#anyways thanks for checking out my niche project

[rad-roche]

Lead Paint timelapse

here's the making of the entirety of the comic, spelling mistakes and all! recorded in seven one-minute videos, then sped up, not including thumbnailing or scripting because that's not the hard part. all forty-something panels, two weeks in two minutes. oh god. oh god i gotta lie down

[gatheredfates]

I thought I might start using this graphic for the updates, too! At least until I get bored of it and end up creating another. 🌊 We love eye-catching visuals in this house.

Anyway, sorry for the delay with this update! Last weekend was insane, putting it lightly, and I only really feel like I have started to return to capacity now. I appreciate your patience!

As of 04/27, I have added the following resources (in no particular order) to Sea's Community Compendium for FFXIV Creatives:

LARGE SCALE

XIV TODO — honestly, huge thanks to whoever submitted this resource because I didn't know it existed! This is another set of tools and tailored checklists for XIV that help you track encounters, content completion, dailies and more! It's also extremely alt-friendly for those of us who have more characters than sense.

FREE COMPANY / COMMUNITY FOCUSED

THE VIERAN MAFIA — do you like suave Noir-themed bars framed by mystery and intrigue? How about a bit of organised crime? This Free Company is for you! (They're also hiring, if you're interested. Get in touch with @fjotla-vithir!)

MISC

FFXIV BUFF AND DEBUFF MAKER — if you have ever thought a screenshot of yours would be made funnier by a buff/debuff but you don't have access to photo editing software, @fortunafavore has you covered with this simple tool!

XKIT REWRITTEN — The most up-to-date iteration of the original XKit tool, XKit Rewritten provides a series of enhancement tools for Tumblr's web-based interface including accessibility tools, anti-capitalism bocks and recommendation tweaks.

Want to submit? You can either fill out the google form here, send me an ask with the relevant information contained on the Compendium, or join my Discord at SEAFLOOR (21+ only)!

As a reminder, the answer to the question of "Is my resource/community applicable to the Compendium?" is almost always a resounding yes. I want to know what's out there. I want to feature your project!

However, for the sake of clarity, I'll pop the FAQ from this post below in a read more for you to check out if you're worried. ✨

I want to put my community on the compendium but we have an application process. Is this okay?

Yes! Just note somewhere in your application that's a requirement. The only thing that is mandatory for the Compendium is that you must be open to new members or have a public-facing/accessible facet. There's no point advertising a community if no one can join it in some way!

I want to put my community on the compendium but I only have x number of members —

Also totally okay! People don't start with large communities. Activity is a must but, whether your server has two or two thousand members, if you're looking for new people to join, I'd love to help you find people.

I want to put my community on the compendium but I worry its too niche?

Okay, and? If your Eorzean Fishing Alliance has four members but you roleplay every second weekend, I still want to know about it.

What resources/communities can I add if I'm not the owner of them?

Mutual consent is extremely important to me, so anything that isn't a large-scale community OR a publicly accessible resource must be endorsed by the owner/admin/moderators in order to be added to the compendium. I operate under the assumption that a resource posted to a public space (tumblr, googledocs, youtube, etc) is open to all. A large-scale community is one with a significant member count or openly advertises itself as being accessible to everyone for whatever purpose it serves. If in doubt, please get in touch with me. I'm happy to contact your community owners for you!

How active does a community need to be?

If you find a community has not been active in about two/three months, send me a message and I'll take a look at it. Communities have ebbs and flows, especially event spaces that may take hiatuses depending on member interest/life events. I'm not strict in my implementation provided a space isn't dead. If a link or anything is broken, absolutely contact me about that.

I have [insert a question not stated here]?

No drama! Send me an ask or use the #Compendium channel in my Discord!

[evilgabe29]

Chapter 2: Magic Space Prospectors

Sir Lanyard Wayne did his best to not shiver in the cold air of Artagan’s port. He tried to keep his back straight, years of working in cramped guild ships had done a number on his spine. He hoped that keeping his back straight would maybe undo some  of the damage, so far it hasn't done much.

Two hours had passed since Vik arrived. there was still no sign of the heaver. the job listing had clearly reached the centers so what was taking them so damn long? right as he finished that thought he snapped out of his thinking. Lan had been doing this semi-regularly to prevent himself from getting snuck up on again.

Lanyard scanned the crowd of people milling about for someone who might be walking towards him. Unfortunately it didn't seem like anyone fit the description. Lan relaxed unintentionally letting some of his slouch creep back in. 

“Excuse me?” a voice came from behind him accompanied by a tap on his shoulder. 

Lan jumped back in surprise, reaching for his coat pocket where a Keno shard sat in a fiery magenta cloak draining into Lan’s gloved fingers, Kenek stain crawling up his arm just that little bit more. a force pushed up against Lan granting him weightlessness. Lan bounced off the ground like a skipped rock. giving him a good ten half-yards of distance between him and whoever scared him. His brain finally caught up with what his eyes were seeing. a woman stood on where he'd been, she wore a blue port guild uniform. Lan stopped his levitation by putting his Athos back into the shard in his pocket making it burn a brilliant cyan.  

“…you’re Wayne I assume?” the woman asked unfazed.

“Uhm yes, you can call me Lan,” he said, letting himself relax a bit now that he was sure he wasn't in any danger. “you're the heaver then?”

“Yes, you can call me Kali. is that your ship back there?” Kali asked, pointing to Theo behind him. 

“Hum? Uh yeah, my brother and i built it for fun, we call her Theo after the-” 

“Yes, I know who Theosunis is. A fitting name for her,” This surprised Lan, the common person didn't know much about the niche subjects that Lan found so interesting.

“Yep, anyway we need to get going, we only reserved so much dock time” Lan said, beginning to walk towards his ship.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Lan opened the door to the ship making a loud squeaking noise. He heard a soft gasp from Kali as she entered. People always seemed to underestimate how big the inside was, sure a large amount was taken up with air storage and insulation but if you account for it you could make the inside as big as you want. Lan sighed seeing Nell passed out on the couch to his left.

“Did you and your brother really build all of this?” Kali asked behind him. 

“Well  Nell did most of the building, I did most of the designing and drafting,” Lan said, glad that he could finally boast to someone about it.

“Impressive,” Kali said, trailing behind lan

“Yeah it was quite the project.”

“So what's the plan? The job offer said it was a scouting job but that could be anything from looking for comets to looking for planets,” she said leaning against one of the bedroom doors. 

“I'll explain everything once we get the dasher up. ”Lan walked over to the rightmost room that he could see was locked and knocked on the beige metal door. About a minute later Vik stumbled out of the room after struggling with the lock for a few seconds, their light brown hair a complete mess, gray shirt that was a bit too big for them slipping down off of one shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm awake, I'm awake” Vik said, yawning. 

“You're the dasher then? How old are you, kid?” Kali asked 

“Hum? I'm eighteen, at least last I checked,” Vik responded, still very groggy.

“Really? You look quite young for your age”

“Thanks, I think it's the rat diet. Anyway, what's your name?” 

“I'm Kali, what's yours?”

“Oh right, im Vik, sorry i'm not used to having a name again,”

Lan walked over to the kitchen area, letting the two get to know each other while he went to make himself a coffee. He filled up the metal carafe with water till it hit the inscribed line, placing the jug onto the white heating plate that seemed to glow a very faint yellow. Now that they have a dedicated dasher they don't need to keep a constant level of Athos running in the plate to make it work but there was no guarantee Vik could heat objects so it would be best to play it safe. He walked over to the large yellow cloaked Keno engine at the front of the ship. putting his fingertips to it and sucking just a bit of Athos into himself causing him to glow a very faint cyan. After injecting Athos into the hotplate, the carafe began to heat up. Once the water boiled he removed the athos from the plate leaving just a little bit, and transferred it into the Keno shard in his coat pocket making it glow just that little bit brighter. He dumped a bunch of coffee grounds into the pot and let it sit for a few minutes while he listened to the conversation Vik and Kali were having.

“-i mean it's probably convenient to be small since you're a dasher, you would have less air resistance to worry about when running around” Kali said, taking a swig from her canteen she kept in her coat.

“I do wear a relatively large coat though, so that probably counteracts any benefit I get from being short. Anyway, could we not talk about my height for a bit. You said you're a heaver what's that like?” said Vik, leaning against a perpendicular wall to Kali.

“Oh it's alright, means I never really need to worry about how much I'm carrying. But i think it shines more with other Kenek since so many things are dependent on the mass of the object so having the ability to change that value makes just everyone’s jobs easier”

“Makes sense, by the way, where are you from? Your accent doesn't sound like you're from Artagan”

“I'm surprised you noticed, i'm from Kuralon, i thought i had adopted the accent pretty well” 

“You put too much emphasis on your ‘E’s and not enough on your ‘A’s, it's not that noticeable you still did quite a good job of adopting the accent. I've just always had a good ear for spotting those kinds of things. It's easier to steal from folk that that aren't from here”

“That makes sense. So you lived on the streets eh? How's that like?”

“Eh it could be worse, rats are abundant and more or less safe to eat, and the NDM have soup kitchens set up where you can get a bowl for a sliver which is pretty affordable and the food itself isn't too bad. Sleeping conditions are about what you’d expect. The most dangerous thing would probably be others trying to steal from you but as long as you look poor enough most will leave you alone. Also if sleep high enough up on the escapement ladders most won't even think about coming up there”

“Interesting i expected street life to be a lot worse”

“No, yeah, it's not too bad, although that's probably because the NDM wants a population that actually wants to work for them, if they treat people like shit then no one will want to work and then well the whole city goes to shit. By the way, what brought you to Artagan? Surly you didn't come for the scenery,”

“I actually came here with the Port guild when they needed more staff at the Artagan port. But then they ended up laying me off and I've just been hanging around for a bit hoping I could find a job that would get me off of here before I ran out of shards. I'm surprised that there isn't a bigger demand for Kenek on ships. I heard they made crafts that don't require Athos for propulsion but I thought they were rather expensive and a pain to maintain.” 

