#and more recently A Good Person (which I read a couple months ago)

[doctorsiren]

age swap mogami? the most wettest cat kid ever

hello chara undertale

He just never had any positive adult influences in his life because he was a child star and was “always watched but never seen” (I’m quoting an ageswap fic called “A Good Person” by qrovers, please read it omg it’s so good 😭)

Oh and then bonus is this one I drew yesterday (before I got this ask) based on a goofy stock photo

The inconsistency here is that Mogami wouldn’t be alive 😭

[ariaste]

Okay, I have to share this story because it was a hilarious experience, I'm not sure if the ask box will let me get through it in one message, bear with me.

So I'm scrolling through IWTV fanfiction on AO3, reading some of the more recent fics, and I find one fic that I really love. They've really got the Daniel tone and essence down, I'm laughing to myself on the couch. I decide to wait and read the fic out loud with my partner because when a fanfic is really good we like to share it. While I'm waiting for my partner to get back from canning peaches, I check the author's profile briefly and I'm like 'oh shit they write for The Untamed,' which is cool, that was our last fandom that we were super into.

My partner gets home-- I excitedly tell them that I've found a new fic for us to read and they'd better buckle in because it's got a hell of a vibe and they're not even ready. My partner is like 'oh hell yeah' and gets out their crochet project. (we're in our mid twenties I don't know why this particular day makes us sound like we're in our eighties)

Anyways, I tell them that the author also does MDZS content so we can check that out after our IWTV fic and then we start reading the story and it's very good-- they have to hold up a hand to make me stop reading because they're cry-laughing, and all is well. And then suddenly I go.... wait. Wait, hang on. Hang on, I have to check this person's profile. This is a little too familiar.

And my partner says "Wait. Is this the MDZS writer-" and I say "I don't know I'm checking, hang on" and then I look up and we make eye contact and I'm like "oh my god babe it's the Meng Yao writer."

Essential Background: Meng Yao is my favourite MDZS character and it's hard to find good fics for him. A couple of years ago, my partner was reading the HOA fic and gushing about it, I was insisting that 'an act too often neglected' was simply the best MDZS fic that could ever be written, and we were absolutely shocked to discover they had an author in common, and then a while later there was ANOTHER fic I started reading out loud to my partner because it was That Good and it turned out to ALSO be the same author, so we just started calling them 'The Meng Yao writer' aka the only person we trust to write him.

Basically what I'm saying is that whenever either of us reads anything you've written, it's so goddamn good that we end up sharing it with each other and not realizing that it's the Same Author every time. So. I'm buying one of your books for my partner's next birthday I guess because you're clearly just That Good. Thank you for the multiple years of enjoyable fics and the consistent joy you're bringing to our household. Also I want to eat up your Daniel Molloy characterization with a knife and fork. Thank you.

This is the most delightful ask that it is possible to get. I am giggling and kicking my feet and grinning ear to ear. This is so sweet.

This is also so fucking funny to me. "The Meng Yao writer" ahhh my legacy. The arguing over which fic is better until the moment you realize they're both mine. The way you keep finding my fics and independently discovering every time that they're Finally Some Good Fucking Food without having learned my AO3 name at some point during that process until the third or fourth time i have jumpscared you with it dfghjkkdfghjkfghj Ariaste/Alexandra Rowland is everywhere, they're in your walls, they're currently standing right behind you actually ghjklwwghjwkl;

BLESS YOU AND YOUR PARTNER, your relationship sounds honestly ideal. I hope you keep reading fics and crocheting together forever.

Also very flattered that you're taking a swing with my original works! Thank you!! They are all set in the same world but they're usually (so far) about different characters, so as you read more of them you're going to start catching some fun cross-references between them. My thirteenth book comes out next month, so here's some good places to start based on the fics you've pointed out that you've particularly liked:

if you want more laughing-until-you-are-crying-and-have-to-stop-because-you-genuinely-cannot-breathe content (a la "different for vampires", HOAverse (Meng Yao and the Board of the Homeowners Association), or any of my other high comedic fics), start with RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND. It's about queer pirates accidentally stealing and trying to find a buyer for the most valuable secret in the world, and standing up against institutional hegemony. Also horny sea serpents. Also a plot-relevant cake competition. If you cried laughing at any of my fics in the past, you are not prepared for what I'm about to do to you here.

if you are enjoying the Snarky Old Man content that is Daniel Molloy and his disquisitions on the nature of storytelling and truth-seeking in "different for vampires", go for A CONSPIRACY OF TRUTHS, which has more of both of those things. It's about an elderly wandering storyteller who has been imprisoned on charges of witchcraft, treason, and brazen impertinence, and the stories he tells to rescue himself from the situation. And the corrupt government he accidentally knocks over along the way, whoops

If you liked the yearning, sweeping romance of the main pairing in "an act too often neglected", try A TASTE OF GOLD AND IRON, which is about an Exquisitely Beautiful Prince with a chronic anxiety disorder and his Stoic Beefy Bodyguard as they attempt to track down a coin counterfeiting ring that could bring down their whole economy, and also they fall in love along the way.

My next book, YIELD UNDER GREAT PERSUASION (out in September), is also great for that sweeping romance vibe, but preorders are not quite up yet! If you are looking for a cozy M/M romantasy about a prickly, grouchy tea shop owner, his childhood nemesis who he's been fucking since they were teenagers, and the hard, unglamorous journey of personal growth toward self-love and self-forgiveness to be able to accept love from other people... Watch this space, get on my Discord server (where i am these days constantly ranting about IWTV in a dedicated thread), or sign up for my newsletter linked on my website

Thank you again for the entirely LOVELY ask, I will be beaming all day. Please give your partner a high five from me, I hope the two of you enjoy the books (and if you want to get autographed copies for their birthday, hit me up in DMs and we can get that sorted out)!

Also, there will be a new chapter of "different for vampires" going up in the next hour or so :D

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

Hello. I’m an English reader of One Piece, and confidently know *nothing* about the Japanese language (atleast how to read it). I own all 4 box sets that are currently officially available in English. I was wondering, considering your expertise, is the VIZ translation good (in terms of how reliable it is in accuracy)? Does it convey what it needs to? If not, do you think any scans you’ve read are better compared to the official? Curious what you think as a translator. Thanks!

i think that these days the viz translation is basically fine. it conveys what it needs to. often there's little quibbles i have with it, like little differences in how i might personally have phrased things, but i certainly don't think i could do better at translating whole chapters of manga on a week-to-week basis.

my new chapter reading process now that i'm properly caught up again starts with reading the raws in japanese, and then i skim both the unofficial scans from tcb and the official release from viz when they each come out to see what choices they made. doing this, i do see more mistakes in the unofficial scans than in the official viz translation. and that makes sense! the people who do the official viz translation are professionals who are being paid for their work and they have more time to do it.

like, just for one low-stakes recent example i noticed, in chapter 1112, the unofficial scans (left) messed up this panel by attributing both of the lines on the left to vegapunk, when in fact the second one should be spoken by pythagoras (something made clear in japanese by his distinctively polite speech pattern), a mistake which was corrected in the official (right).

and i'm not saying this to insult the scanlators, by any means! it's something i've wanted to get into myself, and they provide a really cool and valuable service largely for free as volunteers. i love scanlators. but if you are wanting the most accurate experience of the current manga as an english-speaker, the official is probably still your best bet.

however, from what i've seen (bearing in mind that my actual experience with the official translation is pretty limited, i mostly only look at it when people ask me questions or i have a specific curiosity) i do think the official translation has a lot more problems in the older arcs, roughly from east blue through, like, skypiea?

i've seen or been asked about a pretty substantial number of mistranslated lines and questionable choices from that stretch of the manga. for just one example, there's this one from drum i posted about a couple months ago, where a line that's quite thematically important to the series as a whole got cut up because of the translation's former unwillingness to use the word 'god' (also very visible and annoying in skypiea).

the anime for those arcs does use, from what i've seen, a better translation than the official manga. however, i personally don't know of any better manga retranslations of the early arcs (it's something i've actually considered trying to attempt myself, if i ever have the time for a project of that scale). if any of you have any to recommend, please let me know!

[fellamarsh]

another thing i've been trying to do recently is read more self-published stuff. "but fell," you say, "you're a self-published author. surely you've been reading self-published stuff all along" and then i laugh for so long in response we both become uncomfortable.

see, the fear (which has for a long time been killing my mind) that i'll read other self-published stuff and find out that it's so much better than mine that i might as well stop writing forever kept me from doing that basically ever. i have a hard time not unfavorably comparing my work to others and had convinced myself i was being smart by withholding an avenue of de-motivation (reader: i was not being smart). it also doesn't help that i'm pretty low income and have a hard time spending money on books i haven't already read, and that self-published stuff isn't always available at the library---but really a lot of it was just me being a coward. which i'm working on. i could talk about how this particular cowardice is Very Silly, but i think enough has been said about it on writeblr and in the Writing Space in general that i don't feel the need to (though i will if anyone wants me to).

instead, i wanna talk about the self-published things i have read in the past few months and ask about the self-published things you love!

so: what happened was i got real sick, and while i was real sick i (naturally) read over 200,000 words of ace attorney fan fiction in the span of a few days. eventually i got bored of it (and also maybe annoyed at how people were characterizing some of my guys), but i still wanted to read something gay and romantic and nice, something i knew was gonna end happily, which isn't my typical fare.

now you may be saying (having gotten over all the uncomfortable laughter from earlier) "fell, you write gay romance. what do you mean that's not your typical fare?" listen. until a couple months ago i hadn't read a cut and dry romance novel since before i finished college. for context: i graduated in 2015. i know it doesn't make sense. i'm a guy who doesn't make sense.

but in this case it worked to my advantage. not the not making sense thing, but the not having read Published Romance in 1000 years thing. I didn't know where to start. I was very skeptical of everything the library had Available Now in the Gay Fantasy Romance category. what if it was all bad and also not good?

and then i scrolled past the familiar cover of our very own @ashen-crest's A Rival Most Vial.

now this was comfortable territory! this was a novel by a very nice writeblr person whose posts i enjoy! i already loosely knew the plot, i was familiar with the characters, i knew the names of things like rosemond street and the griffin's claw and that ambrose had blue hair and that at the end of it all there would definitely be Boyfriends. i didn't have to worry that this would be bad! i only had to worry that it would be really good!

but i wasn't worried about that, because i was officially Not Writing at the time, and because why the hell hadn't i read this book yet Ash literally emailed me some very kind words last year when my cat died??

