need of a trim.

“How different is it over there? I mean, you must’ve noticed something by now.”

“Well,” I huff, stepping back to appreciate the natural light coming into the room. “I live 40 minutes from Wicklow, which is nice…But I do miss the city already; it feels all so stretched out now.” It was terribly ironic of me to complain about Europe being big in comparison to America, but after being raised in downtown Seattle all my life, to be thrown into a village where I have to drive to get my groceries was different.

“We miss you.” Elsie pouted. “Who’s going to bring disgusting vegan dishes to every game night?”

I let out a laugh straight from my chest. “Sorry, babe, you just need to find another pretentious vegetarian then.”

Carefully, I pulled out my easels and canvases I hadn’t used yet. The room was mostly boxes, with only two work benches being built and a random spinny chair thrown out. Making this house look like the ones on Pinterest was going to be a process.

“Say, are you and Lydia going to be able to make up here for Christmas?" I ask, fighting the wooden easel to unfold.

I can hear her hiss, disappointment sinking in. “I… I don’t know, May…It’s just…busy right now. You know, if we can’t this time, we just will come up for our anniversary! We’ve always wanted to go to Ireland.”

“Oh, that’s alright.” My voice came out a bit more upset than I hoped, and I could feel the burning in my eyes, a small sniffle escaping me.

“Maisie..” Elsie said sweetly, making me butt in immediately.

“No! No, it’s ok. I get it. You two are working…married, busy, have all your friends there, it’s fine.” I hated how I reacted—so reminiscent of a child, I didn’t even notice the tears on my face.

“Maisie, I…” She paused, seemingly looking for the right words. “It’s going to be hard for a while, ok? But you’ll make lots of friends! And we will still talk every day, ok? Don't feel bad because you’re upset; it’s okay to be upset.”

“I know, thank you.”

I had moved from Seattle to New Castle, County Wicklow, a few weeks ago. A year before that, my grandma had died, who, other than Elsie, had been my best friend. The loss still hurt, but hopefully something good was coming out of it. In her will, I was left to this beautiful property near Greystones. The house itself was pretty humble but charming and well kept. The garden was very large yet outgrown. After living in the hustle and bustle of a city like Seattle, I needed this, something different, it was like she knew.

My grandma inherited the house from her grandmother, who’s grandmother owned the home before the "famine." My Irish family had left Ireland some time in the 1840s to New York, where we eventually found ourselves in Washington. Thinking back on how hard it had to have been to just be Irish in either country made me a bit proud to find myself back at this house, just like how the women before me wanted.

While modest, the home was well built and was a good distance from the beach, which I had been utilizing for walking Lenny. Since the 80s, our richer part of the family had used it for a vacation home, but as my grandmother got older, the only thing she made sure of the home was keeping it clean, despite the fact it was empty now.

——————————————————————

A while later, still unpacking, now in the kitchen, Lenny began doing circles around the kitchen, licking at my leg. “Shit, you’re out of dog food.” I whispered to myself, leaning down to pat his head. Now that I had actual utensils, pots, and dishes, I could finally move on from adapting to their version of Chinese takeout and cook myself a proper meal.

At the grocery store, I spent a lengthy time deciding which shape of pasta was the most appealing.

In my pasta-induced haze, a voice broke me out of it. “Gosh, you look just like her, all grown up.” I turn my head to see an older woman, around 70 or so, smiling up at me.

“Oh, did you…”

“Know Evelyn? Of course, I met you when you were just a wain.” Heat rose to my cheeks, It was always embarrassing to meet someone who knew you from your family in public. All I could think about was getting out of it. “I saw your…pictures on Facebook, and I mean, it was identical until…”

My hand instinctively went up to my head. “Oh? My hair? Yeah, uh, I mean, at least it’s going to a good place.” A few months ago, I had completely cut off the long hair I had growing down near my waist into a pixie cut; liking how it’s growing out, I plan to keep it.

“Such a shame what happened.” The older woman shook her head. “She was a good woman, ye grandmother.”

Awkwardly, I nodded along.

“Nice to see the property put to use, I hope the stories don’t get to you though.” That caught my attention.

“Stories?”

“Oh? You don’t know? There’s a saying that hundreds of years ago, when your family bought the land, it belonged to a monster…called a púca…Something about it torments the humans who lived on the land in an attempt to scare them off.” A small giggle escaped me; I was no stranger to legends and myths.

“It’s all coincidences though; lots of dead animals are found near the property; I’ve never heard of any real trouble happening.” She smiled sweetly. “God is on your side.” Obviously, being a devote atheist for over 10 years, I had no real fear of any monsters.

“Oh!” The woman beamed, reaching into her purse for a pen and notepad. “Here’s my number if you need anything, love, just a call away.” I watched as her shaky hands scribbled down her home phone, pressing it into my hands. Mary.

“Thank you, Mary; I’ll be sure to get in touch.” I smile as we part, my mind drifting back to the word. Púca… It sounded like puta. I stifled back a laugh.

——————————————————————

Later that night, while Lenny was eating out of his dog bowl in the kitchen, I guarded my large bowl of pasta on the makeshift pillow-blanket couch I had crafted for myself. I sighed softly, checking my phone every minute in case someone wanted to ask me how I was or send me a funny video. Instead, I sat alone in the room, rewatching episodes of Gilmore Girls until there was nothing left in my bowl.

As I washed out my bowl, laying it on the rack, Lenny ran around my legs with a toy, eagerly waiting for me to throw it across the house for him. I smiled fondly down at my boy, the only thing keeping me from losing my mind. “Hey boy, want me to throw it?” I cooed at him, kneeling down to his level, excited by my tone. He wagged his tail and did circles, coming back to me with the small rope. Taking it, I tossed it across the floor, enjoying his nails scraping the tiles as he ran towards it, prompting returning it.

After a few rounds of this, a scratch on the door caught my attention, causing my brow to raise and my anxiety to heighten. It’s fine. I thought to myself, tossing the toy again, watching him retrieve it. It could be anything. Anything? Like a…no. Stop. Wiping my face, I waited for Lenny to come back. As he trotted to me, the scratching was louder, more aggressive.

Setting him off, the small retriever began to bark at the door, his little body jumping back each time. Shushing him, I walked to the window, looking out; there was nothing I could see. Púca. I scoffed, shaking my head; it was just my brain. I took a deep breath, opening the door slowly, unreasonably anxious about what I might see.

As I did, my leg instinctively went to barricade the door, Lenny barking at the small creature in front of me. I didn’t know how to react to the fox in front of me; it stepped back slowly, looking at me, making sad chirp-like sounds. My brows furrowed at the sight. “Ok…” I drifted off; my initial thought was that the animal was hurt, but the way it walked around my patio indicated otherwise. Perhaps whoever took care of the house before fed it, but it hadn’t come before.

Being a natural animal lover and suck up, I close only the glass door, letting me see him still. The fox pranced around still before sitting down in front of the door, clearly with no intention of leaving. Lenny stood, his tail high on alert. “Lenny!” I called out disapprovingly as I heard his familiar low growls. In a small bowl, I scooped some of his food with a few pieces of left-over pasta on top.

Laying the bowl down, I went back inside; even if it wasn’t aggressive, I didn’t want to invade its space, even if I was guilty of interfering with nature in the first place. My eyes drifted over the animal’s fur; it was a warm brown all around, and the ears and feet were black. Under the jaw and belly of the fox, the fur was white, as was the tip of its tail. Mostly, I was looking for signs of mange—anything to indicate it was sick. On cue, it looked up; the way its green eyes flashed at me caused my face to stiffen as I saw the reflection of light in it’s eyes. I looked back; there was no light to cause the eye to shine, and as I looked back, it was gone. The house was silent except for the low growling of my dog and the crunching of the fox’s feast.

——————————————————————

“It was so weird!” I complained to Elsie over the phone, clutching my colorful robe, tea in the other hand.

“Maisie, usually you make amazing choices, but this was dumb.” She said it matter-of-factly.

I shake my head, pacing around the cold floor. “How? It was hungry, Elsie; what was I supposed to do? Let it starve.”

“No, you’re supposed to call the Irish Animal Control, obviously. It could have had rabies.”

“Rabies? I don’t think so.” I chuckled, so sure of myself. “It wasn’t like…foaming at the mouth or aggressive.”

“Maisie, when animals have like…early rabies or something, they act oddly tolerant to humans, was there mange? Was it dehydrated or anything?”

“No… It looked really healthy, actually. It just wanted food; no one got bit, no one got hurt. Elsie, It isn’t that big of a deal; it’s a one-time thing.”