“From what i heard most civilian spacecrafts have Kenek that are either friends or friends of friends, and most commercial aircrafts don't tend to use the local job centers”

“Really that's good to know, makes me wonder what we signed up for here…”

Lan snapped out of his musings that most would call eavesdropping but hey what do i know. He put the lid on his carafe, put a new filter into it and poured it into two metal mugs, filling the ship with the smell of fresh coffee. He walked over to Nell who was still passed out on the couch. Lan tapped him on the head waking him up and handed him one of the mugs. He sat down next to Nell, mug clenched between his hands while he rehearsed his speech in his head.

alright, yall mind imagining that i used gender neutral pronouns for Vik in the first chapter? thanks.

oh and i absolutely recommend this vlog playlist if you're doing a long stint of writing, its really relaxing and honestly just people being nice to people, its really cozy.

anyway i need to tag a bunch of folk now eh?

first mutuals,

@ohnoitsslime @kaylinalexanderbooks @theeccentricraven

@illarian-rambling @beloveddawn-blog @caligusabs

@weird-dork37 @ratedn @leahnardo-da-veggie

@you-need-not-apply @elsie-writes @fwoofz

and now non mutual tags,

@mr-orion @squarebracket-trickster @the-ellia-west

[the-greek-mythos-project]

The Greek Mythos Project: What We Accept Within Submissions

Hello everyone, it is once again Camila here and I am writing this post because I decided I should probably clarify things sooner than later. I know I and quite a few other lovely people can struggle with open barriers within things, especially in such a large and "imposing" project, so I decided to write down the general specifics of things to lessen everyone's anxiety. This can and will definitely be improved if we are given more information/questions/asked for clarification so feel free to check every once in a while or reach out if you don't see a specific question you have answered. This is once again here to promote better communication within things and break down this large project to more manageable things. So, let's get into it!

[Note: This post will go from the broader, more unspecific, topics to the smaller, more specific ones so feel free to scroll down or up as you please :)]

The Biggest Thing First! One Singular POV. This is something that I, Camila, want for the project and therefore, it will be the most enforced thing within here. Don't worry, though! We will be releasing a Second Work alongside this main project consisting of things that didn't quite fit into the original project, such as works that aren't exactly (or at all) one POV but still want to be recognized or OC pieces that are like reincarnations of various gods/mortals/characters which I'll get into later. So you work has a place with us, I promise you <3.

Anyway, back to the One Singular POV thing. It genuinely does not matter whether the piece is First Person, Second Person, Third Person, or something within those parameters as long as the setting, scene, thoughts, and work are being described in that one character's thoughts/experiences. A great example of this in Third Person is in the Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan, a popular YA Book Series centering around Greek Mythology in a Modern Setting told by their Demigod Children, where the narrative is in Third Person POV but it only ever follows whoever's POV it's in. Such as we do see the character's actual name and "he/she/they" instead of "I" but we're not privy to anything other than what the character is experiencing.

That is what I am asking for, and I am asking for this mostly for myself!) As we all may know by now, this project was created because I--Camila--took one look at my goal to rewrite the entirety of Greek Mythology in my search to learn more about the Greek Myths, was like "yeah... no," and then proceeded to make this public with the intent to bring out those niche writers, gain a community, make friends, and generally learn more about the various communities and ideas surrounding such a vast and deep thing such as Greek Mythology (remember, people not only know this across the globe, but across centuries. It's not just our ideas and the original texts, it's the Roman Empire's thoughts, the Rise of Christianity, all of our forefathers, and even those who we have read dissecting these things and creating academic papers or other works. It's just so interesting how much character and change and even how much influence various things have had on our modern perceptions). But, this is also a Project, this is also mine, and so I am very politely asking for it to be One POV of a Greek Mythological Character--However Niche They May Be--Only.

Thank you so much for understanding and, again, I will be hosting a Secondary Fic for all the things that don't quite fit under this Main Project but may still want to have the recognition/community that this comes with <3.

Note!! Because this post ended up being a little long and would be hard to properly organize going further, the rest of it will be comprised in reblogs <33

[jovenshires]

💛Smoshblr December Asks Final Day💙

We‘ve done it! We’ve finally reached the end of this lil ask game and also the end of 2023! 🥳 Thank you so much for joining in on this, I truly appreciate it so much 🫶! I wish you a wonderful start into the new year and that all your hopes and dreams for 2024 will come true! ✨💞

But, since the year isn’t quite over yet, I thought this might be a nice time to reminisce a little bit. Therefore, the final question of the Smoshblr December Asks Game:

What are your favourite smosh-related memories of 2023? 💖

(no specific amount required for this one; and you can ofc also include older smosh memories, if you want to 🤗)

oh my god........ im emotional fr. this was so, so, SO much fun and stella, i will speak for EVERYONE you sent these asks to when i say that we are all so grateful to YOU for organizing it. you brought the community together in such an amazing way, asking us thought-provoking and interesting questions, a lot of which i never would have thought to ask. and yet i got to learn all my mutuals' answers anyway!!! it made me feel like i really got to know everyone, even the people im too scared to start a convo with bc i am a Coward. i love you, we all adore you, thank you SO much, and i cant wait to see where smoshblr goes in the new year now that we are all closer than ever <3<3<3<3<3

okay so...... okay okay okay okay HERE we go. im gonna put it under the cut bc this got SO long but if you want a tl;dr summary, please by all means go check out this video i made at the beginning of the month bc. it sums it up tbh.

making all of my amazing friends: i am literally. an emotional wreck just thinking ab this. anyway. i've already been sappy enough this year (from my christmas presents to my many many personal posts and asks that are just. me talking about how much i love these people), but i would still be remiss if i didn't mention my beautiful, wonderful friends. im not gonna tag them all here - it'd be too many and you all know who you are <3<3<3 - but to everyone i've dmed for hours on end, or talked to in replies, or mutuals i've never even spoken to at all, or anons who come into my askbox and just have the most wonderful interactions with me, i am so, so eternally grateful. i made new friends; i reconnected with one of my best friends in the WHOLE world; i met some people who i never would have spoken to otherwise and found such an incredible community. i love you all so so SO much (yes ALL of you even if you think im not talking ab you if you're reading this i AM), and i am so excited to see what happens with all of us next. love you all. mwah. <3

domo day/my birthday: oh my god. OHHHH my god. literally the fic that brought me back to this fandom. i am not crying its fine im FINE. domo - aka dancing on my own - was a passion project from the very start. i thought, 'well, no one will wanna read this niche lil fic that im writing just to deal with My very personal trauma about an rpf ship that no one cares about.' (mind you i started it before i even posted right side, so, like, i literally thought it was just me standing on a deserted island.) and then five or six months later... there we were. i posted it on my birthday (bc i Live for drama !) and god. the amount of love and support i got that day was... everything to me. when i said this was a passion project, i mean that it was truly one of the first things i sat down and wrote For Myself, without giving a fuck what anyone else would think. it was something i poured my heart and soul into because i needed to read it. and when other people started to reach out - telling me how much they related, how much they got from it, how much it meant to them. then there was the analyses of it from everyone,,,, not to mention the birthday love. my birthday is a HUGE thing for me, and, as i told you at the time, you were the very first person to wish me a happy birthday stella (with that incredible moodboard that i think of frequently........ the rat.........). and then kit went and published bad idea and gifted it to ME which was such an incredible and treasured gesture and... truly some of my irls forgot to wish me a happy birthday so. im just so honored and i love you all so much. thank you for loving me and my dearest darling daughter domo <333333

shaynse day: this literally isn't even about me, it's honestly about nat, but this changed my brain chemistry and i think everybody's tbh. it was the way that the MOMENT the love is blind video dropped, we all gathered around my blog to hold hands, sing kumbaya, and all hail the shaynse anon (aka now shaynse founder nat). they had their third eye OPEN. and everyone had to come check on them to make sure they were okay. that meant so much to me. not only did it mean that enough people were reading my blog that an anon had their own niche subset of a fan base, but it was truly like. one of the best displays of fandom togetherness i've ever seen. we were all so united that day. god bless november 19th, aka shaynse day, my FAVORITE national holiday.

gedits: i really Dont think i have to explain this one. this is one of my favorite bits (but also its not really a bit and i genuinely wanna fuck that old man). making thirst traps for garrett? oh my god. stroke of actual genius. once again another day we all came together, held hands, and decided we were ALL gonna be garrett fuckers. long live gedits. they will never stop and im NOT sorry about it.

the bsf fan art: i have literally never had fan art made for my fic before...... i screamed and cried and threw up when someone made fan art for the bed-sharing fic. furry-jackson is my hero and this fan art lives in my mind RENT FUCKING FREE. it truly imprinted itself on my brain and i think about it all the time. thanks so much to them for loving i could be the reason as much as i do <3333

the top ten dynamics poll: !!!!! my baby!!!! i truly thank you all so much for indulging me by voting in that silly lil poll. it was so SO interesting to see the way the dynamics stacked up. not to mention, it also got me into gif-making again!! that was the first time i'd made gifs in ages, especially gifs i was proud of. but i love that silly lil gif series so much, one of my favorite projects of the year, so thank you all <3

smoshblr december asks: i mean. i said it all up top, but it's worth mentioning again. this was so, so, SO much fun, and it must have been such hard work for you, and i am honored that you did all this work for US of all people when you are so busy and talented and working so hard just in like. YOUR LIFE. honestly, this whole section could just be called 'stella,' bc i am so, so grateful for you especially coming into my life this year. whether we're working together on fic or just chatting about our lives or shouting back and forth about why EVERY taylor swift song is in fact a spommy song, i am just so lucky to have you and i love you so, so much. you always tolerate my shenanigans and i am SO incredibly lucky to have you as a friend. anyway. yeah i love you and smoshblr december asks so there.

[smeedlesmeelder]

Flatgame

Sixth week of my Video Game Genres Guides!

Logo by my friend Flatgame! This is a very niche style of indie games that was suggested to me by my friend, the same friend that has been making logos for these! If you'd like to suggest a genre to look into, check my ask page! Anyways, flatgames are super hard to pin down, but in general they are very simple narrative adventure games with minimal graphics, gameplay, and controls. Some of these games tell very personal stories, while others are quite silly or cute. Here's what that would look like on a Genre Tree!

In terms of top level, Flatgame is strictly under Adventure as a very primitive sub-genre of Graphic Adventure. Here's 5 Flatgames (in no particular order). In terms of tags, they are all pretty much just Flatgame, as is most of the genre. Instead of tags, I will be linking these games so that people can support these indie devs if they'd like!

The Isle Is Full Of Noises Number 1 is The Isle Is Full Of Noises! This is the game that started the genre. The games creator Llaura McGee coined "Flatgame" when her games simplistic style was criticized by judges at Indiecade. Contrary to the criticism and the simple gameplay and art, this game is really intense, and as much as I recommend it I would also warn that it is very heavy emotionally.

gays at the beach! Number 2 is gays at the beach!! This is the first flatgame I played in this genre exploration. To be honest when starting out I really had no idea how these games were going to work. The story seems cute I think? It's certainly about gays at the beach! The music was good but I wasn't even really sure when I finished the game, which my friend says is normal for this genre. After this game, I knew this wouldn't be the easiest genre exploration to write lol.

how 2 dreams Number 3 is how 2 dreams! This is a collaborative flatgame made by multiple devs! This flatgame is a lot more surreal as you adventure through how dreams are made and delivered. Very simple fun with silly different graphics from each of the developers!