Y'all, I devoured ARMV. If you haven't read it yet---especially if cozy fantasy is more your thing than it is mine---you should check it out Immediately. It was fun! It was heartwarming! It was sweet and earnest and confident! I was delighted to find it was occasionally hot! Ambrose and Eli snuggled up into my sick exhausted heart and found a permanent little place there. (Especially Ambrose. I have such a thing for Stiff Guys who Kind of Suck for Tragic Backstory Reasons and are So So Lonely They Don't Even Realize It. gawd)

(And a very small part of my brain spent the whole time wondering why I had been so afraid to really engage with the work my community is doing. The community that I'm in. The one I'm a part of. Why?! Maybe more on that later.)

But from there the curse was broken! I immediately devoured @stjohnstarling's What Manner of Man in a similar sort of frenzy (and hooooly shit guys am I excited for the expanded, finalized version to come out at the end of next month!) and started digging into @lurinatftbn's The Flower that Bloomed Nowhere (which I can already tell is going to be an All Time Favorite).

And now I want to ask you what your favorite self-published books are so that I can read them, too, but I think I will in another post that doesn't dedicate so much space to talking about my various and sundry Issues and isn't Terminally Long

[neriumxoleander]

If you could explain, I'm only learning this now! What's going on with Gato? I've only seen vague posts but I know all social media is gone (because by god fucking twitter apparently) I've seen from the fake gatobob account post about recent events and I'm soo confused. Could you please shed some more light on this? If you are as clueless as I am, you don't need to respond. - @your-very-own-anon (mod speaking)

Sorry for the late response, I've been trying to retag some things while I'm focused on this account for once. I'll try to be brief? please don't take me as the authority on this, I just happened to get into the tags while it was unfolding earlier today. still going under a read more though. i suppose a tw for mentions of racism and xenophobia are warranted. And please do not interact if you are a minor or have no age listed on your blog, I will block you.

Gato deleted her social media accounts this morning (tumblr, twitter, pillowfort) and explained on patreon it was for her mental health and safety (which... safety? hm) and someone here immediately claimed the gatobob url. which happens, it's tumblr. but this person is using it basically as a callout center.

the callout seems to be about an incident that happened in the patreon exclusive discord server before it got shut down a couple months ago. tldr according to this person, someone (a mod?) made a racist comment towards someone, and gato apparently handled the situation poorly and neither her or the mods apology were really that great. I was in the server as a lurker more than anything, but I don't remember being there when this happened.

other people sending in asks to this new gatobob account have also been calling her out for xenophobia, but I have a feeling that's looking a little bit too much into statements she's made about her games being redistributed in Russia and Spain specifically if i recall correctly.

this new blog is demanding gato and the aforementioned mod properly apologize for their behaviour, but in my opinion, this is a really weird and bad way to go about it. Smart to use her url as a way to boost the problem, but... I haven't seen any solid evidence besides some very vague screenshots, none of them including the racist remarks (the screenshots they've posted so far definitely aren't good responses or apologies if they ARE linked to this incident, and it should have been taken seriously) And the victim from the racism incident is NOT the person running the new gatobob account, so it feels very weird to me that this person is taking it upon themselves to stir everyone up and demand things from gato and the mod.

as far as I can tell, gato hasn't said anything about this on patreon, although she's likely taking her separation from social media very seriously. If she is aware (and I'm sure she's getting plenty of DMs about this on patreon), she'll likely make a post there addressing it in the next couple days, but that's just speculation.

I'm keeping a mostly neutral stance in this whole thing, but I'm encouraging people to not interact with this new gatobob account. There's nothing we can really do; they aren't impersonating her, posting anything against ToS as far as Im aware, and people have been hoarding urls for years. Just... listen and learn, I think is all I can suggest. Form your own opinions, but don't go on a witch hunt about it, if that makes any sense.

I'll try to answer other questions, but I'm just one guy on the internet who doesn't usually get tangled with things like this. Please be patient.

[lancrewizzard]

Please tell me you’re not a gaiman fan because it seems like you have issues with him and goddd me too

Okay this is a complicated question to answer and has got both more and less so in the last couple of weeks. Since there's still information coming out about the sexual assault allegations, I don't want to say too much now and then have to backtrack hugely, but even the very best case scenario makes his behaviour scummy as all hell. And I don't believe it will turn out to have been the best case scenario. So we'll just bundle the whole thing up with "yikes" and move on to things I've had a long enough time to think about and put proper thoughts around.

A month ago I'd have said that he seems like a decent bloke, but seems to have real trouble understanding experiences he can't relate to. The foreword to his short story collection Trigger Warning is a great example of this. He spent a while wittering on about his misgivings about trigger warnings as a concept, then remembered he knew someone with a severe phobia of tentacles and conceded that they had their place. He then proceeded to give a very dumb non-warning which completely failed to mention how something like one in three of the collected stories involved sexual violence. Great job Neil.

I already mentioned in the tags of that previous post my issues with his obvious lies to TV Omens fans who don't know any better. It's just annoying and stupid to lie about something that unimportant, unless it was actually an attempt to get disillusioned Book Omens fans back on side (in which case, wow that failed spectacularly).

And now I realise that everything else is about specific works of his, so I've stuck it under a cut if you don't want to see me bitch about Good Omens adaptational changes changes for the umpteenth time or go on a short heartfelt ramble about what was almost a perfectly crafted short story.

I'll be blunt, I only saw S1 of Good Omens, and while I enjoyed it, it was an incompetent adaptation. The fucking radio play managed to tell the same story with greater faithfulness and more elegance without a 3rd person narrator (and had the brilliant idea of having the opening and closing credits performed by Agnes Nutter's voice actress). Compare and contrast the show making God the 3rd person narrator and exposition dump, and how that changes the whole story from a humanist tale where people are all people and whose choices matter, where God's grand plan night not even exist, to a story where everything implicitly or explicitly is going to God's plan under God's watchful eye.

And I will never comprehend how Gaiman successfully argued to have a whole set built to film Agnes Nutter's death, but then said that for practical reasons they couldn't have Crowley revive the dove. The angel accidentally killed a dove and the demon intentionally revived it! It's so thematically important! Neil why are you like this? Do you understand your own works or was Pterry the only one of you who put actual thought into things' meanings?! HOW DO YOU FUCK THIS UP NEIL? I UNDERSTOOD ITS IMPORTANCE WHEN I WAS 15 NEIL!

Ahem. Moving on.

Neverwhere is the most recent Gaiman book I've read and it's a good showcase of all the issues I have with his writing. The protagonists are dragged along by the plot, they're Special TM by birth or fate, not by the choices they make. The world they inhabit is wonderful, detailed, and vibrant, but I found that far more interesting than the protagonists inhabiting it. We got a random rape backstory for a girl whose main role was to die so the male protagonist feels bad. The way Gaiman described every female character bar one in terms of their attractiveness made me unsure if it was him or the protagonist who was weird about women (although I guess I have the answer to that now). Funny how Gaiman didn't shy away from things and people smelling bad right up until a hot woman who had been fighting, running, and falling over in a swamp apparently smelled not of sweat and stagnant water, but "musk". Really normal, that. There were wonderful descriptions and great moments, but after that first SA moment I couldn't relax and enjoy the ride because I was always on edge waiting for the next time Neil felt the need to be Like That.

Then there's my beloved, hated The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains. It's almost the perfect neat fairy-fable where every little detail is paid off later. It's a story of grief and vengeance and greed. It's about the price of fairy magic. And it has a pointless scene stuck in of marital rape. It has no purpose. It does nothing for the pacing or themes or characters. It never comes up again. I hate it.

Stuff can be horny or harrowing or both, I don't care, but Gaiman just drops SA into things for no clear reason as a generic Bad Thing Happen, Make Tone Dark. It's distasteful and inelegant. It cheapens the rest of the writing by its presence.

The simple truth is that Neil Gaiman seems to have a near pathological urge to shove sexual violence into places it has no need or right to be. It's disgusting but sadly not shocking that this apparently includes his personal life.

[selfportrait27]

Ween fans of Tumblr. Come over to ween.wiki and help us build a new knowledge base for future fans.

I didn't start the wiki, I just got pissed off a couple of months ago and posted this on r/ween. To my surprise, people actually listened. We now have a few regular contributors, but it's time to start reaching out to the rest of the Ween web, and I'm starting here on Tumblr for a reason.

The fuck-you spirit of Ween and punk rock seems to have actually survived on this platform. Despite Tumblr's best efforts, this has mercifully not become a Nice Normal Place for Nice Normal People. There's a beautifully unhinged quality to all Ween fans that still circulates in the air supply here, that when you see it on reddit for example, you know that it's being allowed to happen.

Anyway, check out my original post on Reddit, or you can read the text below. Then saunter back to the Ween Wiki house and take a look around. If you see anything you think you can help with, go for it. You can find my user page here.

Full text of my post from r/ween:

If you didn't know, there is a Ween wiki just sitting there waiting for us to fill it in.

I know it isn’t very well maintained or reliable. That’s because we’re not using it. It’s a community database, not someone’s personal website. It’s supposed to be maintained by the fan base, that’s the point of a knowledge commons.

Let’s say, for example, if 50 of us make one quick, low-effort change to the wiki in the next month or so. That would already be a big improvement. If it’s the first and last time for you, you will have made a contribution.