I heard a deep, disappointed sigh escape her. “Maybe you should’ve been raised in the mountains…Look, when you feed animals, they expect that you will give them food; they’ll come back. When I was little, growing in Bend, I accidentally fed a raccoon once, and she brought generations of baby raccoons for years.”

Walking to my porch, wanting to enjoy my tea with the cool air, I open the door. “If it comes back, I just won’t feed it; I learned my lesson, ok.” My eyes immediately drifted down in front of me.

“Maisie?”

“Uh, sorry…” Carefully, I set my tea on the railing. On the concrete, I stared at a small rodent in front of me, absolutely gutted. “There is a mutilated mouse on my porch.” I said breathlessly, always hurt by any dead animals.

“Oh, see! Now it’s rewarding you!” She complained over the phone as I stayed silent.

“Do you think they’re like cats? Like, they’ll bring you dead stuff because they think you stink at hunting or something…” I wasn’t too sure what to do with the body.

“I don’t know,” Elsie said flatly. “What I do know is that you should stop feeding it; just for your and Lenny’s sake, I don’t want you calling me at 3 am because you have to get rabie shots in your ass, ok?” On my side of the phone, I nodded, immediately looking for a reason to hang up. “Oh shit, it’s already so late, ok, Maisie, I love you; I’ll call you later, ok?” Thank god. Is all I could think.

After using a poop bag to toss the animal into the outside bins, I went to pull out my laptop, pulling up my laptop and searching: What is a Púca?

[xxxsharpcheddar]

I'm gathering that he betrayed your trust. *sigh* I'm so sorry. It's genuinely saddening. Of course it doesn't affect anyone more than you (and possibly him if he holds the capacity to understand what he's lost), but it feels sad for all of us, albeit in a far smaller, but still significant way. I keep seeing this exact pattern play out recently.

(The astrology shows that it's a massive time for hidden structures that aren't serving you & things you may feel are solid but actually have rotting foundations to be forcibly cleared from your life: due to Pluto finally leaving Capricorn and not returning for the next 200ish years.)

The reason why it's so saddening is because it makes us disconnect in order to protect ourselves, when all we want is connection. It's this disparity that causes the discomfort of sadness, the feeling of being pulled apart.

We're a very small community (FFA+BHM) spread across continents, and your relationship was a symbol of hope for many of us. Not the only, but certainly one of the few. And here I am angry and sick to my stomach that you got treated this way by a member of our own tiny little community. I'm sure it's made you want to disengage massively, I'm sure it's made others more wary and guarded, and I'm also sure that's not how any of us want us to feel in this space.

It sucks and I'm sorry. I don't really know what else to say, aside from can we all please try to do better for each other? Be open, be honest, be brave. But that feels like empty advice that no one wants to listen to.

Les, I hope you're getting all the support and love and kindness you need, so you can heal super quick. ❤️ In the meantime, I ask rhetorically: guys, what the fuck??

Yes. It was calculated. He’s a very intelligent person. He was the perfect boyfriend on paper. There were no red flags in the ways he treated me. Thank god for intuition.

Oof “it makes us disconnect when all we want is connection.” I felt that.

I honestly felt so much pride and joy sharing our relationship here because I thought what we had was rare and beautiful. My normie friends were fooled by him too. I thought we were crushing it on the personal front and the fetish front. He was my first experience with this community. He exploited my trust in such a large scale it’s hard to come back here. It’s hard to look at other couples thinking that’s what we had. It’s hard to look at the most seemingly insignificant things because it brings me back. I keep dreaming he’s betrayed me in different ways and I’m begging for him back. I thought we could be a pinnacle of hope for people. I thought I found someone who loved me and shared the fetish - fucking hole in one!

I couldn’t have been more wrong. I hope my experience can help prevent someone from going through this. I never should have let my walls down so soon.

Thank you for sending this. I know my response is muddled with venting, but thank you. Let’s do better. Let’s work on ourselves before we engage with others. Let’s unpack our shit before we hurt people in the process. Let’s heal ourselves so we can find meaningful and true connection.

Also if you’re comfortable with it could you DM me the astrological snippet?

[exceptionimagines]

Lying In Wait

(Not my gif)

(Changing the meeting scenario yet again so enjoy this little post that contains the old one: not the one where you have a boyfriend.)

- Have you ever seen a hawk in person? Not in a zoo or an aviary: somewhere where they're caged and confined to one area, stripped of the necessity to act according to nature. No, I mean seeing one completely out in the wild, being in the woods or even your own backyard when it just suddenly ...appears.

- Because that's what they do. They simply appear. If you live in an area where they're common, where they typically frequent, you learn what to look out for, what the tell-tale signs of their presence are. You don't hear them, but you do hear what comes in preparation of them: the utter silence of everything around you. One minute the sparrows are chittering noisily, and the next they're dead silent; like they can feel them in the wind.

- It creates a tangible feeling. A pin prickling sensation that tells you that, regardless of whether or not you are bigger or stronger than them, there is something out there in the wild, watching, and waiting and hunting. If you look hard enough, you might just find them, but it won't be before they've found you: their piercing eyes immediately pinning you down in place. There's something about their gaze that's chilling: beautiful, and wild, and calculated; almost to a point that's beyond your understanding.

- That's what it feels like when you meet Jerry Dandridge for the first time. Like you're locked in the gaze of something predatory: something foreign and dangerous. Something that is simply lying in wait, lingering in plain sight until the perfect moment to strike.

- It's why you're baffled when all of your neighbors are seemingly charmed by him: having nothing to say but good things whenever he comes up in conversation. You're not denying the fact that he's an attractive man, anyone with eyes will quickly realize that he's closer to a model than a regular person, but you're somewhat unnerved by the fact that no one else seems to notice how ...odd he is.

- Admittedly, when you first began avoiding him, it was entirely because he was so attractive. You're a reserved person, someone who typically keeps to themselves and the thought of approaching the statuesque figure of your newest neighbor; of attempting to endure an entire conversation without making a fool of yourself, is daunting, to say the least. Forget about letting him into your home and entertaining him one on one....

- But it was because of your avoidance that Jerry began to take an interest in you. Everyone else in your quiet suburb had welcomed him with open arms, making it all too easy to gain access to them and their homes, but nothing he did seemed to convince you to trust him; to convince you to let him inside. He isn't used to having to try so hard; especially not with someone who fits his main demographic, so he finds himself determined to wear you down; while also trying to figure you out in the process.

- You'll find yourself being pulled into conversations with him, being interrupted with knocks on your door early in the night or with offers of assistance whenever you seemingly need it. You rarely indulge him by accepting but it doesn't deter him from trying again another day, embarrassing you with all of the attention and the special treatment.

- Anyone who witnesses his actions will smile at you "knowingly", tease you about how Jerry's seemingly taken a liking to you and how lucky you are because of it. They look at you with envy; eyes blazing when he excuses himself from them in favor of approaching you, but their envy makes them oblivious, makes them blind to your discomfort.

- You don't understand why he's so intent on getting to know you, why it seems to matter so much to him that he has your approval and that you consider him a friend. There's something so ...artificial about it. About the way that he smiles and tries to connect with you, like his actions are a means to an end rather than a genuine desire for connection. And the longer his attempts to draw you in continue, the stranger he begins to behave....

- As smart as Jerry is, when it comes to you, he sort of creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you refuse his bids for connection; the longer you treat him like the wolf in sheep's clothing that he is, the more frustrated and certain that he becomes: certain that you're onto him and that you've somehow realized that there is something inherently wrong with him.

- It's the frustration that makes him sloppy. The impatience that he feels when continuously being denied access to you. The carefully constructed facade begins to slip, and the atmosphere begins to change. He grows desperate and that desperation is palpable.

- He sorts through every trick in his book, hopping erratically from one thing to another, hoping that something sticks and makes you finally take to him like everyone else. He's scrambling to get you to trust him, to want him, to reach out to him, but nothing seems to be working, not like it usually does. Which only makes him want you even more.

- There's a thrill in the hunt, in being found out and sensing the fear that fills his prey once they finally realize what they're dealing with. It's a game of cat and mouse, one that he always ends up winning, and the anticipation of it is both infuriating and intoxicating. He deems you a worthy opponent and that's part of what keeps you alive. He needs a chance to stake you out, to try and figure out exactly how much you know, and how dangerous a little thing like you can be; not that he genuinely thinks that you could ever beat him.

- A part of him is intrigued by the fact that you've figured him out so quickly: that you sniffed him out from the get-go; never once faltering in your distrust. Your neighbors assure him that you're just shy, but your eyes hold the truth: the shifting discomfort that he's used to seeing when he starts picking off residents one by one.

- At first he finds your avoidance alluring. You're his perfect victim: someone who isolates themselves; unused to attention and affection. He works best with people who are crying out for something more, people who are different and yearning for someone to understand. People who are vulnerable and easy to forget about.