Interactive Meadow 64 Number 4 is Interactive Meadow 64! This flatgame is less narratively driven, and more framed as a nice relaxing meadow to chill and relax in. Reminds me of this one scratch project I made for a class in middle school lol. Super cute and relaxing compared to some of the more intense storytelling in the genre.

quietly Number 5 is quietly! Slight spoilers ahead for this one, as its a bit hard to discuss without. This flatgame is a bit repetitive, but the payoff is well worth it. Seemingly a flatgame Stardew Valley, you start out by sailing and getting seeds, water, planting and watering crops, and starting your farm. Through this repetitive day-to-day story cycle, the story is told and very surprising events occur that I will not get into. Very interesting game and the build-up felt very unique for the genre from the small selection I played. That concludes my sixth Video Game Genres Guide! Thank you for reading!

[monstersandmaw]

Somewhere in early September Tumblr washed a story from your master list 1 to my dash. Intrigued, I spend a few evenings reading through that list and finally moved to list 2. There I skipped the yautja story as the movies never were my cup of tea. Instead, I fell in love with Moon & Tide and Gabe & Odessa, just when you announced a break - bummer! Rereading could bridge only so much time so eventually I started on the yautja story anyway - and boy! did you have me on the edge of my chair latest by chapter 3!

Long story short, someone here who used to casually scroll through their Tumblr dash maybe once a week now became someone who checks for updates at least twice a day. 🙈😅

Please don't stop! I'm loving it! And thank you for sharing these stories!

PS.: I'd read a book of Moon&Tide and their adventures in witchery. The story was so sweet and lovable and different. 🥰

Ahhh, thank you so much for this!! It's going in my 'sweet anon' tag which is for sweet asks that people send me that I can go back through on a rainy day!

Anyway, I'm delighted that you enjoyed what are probably my two favourite (or dearest) stories on here (aside from Footsteps in the Snow which is super niche and which I never shut up about to people, sorry).

Gabe & Odessa is my next big project after I've finished Big Red's story, and after I've got my Etsy up and running again. I intend to self-publish Gabe & Odessa's story too, when it's finished! I have so many plans for their future...! There's a whole 'Season Two' plotline that I'm just itching to write! haha.

Anyway, thank you so much for trusting my storytelling enough to give something a go that wasn't initially your thing. It means a lot to me, and I'm even happier that you ended up enjoying it!

Thank you too for taking the time out of your day to leave me this!

[gendervapor14]

oh fuck i hit 400k words. !! ??

big ol genramble below ♥️

wow!! it's super weird seeing it recorded like this. hasn't even been a year of posting! i've been writing fanfic and reading fanfic for YEARS (started around 2016?) but i didn't get out of my lurker seat and make an account until sepetember of 2022 i believe. i started writing 01746 in late july when i had a MASSIVE chunk of free time, which is where over half of this word count came from. and there are a few random oneshots i posted that i actually wrote back in like. april of 2022 or something random like that. so yes, it isn't like i sat down in september, fresh into the fandom, fresh into writing fanfic or writing in general, and threw up 400k. i'm absolutely insane actually so this shit just kinda happened. i'll probably miss 500k because i don't check my stats much so i'm getting all the internal celebration out now, lmao

nothing will stop me from writing, but i have to thank everyone who encouraged me to continue immensely. sure, i've got a lot of wacky ideas of my own, but if it weren't for my buddies here on tumblr, ao3, and the villain server, i don't think over half these fics would even exist. and i think my writing quality has improved as well!! ya'll give me so much encouragement and validation, it is insane. i absolutely did not expect to find so many friends and likeminded people who genuinely enjoy my stories (and my original character??) and continue to support me throughout all my niche phases. (and god knows what niche phases are next...)

that being said. i have SO MANY wips lying around. some days i just sit there in an unproductive slump because i'm so worried i'll never be able to finish all the projects in my head. 400k is baffling to me because everything on my ao3 dash feels like the very tip of the iceberg. we haven't even scratched the surface of the stories i wanna get out there. not even close.

well. anyway. one last thanks to everyone who's supported me in any way!! you are all so so lovely. i'm not gonna tag everyone because. god. that'd be like. almost everyone i follow! XD

stay frosty out there ♥♥♥

this where i'm at mentally. reflecting upon everything.

[bellshazes]

#OHHHH #this makes so much sense and also clarifies a lot of the ??? my brain produces for some of your writing #like the way you talk about and approach building and stuff this first section makes me Get It now#also now im like. how to give other people this framework for play bc its so much more fun than just absorbing the interest du jour #i feel like bc of a combination of lack of this kind of underlying thought and how algorithms work ppl tend to condense#whether that be on Faithful or megabases or texturing or Hardcore 100day whatever #and while its easy to call that fads or imitation i think its partly just #players do Not have the language or framework to go 'but how do i want to play?' #increased roleplay has opened that up a Bit but its still very BILLION ITEM FARM engineer-porn out there #meta #bdubs #anyways. fuck dude this rules (@salemoleander)

how to give other people a framework for their play is exactly what I want and what I was getting at, thank you for that phrasing! especially because you could start like this:

Ask yourself "How do I like to play?"

except then you've already started off wrong. there are secret hidden questions behind all simple questions, and if the quest is to get people thinking about their own framework for play, then it's more like:

How do I know how I like to play? Is it by what I'm naturally drawn to? Experimentation, trial and error? Past experiences? Things I've seen other people do and want to try?

What different kinds of enjoyment do I get from different activities? (if I like redstone and also mining, how are those kinds of fun different?)

In what contexts do I experience different kinds of fun? What contexts am I currently playing in or wanting to play in? (biome, single v multiplayer, physical computer setup, time window, etc.)

and it's a red herring to list questions this way because what I'm after is not a checklist but a way of thinking that prompts people to continuously ask these questions or interrogate their experiences in some kind of capacity, as an ongoing activity or reference system that helps guide and shape play. it could look like paying attention to joy or pride or victory when you feel it so you can use that information about your experience to make the game more fun/rewarding/better for yourself, opening more possibilities.

I think a didactic checklist or how-to approach is worse than a dialectical, critical conversation one because a dialectical approach also naturally is compatible with collaborative play, if not encouraging of it. the framework has as much utility for a single "I" as it does a collective "we" of players, and a lot of my feelings and desire for such a framework is the wonderful conversations about the game in the abstract or as it relates to a project with friends. even as conversations for their own sake, it's rewarding! and actionable on top of that!

a dialectical framework also sidesteps the issue of pigeonholing yourself, as a checklist is by definition checked off; a way of thinking and paying attention to your own play experience allows room for your preferences to change across time or contexts or whatever variable condition. it is, as I think bwbs3 somewhat exemplifies, friendly to skill development but doesn't require it. it would solve all my problems if it existed (jk. but.)

unfortunately the platforms available to us for meta-level minecraft content (content about minecraft as a game experience) are just not. built. for dialectical learning and theory - like possibly false conceptions on what The Algorithm desires and so on. and even in my perfect world it wouldn't fully replace farm tutorials or build hacks or whatever - they're different niches. i get why it's not already being done. but I wish people would

[vexx-ation]

hello! hope youre doing well :)

ive been following along with your 365 albums in 365 days and ive absolutely fallen in love with the femtanyl album you reviewed a couple of days ago. its nowhere near my usual genres and way outside my normal comfort zone, but since then ive looked for as many similar artists and albums as i could find. thank you so much for your service as a niche album reviewer

(my favourite song was girl hell 1999 :D)

Hi!! I am so sorry it took me literally like 5 months to get to this I threw it in my drafts and immediately forgot about it. Anyway OMG!!!! This project was made to broaden my musical horizons, but seeing that it's inspiring other people to check out new albums and find new fun music is just stellar. I'm so stoked!!!!

I'm really glad you enjoyed the reviews and found some new stuff to check out! If you find anything new that I haven't reviewed def send it my way!!! I'd love to see what you found :D

[mangoisms]

omg i hadn’t even thought about the hierarchy of needs in that way, it actually makes a lot of sense, but yeah that’s actually a really good idea thank you! and yeah thank you so much for the help i really appreciate it, i’ve been just having like a ton of fun connecting certain characters to psych so yeah. also i will definitely give those a read! i think they’ll fit really well with the stuff i’ve already got too, and i needed more examples to do you also just saved me like an hour of searching so i am forever indebted to you 🙏🏼. i’ll definitely elaborate on that more in the project and let you know how i do lolol.

and since we’re doing memory rn (thank god we moved past the anatomy stuff. eugh. anyways. ) i connected tim’s recollection of the night dicks parents died in a lonely place of dying to arousal theory, and flashbulb memory, since he said he had nightmares about it which in my opinion was a pretty solid connection so i’m fairly confident i’ll get those points

but yeah i have seen some jason and babs stuff here and there and it’s just?? odd. but like i don’t dislike it enough to not read something that has it lol so yeah i’ll check those out! ALSO off topic but i saw something once about bruce and babs?? like they were kissing. and stuff. which is??? um??? it was animated but i have no idea what it was but i did not like it 😭

totally meant to answer this earlier so sorry!!! but!! here i am <3

of course! super happy to help! it's kind of niche really HAHA talking about psych and the bats, so it is very fun to do it!

glad you're having a better time in class now too!!! i had registration for the spring this week and we had like. three options for our singular elective and all of them kind of sucked so i had to go with human cognition which i am Very Scared about but a classmate whose advisor is the prof for the class says his classes are easy/the prof is nice so i am hopeful 🤞 that it will be ok 😭

that's really neat though!!! i have to be honest i had to google some of that it has been Very Long since i had my intro class... super cool though!!! i hope you get points for that too hehe it certainly sounds like a good connection!

i was thinking of bruce and lifespan perspective theory (in developmental psych ^_^ since i'm taking that class rn), there's something called multifinality and equifinality. multifinality is usually when people have similar backgrounds but it is still possible for them to end up in very different places or with different outcomes. equifinality is sort of the opposite, where different initial conditions or experiences can lead to similar outcomes or developmental trajectories.

i think there's something to be said about equifinality and bruce losing his parents at a young age and being defined by that, then becoming the batman as a result of it, then you look at tim who, initially, had both of his parents, became robin, then lost his mom, and then lost his dad, and ultimately wound up as an orphan too. they started in very different places and ended up in similar ones.

i wanted to use dick and bruce for multifinality (similar beginnings and all) but i do wonder if their outcomes are that different... you know what i am going to go with, yeah, they are different, dick deserves that much HAHA i won't say he's turned out like bruce, i don't think he has LOL

anyway kind of got carried away with that but YEAH. god i should've brought that up in class. anyway LMAO

no yeah three jokers is questionable in quality i only re-read it for the pretty art HAHA. and oooh yeah i've heard about that... it is SO weird... babs i'm gonna get u out of there i swear...