Here are some little things you can do anonymously, without an account or a username: 

~Add lyrics to a song.~ 

Change lyrics that someone else added. (It updates instantly, this isn’t genius.com.)

Add a page that you think should be there - you can leave it blank for others to fill in if you don’t want to do it.

Delete something if you think it’s wrong -  you don’t need to have something to replace it with in order to do this. Removing something counts as a contribution. If it turns out to be right after all, it can be put back.

Ditto if you see a citation that you don’t trust - you can just remove the source. Now it’s a ‘citation needed’ situation, which gives others an opportunity to do something.

Correct a minor spelling error, it can literally be that small.

Don’t share private material without permission, but other than that, it can be just about anything at this point, as long as it keeps the ~recent changes page~ ~active.~ Even if you’re new and you don’t know much about Ween, you almost certainly know something that isn’t there yet. Remember you can edit anonymously, so nobody can give you shit if you get it wrong. What they can do is change it.

A few notes:

Why do we need this, when we can just ask someone more reliable? Because it’s too much pressure to expect any person to be reliable all of the time*.* It might sound counter-intuitive, but having a community database that “just anyone” can edit actually creates more accountability, because we’re all responsible for its content, rather than expecting a few people to do all the work and get everything right. This is an opportunity to make a contribution to the legacy of Ween and their fan base, one that’s at least a little better than the stew of info and misinfo that’s out there now. It’s also a chance to help ensure that the good work people are doing on projects like Ween Archived doesn’t just end up getting mixed in with all the bullshit~.~

You don’t need to know what you’re doing. I’m a tech-moron - seriously, my 80-year-old father probably knows how to use Media Wiki better than I do. Even I figured out how to make a few basic edits. We’re going for minimal effort here, so even if you think it won’t make a difference, it will only have cost you a minute of your life.  Do a sloppy, half-assed job. Make a tiny improvement to someone else’s sloppy, half-assed job. Do it now or later - a community database is a long term, ongoing project and there’s no deadline for anything.

But people will just use it to troll? Yeah, they might. They can already do that now. If that’s what you want to use it for, you’re going to anyway. Here’s a couple of things worth remembering:

Nobody needs to put in a ton of work only to risk having it spoiled. There’s enough of us that your individual contribution can be as tiny as you want, and it still counts.

Again, anybody can delete information, so dealing with troll entries doesn’t just fall to one person or a few people. It’s unlikely that we’re gonna have a troll problem that’s too big for the rest of us to handle.

Sorry to be cheesy, but if we’re too scared to do anything, then my friends, the trolls have already won.

One last thing. You can do this and still hate everybody and complain as much as you want, nobody can take that away from you. You can even feel better about complaining, knowing that at least you did something. And if you want to tell me to shut up, who the fuck do I think I am etc, then you’ll still have plenty of time to do that too.

Come on, people. Two children who couldn’t play their guitars yet started a band without a drummer, and we can’t build a better community wiki than this, with all the tools in front of us? Of course we fucking can.

[fire-but-ashes-too]

(Writerblr) intro post!

Hi! welcome to my blog! this is my (very late) writerblr/general/artblr intro, or just somewhere with all my general informations :)

please, go on and read *bows*

☆ Ash is my name on here and i go by she/her

★ Im a teen writer and artist, but i dream of acting

☆ im from italy

★ pan ace and quoiromantic (or wtfromantic its the same) (im still kinda questioning tho??? probs demiromantic??? idk?? feelings r weird atm)

☆ entp and introvert

★ im always up for tag games or stuff like that :)

☆ recently added tags! #ash writes- my writing ofc #ash and her rants- just me talking abt random stuff could be anything serious or not #ash on fire- probs me fangirling over something lol i may get overexcited beware

★ i relate to a spiritual and psychological level to black cats and all their other forms (aka regulus black, tori spring, aristotle mendoza etc etc etc)

i mostly write fantasy or fanfiction, but sometimes i engage in various genres as mystery, dystopian or surrealism :)

★ So I've been scheming like a criminal ever since

genre: fanfiction

audience: general/ teen and up

tropes: rivals to lovers, college AU, slow burn, a lot of fencing, paris✨

cw/tw: past rape/non con, ptsd, homophobia, wounds/blood

progress: i try to update every week but nothing's promised 🥲

snippet here:

Years ago he’d learned to mask his handwriting, so now he could easily forge any handwriting he wanted, if he was given a good example of it being used. There was something extremely interesting in how each person connected two letters to each other. How they wrote an “ar” was different from how they would write an “or”, how much the words were apart from each other and how much pressure they put in the paper told a lot about someone, to him it was like zodiac signs. He didn’t always have to copy other handwritings, not unless he wanted to throw the blame on that person. He just had to invent a brand new writing style, and be careful to not slip his between the cracks. And that’s exctly what he did in the letter. Before Jesper could finish his monologue about how much he had missed out in the past few months holed up in his office, a blackmail threat was ready to be closed inside the paper envelope, just the signature was missing, but he didn’t bother to add it. A proper threat always had to be anonymous, it was always better to give as little information you could. Everything could be used against you. The maroon wax sealed the opening with a satisfying fizzling and a single wisp of smoke. The clock chimed on the wall, it was already 6 pm, he had to go finish some assignments.

(previously titled: questionable decisions)

☆ The Rogue

genre: fantasy, dystopian

audience: teen and up

setting: a fantasy world im currently busy (trying) building

progress: just vibes really, two mainc characters, a couple sides and an outline plus one of the first chapters, not much really but im working on it

characters:

anne: the rogue from where i took the title.

shes a 17 y/o girl who lives in a bunker in a forest, on the run from the government as she's a "high traitor and liar who must be destroyed".

she has the ability to modify her face and appereance for a while and she has a prosthetic arm connected to her virtual friend Indigo.

thanks to it she's able to teleport and keep track of various things.

alexander: the son of the dictator, he's lived his life in a bubble until 2 years ago, when he finally managed to get more social contacts with people and (slightly) catch up on what he's missed, behind his father's back of course.

he meets anne when she's captured and figures she's his best shot at escaping his father domain.

snippet:

This time, she materialised in the shadows behind a bulding, which gave her enough cove for her to shift her facial features. Her nose a little bigger, her hair some shades brighter, her eyes more elongated and greener than the grass growing outside her doorstep and a splash of freckles to top it all off. It was way harder to do it without a mirror, and way more dangerous. For all she knew, she could’ve been looking like a girl with a fish head, and she didn’t know if that would be better or worse than looking like herself. Anne took out a hat and a silk scarf, she wrapped it around her neck and jumped in a group of tourists gazing at the city. In no time she was in the square, vendor’s stands circling her, colourful flags waving in the wind. She could’ve stayed like that for ever, stuck in the memories of her old life, but she knew it couldn’t last forever.

★ Flowers and Homicide

genre: mystery

audience: general

cw/tw: blood, dead bodies, autopsies

main character: Giada

she's a forensics student who one day stumbles (metaphorically) over a dead body in her neighbour's lawn and starts investigating.

progress: actually finished but in italian sadly so in the translation process

☆ Confessions of a timeless man

genre: short story, surrealistic

audience: teen and up

content warning: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, depression

plot summary: a man is stuck living the same day over and over, after almost 10 years there, he tries to escape his curse by killing himself

progress: completed XD

(here's my ao3 btw)

you want to know more about me! why than you, here you go!

★ my favourite artists are Taylor Swift, Conan Gray, Arctic Monkeys, Chase Atlantic, Marina, Lana del Rey, Sabrina Carpenter, Mother Mother and Billie Eilish (theres more but i cant remember whoops)

☆ synesthetic bitch

★ other than writing, art-ing and reading i love baking/cooking and crocheting

☆ theatre kid over here, always up for screaming my lungs out

★ uhhh im a vegetarian

☆ i know a scary amount about death and murder (especially poisons)

★ i dont have a specific vibe, it usually changes every few months or so

☆ i probably have anxiety but ive never been to therapy so idk 💀

★ always up for fangirling :3 (im in too many fandoms *cries* buuut im most active on pjo, marauders, grishaverse and osemanverse, musicals and some books that i have boards for on my pinterest :D)

☆ i am terribly scared of insects, needles and dogs

★ my (quite unusual) sport is aerial dance, a circus speciality that looks really cool but is acctually really painful

☆ my pinterest, spotify and goodreads if by some reason you're really interested in the chaotic human being that i am :)

thank you for reading this farrr🥹🥹

have a great day/night/life :D

[mermaidsirennikita]

What are your favorite Scottish historicals?

I recently did a recommendation list on Instagram!

However! To get more detailed...

My favorite Scottish romance novels as a collective are probably the first four Mackenzie books in Jennifer Ashley's Mackenzies & McBrides series (listed in order of publication, would recommend reading in order, they're all bangers):

The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie. This one is famous for featuring an autistic hero (ahead of its time) who ends up basically asking the heroine, a widow who's recently come into some money, to have an affair with him after he warns her off of marrying a tool. It's supposed to be this purely physical thing, but it gets deeper (... as does he ...) while also introducing his somewhat insane family.

Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage. The artistic brother decides to win his wife (who's been estranged from him for three years) back. It's a great example of a marriage in trouble book, where there are several reasons they broke up but most of them lead back to him just not being ready to be a good partner for her. And he has to prove that he's learned!!!

The Many Sins of Lord Cameron. The single dad brother sets out to solve a Mystery with this widow he had a near-thing with years ago, and they end up starting an affair, but his emotional wounds from his first marriage haunt the relationship.