- But then you just don't break. You continue to keep your walls up and remain unobtainable, and it's so ...different. Frustrating, of course, but different, and different is exciting.

- Admittedly, you find him exciting as well. The attention is initially quite flattering, and though you try not to read too far into it, it feels nice to be noticed; especially by an attractive man like himself. Though, the more he notices you, the more you start feeling like he's actually kind of a creep. You're gearing more towards sex offender than creature of the night, of course; maybe a serial killer Ted Bundy style, but it's his unusual strangeness that gives you pause.

- Boundaries aren't usually in the vocabulary of men like him, so it surprises you when he refuses to enter your home, seemingly itching for you to let him in; straining against the door frame, yet never crossing the threshold himself. ...And that's just the start of it....

- It takes you a little while to realize it, to figure out why the hairs on the backs of your arms start to stand up at random, skin crawling with sudden anxiety. When you finally do, it's because you've realized that the animals of your home have become palpably tense, perfectly still and quiet for no reason, like there's something there that bothers them. But there's nothing, nothing at all and you coo at them in confusion, trying to get them to relax ...until the doorbell suddenly rings...

- Jerry materializes out of nowhere, gone one moment and right next to you the next; stepping just that tad bit too close whenever no ones around to see it. He never appears in the daylight, and it's not the whole "I work nights" thing either. He doesn't leave his house during the day, sure, but he does leave it in the evening, yet only when there's cloud cover; when the sun is low enough in the sky that you can't see it over the houses or feel the warmth of it's presence. It all makes you start to wonder....

- You feel ridiculous claiming that your neighbor is a vampire; even when it's only spoken to yourself. You feel ridiculous doing your research, of being afraid of the dark like a little kid, thinking about all of the monsters that go bump in the night. You resent the fact that you're scared of the setting sun, that you're scared of braving just a few steps outside your door, that you've developed a habit of going over all your belongings twice just to ensure that you haven't forgotten anything before going in for the night.

- Oh god, your phone.

- Your phone that's sitting in the center console of your car, plugged in and charging since you drained the battery at work; not sitting nicely in your bag as per usual. It has your work schedule, it has your alarm, it has a handful of other important things that you need before you go to bed, but it's already dark out: dark and quiet and completely abandoned. You contemplate if you really need it, then you curse yourself for being so stupid. The answer is yes, yes you really need it, so you scope out the area and hype yourself up, walking on two nervous legs as you quickly make your way over to your car.

- Your phone is right where you left it and you quickly grab it, moving to shut your car door before you happen a glance up and immediately still in place, noticing a figure standing in the distance. You think to run back to your front door as quickly as possible but you just can't do it. You're not sure which outcome will be better for you. When you're alone in a dark forest, unsure of what is out there and how hostile it might be, do you call out for help or do you remain silent?

- You stay perfectly still, eyes locked on the dripping red that's stained across Jerry's mouth, being hurriedly wiped from his lips as he begins walking away from the car that he just came from. It only takes him a moment to sense your presence and he doesn't even do you the justice of pretending to look around, of pretending he doesn't immediately know exactly where you are, his eyes locking on your figure as he begins to come to a stop.

- He watches you intently, reading your expression as you simply stand and stare, frozen in place as he tilts his head and starts to smirk. The expression makes your stomach drop, the satisfaction in it, the vagueness of it's cause. He begins walking towards you, and the idea of running crosses your mind yet again. Yet your legs no longer listen to the pleas, completely immobile, weak and quivering as he stops a few feet away from you, studying you as you stand there stupidly, clutching your oh so important phone in hand.

"You're not usually out this late," He comments and it takes you a moment to respond, to will your tongue to move and your lips to purse and press and open. "I would know."

"I forgot...I forgot my phone." You finally answer, swallowing thickly as Jerry merely continues to smile. He knows that he has you right where he wants you; even you know that: that you're cornered and helpless, and that nothing you do will change that.

- He closes the distance and you tense even further, close to trembling as he leans in and nearly brushes against you, gently closing your car door and leaning against it as he inhales deeply. He studies your face up close, taking in every nervous tick and twitch and freckle. And then he finally speaks....

"You better get to bed." He tells you, and it takes you a while to process what he's saying. It only makes him smile wider, watching you buffer in response to his comment.

- You know he's telling you to start walking to your door, and all you can think is that this is it: that you'll turn your back and he'll pounce. But it's all you have left to do, to buckle up and endure it, to knowingly take the walk towards nothingness and face it head on. You swallow hard as you turn away from him, screwing your eyes together tightly and willing yourself to accept it.

- Every second ticks by agonizingly slowly once you begin the trek to your door. You wait to feel him grab you, to sink his teeth into your flesh at any minute and tear you from this Earth in one fell swoop. But when you get to your door without an issue, you happen a glance behind you and find him gone. You go inside safe and sound, collapsing to the ground and panting wildly as you try to calm yourself, clutching your phone so tightly that you're surprised it doesn't break.

- It is now, without a fraction of a doubt, that you realize that Jerry is a vampire: the tragedy of this being that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. You and Jerry both know that this is the case, that you're powerless to stop him, and that nothing you can do will give you any sort of leverage against him. If you tell anyone, they'll think you're crazy. If you attempt to arm yourself, you risk the chance of endangering yourself even further with faulty stereotypes. You're all alone in this, and you haven't the slightest idea of what to do, if there even is anything for you to do.

- Waiting. That's what you're forced to resort to. Sitting and waiting for the moment to come when Jerry finally decides to deal with you; to resolve the stand still that the two of you have recently come to....

- He seems to find it all very satisfying: watching you try and anticipate his actions; squirming under his gaze with both fear and the urge to act out. He takes pleasure in provoking you, in reminding you of your shared secret and the obliviousness of the people around you: smiling at you mockingly and trying to spur you into doing or saying something in front of your mutual neighbors that will make you seem like the crazy one. A reminder that no matter what you do, no matter what the truth is, you'll never be able to warn or convince anyone, and you'll never be able to save them from him....

- Unluckily for you, or perhaps luckily, Jerry finds your scent intoxicating: it's a big part of what keeps you alive for so long. He wants to play with you, to make the most of your time together and to indulge in the exquisite aroma of your fear. Though it isn't just your fear that attracts him. Soon, everything about you becomes intoxicating, and it leads to a small obsession: one that causes him to grow bolder and more bothersome than ever....

- It's this emboldened behavior that causes you to confront him and subsequently jumpstart your future relationship.

- You've tried keeping your family away from you for as long as possible, not wanting to risk their safety by having them come over to your home and potentially run into your vampiric neighbor. But at some point, your excuses stop working and you find yourself being ambushed with a visit, one you try your hardest to end before the sun begins to set. Unfortunately for you, it doesn't end up happening, and as you gather the last of your mothers things, you hear her begin to converse with someone outside.

- You rush out into your front lawn and feel your anger surge as you catch your mother laughing and talking to the man that you so desperately wanted her to avoid. You usher her to her car as quickly as possible, blood boiling as they continue to call out pleasantries to one another. She teases you about your attractive neighbor as she sits behind the wheel, urging you to shoot your shot before she sends him one last wave and a wink, driving out of your neighborhood as you stand there and seethe.

"What was that?" You growl at him, quickly closing in on the man as he simply smiles at you. You're furious, furious that he spoke to her, that he purposefully left his home to make sure that the two of them met.

"I think that was your mothers attempt at getting us together. I have to admit, I have thought about it myself-" He replies teasingly before you interrupt him.

"What do you want from me?" You growl, pushing at his chest and forcing him backwards. You're so fed up, so caught up in the high wired emotions that have built and built for the past few weeks that you don't even care about the consequences anymore. If you were more relaxed, you probably would have been surprised by how easily he went along with you, how he let you act as you as though you even held a candle to his strength.

"Easy." He breathes at you, chuckling with amusement as he takes in your anger, his teeth glinting in the low light of the evening.

"What do you want from me?" You seethe, hands gripping tightly to his shirt sleeves as you hold him against your garden gate.

"What do you think I want?" He smiles, hands coming up to tease at your flesh, returning your touch as he catches your arms and steadies both of your positions. His eyes twinkle, as if he's enjoying this entire thing.

"I don't care about what your plans for me are. I don't care if you want to sit around like a creep and torment me: ring my doorbell at all hours of the night and stand in my garden like Michael Myers. I mean it, I don't care. Just stay the hell away from my family. They have nothing to do with this." You hiss, disregarding the way he raises his eyebrows at your choices of words and the way that he licks his lips, entertained by your ferocious display.