ANYWAY! good luck with everything <333

[ivelovedhimthroughworse]

Get To Know Me

Thanks for the tags: @nausikaaa, @captain-aralias, @raenestee, @angelsfalling16, @you-remind-me-of-the-babe, @aristocratic-otter, @bookish-bogwitch and @fight-surrender

Relationship Status:

Happily in a relationship with someone I've known for more than half my life. We were friends for six or seven years, maybe, before having our "something to talk about" epiphany. 

Favorite Colour: 

Red. (For clothes and possessions)

Favorite food:

I used to be a butter and cheese enthusiast, but sadly, no longer. 

So my favorite food is bread. Fresh, fluffy, yeasty, yum. And dark chocolate. 

Chocolate chip cookies (made with dark chocolate and margarine) are my favorite dessert. 

Song stuck in your head:

There's a song called "Whispers of the Heart" that's been haunting me nonstop for three days. I think it has the lyrics, "country roads, take me home".

Why is this in my head? Remember @foolofabookwyrm-activated made the top tier Rick Roll playlist? There was an orchestral version by Vitamin String Quartet. I was up late on Saturday night editing my chapter and thought I'd check out more of their instrumental pop covers. The last song before I went to bed was Whispers of the Heart and my brain got stuck on loop and I fell asleep with it and woke up with it and here we are today, despite the fact that I only know maybe eleven words of the lyrics. 

Someone in my house is singing Sink the Bismark, so that may dislodge and become the new earworm winner (Please please please).

Last thing you googled:

Lyrics to Sink the Bismarck by Johnny Horton

Lots of Victorian period photographs and engraving for COTTA, including but not limited to period ladies' glasses, ladies' hairstyles for curly hair, cross-dressing and long hair for men

Time:

16:04pm

Dream trip:

Costa Rica. Especially for a tree top adventure. Or hang gliding. 

Last book you read:

Sharkmartini's fanfic series On the Relativity of Time. Okay, it's not the last book, but I read this and love it and just keep thinking about it.

Last book you enjoyed:

I enjoyed rereading Boyfriend Material to get ready for the release of Husband Material. I think I liked it better this time than the first time. 

Last book I hated reading:

I didn't hate it, but I rolled my eyes a lot through Dangerous Alliance: An Austentacious Romance  by Jennieke Cohen. It seemed every chapter had this same sentence, "She bit her lip." Although occasionally she bit the inside of her cheek. But I kept reading anyway and tried to figure out what made the phrase so jarring and how this author could have rephrased it to be less repetitive.

Favorite thing to cook/bake:

I love cooking and baking. Right now I'm learning a lot about vegetarian cooking. One major difference is that you need a lot more spice and aromatics to make up for the loss of meat flavour. My spice cabinet is getting more interesting.

Favorite craft to do in free time:

I doodle. All the time and everywhere. Pencil and pen doodles cover the margins of my notebooks and bills and any scrap paper. As a hobby, I like painting. I'm handy with most types of crafts. And when the temperature drops I like to have a knitting project to keep my hands busy. 

Most niche dislikes:

Blerg. I must have some. I'm sure I thought of one. What was it? 

Is it niche to get mad at people who are not celiacs and want to cut bread out because someone told them that it will solve every health problem? Bread is glorious. I'll never let you say mean words about my good friend, bread.

Opinion on circuses, now and in history:

If I'm going to spend my money, it's not going to be on a circus. I'd rather go to see live music, or watch a play or musical. I'd enjoy a drag show or maybe burlesque. I'd even take the opera or ballet before the circus.

Circuses in history have been abusive to animals. Who's going to have a positive opinion about that?

Do you have a sense of direction, and if not what is the worst way you’ve gotten lost: 

I've got a fairly good sense of direction. I like maps, but not so much GPS. If I use GPS directions then my brain stops making a mental map. I've gotten lost mostly because I tire of taking the same route and will mix things up at random.

Most of the time I enjoy getting lost, so I had to really think of a worst time. Okay, once I was driving to my aunt's cottage and everyone else in the car was sleeping so I decided to get off the highway and take a scenic route. I got hopelessly lost and was out of cell range. I made it there more than an hour late and tired and frazzled while the other car occupants were refreshed and ready to go. Ugh. 

Tagging in some creative folks: @stardustasincocaine @ic3-que3n @takitalks @nick-eyre @cynopoe @stillmadaboutpetra @urban-sith

[100hearteyes]

any more thoughts on 'clarke and lexa make a porno'?

🤔😏

Part 1 Part 2

“Last but not least, worry no more, citizens of Capitola: after a grueling week of searching, our very own superhero Jasper Jordan has finally found his cape. He was wearing it all along.”

“It’s so good to know that he will be able to go on keeping Capitola safe.”

“Yes, what would we do without Jasper Jordan here to protect us? And from now on, you’ll be in Lexa Woods’s hands. Also, such good hands those are. She’s got very long fingers.”

“Oh. Well, I never actually noticed, but I guess they are. Thanks, Clarke. And now, perk your ears for the new hit single from our very own global country star, Harper McIntyre. It’s called Call Me Harp-by. She’s a creative genius!”

-

Lexa’s first instinct when she hears the studio door open is to hide. She checks her options: Monty is holed up under his desk playing on his GameBoy Color, Octavia has barricaded herself in a corner with actual hand-carved sticks and is roaring at Bellamy in a strange language, and Murphy is probably peeing into a bin behind the pillar on the far side of the room.

She’s too slow to think of a solution in the end and she can’t do anything but flush when Clarke strolls in and heads over to her, smirk plastered on her face. Lexa only has time to save her miniature Baby Yoda from Clarke’s weapon of ass destruction before her coworker sits on the edge of her desk.

“Hey, Lexa.”

Lexa forces a polite smile, trying to focus on her outline for the day rather than the butt cheeks planted on her desk, the body attached to them, or the face looking down at her with a sly grin. “Hello, Clarke.”

“What do you think of Harper McIntyre’s new song?”

The topic confuses her, but she trudges on with a brave face. After all, she’s got opinions on Capitola’s Taylor Swift rip-off and if Anya is going to make it a point of leaving the room every time Lexa so much as mentions them, then she’s going to take this opportunity with both hands and pull out all the receipts. “Uninspired. Derivative. Oddly reminiscent of Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen.”

“Yeah...” Clarke nods pensively, letting the subsequent silence drag on for a few more seconds. “I like your fingers.”

Lexa starts at the sudden topic change and struggles to keep her blush under control under the brazen intensity of Clarke’s stare. “Yes, I- I noticed. You mentioned. On the radio, for all of Capitola to hear. Thank you, I guess?”

Clarke hums, before clicking her tongue and hopping off of Lexa’s desk. She roundabouts it until she’s right next to Lexa, thigh brushing Lexa’s arm.

Lexa tries and fails to swallow down the knot in her throat as Clarke sits on her desk again, this time on her side, crossing her legs so her feet touch Lexa’s leg.

“So a little bird told me we’re starring in a porno together.”

Lexa almost yelps, scrambling out of her chair to fasten both hands over Clarke’s mouth. “The whole world doesn’t need to know, Clarke!”

Clarke rolls her eyes, but Lexa can feel her smile under her hands. Their eyes lock, a tacit understanding passing between them. Clarke's eyes are a vivid blue, like a cloudless sky or the color of Lexa's highlighters before Anya dunked them all in a bag of manure, and it's hard not to drown in the depths of them.

"Glad to see you two getting intimate already."

They spring apart as though they were burned. Lexa sits back down on her chair, while Clarke takes a seat at her desk, which to Lexa's chagrin is right next to her own. Anya chuckles as she sinks into her own chair, propping her feet on Lexa's desk, crossed at the ankles.

"Anyway," she slams a hand over a stack of papers, making Clarke and Lexa jump in their seats, "can you guess what this is?"

Clarke and Lexa look at each other with raised eyebrows, then at Anya. Lexa shrugs.

"This is your fucking Bible," Anya says, not waiting for them to guess. "Your Dianetics.Your Loose Canon. Your gospel." At her companions' still expectant stares, Anya heaves a dramatic sigh, throwing her arms up. "It's the goddamn screenplay."

Oh.

Oh.

It's like the snap of an elastic band. Lexa and Clarke shoot out of their chairs to snatch the script from Anya's desk. Lexa gets there first (going to the gym does pay off after all), dribbling around Clarke, and lets out a triumphant cry before sinking back into her chair, thumbing through the pages of the heavy tome.

She stops on a random page and feels Clarke press closer to read over her shoulder.

-

INT. BLONDIE'S KITCHEN - TWILIGHT

Enter Lulu. Plumber by day, detective by night. She stops by the island and twirls a lead pipe in her right hand before sheathing it like a cowboy's pistol.

LULU

It seems it's time to read your...

Lulu puts on her shades. ZOOM IN.

LULU (CONT'D)

...Anya rights.

-

Lexa balks, peeling her eyes from the page to gape at Anya.

"Anya rights? Anya rights? You can't just... Arbitrarily rename the Miranda rights. They have that name for a reason."

Anya rolls her eyes like Lexa just said something obnoxiously stupid. "I didn't just rename them, you dumbass. I fucking changed them. If you'd read the whole thing, you would know that the suspect has the obligation to remain silent. No more fucking cry babies in cuffs."

"This is..." Lexa opens and closes her mouth like a fish, trying to find a thread of logic in the midst of... Whatever fever dream she's living in right now. "I thought we were filming a porno, not a sexy cop movie. Plumber by day, detective by night? That's- it's not even remotely realistic."

"Lexa... Suspend your disbelief."

"I think it's really good stuff," Clarke chimes in, her breasts still firmly pressed to Lexa's shoulder blade.

"Thank you, Clarke!" Anya exclaims, throwing her hands up and letting them fall on her legs with a loud clap. "At least someone appreciates my genius."

Lexa rolls her eyes, but fine. Fine. She will read more; she will give Anya a chance. She opens the book on a new page, several scenes ahead.

-

INT. BLONDIE'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

Blondie rubs her lover's love button like she's scratching at a turn-table, making Lulu scream louder than Saoirse Ronan in Ammonite when Kate Winslet was eating her out with her neck.

LULU

Oh, fuck! You're so good at this! Almost as good as my awesome best friend and mentor Anya, even though I've never had sex with her because that would be totally gross.

Blondie stops her ministrations to look up at Lulu and smirks.

BLONDIE

I know. After all, they don't call me DJ Diddles for nothin'.