The Duke's Perfect Wife. An all time favorite of mine, the asshole oldest brother mega alpha everyone hates ends up running into his ex-fiancee again... after which he's like "I am remarrying and it's gonna be her" (he got married briefly after they broke up, it's part of his tragic backstory)... and also she's a girl reporter and approaches him like "Oh hey, an anonymous person is sending me nude photos of you and it could ruin your political career :D". A FABULOUS second chance romance with two leads in their thirties (harder to find in a historical than you'd think), tons of passion, and the zaniness I want from this series. Jennifer Ashley excels at making you believe her couples are perfect for each other, and this one is the best in that realm to me.

I've read the subsequent books in the series, up to book #8, and I'd also recommend Rules for a Proper Governess (a stern lawyer takes on a street urchin who's recently started stalking him as his governess because she's the only one who can wrangle his two kids, and workplace harassment ensues) and The Stolen Mackenzie Bride (throws back to the ancestral generation, takes place during the Jacobite Rebellion, love at first sight between the rakish youngest Mackenzie brother and an Englishwoman engaged to another man, very star-crossed).

I also love Monica McCarty's Highland Guard series, which is a medieval Scottish series about Robert the Bruce assembling a group of dudes with Special Skills. Favorites include:

The Chief. The stern leader of the group ends up being tricked into marrying a woman he didn't want to marry for political purposes, is emotionally withholding but sloooowly falling in love. Also he has two kids from his first marriage that we NEVER SEE, which I found hilarious.

The Hawk. The rakish seafaring pirate-y one picks an Irish noblewoman out of the water and is like "Welp, I guess we have this random girl now". She's uptight, he's wild and incapable of committing, he bangs her on a raft in the middle of a storm to soothe her lmao

The Ranger. The one with insane sixth sense powers ends up undercover behind enemy lines (the enemy also being the man who killed his father) and ends up falling for said enemy's daughter

The Viper. The grouchy one with Woman Trauma ends up on a journey with a woman he has Mad Beef with, hate turns to love...

The Recruit. The New Guy sleeps with the woman he was supposed to marry, but he didn't know it was her and he basically said he'd keep sleeping with her after he married, and she went "you shall not cheat on me with me" and dipped. A few months later, they run into each other again. He realizes she's pregnant, he won't have any kid of his be a bastard, he forces her to marry him lmao

When a Scot Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare is obviously a classic that everyone should read, includes accidentally making up a fiance who is real and being forced to handfast with him. Also romantic lobsters.

Maya Banks writes really good medieval Scottish books. I've only read a couple so, but I really loved Never Seduce a Scot, which has an arranged marriage situation between two people from rival houses... But the hero doesn't realize the heroine is deaf, which makes him worried about taking advantage of her. She's determined to make it clear that he is NOT.

Elisa Braden's Midnight in Scotland series is really fun if you want a pure romp! I also loved When a Girl Loves an Earl, which is about a zany heroine tricking the big Scottish hero into marrying her lmao. And he's covered up his Scottish accent after years of being Englishified (it's an issue the book touches upon nicely, I think) so she doesn't even realize he's Scottish until he's taking her TO SCOTLAND.

But yeah, otherwise definitely check out that post!

[haechanhues]

KPOP FIC RECS

So I recently (like a couple of months ago) read Bowie’s Books by John O’Connell which is a series of essays exploring David Bowie’s list of 100 Books that transformed his life and I thought it was a way to make my own. These are all fics (in some way or another) that have been memorable in many different ways and I hope to share them with you all.

This is also a full on sap train so I thought you should be ready. I’m also weirdly nervous since this feels kind of vulnerable and makes me shy. but haiii

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR | PART FIVE

1. @hyuckiebabie - Bad Intentions | NCT (discontinued) 

Of course, I have to start with this. I have to. I’ve also just learnt that author-nim has since left tumblr. But the writing was beautiful and the connection that Haechan and the MC had with each other was absolutely alluring. God I felt things I have never felt before. This was quite awhile ago and I’m kind of sad I can’t reread it to boost my memory a bit more but I was super excited for every update. But aww I wish you could all read it even though it was discontinued, it still remains very memorable for me. 

2.  @beom1e​ - Love Is Not Easy | TXT (completed)

The fic that made me obsess over TXT fics for a very large portion of the year. I read it again and it’s so chaotic and erratic in the best way. I love these boys with all my heart and it was so fun to be able to read it and connect to it. There were different endings that were all really fun. The very first time I was a very big Yeonjun supporter but nowadays I feel a more Beomgyu lean. Hmm, I don’t know. So many options. Can’t forget about Soobin either. The best kind of crossroad ever. 

3. @dovechim - That’s Okay That’s Love | BTS (ongoing)

No because I’m frustrated my original comments about this didn’t save. I remember reading this and it was the first time I had read something involving mental health so blatantly and it just felt oddly satisfying. What I liked the most about this fic however was the way that every character was interwoven within the story without the sole purpose of their existence to be a ‘friend’ to the main character and give advice and put some sense into them nor to invoke drama. I liked that they each have their own story and plot and it’s so majestically done that I always have to applaud this story for it.

4. @jayflrt - The A List | ENHYPEN (one-shot) 

Ahhh yes, I finally get to talk about this. This was one of the first ENHYPEN fics I read and it definitely helped me stan them to the level I did. I love the ....friendship between the MC and Jay. I love the taste of the whole fic in general - the rich people shit and the drama and the need to just not be made into a total loser by an anonymous source. I’m not even being dramatic but this fic has a taste and it’s absolutely fucking wonderful I’m salivating. 

5. @fantasybangtan​ - Queen Cobra | BTS (ongoing) 

One of my utmost favourite writers on Tumblr and in general. I love this story with all my heart and it made me a total * girl. This fic always manages to have a hook on me in more ways than one and I was so excited to see that a chapter has been updated since I last read it. I hope to god you never stop writing. Ever. Such a talented person and a very special one at that. I sound a bit like teachers comments in student reports and I’m sorry. But I hope you feel how sincere I am in my recommendations to read this fic. You have to. Absolute art. 

6.  @caramellohigh - Not Such A Good Boy | THE BOYZ (ongoing) 

This is my favourite depiction of Juyeon, like ever. I remember seeing three times before I actually read it. First it popped up in my dash just randomly, then it was recommended (not specifically to me) but I had been wanting to read a few fics. I thank whatever higher power exists for this fic. I can’t explain myself but like it’s so good. I love the whole golden sweet nice sunshine boy being this person who isn’t actually all that sunny and saintly trope. I don’t know the proper name for it but I loved this. I can’t wait for more chapters such an exciting fic, I couldn’t put this fic down for the life of me. I had a lot to do today but I didn’t do it because I was reading this hahaha best decision ever. 

7. @theluckyyyoneee​ - Antipode | EXO (completed) 

OH MY GOD I JUST SAW THERE’S AN UPDATED CHAPTER, I’M GOING TO READ IT NOW. Okay okay I’m going back to writing normally so I don’t look like an idiot, but I love this fic with all my heart. So so warm. I love that Chanyeol is just a literal puppy throughout the fic. God I hope to see this couple again. In any way. I’ll take it. I remember I first read this when Chanyeol went to the military and reading the final chapter when he’s back literally feels like all is right with the world. I adore this couple. And with the risk of sounding cheesy as hell, this story smells of pine and appears like Christmas lights in the night and I think that’s the cutest fucking thing. 

8. @jungblue - Future Hearts | BTS (ongoing) 

I’ll be honest, before I came to Tumblr I always ignored recommendations for fan fics - simply because I had different tastes to the person giving the recs (they were a bit too much for me) and I just liked that fan fics were just my terrain to freely explore the fics available without in some form being attached to someone else (i was going through some shit obviously). Then this fic showed up and I took a chance on it. Best thing I’ve ever done for myself. I fell in love with writing all over again. I thought of colours differently. Everything. was just so different. I was super invested in the story. I would say it became so definitive of the person I was at eighteen, when life started changing. So thank you author-nim. From your forever fan <3 I hope all is well with you, you deserve the whole world y’know. 

9. @sankyeom - Break Your Rules | THE BOYZ (completed)  

Okay okay so, I love Sunwoo with my whole heart and one of my favourite tropes is brother’s best friend (disclaimer : it reflects to my life in no shape, way or form but we love a good ol’ forbidden love without the death involved) I first read this on my other account and it’s always one I seek out if I want a little thrill and a happy ending. Also the side characters are so fucking funny, I loved reading them. This fic is the treat your aunty tells you she shouldn’t be giving you but does anyway and you love her with your whole heart. So wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. 

10. @chittapornswife​ - DYNL Club | NCT (ongoing) 

A fic I’m forever fond of, I think. I always used to read this whenever I would go to class and it would keep me from having panic attacks. It would always leave me feeling fluffy and energised enough to get through an hour (or longer) class (and it wasn’t like the class was terrible, it just made me anxious.) I always link this fic to good things, or at least like it’s a bridge from being less than okay to recovery which is kind of ironic considering the content. It also has Haechan in it, which I’m thankful for. This story helped build my love for him in a way, I think. I’m truly grateful. 

11. @desayunho​ - Time Of Love | ATEEZ (completed) 

Oh my god it was a struggle deciding what fic to use but I decided on this one. It’s so beautiful. Oh my god I loved it. I read ‘Lovefool’ before this one and just knew that I had to hop on this train too. Lovefool blew me away and I knew it would happen with this one too. Absolutely after my own heart. I’m not one for poly fics (not against them either, I just don’t normally read them) but AHHH I’m screaming. The dynamic. The everything. This fic is everything. Thank you and good night. I love San and Wooyoung and ATEEZ AND author-nim, a special place in my heart is reserved for you and your artistry. 

12. @ballelino - Wedding Season | STRAY KIDS (completed) 

With the risk of sounding absolutely delusional, this fic helped me well and truly realise that I am never ever going to move on from Lee Minho. Like ever. The fic left me feeling very vulnerable but well protected? I don’t know how to form words but...  Everything was just perfect. Truly a foundation. It’s a fic I want to read for the first time again for the feelings I felt and the sensations I was going through. Truly a magical ride. I’m not even being sappy - this is me being totally brutally honest. I loved it for lack of better words. You know that question that goes ‘If the words ‘I love you’ didn’t exist what would you use?’...This fic. That’s it. My new love language. 