- You pull away from him, arms jerking angrily from his grasp before you're immediately pulled right back in. It's only then that the severity of your actions begin to dawn on you: the swiftness of his grasp shocking you; the strength of it making it increasingly obvious that he let you move him and not that you managed it on your own.

"You know. I really think we got off on the wrong foot," He says with a smile, almost joking in his delivery of the line. He furrows his brows when he begins speaking again, nodding at you as if to implore you to agree. "I think this has gone on long enough, don't you think?"

- The words send a chill down your spine, and you watch as he breathes in deeply, inhaling the air around you before he shivers, pulling you closer as you struggle against him, trying to squirm away. You tense as he leans in, sniffing along the column of your throat as you remain momentarily paralyzed. He ends it with a flourish, faltering inches from your lips, close enough that you feel as though he's about to kiss you, his breath hitting your face.

- You catch his blackened eyes, catch a glimpse of his growing teeth, and your brain seems to finally catch up with you, realizing what's about to happen just in time for you to do something about it. He opens his mouth in preparation just as you fish the crucifix out of your pocket and shove it against his cheek. He quickly whips his head away, momentarily releasing you as he hisses, the holy metal searing into his skin and giving you enough of a distraction to get away.

- He wants to go after you immediately, but he's quickly drawn to the sound of a neighbor who's leaving their house: one who's just seen what's happened and is standing paralyzed in shock at the sight of "charming" Jerry who's just seemingly assaulted you. He turns to the man as he clutches his cheek, smiling at him as he tries to play it cool.

"Lovers quarrel." He jokes, but he can immediately see that the man doesn't believe him. He quickly heads over to your door, watching as they hurriedly go inside their own home and undoubtedly begin to tell their wife what they've seen. He knows that he can't get away with disposing of Mr. Brenner and his family, that the town will quickly notice and that it will compromise his cover, so the only choice he has left is to use you.

"Y/n, we need to talk," He knocks on your door, speaking quietly through the wood; knowing that you're able to hear him even though you don't respond. "You're a smart girl, y/n, and I'm not just saying that. It isn't easy to get away from me so consider me impressed."

"Since you're a smart girl, I want to make a deal with you. You go over to the Brenner's house, you tell them that we had a little argument and that everything is fine, that it was a misunderstanding between boyfriend and girlfriend, ...and you'll save yours and that entire family's lives. All you have to do is play along. And I think that's better than the alternative, don't you?" Well you don't have much of a choice, now do you?

- You slowly open the door, peering at him warily as you do your best to pull yourself together. He smiles at you, praising you for making the better decision as you step outside and begin walking across the street. You knock on the Brenner's door, forcing a smile onto your face as the older man answers. Once he see's that its you, he asks if you're alright, visibly becoming relieved when you assure him that you are.

- You do your best to act a bit embarrassed as you explain the story that you've been told to give to him: telling him that you and Jerry had a bit of a fight, that you're actually kind of seeing each other, and that things just got a little heated. You apologize for scaring him and the fact that he had to see all of that, sharing a laugh as he insists that it's fine and that he was just worried you were in danger. You both say goodnight and you make your way back to Jerry who's standing on your porch.

"Aren't you gonna invite me in?" He asks, glancing over to Mr. Brenner who's watching you through his window, seemingly still a bit suspicious. You hesitate, not thinking that allowing him access to your safe space would ever be a part of the deal.

"Of course." You insist phonily, smiling at him as though your stomach isn't completely in knots, opening your door and letting him enter your home for the first time since meeting him....

- Now that you're "officially" a couple, you're forced to act along whenever you're in front of your neighbors. You're forced to pretend as though nothing is wrong as Jerry pulls you into him, kissing and cuddling you in order to make this act of yours convincing. You don't think it's as much of a burden to him as it is to you. Frankly, you think he actually enjoys it.

- A lot of the time, he acts as though this arrangement of yours is more than that: that you're genuinely a couple or; at the very least, that he isn't forcing your hand. You find yourself beginning to struggle when trying to differentiate between all of your feelings for Jerry: where your obligation to him ends and your genuine attraction to him begins.

- Jerry is naturally magnetic. His presence is erosive, stripping you down to your weakest state and jumbling your nerves. There's a fine line between hunger and lust, and Jerry's personality embodies this line; creating this palpable desire that burns you up on the inside. You hate that he has an effect on you, but you cannot deny that it is there, and that very fact keeps you up at night.

- One evening, you get a knock on your door and when you open it, you're met with the Brenner's eldest son. He's hushed when he tells you that he knows what's going on with Jerry, that he knows you're not a couple, and that the two of you can work together to stop him. You want so badly to divulge everything, to grasp onto your only current ally and finally admit the truth that you've had to keep secret for so long. But you can't.

- You look at him, look at his baby fat and his nervous eyes, at the promise of a future that's written all over his face. You look at him and you lie. You tell him that you know what things may look like but that it's not really the case. That you believed it for a minute there too, but that Jerry isn't anything and that you're in a happy relationship with him.

- He tries to insist that he knows the truth, to tell you that you don't have to be afraid, but you simply shake your head; giving him a reassuring smile as you tell him to believe you: hoping that you're either convincing him or that your behavior is enough to make him comprehend the danger that's at hand. You see the look in his eyes before you feel Jerry behind you.

"Talking about me?" He asks, voice lighthearted and teasing but you're smart enough to sense the edge.

"Just clearing things up." You tell him, smiling back at him and towards the boy standing on your front step.

"Good, good. ...Have a goodnight Daniel." He tells him before closing the door around you, caging you with his body.

"You've really gotten good at all of this, y/n. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you liked having me around." He tells you, cupping the back of your neck as you turn towards him, smiling down at you reassuringly, almost affectionately. "Why don't we go watch something, hmm?"

- You're beginning to come to terms with the fact that this is your fate. That in the process of saving your life, you've subsequently surrendered ownership of it, and that this ownership was handed over to him. That there is no getting rid of Jerry Dandridge and that you'll be forced to stay by his side until he decides otherwise.

- The thing is, you're also beginning to find yourself concerningly okay with that....

[farewellneverland2004]

Being a reincarnation sucks! and UWMA told us, but we were too happy for DeanPharm to listen!

Okay! This might be a little bit of a hot take, and also possibly a little theorizing. But I will stand my ground and die on this hill!

UWMA is my all-time favorite BL, and might I even say, one of my favorite web dramas ever!

It's a compelling, heartbreaking, beautiful story about a wonderfully healthy relationship between two very traumatized people. Finding each other, and in the process, reconnecting the tortured souls of two people who loved each other but weren't given the option to be happy together.

Now, though that scenario is not likely to happen to me or you, it's still an interesting story, using the soulmate trope to its ultimate advantage. I love the idea of a healthy, yet unconditional and unending love that prevails through all.

However, although I love the reincarnated love trope, there is a blatant fact that I, and many other UWMA fans have been oblivious to. and that is how much it would SUCK to be in our beloved Dean and Pharm's shoes!

What invoked me to make this post?

Well, it's plain and simple. I'm sick of all the complaining and making fun of My boy Pharm for being a cryer!

Am I biased because Pharm is my favorite character and I relate to the inability to stop myself from crying and it usually takes a while for me to stop, so I see a lot of myself in him? Maybe, but that's not important!

What's important is that I believe, people who complain or laugh at Pharm for this know that this is a response to PTSD, but don't take time to really acknowledge how bad this PTSD would be if you were faced with it in real life. This is why I want to shed light on how being the reincarnations of Korn and In have done little to nothing beneficial for Dean and Pharm, other than the fact it's what brought them together.

(But just an FYI, crying is a normal reaction to things, and maybe Pharm is just a very emotional and expressive softy and there is nothing wrong with that! MEN SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO CRY GODDAMNIT!)

Well, since I just ranted about the Pharm crying disrespect, might as well start with him and his respected past life counterpart, Intouch!

As we see all through UWMA, Pharm probably has the more blatant PTSD from his past life out of the couple, and it makes sense.

In was left to watch the man he loved take his own life in front of him. He was the one to witness his improvement, his confession, and his mutual decline until he had nothing left to say but "I love you" and "I'm Sorry", and in the end, he was still left alone. he is left cradling the body of not only the first man he probably ever openly loved but also the first person who he could actually relate to in a world that told him if he wanted to survive, he had to hide who he was.

This user makes an interesting point on how Korn dying isn't just a traumatizing event for In, but in his mind, also an act of betrayal. Because he promised him, yet he traumatized and left him alone in a world that would hate him for who he is.(in Intouch's mind ofc). Yet he also knows that though he is hurt, all he wants is to be with Korn, so he commits suicide to escape the life he'd have to live without him.