-

Lexa stares incredulously from the two hundred-odd pages to Anya, wondering how grave a sin she must have committed in a past life to deserve this.

"What are you, a sex-deprived straight guy?"

Anya scoffs, yanking the script from Lexa's hands before she can do anything to stop it. "I can assure you there is no deprivation in that department."

"After reading that I am seriously starting to doubt that you've ever even seen a vagina."

"I thought it was good," Clarke pipes in once again. This time, Lexa turns to her with a raised eyebrow.

"Is she paying you to say that?"

Clarke tsks with a smirk. "I'm just smart enough to know better than to get on the lead producer's bad side."

Anya snaps her fingers and points at Clarke approvingly, and Lexa has never regretted a decision so deeply in her life.

"Anyway," Clarke resumes, standing up and grabbing her bag. "This has been fun, but I need to get going. Anya, stay classy. We'll work out the schedule this week. Lexa," she adds, her voice dropping a tone to turn into a seductive purr. She leans down, and it's all Lexa can do not to focus on how her breasts squish together and seem to become fuller and more inviting. She loses the plot when a pair of lips presses to her cheek in a kiss that is chaste, yet way too slow for propriety. "See you tomorrow."

Lexa's throat is dry as a desert as she watches Clarke leave, her hips swaying more than usual. She jumps in place when Anya clears her throat next to her. This time, she can't avoid her friend's shit-eating grin.

"No chemistry, you say?"

"Shut up, Anya," she grumbles, focusing back on her work. She has a full, five-minute newscast to prepare, she can't dawdle and joke around gossiping like some people. But then a thought pops up in her head and she turns to Anya, eyes narrowed. "Is this some elaborate plan to get us together? I refuse to be your little Love, Actually experiment."

Anya's stare is fifty shades of unimpressed. "Lexa. Don't take yourself so seriously. It's a bad look on you."

Lexa buries her face in her hands with a long-suffering sigh. Why is this her life? Why is this her best friend? Why is she hopelessly attracted to the worst, most unprofessional coworker on the planet?

"Why couldn't you find a normal hobby? Something that doesn't include me? Like baking. Baking would have been so much better."

"You know," Anya drawls almost nostalgically, "I actually considered that, but the criminally inclined baker niche was already taken up by Martha Stewart."

"She is surprisingly niche," Lexa says, intrigued.

"Indeed."

"But she's also able to appeal to a larger audience."

"Uh-huh."

"Fascinating."

"I know. It's like Punkya. You'd think a lesbian erotica magazine would only appeal to queer women and depraved straight men, but it's been selling surprisingly well amongst the straight female demographic."

Hm. Are all women secretly queer?

"Interesting," Lexa concedes, before veering the topic back to Anya's passion (and Lexa's torture) project. "So when does principal photography start?"

And there it is again, that nefarious gleam in Anya's eyes. It grows along with her Cheshire cat grin, curling and curling until it's pure, unbridled evil.

"Next week."

[its-toasted]

Every time I come back home it smells like wood and weed and makes me happy

I met the new owners of our old house today. We'll call them Bobby and Christine, one of those generic names are correct. I accidentally mailed some packages there and it's less than 30 away so I scooped. A shipment is missing and I'm in shambles. It was a perfect snoopy-woodstock mug for dad, that's one of his things. He loves classic shit, old pop culture gems like athletes and star trek and sherlock holmes and hall n oates and diana ross and looney tunes. And peanuts :)

Anyways they're really keeping up the garden. Bobby was spilling life shit, like any moderately lonely grown man who doesn't have many people to talk to because he spends all his time on the nuclear family and probably one or two super niche hobbies like craft beer or old cars or glassblowing. I'm projecting. I liked him a lot. Those are white-ass hobbies and less likely to be applicable. He does 5g contracting whatever for the government and she works for a big transportation company. I didn't ask about kids but there's a new used hoop in the driveway, old school with the sandbags on top. They made some changes to the frontyard walkway, like replacing the big hydrangea bush with something still very fluffy, I dig it. But I'm not a tastemaker for this shit, my parents always architected. It's such a nice thing to meet the people that'll love that home for a long time

I've mentioned what I do mad times, but this was a more uncommon full introduction. It felt good to say I'm a writer for a media company called The X, etc etc, you should check us out. It's a good name, I bet he will. He seems like a good ol' suburban dad-type, like D's. Like my dad. I wonder if I'm already becoming like these lonely dudes. But nah, I think I just had a really bad spell. I do have people to trust forever, and I'm so thankful for them, but I still get hung up on who and what I've lost. And I miss living life with a good few. Or just one, really. I don't want to worry about being lonely, I'm still too childish. I just need to move like I love myself again, so simple in theory right

I've been trying to rewire a lot of small things lately so today was nice. I haven't been feeling the christmas spirit except adjacently, but I've been so happy that I don't mind. I’m singing a lot. I've done all the shopping, home is clean af, just got off the phone with ma. Feels clean slate

[passable-talent]

ya boi is back with a new niche character played by hayden christensen for yall to enjoy.

CW: blood, wounds, cursing, piercings, tattoos, guns, fighting, deaths of unnamed characters

AJ x gn!reader - Takers (2010). the stupid hat grew on me.

dedicated as always to @haydens-moles and @iscariot-rising for being my friends and for appreciating hayden as much as I do

The story of your life, as you loved to explain it, boiled down to a little math joke. Excited five, you called it, or it’s official terminology- five factorial. Written as “5!”, hence the awful pun.

“Factorials,” you’d say, “for those that don’t remember, are a multiplication of every number up to the one that’s being discussed. As such, five factorial is five, times four, times three, times two, times one.”

Your life, your excited five, was as follows: five major scars, four tattoos, three piercings, two eyebrow slits.

“The one is usually ignored,” you’d say, “as it makes no multiplicative difference. That’s why I don’t have a ‘one’.”

In August, 2009, you got your ‘one’. Its a doozy. But we’re not there yet.

~~~

Five major scars.

December 25, 1983. It’s your first Christmas. Your parents think you’re just being a cranky infant, but something way more serious is going on- they find out the next day that you’ve got RSV, a respiratory virus that’s especially dangerous for infants. You spend the next three years periodically using a ventilator whenever the coughing acts up. You don’t remember much of it, other than the vaguely crayon-looking piece of the machine, but you can’t forget that it happened, due to the pretty white scar over the bridge of your nose. It’s not such a gnarly wound as it is a reminder- not of the ventilator that wore through your skin thanks to frequent use, but of the virus that almost took your life only a few months after it had begun.

July 28, 1993. You’re seven years old, staying at your grandmother’s house with your cousin, who’s six months older than you. You’re playing cops and robbers- he’s the cop. The forest streaks by as you run the length of the property, slightly faster than him, but he catches you and throws you down. You land on your back on a jagged rock, not only painfully impacting your spine but digging deeply into your muscles beside it. It was the first hospital visit you remember, and the dark, long scar halfway between your tailbone and your shoulders reminds you never to fall without controlling it.

January 15, 1998. You’re in sophomore year of high school, and not the most popular. You like to play by the rules, and some asshole junior decides that he doesn’t like the way you won’t let him cheat off of your trigonometry homework, and decides that a knife is the best way to settle the problem. Those homework answers weren’t worth the long white line over all four of the knuckles of your left hand, but it is a pretty little reminder that lowlifes do what they want. And law enforcement, or whatever your school called the ‘anti-bullying league’, does jack shit about it.

October 30, 2002. You’re almost done with your certification to become a cop- thank god. You couldn’t stand the people who were to become your graduate class. They were so ready to become cops just to bully people, just to get to weild an iron fist and hide their bloodlust behind the law. Not you- you’re here to do some real good. That’s what they don’t like about you. And that’s why Fred Young splits open your cheek when just he’s supposed to be practicing his sparring. It’s an ugly scar, needed six stitches, but it’s a reminder that even the cops aren’t always the good guys.

May 14, 2004. You’re a new cop, working under detective Wells. There’s a robbery of a jewelry store a few blocks from where you’re patrolling, and as you’re making your way to the scene, a man in a fedora runs smack into you, taking you both to the ground. Broken glass digs into your shoulder, but he apologizes, and his blue eyes look so genuine. He’s afraid. You’d not realize until a month later that he wasn’t a scared bystander, but in fact one of the thieves. The fifth of your scars matches your first meeting with AJ- who would, by the end of the summer, become one of the most important people in your life.

~~~

Four tattoos.

August 4, 1999- Left wrist, inside knob of the bone. The little symbol had represented something to you when you were sixteen, but it had long lost whatever meaning you’d given it. Now, it was just a pattern to pass your thumb over whenever you got restless.

February 16, 2002- The cap of the right shoulder. It was your bunk number, from when you were training to be a cop. Nothing extravagant, but it was supposed to represent the beginning of the rest of your life- it was supposed to represent your calling.

June 1, 2004- Left arm, the outside of the forearm. Bleeding from your first tattoo was a new one, the largest one on your body. It was geometrical and high contrast, black lines loosely following your veins up toward your elbow, as though that left hand was bringing darkness into your body. It did- you shot with your left hand.

July 17, 2004- Right collarbone. A single, circular monogram, made up of six letters.

T A K E R S.

~~~

Three piercings.

April 7, 1989. Your father took you to get your ears pierced, but insisted upon arrival that it was too expensive to get both done, so you only got your left. The assymetrical style would have to grow on you- at six years old, you hated it.

May 19, 2003. You couldn’t have piercings at the academy, they were unprofessional, they were dangerous. So the night of graduation, you went out and got a hole punched into your nostril- the pain made tears well up, but more than anything, it was the satisfaction of giving a pretty little ‘fuck you’ to your superiors, who you’d never see again.

July 18, 2006. AJ takes you to a fancy beauty salon for an eyebrow bar after hearing maybe once that you’d wanted another piercing. You knew you were in love with him- who else in your life had ever paid such close attention to you?

~~~

Two eyebrow slits.

June 23, 2004. You leave the police force. You tell Wells that it’s because you’re pissed you can’t find the guys that robbed the jewelry store, but that’s not even close to the truth. You’ve found them- hell, you got a good look at one of them on the very day of the robbery. But you’ve done the looking, and didn’t have the heart to bring them in. They had families. They donated ten percent of every heist to a charity. They did more for the community than the police you worked for, and they did it clean- they didn’t hurt anybody, if they didn’t have to. They did what you’d hoped to do, when you joined the force. What you’d never gotten to do. Eyebrow slits were considered extremely unprofessional, so the moment you were free of your two week notice, you split open your right eyebrow. It would give a good balance to the bar piercing you hoped to put through your left someday.