13. @thepixelelf - Hood | THE BOYZ (completed) 

This was well and truly a rollercoaster.. god I could remember it. I was on the edge of my seat every update. I loved the whole friendship and the back and forth. Ever since that first chapter it has been a favourite of mine and has remained one of my favourites since then. Also it was literally a year spent together with a fic and I don’t know why but this makes me feel more attached and feel more love for this fic even more. It’s beautiful and it’s literally like cuddling a teddy bear. I don’t know how else to describe it. If I could hug any fic it would be this one. Cause it deserves everyone’s high praises and I want someone to experience reading this fic to experience it and just tell me what they thought and we can go nuts over it. 

14. @seokjinsdisciple - Who’s Your Daddy | ATEEZ (ongoing) 

What a rollercoaster of events. These ATEEZ fics (not even just this one) has a special place in my heart but I’m here to talk about this one in particular. It’s so incredibly cute and angsty at the same time. Anything you ask for in a fic, you get it practically. It’s everything. It gives me everything. It gives me life. Seventeen chapters in and I've already tried finding a wizard to turn me into a puddle on the floor because I can’t cope. It’s absolutely brilliant. Ahhhh- also one of the authors to open the new door for me in terms of social media aus. I never thought I’d be into them but I really am and a large part is due to author-nim so thank you for this medium of storytelling and doing such a good job every single time. No misses. 

15. @aspenwritesstuff - Prove Me Wrong | STRAY KIDS (ongoing) 

HOW COULD I NOT INCLUDE THIS. I can’t even remember how I came to read it but I remember reading it and being so hooked the very first chapter. I am also extremely affectionate of you, Aspen. This story and everything about it. I love it. It’s cute and fucking interesting and I’m just so hooked and excited I cannot wait to see how the rest of the story pans out. Like truly amazing. I’m going nuts over just thinking about it. Absolutely wonderful and just truly cute. I don’t know what else to say but it’s so cute. So fucking cute. Ahhhh. Just screaming and yelling and hollering at this point. LIKE YEAH THIS IS ME. THIS IS HOW EXCITED I CAN BE. Can’t wait, Aspen, honestly (take ur time tho <3) 

16. @gyukult​ - We Don’t Usually Hold Hands | SEVENTEEN (one-shot) 

So usually whenever I read Mingyu books I’m used to player Mingyu or sugar daddy esque-Mingyu who’s very cool. I’m not hating it. I still most likely would read it. But I never knew how much I needed a fic where I could actually see Mingyu in it and I think it’s perfect. I fell in love with this fic at first read and I think it’s actually changed the trajectory of my life forever. I’m not even being remotely funny. It really has. I don’t know - I loved the humour, I love just how casual the romance was. Like it felt so natural and just so Mingyu I don’t know what else to say without rambling. I feel like this fic is especially for those who don’t necessarily believe in romantic love, for those who do and in love with the idea of love and just everyone in between. So everyone basically. It’s a necessity. 

17. @kyufiber​ - How To Be A Heartbreaker | THE BOYZ (completed) 

God, I love this fic so much I don’t know what else to tell you. This is an Eric fic but it felt like more than just that. I’m a Sunwoo girl, have been from the very first video I saw of these guys but everyone just-. Let me tell you how PERFECT this fic is. It went exactly the way I wanted it but every update was a blessing and a gift. Like...is this music? No but I’m honestly always starstruck by this fic. I have no way of formulating proper sentences, it’s amazing. It’s so good. It’s so good. It’s honestly- GOD, especially if you’re an Eric person. This is for you. For all of you actually - read it! I’m begging with my whole chest, my whole soul, everything about me that is me - read it. 

18. @starrgaziinggg​ - Friends With Benefits | STRAY KIDS (ongoing) 

I can’t remember exactly remember the 6 W’s of how, where, when I found this fic. But all I remember is that it was a god send during my Minho phase (that is still in fact going, don’t get me wrong). Every new update is so fucking fun for me and definitely has me all up in there. I love this version of Minho. It’s one of my favourites. Absolutely. This fic has been a newfound love of mine and I’ve enjoyed falling in love with it every single chapter and I know that won’t ever change. I’m a bit speechless I don’t know what to say, currently I’m looking at it and I’m so excited to talk about it but all I am right now is a blubbering mess that can’t string two words together to make a single sentence. But I really appreciate this fic and I can’t wait for more updates! <3 

19. @wooyunhwa​ - Kingdom Of Welcome Addiction | ATEEZ (ongoing) 

Although it’s been a couple of years since the last update, I am still going to praise and praise this fic as if it’s my sole purpose in life. I love the way the characters are and how there’s a whole world away from everyone else - as if its just the three of them in this demon vs angel love affair. Don’t even get me started on the writing - it’s so beautiful, detailed and I love how humour is incorporated into it. Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. It surprised me so much in such little but significant ways that I think sets apart this fic from others like it. Truly. 

20. @yeow6n - boyfriend!haechan tiktok series | NCT (ongoing) 

Ahhh my current go-to Haechan fic writer. God, I’m in love. Have you ever felt a connection with someone you haven’t talked to or anything but because you share that one thing you’re in it for life? This is it my friends. This. Every fic I’ve read is a love of mine and I’m so excited to write about it. They’re usually short and sharp but incredibly sweet and it just- it makes loving Donghyuck easier. Honestly author-nim came in at the right time and totally swept me off my feet. In love with it. In love with him. Stan author-nim for good Haechan content. Honestly I feel like calling you bestie which is one hundred percent out of character for me so I won’t - but I just want to let you know that the temptation was there and it was a strong one! 

[sin-cognito]

Rarepair New Year 2024 ch9: Nightmare/Blue, Foreign language

SFW

Wordcount: 2623

Blue arrives early at the café.

READ ON AO3

Blue arrives early at the café.

He's still got a good two hours before his new teacher arrives, so he gets himself a cup of tea, pulls out his headphones and his books and starts to study. No sense in wasting any precious time when he's got an important test in two months.

Blue is a smart and studious monster, the best in his class. His grades are through the roof, and his aim is to get into the advanced class by the end of the year, so that leaves him a little under four months to achieve his goal. It's especially impressive since he could barely introduce himself and count to ten not even a year ago, when he first moved to Applemoon.

He's always been fascinated by Applemoonish culture, it's so different from his own country, Underswap, so when he got the opportunity to come here to study the language, he didn't even think and signed up right away. He told himself he has two years to learn to speak Applemoonish fluently and so far he's on the right track.

Recently however, he's felt like his oral skills are not up to par with his writing, leaving him frustrated everytime he tries to go out and have fun. Granted he doesn't do much of that since he's so busy with school and (self-imposed) homework, but it'd still be nice if he could have more confidence in speaking up during the rare times he does go out and tries to make new Applemoonish friends.

It leaves him puzzled as well: how can he get full marks on all his tests but then struggle so hard just asking the lady at the grocery store if they have soy milk? He sighs at his lacking skills.

Which is the reason why he's spending the rest of his afternoon here in this café. He'd usually just go straight home after class, but today he's going to meet a private teacher that should help him improve his conversation skills. Or so it said on the site where Blue found the other's profile.

Nightmare, skeleton monster, 27, half-Underswapian, half-Applemoonish, with experience in teaching both languages. He sounds perfect for Blue. Not to mention that he doesn't charge too much for each lesson.

So Blue messaged him and they've agreed to meet in this café for a trial lesson. It's half the price of a regular one, so if Blue isn't satisfied with Nightmare's way of teaching conversation (however one does that), he knows he can just find another teacher and he won't have lost too much money. It's a good deal.

"Blue?" A deep voice calls out his name, drawing him back to reality.

He was too focused on his books and didn't see the time, momentarily forgetting where he even is, so when Blue hears his name and looks up, it takes him a couple seconds to realize who the stunning skeleton standing in front of his table is.

He looks dumbly at the other for a moment before he feels his cheeks go hot. Hold on, wait, -this- skeleton is his teacher? This absolute stud of a Greek god? Really? There was no profile picture on the website, this isn't a dating app after all, but holy stars, there should be. Nightmare would have so much success with his sacramento green bones and broad chest, not to mention the vivid mint eyelight shining in his left eyesocket. Blue swallows hard.

"Sorry, I must have the wrong person," the dark-boned skeleton says when he can see no reaction from Blue.

It gets the little student into motion again, and Blue quickly stands up and gestures at the empty chair in front of him.

"NO, YES, I MEAN, YES IT'S ME, I'M BLUE!" He wants to smack himself for the worst ever delivery of a self-introduction.

"Oh, alright," Nightmare lifts a brow but doesn't comment further on Blue's awkwarness. "Nice to meet you."

"NICE TO MEE YOU AS WELL, MR. NIGHTMARE," Blue happily says as they shake hands.

"Eh, drop the mister. Nightmare's fine."

Blue feels his SOUL skip a beat, what is wrong with him! He needs to calm down.

Nightmare orders himself a coffee and then the trial lesson begins. Nightmare asks Blue what his objectives are and why he had to hire a private teacher when he's already enrolled in a school that has a great reputation. Blue explains his dissatisfaction with the way the school teaches oral conversations, or rather the lack of teaching in that department, really, and Nightmare nods.

"Yeah, it's not that unusual that language schools like the one you're in focus more on getting their students to pass written tests than obtaining the actual skills to live in the country itself. That's why I don't really like them, but I can't complain because that means I can get a job quite easily," Nightmare comments as Blue nods. "Alright, enough about your backstory, let's hear you talk Applemoonish. How about you introduce yourself again?"

Blue makes a face but does as he's told so. He struggles with getting the right words to come out of his mouth smoothly, his timing and intonations are all wrong, and his pronounciation is way off. He can be an absolute chatter box in his native language, but right now he can't help but keep his introduction as short as can be.