These very hard-hitting and intense feelings are already bad to live with for the one who actually experienced the trauma firsthand. But imagine, being a normal kid with a happy loving family, yet you are plagued by vague but traumatic memories that are not your own? you wake up crying every morning, you panic at any unsuspected loud noise, and you get seemingly random panic attacks that you can't even explain why they happen.

You seemingly have no valid reason to act this way. You want to stop, or at least to know why, but can't for the life of you understand. I think many people can understand the feeling of being depressed, angry, anxious, etc., and don't really know why. So they feel guilty and exhausted from these strong emotions they don't want or understand.

For Pharm, the more he learns about his situation, the more he's around Dean, and the more he learns about Korn and In, the more intense his episodes get. he has more nightmares, more flashbacks, and he's less able to discern In's emotions and pain from his own.

At one point, he even realizes that the more he finds out about In, the more power In's feelings of betrayal and anguish have on him. He ultimately decides he doesn't want to know how In died, believing what's done is done and it's best to leave it in the past, just for him to find out later and for all his efforts to stay himself to be diminished by In's immense grief.

He straight up almost DIES because In's soul can't distinguish Dean from Korn, and therefore Pharm from Intouch. And people still thinks he doesn't deserve to cry all he wants?

Moving onto the titular man that, for lack of a better phrase, "started it all", and his green-flag of a reincarnation! Dean and Korn.

(If you don't agree with the dean, green-flag statement, I respectfully disregard your opinion)

So... let's just get this out in the open. I believe Korn was always suicidal. Or at least, very depressed.

Now when I say that, I obviously can't know how his childhood went or when his mental health began to decline, but considering the family he was born into, and the time he was in when he realized he liked men, it's not too hard to suspect that these feelings have been festering for a while.

Korn was the eldest son of a mafia loan shark. We don't ever find out about his mother, whether she was around or not, but considering how his father treats him and his children, I can assume that even if she was in their life, his father would still be calling all the shots.

We know that Korn is expected to carry on the family business, and at the point of his life where we are introduced to him, we see his father is beginning to put even more pressure on him to start taking up jobs and practicing to take over when he's gone.

But we see that Korn doesn't want to take over. He doesn't want to hurt people and he just wants a normal life for his brothers and himself. However, due to familial obligation, and threats from his father, Korn is submitting himself to a life he hates for the sake of his brothers, so neither of them has to throw their lives away for their father's business.

At this point, the existence of Korn is miserable. He's being pressured to do something he desperately hates, to submit himself to a life he does not want. He's ostracized at university for his affiliation with loan sharks and his general anti-social demeanor(which is definitely a coping mechanism) He's being berated and called useless by his own dad, which would definitely hurt his view of himself. He cares about his brothers way too much to ever let them know how much he's hurting, isolating himself from their care. finally, his sexuality would make him a target for discrimination, so he's forced to hide more about himself until he's probably forced into a marriage with a person he does not love, producing an heir to take on the job he hates and officially restarting the generational trauma and cycle of abuse.

This person better explains what Korn was going through mentally and what In truly meant to him than I ever could. But basically, they say that before In, Korn had practically dug himself a hole he couldn't get out of, and he was living on autopilot. Just moving through the days, until the day would come when he couldn't take it anymore. I very much agree with this. and every flashback, when they get closer and closer to the day, you can see that he doesn't know how much longer he's gonna last. So now that he is at the point of hopelessness, all he can do is let him know he loves him, and apologize to him and their dads for making them witness what he was going to do, but also for leaving him.

Now, I see a lot of comments about how Korn was being selfish with taking his life, because not only did he do it in front of the person he loves, but also in the process, he left him alone in the world. I personally feel like these comments tend to push a little too much on Korn being selfish that it ends up almost coming off as victim blaming. And I want to make it perfectly clear, people who commit suicide do so (mainly) as a last resort. almost no one who is going through with committing the act is doing so out of spite or to hurt others. They do so because they believe there is no other way to escape or fix what's wrong in their life. Korn is no exception. He was in pain, and he needed help, but he believed there was nothing that could be done, and probably felt if he was out of the picture, he would no longer be a burden on In and he would finally put an end to all the war and suffering in his heart and in his life.

However, suicide is an act that at the end of the day hurts everyone the victim is close to. people who are affected by a loved one taking their own life can feel a piling number of emotions. Confusion, anger, guilt, etc. We see those emotions expressed in In, An(In's Sister), Korn's brothers, their dads, and even Pharm. These emotions are valid and it's a common response. So I won't blame the audience for empathizing with In more than Korn in this series. To be fair, even Dean holds resentment towards Korn once he finds out.

Which brings me to why it'd suck to be Dean. He's possessed by the soul of a very depressed and broken man with anti-social tendencies. He's having issues similar to Pharm where he has memories that are not his own, not to mention he's always preoccupied with looking for someone he has no idea may or may not exist. He also chooses to isolate himself from his parents and siblings for the sake of his paternal grandmother, making his relationship with them more strained once he has to be in their lives. (which may or may not be influenced by Korn due to his tendency in life to self-isolate.) He puts on a stern and responsible act for everyone to mask his social awkwardness, still looking for someone he does not know.

And when he finally feels happy and relieved because he's found the thing he's always felt was missing, it only gives him more questions of who those memories actually are, and what he and Pharm have to do with it. The more he finds out, the more his true anxieties begin to take over and he desperately tries to put on a brave face for his boyfriend because he knows Pharm is already going through a lot, and he wants to make sure he's not worried.

When he actually finds out who Korn and In were, and What Korn did, he immediately starts cursing Korn for what happened. But it's so much more than just him being hateful towards a man who took his own life. Because to him, whether he likes it or not, Korn is an aspect of him. Whatever Korn feels, he feels. Korn's actions are his actions. So whatever Korn did, Dean is responsible for.(at least in his mind)

So Dean is practically cursing himself, calling himself a bastard. to Dean, He's the reason Pharm is terrified whenever there is a loud unexpected noise, he's the reason Pharm has panic attacks, and he's the reason Pharm cries in his sleep. He thinks it's his fault that Pharm was so scared of being in a relationship with him, Not to mention he's probably dealing with Korn's soul feeling the same amount of self-loathing. To Korn, everything is his fault, and because of his actions, he abandoned, hurt, and killed the one person that made him keep going.

So now, Dean is left with double self-loathing, and blaming himself for things that were most definitely NOT his fault.

Now, onto my final point on what the worst part of being the reincarnations of two unresting souls. Which is the lack of being your own person. When your body is holding two separate souls constantly fluctuating on taking the wheel, don't be surprised if you feel just a tad bit unsure of who you are or what things in life are your own.

Now, there are some things that their past life events influence that are not bad and are in fact quite sweet. like how In always wanted to be good at cooking, and so Pharm is born with a mother who is great at cooking, and in the process learns to be a good cook. Or Korn going to the beach for the first time with In being one of his happiest memories, and so Dean grows to love the beach, and therefore swimming. But the main thing that this drama shows as its conflict through the series is both Dean and Pharm trying to stay themselves. To have their actions be their own. and also, when the whole reason they are reincarnations of these two men specifically is to reconnect them and fulfill a promise made long ago, there's also the conflict of how much of their love is genuinely theirs. That's probably the worst anxiety in the world! You finally find a person who can truly relate and understand what you're going through and you feel an intense unexplainable love for them, only for you to fear that the relationship you built together isn't based off of love that is yours. It makes you fear that you are hurting the other person because why would you stay with someone if you're not sure if you love them? This is something they both have to face in the final episode. They separate for a little bit to give themselves time to reflect on their own feelings and only after they know that the souls of In and Korn are content, do they know that the love they have is real and it's theirs.

So...Still think reincarnation is cute and fun?! There's a reason people work to finally escape Samsara! Thank you for coming to my rant lol!

[knowonesdesigns]

**Suzume Spoiler Warning!!!**

-don’t read if you haven’t watched it!

I love going into Makoto Shinkai movies kind of blind. Like I know the general concept, but I don't want to know more than that, I just want to watch it unfold. For example Suzume, I knew there were doors appearing all over Japan and something probably was coming out of them that shouldn't then hot mysterious guy related to doors steps in, stuff happens, probably.

What I didn't know was that hot mysterious guy was going to TURN INTO A WALKING, TALKING CHAIR that she was going to carry around with her all over Japan to close said doors.

Then this nonsense turns into something literally magical. That something seemingly so weird and random, turns into a beautiful allegory of not abandoning yourself and your inner child.

Hot guy chair ends in self reflection and inner child acceptance.

HOW?!

What creative demon did he make a deal with?!

That's the beauty of these movies.