March 4, 2007. You’re cleaning up your slit when AJ walks into the room and stands behind you so that you can see him through the mirror. You keep your eyes on the trimmer you’re so delicately running over your skin, but when he opens up a little felt box with a pretty ring inside, you whirl around with such panic that you make the slit approximately half an inch wider than it should’ve been. Lilli helped you fill in the gap for the engagement photos, but you decided to keep a second slit on the other end of the unfortunate shave- a little reminder of the evening in which he proposed to you.

~~~

“The one is usually ignored,” you’d say, “as it makes no multiplicative difference. That’s why I don’t have a ‘one’.”

On August 27, 2009, you got your ‘one’.

You’d been out of the game for two years, choosing not to take a cut of the winnings. You’d advise, you’d plan, you’d set up, but you did not want to be on site when the heist went down. The boys had it taken care of, and you butted heads with Jesse far too often for anyone’s comfort.

You especially couldn’t work on this project, thanks to a little fucker named Ghost- he didn’t trust you, as a member of the Takers he’d never met, and you didn’t trust him, as a criminal you’d never grown to respect.

You knew that most of them didn’t trust Ghost either, but everything he brought forward checked out- AJ must’ve mumbled the plan thirty times in his sleep in the five days from its suggestion to its fruition. There were no holes. Knowing Gordon and John, they had some ‘insurance’ for Ghost, anyway. In case it went wrong.

Still, you stayed at the Hotel Roosevelt through it all. You were their sitter, keeping the hotel room warm and ready for their arrival. They arrived back one by one- and like usual, AJ got there first. He, Gordon, and John were usually the first to get out, but he always made it back to the room first, because that way he could get some time with you. That way, he could have a private reunion, fresh off of a job.

“Hey, baby,” he said as he closed the door, and you waited for him to turn his eyes to you before you gave him a smile. He threw down his bag onto one of the chairs, and it landed with a heavy thump, but you’d long grown used to the sound of the score. However much he pulled, good for him. You were just happy to slip your arms around his neck and feel him kiss the scar on your cheekbone before sliding his lips to yours.

He always kissed different right after a job- before the boys had all gotten back, before the total was counted. He had a confidence to his movement, but there was fear, insecurity, just a tinge. He wasn’t just a taker, he was a man, who had worries and risks just like every other man.

You were out of the game for a few reasons. They had it taken care of. You butted heads with Jesse. You didn’t trust Ghost. But you knew that you were AJ’s biggest fear- you knew that if you got hurt on a job, he’d never forgive himself.

So he kissed you, he held you close, he reminded himself that you were here, you were fine. His long fingers seems to take up half your back, and his hair was already in his face, as though you’d tugged it there yourself.

With just one more pass of your lips over his, you pulled away.

“How’d it go?” You asked with a soft voice, rolling your first finger through the curls at the back of his neck.

“Could’ve gone better,” he said with a chuckle, “but we got it done.” You heard a knock at the door, and Gordon was the next arrival- then John, then Jake, then Ghost. Jesse came last, and with him, a whole host of new problems.

A bullet splintered the door and caught AJ somewhere under the ribcage. Everyone hit the floor, diving behind couches, and you popped your head up long enough to see AJ launch over the kitchen island. The room shattered into gunfire and feathers from expensive pillows, glass shards littering the ground like raindrops. It all moved so fast, and the air exploded into noise. You could barely track AJ through it all, he was so far away, all the way across the room. And you wanted to keep your eye straight down the barrel of your gun.

“AJ!” Jesse called from beside you, hidden behind a brown leather couch, “You okay?” You looked around the side of it, and saw him ten feet from you, the longest ten feet of your life, behind the kitchen island. He was struggling, on his hands and knees.

“Get up,” you snarled, knowing he’d already taken a hit.

“Out the back!” John ordered from the doorway behind you, and you started to realize the moment, the dangerous, heavy moment. AJ was all the way across the room- he couldn’t cross it. Not with these mobsters holding ground.

“Let’s go!” Gordon shouted, and your eyes connected with AJ’s. He saw the same thing you did.

“Go,” he said, voice calm, and it cut through the chaos of the room, cut through every hardened lesson ever pounded into you, cut through every wall you’d ever built around you, around your heart. “I’m coming.”

AJ was a good liar. But he couldn’t lie to you.

“No,” you growled through gritted teeth, and you made a rash decision.

You’d always been good at gymnastics. You had strong control over the movement of your body, and had, ever since you’d learned from your cousin throwing you down onto that stone that split open your back. You could move and slink and roll and dive in ways that would keep you not only from falling, but even from being noticed.

Using the chaos as your cover, you did a tight diving roll across the room to him, slipping between shelters unscathed. This brought you just a bit closer to the mobsters, but further from the back door exit that Gordon had been trying to guide you toward. You’d chose AJ over your safety any day- the surprise and the fear in his eyes said that he wished you wouldn’t.

Making sure you had enough ammo, you considered your final move- this didn’t end until these mobsters did. There were five of them left, after all this commotion: four in the room, one in the hall. You couldn’t take all five, not with their guns being so much more than yours, but you could take out a few. You could shift attention, you could buy time.

And hopefully, you could stay breathing, too. That’d be nice.

“Stay down,” you hissed, leaving AJ behind the island where he’d be forgotten about, or assumed dead. Then, you rounded the corner and rolled to the feet of the closest mobster. As you came out of the roll you caught his legs in yours, wrenching them from under him and taking him to the ground with one of the first moves you’d learned in basic training. He hit the wall hard, and was unconscious by the time he landed- the same could not be said for his friends.

From your right, you could see Gordon, still firing, still hopeful for your and AJ’s escape. Your shoulders were above the couch, so you knew he saw as you turned your weapon to the second mobster before he could turn to you, and stopped his heart.

Your commotion had caught the attention of the other three who still remained. You whirled around and raised your gun to one of them, but they managed it first.

Gordon had to swallow back his horror as he saw a bullet enter the front of your side profile, and blood explode from the back. He took out the mobster who still had his attention on you- but your shoulders smacked to the ground outside of his view, and he closed the door.

Luckily, their aim was spotty. You now had a useless left arm, but you were still breathing. Not that you’d let the one remaining mobster notice that.

You and AJ played dead, only a few feet from each other, but the kitchen island becoming a thicker wall than any you’d ever been split by. As you stared blankly at the ceiling, taking shallow breaths hidden by the folds of your shirt, you hoped he didn’t think you were dead. You hoped he wasn’t bleeding out.

After what felt like agonizingly long minutes, the shooting finally stopped, and the door opened again. Gordon was the first to enter the room, and rounded the couch to you, grief in his eyes, expecting the worst.

But you could give him a smile.

“Surprise,” you groaned, and he lit up in relief, helping you sit up with your good arm.

“Look at you, playing dirty,” he said with a laugh, “I thought you were gone for sure.”

“AJ,” you heard Jake say from across the room, and finally AJ could sit up from where you’d forced him down. The two of you had both bled straight through your shirts, but there wasn’t any time for sweet reunions- everyone had to get out, and fast.

AJ left his car wherever it was. John gave the two of you a ride to the airstrip where Gordon was going to disappear for a while, and on the way you and AJ attempted to give each other first aid until the personnel on the plane could take care of it.

Eventually, you leaned against his left, and he against your right, your wounds still stinging and sticky with blood, but manageable, for as long as they needed to be.

The night didn’t get any easier, but that didn’t matter- you were home free, they’d managed the job, and Ghost was out of the picture, and neither of you were going to die.

And someday, when you felt brave enough to recount your near-death, near-loss, near-jailed experience, you’d say:

Five major scars, four tattoos, three piercings, two eyebrow slits. And one gun shot wound.

-🦌 Roe

[humanmoodring-retired]

Good Vibrations & Coffee Contemplations || Raina & Nadia

TIMING: Current  PARTIES: @rainaim & @humanmoodring SUMMARY: Nadia grabs a coffee. Raina makes a friend. CONTENT: brief parental death mention

Raina leaned against the counter top, bored by the lack of customers. The morning rush had come and gone. Now, only a few coffee connoisseurs trickled in every twenty to forty minutes. Her shift wasn’t going to be over for another hour and a half, and though she knew there was plenty that she could do to pass the time, it was hard to find the encouragement, especially when the overhead speakers had died out and there was nobody with the know-how to fix them. She scrolled through her phone, only looking up at a sudden shadow against the door. A customer! Raina shot up and beamed at the woman as she entered the shop. “Hi! Welcome to Coffee Plus.” She punched in her I.D and waited for the woman to begin her order, finally glad to have something to do that wasn’t scrubbing the burnt muffin tins in the back.

Sometimes, Nadia preferred to just stay in her apartment. Most times, really, if she was being honest. And she was trying to do that more often. But she stayed inside too much, and the days were getting longer, and warmer, and generally more enjoyable. And she liked being warm, and she was thinking too much in her apartment. And… she’d run out of coffee, which meant she needed to go somewhere to get a much needed dose of caffeine. Which was how she ended up at Coffee Plus, hoping that the barista wasn’t that poor girl that she and Sammy had ended up tormenting. It wasn’t, thankfully, just a young woman who went from bored to very, very excited so fast it was like emotional whiplash. Nadia blinked. “Uh, yeah. Can I--” she acted like she was deciding what she wanted when really she already knew. “Can I get a triple shot of espresso.” She needed to not fall asleep for a few more hours, at least. “And, uh, a blueberry muffin.” She guessed that maybe she should probably eat something, too.

As the woman approached the counter, Raina looked past her to see if anybody had followed. Nope, she was alone. Disappointment fell over her for a brief movement before she reapplied the smile and gave her attention back to the woman. She had been hopeful that there’d be more customers to help-- that the remainder of her shift would be spent using up her time, not slugging through wiping down each table until her replacement came in to relieve her. Raina nodded enthusiastically as the woman finally ordered. A triple espresso? That was easy. “Sure thing. Can I get a name--” She looked around. “Never mind. Why don’t you go on and find yourself a seat and I’ll bring it over to you when it’s ready.” She kept her smile as she turned back towards the espresso machine. Raina waited for the filter to drip the espresso into the glass below, humming as she went. She quickly warmed up the muffin and put it on a small, off-white plate. Once the woman’s order was ready, she walked it slowly to the table. “Here you are, hon!” She didn’t know if the woman was older or younger than her, but it didn’t matter-- Southern charm leaked from her candy coated tongue.