Nightmare hums. "Well, it wasn't as bad as I expected. I think all you need is to just practice talking about random stuff, and it'll all come naturally."

Blue blinks in surprise.

"REALLY? I THOUGHT IT WAS TERRIBLE!"

Nightmare chuckles and something stirs in Blue's magic.

"Not at all. Sure, maybe some of what you said sounded a little weird, but I understood what you meant to tell me, and that's what important with oral skills. It's not as much saying the correct words as it is getting your point across," he explains.

Blue lets out an impressed hum and decides that yes, Nightmare is the perfect teacher for him.

(Nightmare being a solid piece of eye-candy has nothing to do with Blue's decision.)

They start planning Blue's lessons twice a week at first and everything goes well. Nightmare usually shows up with a couple conversation ideas before asking Blue to come up with some themes himself. Over the next month or so however, preparing anything for these private lessons feels more and more useless as conversation flows so naturally between the two that it's not unusual for them to keep talking well past the hour Blue is paying Nightmare for. Blue insisted at first that Nightmare accepts his money, but the handsome skeleton proved himself to be rather stubborn, saying that it was his decision to keep hanging out with Blue outside of his 'work hours'.

Blue feels more than pleased with his progress already. It's barely been a month and he feels himself getting more and more confident, and he doesn't dread having to ask something in Applemoonish anymore. He doesn't even use Underswapian with Nightmare anymore, not even for corrections or when he doesn't know a specific word. He just does his best to explain what he means in another way and waits for Nightmare to provide with the actual term.

One month and a half marks the start of Nightmare offering Blue to go to the movies with him. Watching a movie in another language without any subtitles is daunting at first, and Blue admittedly doesn't do very well on his first time. The actors are talking too fast and sometimes mumble their lines, and without the visual aid subtitles provide, Blue is lost. They debrief the movie later with Nightmare, and Blue asks if they can go watch it again.

It doesn't change much however, as Blue is way too distracted by Nightmare casually wrapping an arm around Blue's shoulder to really pay any attention to the movie.

They hang out more and more often after that, spending almost every afternoon together. When they can't because one is too busy, they usually text each other well into the evening.

At this point, Nightmare is more than just a teacher for Blue. He's a real -crush- friend. Maybe even his best friend.

They celebrate the end of Blue's big test at Nightmare's place, where Blue gets to meet his teacher's twin, the lovely Dream. The two immediately get on well, which ends up with Blue spending all his time with one or the other twin, though he won't lie, his preference clearly goes to Nightmare.

Blue cannot deny it anymore, he's crushing hard on his private teacher. He does consider the idea of asking Nightmare out, but he's not sure how to go about it. He makes the mistake of confiding in Dream about his feelings, who lets out a squeak so high that Blue finds himself temporarily deaf. At least having Nightmare's twin on Blue's side is reassuring, as Dream assures Blue that Nightmare is very single and doesn't have any crush at the moment. The news is as much a relief as it is disappointing, as Blue realizes his teacher doesn't seem to have any interest in Blue as a potential romantic partner.

Well that's what Dream's here to help Blue with, and the ever-smiling twin spends the next few weeks feeding as much personal info about his brother as he can to Blue, who soaks everything up like a sponge. Blue's never been more grateful for his quick learning dispositions. He learns Nightmare's favorite desert, and invites him to taste a homemade apple pie and asks him about how authentic the taste is. Blue hears that Nightmare likes playing chess, and so he downloads an app and asks Nightmare if he knows how to play and can he teach Blue. Dream spills the beans about his brother's very secret passion for singing, and Blue casually mentions he's never been to karaoke and is too shy to go by himself and oh how wonderful it would be to have someone go with him…

Blue knows he's a bit too obvious here and there, but he doesn't mind as either Nightmare doesn't notice or he doesn't mind Blue's company.

Meanwhile they continue their weekly lessons, and Blue's hard work pays off when he's told that his test results are good enough to let him go up to the advanced class. Blue's first reaction upon hearing the news isn't even to tell his family back in Underswap, all he wants to do is run to Nightmare's place to announce the good news.

"I'm really proud of you," Nightmare congratulates Blue over the phone. "How about we celebrate this tonight around a drink? There's this new bar that I wanted to bring you to, I'm sure you're going to love it."

Blue beams at the other and excitedly runs home to get ready. He calls Dream to the rescue, to help him pick his outfit for tonight.

Blue has decided he's going to confess his feelings.

He wants to do it right. It might sound cheesy, but according to Dream, Nightmare can be a little traditional when it comes to relationships, and apparently he likes when things are laid out flat rather than making a bunch of innuendos. It's a little nerve-wracking for Blue, who so far doesn't have much experience asking someone else out as he's more of a 'actions over words' kinda guy if you catch his drift. But he's serious about Nightmare and wants to make sure he's not going to fuck it up for a stupid reason.

He puts on a deep blue sequin top with a high-waisted pair of jeans. He's got white platform shoes on and a dark gray leather jacket on. He asks Dream a billion times whether the look is over the top or underdressed, and each time the twin assures Blue he's exactly to the tastes of Nightmare.

Blue's efforts are rewarded with a soft blush on Nightmare's cheeks when Blue arrives at the bar. Nightmare isn't the most expressive monster out there, so Blue is confident that his looks helped him get a few good points if Nightmare can't even keep his magic in check.

They go seat at the counter and Nightmare orders cocktails for them both.

"As a treat, since you did so well with your test," he explains as he clinks his glass to Blue's.

"I CAN'T WAIT TO BE IN THE ADVANCED CLASS," Blue happily sips away his cocktail, munching on the popato chisps they've orders to go with their drinks. "APPARENTLY THE ADVANCED LEVEL TEACHERS ARE REALLY GOOD, SO I'M REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO ATTENDING THEIR CLASSES."

Nightmare puts his skull in the palm of his hand as he grins at Blue.

"Maybe I should apply to work at your school. It would be fun to teach a whole class, and who knows, maybe you'd be my student."

Blue chuckles awkwardly as he hesitates whether he should say his next words.

"YES BUT PLEASE DON'T. WE'D HAVE WAY LESS TIME TO HANG OUT TOGETHER IF YOU WORKED AT MY SCHOOL," he finally blurts out, avoiding Nightmare's gaze. If the teacher comment on Blue's blush, he can always say it's because of the cocktail.

Nightmare hums. "Yeah, maybe you're right. I don't really want another student anyway, I'm good with just you."

Blue is about to faint, his magic beating wildly in his chest. That was a direct hit, and quite honestly very unfair of Nightmare to be so charming when Blue is the one supposed to flirt with him, not the other way around.

Blue gulps the rest of his cocktail in one go and decides to just go for it.

"NIGHTMARE, I NEED TO ASK YOU SOMETHING!" He starts, but loses his confidence as he scrambles to find a way to word his thoughts. "I, UHH… SO I HAVE SOMEONE I LIKE AND I WANT TO CONFESS."

He glances at Nightmare to check if the other knows this is about him, but Nightmare just looks intrigued. He waits for Blue to continue.

"YES, SO, WELL. I WANT TO KNOW… ERM… HOW- HOW DO YOU ASK SOMEONE OUT IN APPLEMOONISH?" Blue blurts out and immediately has to stop himself from smacking his own dumb face.

"You say will you be my boyfriend?" Nightmare replies without missing a beat.

Blue's SOUL is about to explode or implode, he isn't sure, but it's going to stop working that's for sure.

With a burning face and shaky voice, Blue repeats the sentence.

"WILL YOU BE MY BOYFRIEND?"

"Yeah."

Blue blinks. Oh no, Nightmare thought he just repeated the phrase to get the pronounciation right, something they've done a billion times before during their lessons.

Blue's plans crumble like a card tower and he starts feeling dizzy. His palms are sweaty and his magic is throbbing in his skull.

He decides to go for broke.

"I'M NOT JUST REPEATING THE SENTENCE. I'M ACTUALLY ASKING YOU TO BE MY BOYFRIEND."

There he said it.

"I know," Nightmare replies just as casually as before. "And I'm telling you yes."

"YES?"

"Yeah. I like you too, Blue, so yeah, I want to be your boyfriend."

Blue feels like he's melting, turning into a puddle of goo on the floor, or he would be if it wasn't for the arm Nightmare wraps around his waist. Nightmare tilts Blue's skull and leans down for a kiss and this time, yeah, Blue does melt. Nightmare's tongue is warm and strong and so so good. It leaves Blue breathless but more importantly, eager for more. More kisses, more Nightmare, more… more.

Maybe they can go to Nightmare's place and have a different kind of private lesson.

[tiddiesoutwhenthetisout]

tag from @babyrdie and @greekmythologylover234 .

been a lot of tag games recently huh! thanks for remembering me 🤣

9 people you want to know better

i don't know enough people on here, but i'll be tagging @amnesiaa-on-ice @akhillaous @whorewhouse @naurumii @elnbnt @peggy-sue-reads-a-book

here are the questions to copy-paste:

three ships

first ship

last song

last tv show

currently reading

currently watching

currently eating

currently craving

my answers to them are under the cut so only those who are interested will be reading it (because i'll be yapping) lol

three ships

- patrochilles (duh; probably going to be my favorite, if i'm honest)

- kavetham (admits this semi-shamefully because the rest of the fandom is ass-- but i've left it. glad i did because the recent toxic community will never do me any good. i stressed, i die. simple. was a huge hyperfixation for a year or so though.)