Here's my take (if you care to read)

Suzume was called to these incidents by being able to see things others couldn't and wanted to help. She thought it was initially because of Souta (hot chair guy), but it was really because she needed to find herself and actually process the loss of her mother. Daijin (talking cat) was so affected by her words and thoughts because he was a part of her, acting as her ego, and guiding her. Which would make sense why he switched places with Souta, not wanting him to be a distraction for her, so he turned him into a chair so she could really focus on what she needed to do. I think it's always why he was turned into something so precious to her. Just the existence of the chair made it so she couldn't forget what happened and had to confront it with every new person she met along the way.

It felt more like Daijin had a larger part to play when everytime Souta pinned him down he would say "you know why I can't" when he would ask for him to be the pillar again and turn him back. Suzume hadn't realized what she needed to do, she needed motivation. When she got mad at Daijin and visibly looked ill after that and was less talkative it's because she wasn't listening to her inner world, she was physically pushing him away and not asking questions as to why. She thought she knew what she needed to do but she wasn't being open to the world around her, she wasn't being curious. The same way she shut out her Aunt, thinking she knew what was best instead of talking to her and letting her in.

She wanted to save Souta but it wasn't just about him, she needed to save her inner child as well. When she went back to her house and saw the blacked out pages and the realized she had no memory of the time after her mom died (psst repressed trauma).

Having both cats being a yin and yang to one another, one being the small supportive and mischievous white one to the other bigger black cat that brought out shadow emotions, the ones we would rather hide but are often taking up a much larger space inside us than we realize. They both worked together to get her where she needed to be.

What I thought was even more beautiful is when she found the door she entered as a child when she first went to the ever after, she hopped through the door telling her aunt "I’m going to save the person I love" she was talking about both herself and Souta. She couldn't save him without saving herself, she had to go back and confront what happened after her mom passed, once Daijin saw her resolve to fix things he she was in the right place and was then ok becoming a pillar again to make things stable enough for her to complete what she came there for.

I also really appreciated that Souta went and did the things in his life that he needed to and it wasn't an instant love story, in fact their story is what we think it is and thats the start of something beautiful.

That's what I mean about going in blind, had no idea that a hot guy turned into a chair with talking cats was going to end in me crying over an inner child metaphor.

Also big shout out to Serizawa for being the best bro and literal most unbothered dude ever. Tapping his car door back on after driving 2 distressed strangers to hopefully go help his friend out. That's a real hero.

[atlas-the-bastard]

I don't usually post non fandom art on here but I'm pretty proud of this :33

these r two characters my best friend and I made for a VERY COOL webcomic we're in the process of creating - mavis (redhead) and her currently unnamed girlfriend because we needed side characters and I felt like she deserved a sapphic relationship 😌

i did use a reference for the pose/clothes but it turned out way better than I was expecting??? kind of insane??

anyway if you want more deets about the characters uhh under the cut bc I want to tell people about this so bad😭

SO (and may I just say thankyou for clicking see more cant believe people want to KNOW about my SILLY LITTLE GUYS)

Mavis (full name mavis nic coitir) is the bassist of a 5 person band in a world pretty much the same as our own except there's monsters n magic n people have powers n shit. dont think about it too hard the world building isn't designed for scrutiny.

Mavis' "power"/ability is mostly that she's just freakishly smart. she's the tech junkie of the group, the gadget girl, all that jazz - and also the biggest pop culture nerd ever. she's also the mom friend, she had adhd, she's 20 years old, Irish, and born on the 10th of february. she's a total loser and also the coolest person you'll ever meet.

she has a shit ton of awesome body mods/cyborgy stuff (which I didn't draw because I didnt feel like it💀), including a prosthetic arm - all of which she made herself.

she (like all of our other characters) is an amalgamation of a bunch of different traits and tropes we thought would be funny or cool, and also because I cant keep my sticky fingers out of anything, is losely inspired by one piece characters (namely franky and nami) - again, like most of our other characters💀

i, being a faggot, needed to give her a girlfriend and my friend said "sure :D". I thought it would be funny if she, being the loser ever, somehow pulled like. a beautiful celebrity or actress. and I think the idea in my head has now kind of morphed into like...a really cool artist/content creator who lives in their city and who everyone knows...so like microcelebrity...but still a celebrity to mavis's band mates. I havent yet run this past my friend, but I'm thinking some flavour of blasian for the gf.

also these aren't their actual outfits I just drew the clothes that were on the reference cos it was easier and also I think I am a lot better at drawing clothing folds now so win win. for the record mavis normally wears like an oversized band/pop culture tshirt and some old cargo pants/overalls.

anyway yeah that's mavis :DDD

(If u wanna know the other 4 band members are Soren Fayez , the seemingly cool calm collected popular girl who is actually a total ditz, and plays violin; Dante (full name Durante Alaric Hunter Dio Galloridge), the vampire vocalist and sometimes keyboardist with big dick energy and chaotic bisexuality; Calvin Smith, drummer and the most normal guy ever - completely trauma and angst free and the himbo ever; and Evan(geline) Mori, guitarist and the black cat to cal's golden retriever, bursting with childhood trauma and a Midwestern emo musical influence. Evan and Cal are in love with each other but Evan is too angsty to do anything and Cal doesn't waste time doing things like using his single braincell to pick up on Evan's faggotry that to anyone else except the two of them is more unsubtle than a giraffe in a swimming pool.)

[seaprofound]

there's just something about a woman with snakes for hair... (a psa)

it's been a month or so now since I gushed over the idea of giving Medusa a happy ending and while I do still think that she deserves one—if only in an AU (or something similar)—I've decided to keep the relationship that she has with Po as a tragic one because I am an angst monster.

what made me decide to go this route was the rediscovery—I swear that I got a strange sense of déjà vu—of this vase painting that depicts Po rushing towards Medusa after she's been beheaded while one of her sisters tries to shield Po's eyes from the grisly sight. that made me get just so !!! because Po usually befriends her lovers before ever getting together with them—I say usually because she's not immune to one-night stands (they're just rare)—and, thus, she would dedicate time to them, becoming utterly devoted in the process. because of that, it never made sense to me that Po would seemingly have no reaction to Medusa being slain because when she cares, she cares deeply, and there's nothing she wouldn't do to avenge the ones she loves if they were hurt in any way.

I'll elaborate more on Po's reaction to Medusa's death in the future—but, for now, know that it ate her up inside.

besides my decision to keep Seidusa—yup, this is the ship name I've decided on—tragic, I'm writing this post to discuss another decision that I've made. or, rather, one that I didn't make.

in the days leading up to me writing this post, I came this 🤏 close to writing off interactions with Medusas for good after dealing with years of frustration from the general Greek mythos community—as well as people outside of it—because of the prevailing notion that Ovid's interpretation of Medusa is the true Greek version (it isn't) or, worse, it's the only valid interpretation.

it didn't help that although I've interacted with Medusas that made the sexual encounter between Medusa and Po consensual like the Hesiod version—which is the oldest written version mind you (but that's besides the point)—they all still took elements from Ovid (usually the idea that Medusa was once a beautiful maiden). as a Hesiod!Medusa truther who longs for a Medusa that's scary and unapologetically ugly (albeit still hot if you're a monsterfucker like Po), this desire for such a specific niche drove me to start creating my own Medusa in earnest. I can't wait to tell you all about her because, ugh, she is just so gender tbh. I love her.

( my Medusa is agender, for instance, and she does not give a fuck as to how she's perceived due to a gender neutral upbringing. to her, Medusa is Medusa. )

as my Medusa became a more fleshed out character, I began to wonder what I should do about the Medusas that I've already interacted with (or expressed interest in doing so). on one hand, Medusa is an important character for Po and I've never felt more free than when I started creating my own version of her and really detailing the relationship that she and Po had with each other. on the other hand, I didn't wanna hurt anybody by closing off interactions because I worried that that would come across as callous or as if I thought other interpretations inferior.

that's not the case at all.

I don't mind other interpretations of Medusa. if you wanna write her, go ahead and, by all means, have your fun. I'm not gonna stop you. ultimately, I just wanna have creative freedom in my Medusa retelling—which is why I've decided that my Medusa will be the main Medusa for Po. what this means is that, unless I indicate otherwise, any mention of Medusa will be referring to my Medusa specifically.

what does this mean for other Medusas you may ask? simple. provided that they're NOT purely Ovid-based, I'm still willing to interact.

I have just one caveat if they take a couple of influences from Ovid, though (e.g., such as Medusa originally being human, her stunning beauty—as mentioned before—or the idea that she was once the priestess of Athena which is arguably fanon for it was never directly stated in that passage from the Metamorphoses): Po did not have intercourse with Medusa in Athena's temple.

no shade meant to her male counterpart, Poseidon, but Poseida is different. although Po may have had a bit of a rivalry with Athena at times—a friendly one, though, mind you—she respects her far too much to just. do that.