There wasn’t really anyone else to focus on as Nadia felt the barista cycle through disappointment and hope and just overwhelming enthusiasm at doing her job. “Uh, yeah, thanks.” Nadia managed a tired smile and went over to a table. She checked her phone for a bit, answering a few text messages and looking over a journal article werewolves in medieval Icelandic literature, which was pretty niche reading, even for her, but some website that she’d been on a few weeks ago kept sending her emails with journal articles attached, and she… kept reading them. She didn’t know how accurate they were, and she doubted that Kaden would give her anything more about werewolves beside the fact that most of them were monsters, but it was still an interesting read, even if the words were a little blurry. She looked up when her coffee was brought to her, her smile lopsided. The younger woman was kind and sincere, and Nadia appreciated it, even if it was a lot. She couldn’t help but return the kindness. “I appreciate you bringing it to me. Really, I could have grabbed it myself.”

“Oh, it’s no problem.” Raina looked down at the table, realizing she had forgotten a napkin. She held up a finger and returned to the small table next to the door and grabbed a few before she returned to the customer. She placed them down neatly next to the plate and smiled. “Ain’t got much goin’ on anyhow, so I figured I’d up my customer service game.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s too much, isn’t it?” She looked over her shoulder at the clock. Barely a blink had gone by. She frowned slightly. Well, the least she could do was start wiping down the tables so that her replacement didn’t have to. “I’m new here,” Raina said aloud as she grabbed a wet dish rag and disinfecting spray. She moved to a table far, but not too far from the customer. “Just moved here… a couple weeks ago?” She nodded as if in approval of herself. “You from around here?” It was small talk-- not something everyone liked, but Raina was desperate.

It was weird to be treated like it was a sit-down restaurant when it was a coffee shop, Nadia thought, but she didn’t mind. “Well, still. It’s kind of you.” She took a sip of her drink, careful not to gulp it down even though she wanted to. It was hot and bitter, and it didn’t do much to wake her up, but it was the thought of it that counted. “Oh, no, dude. Not a lot at all. It’s really nice, actually.” And it was. The other woman was well-intentioned. Nadia didn’t have to be an empath to tell that. “Yeah,” she asked. She could kind of tell the barista was new, but she didn’t want to point that out. Southern charm wasn’t exactly common in Maine, though. Not with an accent that thick, at least. “How do you like it so far?” She took another sip of her coffee, picked at her muffin. “No, no, I’m from Arizona. I moved here, like, a year and a half ago.” Had it really been that long? It didn’t feel like it had been that long. Then again, it wasn’t like she’d been present the entire time. Nadia suddenly wasn’t that hungry, but she picked at the muffin some more, anyway.

Raina began to wipe down the table and looked over at the woman as she drank her coffee. She watched her expression carefully to see if the coffee was too bitter, too hot, or too cold. It seemed just right by the looks on her face, or lack thereof. She looked back down at the table and decided she was done with her current project and moved onto the next. “It’s good. People keep to ‘emselves mostly, which I don’t mind…” She shrugged. “Everyone’s different, but I do like sayin’ goodmornin, you know?” Raina offered a small smile, “But overall s’great. I’ve got a nice roommate.” Onto the next table. “Arizona?” She hummed, “I’ve never been out West, but I imagine it’s a lot warmer than out here, or even Tennessee.” She scrubbed at a stubborn coffee ring on the table. “So how’re you likin’ it? Any tips for a newbie?” Raina asked, looking up from the now spotless table to look at the customer.

Nadia did her best not to gulp down the bitter liquid as it cooled, eager for something to start taking effect. Maybe it just wouldn’t. Maybe she’d be waiting on the caffeine to kick in for the rest of her life; she’d exhausted it’s usefulness, and now she was to be perpetually tired for forever. Whatever. It was fine. At the very least, chatting with the friendly barista wasn’t at risk of putting her to sleep. “Yeah, totally. I get the wanting a good morning and everything. I’m sure people will start talking more as you get settled. It’s a small town. You’d be surprised how much everybody just… knows everybody.” And they did. It seemed like there was never more than two degrees of separation between her and just about everyone that she met in White Crest. She laughed. “Yeah, it’s pretty fucking hot out there. Desert and all, you know? Phoenix isn’t named after a fire bird because it’s temperatures are balmy.” She kept a more lighthearted disposition, adjusting in her seat more comfortably. “You from Tennessee? Uh, I like it well enough. It’s... I like it a lot better than I thought I would.” She’d stuck around, hadn’t she? She had people here, now. And it wasn’t like she could go home. “Tips… tips… Let me think… Don’t fuck with the mimes.”

“I’ve heard lots about small towns,” Raina said as she wiped her brow with the back of her free hand. She continued to scrub at another coffee ring on a different table, this one more stubborn than the last. “Guess I’ll just have to put on my best manners ‘an show everyone that I mean well.” She knew that newcomers could scare others off. That was the last thing she wanted to do. How was she supposed to find other people like her if she ran them off instead before she could even have the discussion? “Ah, right, right.” Raina nodded. “I heard the road melts. The houses, too?” She wasn’t sure if that was true, but she thought she’d seen it on the news. It was hard to tell what was a meme and what was real nowadays. “Sure am. Born and raised in Knoxville. Big enough place that not everyone is in your business, but small enough to meet someone’s family member twice removed on a trip to the grocery store.” Not that she ever had that problem. Her family wasn’t from Knoxville. A pang of homesickness hit her and she took a deep breath before moving onto the next table. “Mimes?” She laughed. She’d seen the warnings online, but wasn’t sure what to do with them. “Tell me, they hurt people with their fake boxes and goin’ downstairs routines?”

“I believe in you,” Nadia said, and she did. The woman in front of her seemed endlessly pleasant and kind. Nadia could feel it. She laughed. She felt lighter. It was easier to eat some of the muffin, the food not sticking in her throat as bad. “Nah, the roads and the houses don’t melt. Though, I’ve cooked eggs on the sidewalk before. Knoxville sounds nice, though. Phoenix is one of the biggest cities in the country. Sometimes, I didn’t even recognize my neighbors. Of course, I kept to myself a lot.” In college, the only person she’d really talked to was her roommate, Brooke, and whoever Brooke dragged in and out of her life. And that had been nice, and the thoughts of it hurt her less, now. She could remember them with fondness without the bitterness, even if questions would always linger. “Dolly Parton from anywhere near there?” she asked, genuinely curious. She didn’t know shit about Tennessee. She raised an eyebrow, and kept her tone light. She fucking hated the mimes, but it was best not to come off too strong. “Nah, they’ll just shoot you.”

Raina was glad that the customer-- no, the woman! She was her own person, not just somebody who was feeding into the capitalistic society (or coffee culture). She raised a brow. “Oh, really? I swear I thought houses melted…” Raina shrugged, “Guess I was wrong. Interesting about the egg thing. You didn’t eat ‘em, did ya?” Even if the woman had, Raina wouldn’t judge. “I guess that’s one story to tell to people.” Raina finally knocked out the stain and moved to the next table, which was closest to where the woman sat. The table offered little resistance to her cleaning efforts. She set the rag down for a moment once the customer asked about Dolly Parton. “Oh, yes.” She let out a laugh. “Even if you ain’t a Dolly Parton fan, you’re a Dolly fan in Tennessee.” Her own mother who’d sworn off country music even listened to her. The older Raina got, the more she felt like she could appreciate the woman, too. “Are you a fan?” She asked with a smile. Raina picked the rag back up and moved onto the next table. “Shoot you, huh?” She hummed, “well I’ll keep that in mind.” She wasn’t sure if the woman was being truthful or not. Maybe she was. Raina straightened up after she had cleaned every table but the one the woman was sitting at. “You don’t mind me askin’ your name, do you? Feels weird to think of you as someone I’m servin’ coffee when we’re havin’ such a nice conversation ‘an all.”

“We’ve gotten pretty good about building our houses with materials that don’t melt,” Nadia explained. “It wouldn’t do to have melted houses everytime the thermostat hits Fahrenheit 451. Okay, not really. More like Fahrenheit 115. When it’s, like, fucking miserable out.” So hot that heat came off the ground in waves. So hot that it was impossible to go outside without shoes on. Nadia missed the heat, but, damn, it was dangerous. Still didn’t melt houses, though. Not that she’d been aware of, at least. “I mean, I put them in a pan, and it was really just to see if it could happen. My roommate at the time ate them, though. She said I should have added more pepper.” And not cooked them in the sun, but, hey. It was a fun experiment between two people that weren’t particularly scientifically inclined. She grinned, enjoying the other woman’s lightheartedness. “Makes sense. You know, I’m more of a rock kinda gal, but I think it’s a fucking sin not to be a fan of Dolly, you know?” She could feel the other woman’s skepticism, and Nadia sighed. She rolled up her sleeve, exposing the scar from when her doppleganger mime had shot her last year. “They like to shoot people, too, apparently.” She put her sleeve back down and gave a wry grin. “My name’s Nadia. And you? I’d hate to keep referring to you as the super chill barista in my head, too.”

Raina leaned against the neighboring table, wincing slightly as it began to make a small screeching noise from her weight as it moved against the floor. “Sorry ‘bout that.” She pulled it back into its original spot and stood up straight. “That sounds downright miserable. Now I know y’all have dry heat as opposed to humidity… not sure which I’d rather battle.” Maybe one day she’d be able to figure out how to pull water right out of the air. Maybe when her magic was stronger. When she was stronger. She wouldn’t be able to do that in a place like Arizona, she realized. Yeah, definitely not moving out west anytime soon-- at least, not to any deserts. “Well, I guess that brings a new meaning to the term sunny side up, don’t it?” She flashed the woman a smile before she folded the rag in on itself. “I’ll be honest, I don’t listen to much music. When I do, it’s all Top 40.” She cracked an embarrassed smile. “Mostly ‘cause I listen to a lot of what my momma and daddy did, you know?” she looked down at her feet. It’d been awhile since she’d listened to her mom sing trot, or since she’d watch her dad play out the drum solos in the air from Phil Collins’ greatest hits album. She felt a sudden wave of sadness. Raina cleared her throat, immediately eradicating the feeling. It was fleeting, but there was a heaviness in her chest. “Oh, you’re tellin me--” She was pulled from her thoughts as she was shown the scar on her arm. She blinked a few times, trying to understand why a mime could ever want to do that before she looked up to meet Nadia’s eyes. “Oh! Nadia!” She smiled at her descriptor being a super chill barista, even if she couldn’t take her eyes off of the scar. “M’name is Raina!” She looked down at her nametag, which she only now noticed was missing. “Nadia’s a pretty name,” She sounded it out again, “Sounds like you should be in some storybook, I dunno.” She cracked a smile, though the stab wound was still on her mind.