- vashwood (it's been a while, but i really got obsessed with them and the show. watched 1997 once, stampede 3 times, not inclusive of the scattered episodes)

first ship

tbh no idea. it may or may not be solomon and saya from blood+ (great show great show) but i was around 7 when this happened and was just tagging along with whatever my sister had to say about things like these? i'm not a super shippy person either-- i'm not big on these things and certainly a lot less when i was younger. didn't have a lot of interest in couples prolly bc i had no idea what difference it had with friendship. just that you kiss and fuck or something. and i thought that was weird, or well, nothing much to it.

i guess you could say that the first pairing i've ever wanted to defend was zuko and katara from ATLA 🤣 nowadays i understand mai and zuko's relationship and i think it's pretty sweet, but back then i was fixated on zutara chemistry so whee🕺

last song

i haven't been playing music recently since i've been over at my partner's, but "done for" from epic the musical has been playing in my head since i woke up so there's that lol

last tv show

we were looking through netflix for an "easy" show to watch for dinner and got through 2 episodes of the exploding kittens show 🤣 played the game a lot when we got it, plus fond memories of things that happened whilst prompted us to check it out. it's an american tv show i guess, and i've never really vibed with those so it was alright, i guess. the kitties were cute.

currently reading

nothing. finished madeline miller's circe 3 days ago or so, though. my odyssey reading has been suspended for 2 weeks now but i guess it's because i'm pretty much kept up on the plot from randomly reading shit about it on the internet? i'm generally more of a "how did the story go?" person when i get into a book unless i become super obsessed with it. then, i'll dive into the nuances of text and its analysis. which hasn't been happening recently. i'll probably be balls-deep in academic text soon considering i haven't been a good student (our research adviser told us to start doing our thesis papers over the summer holiday so the process will be smoother... guess i'll be disappointing the prof who actually likes me ✊)

currently watching

nothing. finished castlevania (as well as the released season of nocturne) last month and i think that's my quota for shows for a while lol.

currently eating

fast food because the rain started pouring so hard. in time for lunch or so. it was a sign from the lord to spend and have a good time because the world might end tomorrow or something.

currently craving

the other items on the menu i didn't order- kidding lmao. a calzone for some reason, as well as a fizzy drink i usually get from a local cafe run by a nice old lady and youth on the drinks. ok, now i want her pesto sandwich.

ight i'll just eat now brb

[thegirlwhorideslikeasamurai]

I just want to say, after seeing your post about your recent metas losing you followers - I really appreciated your meta about Yuuri as a sex-favourable ace. It exposed me to a label I had never been introduced to before, and it's helping me explore and understand my own sexuality differently. It's also given me even more reasons for why I relate to and appreciate Yuuri so much as a character. So thank you 🥰

Also, I always appreciate reading your metas even if I'm not always the best about engaging with them, so know that what you're doing is appreciated, even if the numbers don't always reflect that. Never feel pressured to do this kind of stuff for others' entertainment of course, but I'll keep enjoying it as long as you keep posting it!

Hi and thank you for your sharing your thoughts and feelings! I'm happy to learn that I did something right by writing this my meta and that it helped another human being. Too often, I feel that my content isn't good enough to be liked, much less to be shared, and that I don't belong in this place, no matter how hard I try. Your message was a silver lining that brightened my day. The best way to show appreciation always is to interact. Thank you for reaching out 🩷

I hope you don't mind if I talk a bit about how it came to this meta.

Yuri!!! On Ice and writing fanfiction about it has taught me so many things not only about Yuuri but about myself. It helped me understand my anxiety and figure out the different flavours of my own queerness. I always related very strongly to Yuuri's experience in every aspect of his personality, which made writing him a wild combination of entertainment, trigger, and therapy. However, I didn't know that I was subsconciously writing him as ace-coded in addition to all the other aspects in which I "got" him, until a couple of months ago, a reader thanked me for making him so relatable to an aspec-person. At that time, I had been questioning for a while whether I was ace myself, but I had some residual doubts. I had heard people say that Yuuri is acespec, but it didn't really click with me because I couldn't relate to the food-metaphor. However, that comment was a tipping point for me. As a canon fanfiction writer, canon-compliancy is my Prime Directive, and if there's a way to write a character even truer to his canon version, I'm compelled to follow this path. It turned out as just the right decision because as a side-effect, exploring this side of Yuuri dispelled the residual doubts I had about my own identity.

My reading of Eros!Yuuri as being a part of a kink aside, characterising Yuuri as a sex-favourable ace instead of any other ace microlabel was convenient because it allowed me to write him based on my own experience. I don't trust myself with writing a demisexual character (which is an equally valid reading of Yuuri) because I don't know how to make the switch from 0% to 100% sexual attraction believable.

I was so busy being scared of receiving hate for this characterisation of a fictional character that is so dear to me like Yuuri is (and mentally dealing with the hate that meta received from a few spiteful individuals) that it occurs to me only now that discussing and writing ace!Yuuri, especially with the flavour sex-favourable, might help other people. Until I befriended another ace person last year, I never considered the label for myself, and when it all started to make sense, I still had a hard time untangling sexual attraction from libido, sex-related kinks, sexual behaviour etc. I believe this process is especially tough for sex-favourable aces because of the common misbelief that someone who has sex and likes it can't be asexual.

I wish the knowledge about asexuality would be more widespread since there are so many harmful misconceptions surrounding the label that ostracise ace people even within the queer community. And I wish you all the best in your journey of figuring out your own identity 🩷

The meta mentioned in this post is this one.

[jinchuls-moved]

hi, important lil note

pseud change, jinx -> echo

you don’t have to read but there’s a not so thought out ramble of all the thoughts in my head rn under the cut. i feel like ive been tricking people and i want to explain myself

okay so, i moved blogs when i was in a very negative space. i only stayed away for about a month, i missed tumblr and i missed writing even if it took me a hot minute to feel good enough to even be semi active on here.

tumblr can fucking suck. i left because there was drama with a few people that left me a mess honestly, those people have since been blocked and i started to feel a little bit better. i also noticed a number of people breaking mutual with me, which i completely understand curate your space as you need i’ve done it a few times myself, but the amount of people that did in a short time (as far as i noticed) gave me a terrible feeling and i needed to leave. i felt unwelcome and like i had done something wrong to people i had only interacted with a few times. this was on top of a lot of stuff i had going on irl, i felt so fucking alone in every aspect on my life regardless of my friends that made it so obvious they were there for me. i hated how i was at the time, and i appreciate every single person that stuck by me.

so i made this blog for a fresh start. i thought a new pseud and a new blog would make me feel better. and it did, for a while. my friends knew and they listened to my request to change tags, not refer to me as any previous nicknames and essentially not make it too obvious it was me. although i don’t think it was entirely impossible to tell. but now i miss all those things, i miss being stupid with my friends, i miss getting to call my best friend my wife on dash, i miss getting to miss astrology aims and mother nesi nesi, i miss the mutuals i used to have that i didn’t tell about the move because i was scared they were going to think i was stupid. i miss the url i kept going back to bc i loved it (possibly the most silly reason but still ukaishin holds a special place in my heart)

and it just doesn’t feel right. everyone has been so nice to me so far and it feels wrong knowing that wasn’t how echo ended, it makes me wonder what was wrong with me then that wasn’t now? but reality is, it’s nothing. shit happens, i needed time to get over a lot of things and it took time. even quite recently i had a terrible evening because of an old mutual. as in i had a mental breakdown because they added one stupid word to an ask that made me feel pathetic for sitting there the night before crying about how much i was missing them to aims.

getting called jinx in dms throws me off, i appreciate those that knew me first as echo using the new pseud, but it never took. it was never a name i was happy with (except for the first couple weeks on this blog) and im sorry for any confusion and having to switch pseuds again. i just don’t want to move blogs, i don’t want to have a whole thing i just want tumblr to be the happy place it was for me for almost 2 years. it got me through uni, being on here with the friends i’d made, i spend my final year of school in a constant mental breakdown, crying on the phone to my mum almost everyday and it was kaze that kept me going, motivating me to get my degree. it was kaze that flew to england to meet me and attend my graduation. it was aims that was the first person to reach out to me and give me the type of friendship i needed. it was everyone in our silly delululand server that made me laugh and reminded me that no matter how shit people were there were good ones. and it’s the good that’s made me feel better. and the good that makes me want to try one more time to maintain that happy place i had 2 years ago

that got too sappy but i refuse to edit <3

[flutterbyfairy]

i have a neurologist appointment in about a month that i'm quite nervous about due to previously being dismissed/not having my concerns listened to, so gonna post this to ask for some advice on getting Taken Seriously or if anyone knows things about the type of condition i might have about what i should be asking them to do/test.

might be quite long so putting it under a read more, and tw for medical stuff and doctors being dismissive. also i am So So Tired and therefore not able to think very clearly so apologies if i've messed up any of the medical info about conditions i mention and apologise just generally for the rambliness of my writing.

summary of why i'm going:

bunch of disabling symptoms that have continually progressed over the past 5+ years, including: muscle weakness, fatigue, muscle twitches/small spasms, nerve pain, blurry vision, lack of coordination (have this from autism, however has gotten significantly worse recently so might also be related to neuro stuff). first symptoms were difficulty having my arms over my head (like having to take multiple breaks while putting my hair into a ponytail because i couldn't hold my arms over my head for the like.. three minutes to do a ponytail) and blurry vision (that optometrist has said seems like might be due to a systemic disease because of how variable it is) since i was 13, which was seven years ago. i started getting more impairing symptoms when i was 15, and began needing a wheelchair for anything that required standing or walking for more than 10 - 15 minutes. i'm currently 20 and need my wheelchair whenever i leave the house, i can't leave the house or do things around the house often, i can stand for a max of like four minutes and can't hold my hands above my head for more than like 30 seconds to one minute. pretty much all my symptoms get a lot worse with any exertion.