( Po will stick to flowery meadows, thank you very much. )

TLDR:

Seidusa is tragic once more ( I am the monster, rawr, rawr, rawr )

I created my own Medusa and she will be Po's main Medusa from now on

that said, I'm still willing to interact with other Medusas if they're not purely Ovid-based and, if they're willing to bend on the idea of Medusa and Po having intercourse in Athena's temple if their interpretation takes any cues from Ovid

[teddywesworl]

about the attention i do think there's a difference between wanting an audience to experience your art and doing art for attention, no?

in my understanding, for any performance and any form of art, you have to capture your audience's attention, that's true. all art forms are taught around what the spectator/viewer/reader will experience, read and understand when they see it. if you want to attract a certain audience, you skew your art in a certain way, ("fanservice"), or make it more palatable for your core message to reach as many people as possible. creating your art FOR an audience IS a part of making art, on that, i agree with you 100%. even when drawing/writing for my own cringe sake, i still technically think about a hypothetical audience because clarity and observable technical skill, while they're seemingly not important when you only make art for yourself, are still a way to "measure" your skill in that art form.

BUT

i think that when people criticize artists by saying they're doing it for attention, i think they mean making art ONLY to "shock" the audience or be "sensational". there is no real thought process to it, no intention to show certain point of view or share a message, or even to be read/seen more than once most of the time. making something sexual, something that is not conventionally considered beautiful, something that doesn't display your technical skill to all it's ability or REJECTING art's rule to make something unique : THOSE ARE ALL COOL AND AMAZING. but making art for attention means to literally put no thought into anything, surface or substance, regarding the piece. you literally just want to provoke a big emotion without a discernable goal other than capturing people's attention. i'd use an example in comedy (stand-up or otherwise) for this : a joke can be spontaneous, stupid, easy-to-write, and only serve the purpose to make people laugh. a joke does not need to be observational or make LOTS of sense to accomplish the goal : MAKING PEOPLE LAUGH. BUT. the people who make red-pilled-dark-humor jokes or generally demeaning jokes only make them to shock people, not actually to make you laugh. you could argue a red-pilled joke is "to send a political message" but most comedians who go that route are trying to SHOCK you when showing their political opinion because deep down they know that opinion is shocking in nature. maybe they even adopted that political stance to feel "different" from "the woke society" or to show how "brave and daring" they are to display the stance. all in all, they don't do it to make you laugh. so making art to provoke strong emotions is cool, making art to only offend the majority and NOT EVEN TO MAKE YOU THINK ABOUT WHY IT OFFENDED YOU. AND NOTHING else further. that's making art for attention in my opinion. and that kinda sucks.

i hope this makes sense because i'm tired so maybe some sentences are not totally understandable but yeah. sorry for the long ask, you just made me think about this! have a good day/evening/night/whatever :)

i don’t want to be super dismissive, but “im trying to say something, and im not gonna say it in an empty room” should probably have been your clue within the text of what i want the attention for

[pilot-boi]

Catsvdogs

What if when fighting the cat or at some point when Jaune finally puts his foot down to the cat his own shadow starts to crawl its way out of the ground life a giant creature from a game or movie coming out of the water and starts fighting Jaune and the other

( got the idea thinking out artorias for dark souls also I was the one who made the post about Alex poisoning Jaune because of the shadow don't know why it says anonymous)

Believe me, you are not off base, because I already imagined this happening in the timeline

The time Jaune puts his foot down, btw, is after Ruby drinks the tea

CC is much more involved in breaking her down than they were in canon, wanting to speed up the process so they can have a proper Remnant-ready vessel. It’s thwarted, ironically and darkly, by Ruby drinking the tea

This time, instead of CC getting batted away by Neo, CC gets rid of Neo literally just before she convinces Ruby to drink, making it seem like they were just an illusion created to hurt her. And then CC starts their whole possession thing

“I was wearing down my Sunshine for DECADES, loving him and killing him in equal measure, but then you… Why I only had to know you for a day and a half! How weak you must be, little Huntress…”

WBYJ charge in to help her, see CC sitting on her chest with the claws sunk into her chest, and see Ruby drink the tea. Her last option

“I’m sorry guys, this was the best I could do”

CC screams and leaps back. The Tree swallows up Ruby. And that’s just one lost friend too many for poor Jauney

“I TRUSTED YOU!!”

He screams at CC, fury and sorrow in equal measure the only thing left in his once-bright eyes. A harsh reflection of a school lobby a lifetime ago, when the only thing that stood between him and death was Ruby Rose

But Ruby isn’t here anymore. Her teammates are all that are left, Yang in shock, Blake holding her hand, and Weiss holding him back.

Gods how could he have been so stupid

CC blinks at him, shaken from their failure by the voice of their Sunshine. His shadow writhes on the ground behind him, unseen by the three remaining Huntresses, the smallest one seemingly holding him back and holding him up in equal measure

Tears are running from those beautiful eyes

Tears

All this time they’ve been wondering what it would take for Jaune to break. It seems they finally pushed him as far as he could go. And all it took was Ruby Rose

CC’s eyes widen. Jaune screams at him, voice hoarse with tears, and shadow like a yowling cat behind him, but CC can scarcely hear him

Because an idea has crossed their mind. A wonderful idea. A wonderful TERRIBLE ideA

Jaune takes a step forward. The shadow springs from the ground, lashing at him with dark spectral hands that fractal into technicolor static at the edges. The children all yell, shocked and drawing their weapons, as Jaune is suddenly engulfed by his own shadow

CC laughs unbidden, their face stretching into a grin like a saw blade

Because while Ruby would’ve worked perfectly well, there is ONE way to guarantee a chance to see Remnant and keep their Sunshine in line all in one fell swoop

They stride forward, feeling lighter than air in the face of this unexpected victory. Jaune lays before them, entombed in darkness that parts only for their insubstantial form. His friends strike it with swords and bullets that don’t act fast enough

His Sunshine stares up at him. Tears cutting through the darkness like diamonds. Those eyes have never looked more beautiful than while set in a face so terrified

“You are MY Sunshine. My only Sunshine,” CC murmurs, holding Jaune’s chin. He’s shaking his head, or maybe he’s just shaking. “Don’t worry, I can be you for you.”

And then they kiss him fit to devour him whole

[h7p3r4ct1v3-h0rn3t2]

For the fragrance prompts how about... bergamot for Ryan + rose for Kevin + lemon for Neil? Annnd perhaps jasmine for a hypothetical postcanon version of Spencer who's begun the transition process

Oh my evil sinister.... my evil sinister. first of all I Feel I Should Clarify This Ask Is About New Kids On The Rock, the webseries New Kids on the Rock on Youtube Dot Com, the webseries.

So Bergamot is What gesture of kindness made the biggest impact on them, and why. This took me embarrassingly long to come up with but The Medical Bills Thing!! God, american medical bills are so fucking expensive i would assume if neil and kevin had Not helped him with the bills he would be in like ultradebt. limb transplants can be like tens of thousands of dollars yknow . There's probably some other glaringly obvious thing im forgetting but. oh well! That Feeling When Knee Surgery Is Tomorrow

So Rose is What part of falling/being in love do they get the most joy out of and of course this is his because he's the only one who's canonically been on at least one date . Unfortunately, I dont Know what to say for thsi one. Like actually no idea. I Do Not Know the benefits of Being In Love . I even looked them up and i cant find anything solid to put down . I'm very sorry

I only just understood how funny it was to ask Lemon for Neil. But anyway that question is What is something seemingly inconsequential that can put them in a bad mood for the rest of the day. For this one im going to say Seeing a police officer anywhere at all . Now I don't have any justification for this other than the fact that Neil just seems the most inclined toward illegal behaviour. (This is honestly just projection, seeing police officers anywhere ever pisses me off too)

Fuckk!!!! The Pence. The question for Jasmine is What makes them feel beautiful and ough . I'm gonna have to say External Validation Derived From Social Networking Platforms (Read: getting likes on, like, grainy photos of herself on facebook Or Wherever Else) . because Well Chat, idk if self-esteem is really this Freakazoid's strength. freakazoid is a fun thing to call people by the way.

My apolocheese that this one is kinda lame. And My Double Apolocheese that it took so long!! Not really my month, unforchies.

[ladysomething]

The most recent chap of where you go, I go was incredible, you are truly the most talented!!!!! I could literally fill up your inbox talking about this fic, I love it so much and I literally don’t have all the words to express how obsessed I am with it!!! And your other f1 fics!! Everything you write is so amazing!!