“Personally, I always preferred the dry heat. Easier to breathe, that way,” Nadia said. Though… Maine’s humidity and more temperate climate was growing on her. Maybe it had more to do with the people than the place, though. White Crest? She could take it or leave it. It was as fascinating to live in as it was dangerous, two sides to the same coin. She laughed at the joke, genuinely pleased by the pun. “Totally new meaning to sunny side up, for sure.” She took a bite of her muffin, chased it with a sip of coffee. She was enjoying this, genuinely. She needed to get out more, Nadia realized. At the very least so that she could have interactions like this, something that wasn’t all in her head. Her head wasn’t the most fun place to be, sometimes. “Nothing wrong with listening to the popular stuff. It’s popular for a reason, you know?” There was a wave of sadness that followed that, though, in the aftermath of the other woman mentioning her mother and father, and it caused Nadia to think of her own parents. Their disdain for her. The way her mother had told her to never call back or she’d tell the cops. She managed a smile, though, as they rocketed through another few waves of emotions, of confusement and happiness, and concerne. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to show off the scar, but it’d been what she’d done in the moment. Live and learn. Not everyone was as fascinated in scars as others. “Nice to meet you, Raina.” She laughed. “I don’t know about a storybook.” Maybe a horror movie. “I did study a lot of folklore and fairytales in college, though.”

Raina tried to push the scar from her mind. It was silly to focus on something like that. Yes, maybe Nadia had been attacked by an angry mime, but that didn’t mean they were all bad. Her altercation with the thing in the alleyway alongside Irene sent shivers down her spine and she decided to push the thought of mimes, or mime-esque things far from her mind. Maybe it was for the better, the witch thought-- the warnings that these individuals came in tow with. “Well,” The brunette laughed, “see! You’re already part of the way there!” Raina looked down at the chair across from Nadia and contemplated slipping into it, but decided against it at the last moment. Instead, she busied herself with scrubbing another table. Maybe she had missed something. It wasn’t polite to bother customers as long as she had been. “I went to school for art. One of our projects was to illustrate a children’s book…” She lazily dragged the rag against the tabletop, “that mighta gone mighty well with whatever you were studyin!” She grinned at her before folding the rag up again. She was having a nice time talking to Nadia. It wasn’t often that the patrons who came into Coffee Plus humored her with conversation. If they did, they were usually overtly rude. “Which one’s your favorite?” Raina asked as an afterthought, shuffling between the chairs as she went back to the counter to put the rag in the bin and wash her hands.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Studying the Tuatha De Danann practically makes me a Disney princess,” Nadia said, but there was no bite to her words, and she smiled as she said them. She looked at Raina, at the way she’d hesitated near the chair across from Nadia, contemplating something (sitting, probably), before she decided against it and started back to her work. “Art, huh? That sounds nice. What kind of children’s book did you illustrate?” She laughed. “I don’t know how well it would have gone with some of my research, though, unfortunately. Not children’s illustrations, at least. Sometimes fairytales aren’t as gentle as cartoons want you to believe.” This town was proof of that, too. “Favorite?” she murmured. “Damn, I think I was asked that recently, too… It’s hard to choose. Like picking a favorite kid or something.” She thought about it again. “There’s a story called ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon.’ It’s Norwegian. Kind of like ‘Beauty and the Beast’ or the myth of Cupid and Psyche. There’s a prince in disguise, and trials, and a happy ending. Sometimes those are kind of rare, surprisingly. It’s good, though. A different take on the usual.” Watching as the other woman went and washed her hands, Nadia waited for her to look back up before she toed at the chair across from her, pushing it away from the table. “You know, if you wanna sit, at least until someone else comes in, I wouldn’t mind the company.” The other woman was nice to be around. Her emotions were nice, pleasant. “I don’t suppose you’re also interested in obscure fairytales?”

Raina smiled at the woman from across the way and scrubbed the soap in between her fingers. The witch wrinkled her nose as the citrus-y scent lifted to her nostrils. “It was a project of sorts. We all got a few pages, then it was compiled into this bigger book kinda thing.” She smiled fondly as she recalled said project. She had included her little family, including her aunt, as background characters. She still had a copy of the book back at her apartment-- unable to part with it prior to her move to White Crest. “Well, of ‘course not. It ain’t all butterflies, but I think that’s what makes ‘em interesting. Ain’t about bein black ‘n white, but it’s nice when they have happy endings.” She remembered playing princess of the castle with her father-- cardboard boxes made into extravagant towers, her stuffed animals being that of her subjects. Raina decided not to focus on the sadness that was eager to sweep through her at the memory. No, she’d remember those moments for what they were. “That sounds good, I’ll have to look it up.” She meant it when she said it. She tucked it away for later, deciding that once Nadia left, she’d get on her phone and do her own research. Finally, she turned the water off and dried her hands on a clean towel. When Nadia offered the chair across from her, she let her smile grow a little wider. “Wasn’t sure if you’d get all weirded out by your barista tryna kick it with you or not.” Raina crossed the distance between them and delicately placed herself into the chair, doing her best to avoid smacking limbs against either the chair or the table. “Not so much obscure as just havin’ really been into princesses and all that while growin’ up,” Raina admitted with a laugh. She folded her hands in her lap and thought for a moment, “I only really liked it when good things happened, but there were a few that are… a little more sinister that my mama would tell me.” The fond smile stayed pinned to her features as she let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “I know a few Korean ones, too.”

“That sounds kinda fun, an illustration project,” Nadia said. “Gotta admit, most of the stuff I remember doing were less projects and more papers. Buncha shit on, like, meaning and theme and literary analysis. I can dissect a sentence in a poem and tell you what I think the author’s trying to convey with punctuation, but I can’t draw stick figures to save my life.” Handwriting? Sure, hers was decent when she didn’t rush it. Art just wasn’t her thing. Nadia could appreciate it, though. “You’re right, of course. I’ve been bigger into the happy endings, lately. Kinda dig them, actually.” Nadia could use a few more happy endings in her life. Monster gets vanquished, protagonist gets peace. She liked that. She kind of wanted that. “You’ll have to tell me what you think of it.” She smiled, pleased when Raina sat down in front of her. She liked being able to have a nice conversation. “Trust me, nothing weird about having good company. But, yeah, I really like princesses when I was little, too. Though, I also had an unhealthy obsession with the Brothers Grimm. Kinda dark, not really for children. I liked them, though.” She’d like a lot of things she probably shouldn’t have. Nadia’s smile echoed Raina’s. “Yeah? I read the ones my ma didn’t tell me.” And she was interested, leaning forward, eyes bright. “Really? Any you’d be interested in sharing?”

Raina had her fair share of papers, too. She never liked them much, the words always getting jumbled. She’d never been much of a reader, more of a listener. “Sounds like you had your work cut out for you,” The witch smiled. “Writin’ all those papers and whatnot.” She shook her head. “Glad I don’t ever hav’ta look at another report again-- not workin’ here, at least.” She hummed at Nadia’s admission of not being able to draw. “I know you probably get this a lot, but it just takes a bit of practice. Anythin’ is art if you really want it to be.” She should’ve made herself her one of three free drinks. She decided she’d do it later once Nadia had left. “Brothers Grimm?” She tilted her head to the side, “I sometimes forget that Disney really just walked on in and ripped the stories from their original aspects ‘an made everything flowery.” Raina twiddled her thumbs, “but I s’pose that’s what a general audience wants, y’know?” She didn’t know much about what people wanted, but she did know that Tangled was one of her favorite Disney films while the actual story of Rumpelstiltskin was terrifying. Nadia’s interest made Raina’s ears burn. What if she recalled them wrong? It’d been so long since she’d heard them, or read them. She cleared her throat. “Well, there’s one ‘bout a fox, ‘bout how a family wanted-- or, more specifically, a father wanted a daughter, even if she was a fox.” She thought for a moment, doing her best to recall the details of the story her mother had told her, “They got a girl, but in the night, their livestock would start goin’ missing… and each time a brother would go out and report her to their father.” She tapped her fingers, tracing out the words her mother had said to her on the back of her hand as she tried to pull the story from memory, “And each time, the father’d kick the boys out and say it wasn’t happenin. Finally, a few years had passed ‘an two of the brothers came back ‘round… only to find that their family was gone. All but the sister. She ended up eatin’ her brothers, claimin’ that it’d make her human.” She nodded, “I think that was all of it-- I might’ve missed a few points, seein’ as I haven’t heard it in awhile.” She let out a soft laugh. “Pretty gruesome, I think.”

“It was interesting, for sure,” Nadia said. “I always kind of liked writing papers. I like words, language, the way that sentences flow when time and care is taken to putting them together. I’m, like, a lot better at writing than I am talking.” She laughed. “I don’t know, you’ve got to write down people’s orders, right? I bet that, for some people, that’s practically a research paper in length. Four pumps of vanilla, three pumps of caramel, two packets of Splenda, whipped cream on the side, shake, not stirred. All that shit.” She’d been told plenty of times that she just had to practice to get better at drawing, but she… didn’t have the patience for it. Or maybe she didn’t and just didn’t want to apply herself. “I might just, like, stick to writing, maybe. I’m sure you’re much better at the whole visual art thing. But yeah! The Brothers Grimm kind of gathered and compiled a lot of fairytales that we know of today. Snow White, Rapunzel. Sleeping Beauty. They compiled them together in a collection of several hundred ‘household’ tales. They weren’t really for children, though.” They were warnings, a lot of them, stories to keep people in line, stories to tell how things became the way that they are. Nadia listened with interest as Raina told her tale, remembering the details and filing them away for later. “Sometimes, there doesn’t really seem to be a point to stories. If I remember correctly, there was a story about a young girl that was being chased by a witch and got turned into a lake somehow. From what I remember, the witch ended up drinking her. For the life of me, I can’t remember the moral of that one. Grim and gruesome seems to be the way a lot of folk tales go.”

Raina was grateful for storytelling. It brought people together. At least, for the most part it did. She had to look at the conversation that she and Nadia were now having because of this. It made her feel good that she had successfully gotten somebody to speak to her for longer than two minutes. She knew that her too-sweet optimism could be a lot for most people, and though for the most part Raina was actually shy, those were moments where she knew she was being looked down upon. When it came to people who actually wanted something to do with her, she flourished. “Rapunzel, I think-- I really liked that one.” She smoothed her apron down as it curved around her knees. “Not a huge fan of the original though, too... “ Her expression pinched, “much, I think.” She looked towards the door as a customer shouldered through and looked at the counter, their face screwed in confusion. “Ah, dang. Looks like we’re cuttin’ short.” She looked at Nadia with a small smile before getting out of her seat. “Stick ‘round, if you want. Or, I mean-- Only if you want, no pressure or nothin’, just been lovely talkin’ to the not-so-locals, but also locals, y’know?” She hurried toward the counter and began to take the customer’s order, feeling light on her feet. Maybe everything that had happened in White Crest so far had led her to moments with those she might be able to consider friends, or at the very least, people who’d sit down and have a chat.