GP thinks i have myasthenia gravis, but the test for acetylcholine receptor antibodies was negative and he doesn't have the ability to do other tests.

the neurologist has already said he thinks i have functional neurological disorder and that i should do CBT and pysio to improve my functioning (i already know CBT is horrible for me, i'm in other therapy which is good, i've done some psyio before but she just taught me some stretches and that was it, more psyio could be good but it'd have to be with someone who isn't trying to do a graded exercise therapy type thing since i get PEM). he has mentioned doing a spine MRI but this hasn't been done yet. he said he doesn't want to do further testing for myasthenia gravis but i will probably try to get him to agree to doing a repetitive nerve stimulation EMG or something.

i also have scapular winging on the side of my body with worse muscular symptoms which has also caused a lot of nerve pain, and i might also have some sort of spine issues (straightening of cervical lordosis was seen on a CT scan, they said it was probably due to muscle spasms, and i get a lot of neck pain which might be due to that? as well as a ton of back pain along my spine. might have CCI but haven't been tested yet). since it seems like i'm getting some structural changes in areas where i also get a lot of the pain and weakness and spasms i'm hoping if i bring that up the neurologist might maybe look more at organic causes + the state of those structural changes but i dunno.

he did a basic neurological exam in my initial appointment with him and said that i have give way weakness/waxing and waning weakness because when he got me to do the pushing my limbs against resistance i could do okay for a couple seconds but couldn't maintain it. he also said in the letter that i had positive hoovers sign however i am.. very confused by this because from my understanding hoovers sign is mainly looked at when someone has one limb that's at least somewhat "normal" and one that either can't be moved or is very weak, and then the person can't move the weak leg but when asked to push the stronger leg against resistance they push the weak leg down. both my legs are strong enough that i can stand and whilst one leg is a bit weaker they're relatively similar. i lifted and pushed against resistance with both legs so.... i am not sure how hoovers is applicable here? does anyone know why it was applied and if that was correct or if i should be challenging that? he's saying that the give way weakness and positive hoovers are indicators that the problem is "non-organic" and therefore should be treated with CBT and pysio.

i'm not sure what i think is actually going on. i think myasthenia gravis might make sense, but also so could other neuromuscular diseases like a mitochondrial disease or something. also very possible it's myalgic encephalomyelitis (aka chronic fatigue syndrome) but obviously that one is a diagnosis of exclusion so i want to rule other things out if possible. i want to know what's going on so i can have the best chance of being as well as is possible for me. i know CBT is not right for me and whilst some type of pysio could help a bit/prevent some decline (based on past experience i know it won't Cure Me but obviously it can help a bit to build some muscle or maintain range of motion and things like that which are important) if there's other things i can do on top of that i want to.

i've tried to do research to work out the best tests to ask for and i think EMG might be good but also know a normal EMG doesn't typically pick up myasthenia gravis so it needs to also have repetitive nerve stimulation i think?

i can't see a different neurologist at least not anytime soon, so i need to get this neurologist to do as much to help as possible. a social worker from where i get therapy is coming to the appointment to help me so that should be good but i need to work out what the best way to advocate for myself is and what tests are going to be the most useful to ask for.

if anyone has any advice for getting doctors to take you seriously or for any tests i should be advocating for or conditions i should be looking into or anything i would really appreciate it <3 (emoticon description: heart)

[t1meslayer]

Busy with important family events over the next couple of days, and so I thought it would be good to get a day-and-date release for this Debrief on the latest entry in my Sapphic Valley series, "How You Get The Girl." Be sure to read the story before jumping in!

Did you do it? Did you read the story?

Alright, I'm trusting you. Go ahead and hit that 'Keep Reading' button you scamp.

It only seems appropriate to start this Debrief off by addressing the elephant in the room. I haven't posted anything in over a month, and "By Moonlight" came about a month after its predecessor, the conclusion to "Stone-Cold Lovers."

Work, naturally, has been a major factor.

You can see me talk about that almost two weeks ago in this Tumblr post I made about writing in a coffee shop, which came weeks after I actually started writing during a trip to a friend's house.

===

Side note:

Just wanted to take a moment and acknowledge my beautiful Haley and Emily keychains. My friend who's responsible for the affairs of one ghostly farmer named Jizzabelle (Gisabelle to the laymen) got them for me! Only appropriate after I commissioned some art of her and Abigail.

Emily was my first Stardew wife, and Haley currently holds the biggest place in my heart. They make a lovely duo!

And I'll avoid any sister-wife jokes

===

While I've had some other projects like Zine writing to take care of, work and life can't explain the full absence.

The best way I can think to explain things is that:

I had the general writer's block, and

Despite the best intentions and advice of my irl friends and online pals like @alchemicallymoon and @duelbraids, I couldn't force myself to "break" that block by just... Writing something else.

This is entirely the result of my own psychosis. I have a tendency to carefully plot things out and impose a timetable that really doesn't need to exist. When I feel the cause is righteous enough, it's hard to get around that. In this case, I knew I needed to get my poll-winning idea out after dawdling for holidays like Valentine's Day, and then I knew I only wanted to post one more story before jumping on a very special event for my upcoming 30th AO3 post.

Thus, here we are: arbitrarily forcing myself into a spiral of writer's block misery because of a silly promise on Tumblr and my own sense of ordered chaos.

At the very least, this meant it's coming out not long after my AO3 pal InsertACatchyPennameHere also emerged from the woodwork to tell me they're working on something INSPIRED by my four-person friend group farm adaptations.

Much love to them, wherever they may be.

I'll probably start writing more eclectically now that my shoulders are unweighed, but don't expect my next publication to hit until I'm finished working on teasing the big event. All you Pokemon fans better get hype!

And oh how sweet this publication feels. Between my great set of recent ceramics, the figure drawing class I've been attending, and creative writing, I've felt more fulfilled than ever.

You're here to talk about Stardew, though. So let us talk.

This idea began less with any one event as it did a desire to advance the Alexis/Haley relationship, and Haley's characterization in particular. It was always going to end with watercolor painting reference, but 2 Willow Lane was what I really wanted to dig into.

As I see it, a lot of what keeps people invested in Stardew when its comfy vibes becoming routine is the air of mystery in Eric Barone's worldbuilding. Haley and Emily's parents being some world-traveling duo who left their home in the siblings' care for who knows how long (and who knows how many times over their lifetime) really piqued my interest. So much so that the new writing challenge I set for myself in "How You Get The Girl" was crafting a particularly long set of descriptions that emphasize how overwhelming the parents' influence feels — without creating an impenetrable wall of text.

Hopefully I succeeded in that. Let me know!

I tried to include some vaguely real world-adjacent references into that description of the house, as happens with the magical-realism world of Stardew Valley. For example:

The computer sitting next to their bonsai tree is an iMac G3, the kind of old 'futuristic' tech that my dad loves!

A Speedwell refrigerator is based on even more vintage tech, the Mayflower fridge, but named after a different ship ridden by Pilgrims coming to America.

That city that the family visited in an old photograph with a "monument of arching, interlocking steel" is, of course, Paris — with the statue bookends referencing any number of statues in the Louvre.

Haley's FAD magazine could be referencing any number of publications, but Vogue is probably the closest analogue to what I imagine her reading.

Furthermore, I took some notes on describing the home's layout off of my sister's apartment building, and I asked my bestie @trybard for input on what kind of hanging plant should be used in the transitional hallway. Hanging pothos, philodendron, and spider plants were the three options provided, and my response was appropriate:

They know so much about plants.

Go bug them about it.

I drew on other friends' knowledge to help decorate the house. Specifically, I asked one of my witchiest friends what kinds of protective wards someone like Emily would leave around doorways and windows. She had... A lot of reference material.

I picked Hazel given it purportedly "protects against evil; encourages abundance and inspiration." I also picked Amethyst as one of Emily's loved gifts, one that purportedly "absorbs negative energy, promotes harmony."

My witchy friend is the same one who provided the TikTok that I referenced in my advertisement post:

Perhaps the most important thing about 2 Willow Lane was the recurring motif of Barbie's Dream House.

As a surface-level reference, I think the groundwork is clear. Blondie's love of fashion and general queen bee demeanor fits comparisons to Barbie well, and she lives in a big ol' house full of stuff. We all saw Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie last year. It's still in the cultural zeitgeist.

I'm hip with the kids.

Yet, early on I also tried to make it clear that if this is a "dream" house, it's neither Haley's nor Emily's dream. Haley is a Barbie in that stereotypical sense, but also there's much to be mined from the analogy of a sort of powerless doll in an immutable house, constrained by social obligation to her family rather than literal plastic and stickers.

The cold open of Jodi and Sam was meant to stand alone, but in execution I also think drawing Kent's absence into the conversation makes for a more thematically rich comparison to these sisters who appear to have themselves more put together.

My beta reader said this wound up being one of my stronger stories because of how all of that intertwined, which I appreciated given how down on myself I was following the whole writer's block thing.

But also.

Also.

Alexis gets to be horny. She's hitting on lonely MILFs and watching girls shake their asses to the tune of bad reality TV.

We love a buff dommy mommy farm girl in this house.

Haley is probably horny too, she just doesn't realize it yet. For now I think it's fun enough to play into her being coy about building excuses for Alexis to come over, and then getting incensed when Emily barges in on their private time meant to learn more about this farm girl she just can't get out of her head.

===

Fun fact:

Every story in this series is named after a Taylor Swift song, but I know next-to nothing about her discography. All of them are suggestions by my friend whose house I was at when starting this story — the same one who controls Gardenia on the farm.

While I went with "How You Get The Girl," her alternative suggestion was "The Man."

===

All that w|w talk aside, I also want to give Sam the loveable idiot a shoutout. Had to do a fair bit of research into how skateboards are constructed for his failed ollie, and I slipped in a reference to shitty old technology that's exclusively for my beta reader to enjoy.

I also tried doing some agricultural research to figure out how the folks at Kevin Farm could have grown cucumbers so there'd be a jar of legitimate pickles... But that was getting too in the weeds.

Insert laugh track here

Decided to just go with pickled artichoke hearts to save everyone a lot of trouble.

And where does "Kevin Farm" come from, you may be asking yourself. Or the fabulous "Kevin's Special" with its definitely not innuendo tagline.

That story will have to wait for another day, my friends.