I love how much tension/suspense there is in wygig, and I’m having so much fun trying to figure out what I think is going to happen later in the fic based on the hints (or at least what I think are hints lol) you drop in each chapter, and just based on how each new chapter unfolds. Like, in the most recent chapter, Max made the comment about how he’s seen an omega go through mate withdrawal before, and I think that tells us a bit more about what Kelly was going through. And the way Christian seems weirdly informed about Max’s plans and intentions with Charles’ could just be Max being close to his boss, but combined with the clear distaste and distrust Max has for Charles’ current team, I am incredibly excited to see what’s going to happen once they make it to a racetrack. And then in chapter 3, Charles’ dad told Charles that alphas presentation can be triggered, and then in ch4 Max says that his path to this moment started when he was 13 and presented as an alpha? Did Charles’ trigger Max’s presentation 👀 I can’t wait to find out! youre so good at weaving in hints, that I never actually know when something is a hint though, it’s never obvious and it keeps the fic so exciting.

And I also love the way seemingly tiny details show up again (like in chapter 2 when Charles throws the flowers over the balcony and max makes note of the empty vase in ch4), it just makes your writing seem so thoughtful and cohesive.

and I’m not a writer at all, but I love learning about the behind-the-scenes process. So I’m v curious if you don’t mind sharing some details about how you keep track of everything you have/haven’t revealed, how you decide what hints to drop or details to mention, how far advance do you plan all of it, etc.? And it’s probably way too early to share anything about wygig, but if you have any fav bits of foreshadowing or tiny recurring details from any of your other fics then I’d love to know what they are!! Only if you don’t mind sharing ofc <3

this ask got way out of control, i am so sorry, I just admire the hell out of your talent and cannot contain my excitement for your writing

this was the best thing to wake up to this morning.

I'm going to answer below the cut so I don't clog people's feeds because I want my answer to be as long as your beautiful ask!

firstly ... there are a LOT of hints, even in the first four chapters. you can probably safely assume that if it made you go "hmm" then it's going to come up again at some point.

I love the examples you came up with! I will confirm that they are all hints, however .... the conclusions you drew were not all correct. some were, but some weren't. you'll just have to wait to find out which is which 😊

I LOVE that you noticed the vase thing! whenever I read stories I'm always so bad at picking up on those details, but when I write them they're all so deliberate so I'm always amazed and delighted when people see them.

in terms of how I keep track of everything ... well for this story I have the amazing and gorgeous @saiyanwitcher helping me. this story wouldn't be half of what it is without her. I would say like 1/4 is me remembering details, 1/4 is her remembering details, and then 1/2 is the very detailed outline we have. it's 10 pages long.

here is a heavily redacted screenshot of ch 1 in the outline.

from there, I just kind of ... put it together and write. and then make a note of little details that need to be revised.

in terms of how I decide what hints to drop when, I would say there's a mix of reasons. some of it is just what the plot and characters demand, but then other times it's just my instinct, and other times it's just sheer experience. I've been writing for a long time - you kind of learn along the way what makes sense and what doesn't. but I also read a LOT, and when I read I take fairly extensive notes of things I liked and didn't like, and that always informs how I write, too.

in terms out far in advance things are planned, I would say it really depends on the story. WYGIG for example has been quite meticulously planned since SaiyanWitcher came to me with the idea of an omegaverse fic. so we know pretty much everything there is to know about the fic and how the plot progresses.

I like to have written a few chapters before I post, because sometimes when I start to write the vibe changes and I need to be able to go back and adjust little details. It's also why I don't like to immediately post what I've written and instead like to have a few chapters in the can - it means I can go back and add in more/less foreshadowing, depending on how the later chapters are playing out.

but also, sometimes things just happen. I'm writing ch 8 at the moment, and only yesterday SaiyanWitcher and I were like "hey what if we do this for ch 9" so now there's a new extra chapter bc we had an idea and it fits and we want to do it. so that wasn't planned in advance at all haha. sometimes you've just gotta go with the flow!

ok now ... in terms of fave parts of foreshadowing for WYGIG. unfortunately it IS too early for me to share most of them.

BUT! one I've only seen a couple people bring up is Max's aversion to Charles reciprocating the bite - I love that one.

I also just asked SaiyanWitcher what hers are and she said the Mercedes mechanic (a great choice), and Pierre (another GREAT choice). Though he's less foreshadowing and more of a recurring plot point lol.

from my other fics ... tbh I don't think I've ever really done as much foreshadowing in them as WYGIG.

in saying that, one really does stick out .. minor spoilers for if you haven't read Give Me That Fire but I LOVED dropping all the hints about "the final night" that happened that broke Max and Charles up for good. I knew from the first sentence I wrote for that fic that it was all leading up to that reveal and how careless Max was about Arthur, and seeing people theorise about what had happened and then being horrified that the truth was so much worse than what they expected was so bloody satisfying.

also there weren't really any major plot twists in the brocedes fic that had foreshadowing, but the slow reveal of their backstory juxtaposed with cutting forward to lewis at the lestappen wedding was also a personal favourite. that fic was by far the hardest thing I've ever written, and took one of the biggest emotional tolls. so the slow build of the horror at the piece by piece reveal of what lewis and nico had done to each other ended up being a very big personal achievement. I adore that fic, even though it's devastating.

now, I think I've yapped enough!

thank you so much for your beautiful and thoughtful ask, it's made my weekend. I'm so delighted that you're enjoying WYGIG so much and I hope that you continue to love it!

[stargazer-sims]

happy valentine's day! ❤️ sending all my love and i hope you feel appreciated not only today but every day 💐

if you're still taking asks for the love day otp questions, how about 🍭 🫦 🍰 🍫 for eden & haru?

Hey! 👋🏼 Yes, I’m still working my way through all the ones I've gotten recently. I got sidetracked from my inbox by building and CC-making, so now I'm trying to catch up.

And thanks for the message. I do feel appreciated in certain parts of my life (and not so much in others). I hope you're feeling appreciated in as many aspects of your life as possible, too!

Eden Seong & Sakuharu Abe

🍭What's something they can never agree on (big or small)?

Their biggest point of contention is their security guy, Frankie. Eden understands why Haru wants and needs a security person (and driver, interpreter & babysitter), but he doesn't think Frankie necessarily needs to be at the house when Haru isn't there. It's not that Eden dislikes Frankie. He actually likes him quite a lot and considers him a friend, and he thinks it's nice to have company around the house sometimes. Eden's problem is that he knows there's almost nothing for Frankie to do when Haru is away. For Eden, it's like having an unemployed roommate, and as much as he likes Frankie, he kind of wishes Frankie had his own place.

Haru, on the other hand, thinks Frankie is there to protect Eden as well as the property. Neither Eden nor Frankie are totally convinced the property needs more than the security cameras when Haru isn't there, and they don't think Eden really needs protection either. But, they know how anxious Haru can be, and how stuck on an idea he can get when he's anxious, so they both humour him.

Frankie is getting paid regardless of whether Haru is there or not, so he certainly doesn't complain about it, even if Eden sometimes does.

🫦What's something seemingly innocent that the other does, says or wears that turns the other on?

For Haru, it's Eden's figure skating costumes. Eden doesn't really think anything of it because the costumes are part of the performance aspect of the sport and it's totally normal for him to wear something fancy (and often form-fitting) for a competition, but the sight of Eden in his costumes makes Haru think less than pure and innocent thoughts.

For Eden, it's one of Haru's t-shirts that has a slogan of questionable appropriateness. In the category of shirts with bad Engiish translations, this one says love carrot in an orange and green design. Eden finds it amusing, and likes to tease Haru about his "love carrot". It took Haru a minute to get the joke, but now he understands it perhaps a bit too well.

🍰 What is 'their song'? Officially or unofficially.

In the context of the story, their "official" song is "Broken Parts" (a song that Haru wrote for Eden).

As for real life songs, it's "Beautiful Life" by Bebe Rexha

bonus: Eden skates to this song in a program collaboratively choreographed by himself, Nikolai and Haru. He talks Nikolai into letting Haru provide some input because Haru is a better than average dancer and wants more choreography experience. Haru learns a lot about figure skating in general and skating choreo in particular during the process.

🍫 Who is more likely to steal the other's clothes? What are their favorite items to steal?

They're each equally likely to steal the other's clothes. Haru is a little bigger than Eden, but Eden is way more muscular than Haru, so anything tight or form-fitting doesn't work very well, but they're close enough in size that they can wear most of one another's casual clothes. When they're together, they'll routinely wear each other's sweatpants, t-shirts, shorts and hoodies. When Haru is on the road, he leaves a hoodie behind for Eden, and Eden has also stolen a hat of Haru's that he likes to wear to practice, and one might find Eden's mysteriously "lost" Chinese Zodiac bracelet on Haru's wrist.