#bro would come up with the most horrendous insults ever

[qcoded]

I've seen concepts of like. an Adult Collector BUT i propose and idea!!! Teen Collector. I'd feel like he'd be more chill if anything, but more annoying 😭😭 like constantly teasing

I had zero clue what I was doing with his design I just made him look like he grabbed whatever they had in their closet xd

[safestsephiroth]

completely unbiased objective factual review of every MSQ in FFXIV as of the release of base dawntrail (pre-7.1) (Part 1: ARR and HW)

Just to clarify, I know some people are bad at reading tone through text. This is, of course, the objective truth because it's my opinion and my opinion has never been wrong ever, and I take this as deathly serious as a hostage negotiation, a military standoff, or an argument about vtubers.

[And if you don't already know this is written tongue-in-cheek with that, then you might not enjoy what's to come. Especially if you cannot stomach negativity. If you keep reading from here that's on you tbh.]

[This series of posts will not be tagged with anything relating to the game because I have learned over the years not to tag things when you're being a hater. If you hate this, it's not likely to come up again on here so just ignore this post dude it ain't hard. Press the J key. Or read and laugh. I'm writing this for me, your enjoyment is not a concern, audience!]

A Realm Reborn:

I began a realm reborn shortly into 2.1 on the understanding it would be a role-playing platform I had to scrabble together money to pay monthly to play, and treated the MSQ largely as something I was doing to understand the setting and be on the same page about world events as those around me. It was a largely unhurried clomp through right until about level 38 where I hated coerthas to death and wanted to stop, but was put into a position where rushing through it and to the end of the story was not a choice, it was a mandate on the part of my FC at the time due to an RP event.

Coerthas sucks, in case you were wondering. If you somehow don't know that coerthas sucks, I suggest imagining what it'd be like to have to run through every one of those sidequests back to back and reading the story and realizing that every single one of the MANY sidequests in coerthas central highlands can be summarized in either the sentence "ishgard fucking sucks bro" or as "wacky shenanigans".

ARR overall is Fine. It's the setup of a new world (relative to MOST of the playerbase) and it does this decently well. There's a lot of ideas they completely abandon after ARR (interesting dungeon design, for instance, which they then later went back and removed from ARR too so that trusts can complete everything which was just great of them to do) and as such I think it does a decent job. It's cool to join the God-Killing Illuminati. I really wish the Scions of the Seventh Dawn were at all able to keep that kind of mystique they have through the rest of the series but boy do they ditch that pretty fast.

I think it'd be cool if your choice of grand company meant anything, at any point (remember when it determined your team in Frontlines? Remember when Frontlines was not spinning a roulette wheel with a 33% chance of getting a reward on any given spin?) and I think it'd be cool if they gave more equal attention to all three major cities instead of ARR mostly overall being Ul'dah And The Other Ones. If you disagree this is what happened, I'm sorry but you don't remember ARR as well as you think you do. This is especially true in the patches, but there's still enough of it present in the base game you should see what I'm talking about.

(I think Gridania especially gets shafted, but I also don't much like Gridania so whatever)

Overall, A Realm Reborn is greater than its individual parts, and I think there's clearly a lot of experimentation going on and SOME of it is good and SOME of it is not great but none of it is atrocious and none of it is amazing stupendous fantastic 15/10 content.

I consider a 5/10 to be "perfectly mid" as opposed to the larger video game industry seeing "7/10" as an insult.

ARR: 6/10. It is fine, and sometimes good, and never horrendous.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering, I have played through ARR -> base SHB approximately 25 times over the years, so I'm objectively correct and if you disagree you're wrong.

Heavensward:

I like colorful environments, colorful characters, and generally find oppressive atmospheres of single-note violence and Game Of Thrones Edge to be very miserable or, at best, boring.

Heavensward, therefore, is objectively terrible. There is some measure of interesting theming going on about the cycle of violence but I loathe the conclusion that the expansion as a whole draws because it's drenched in self-contradiction (Is the way to end violence to be the first one to lower your arms, or is it simply to exterminate your enemies until they want to quit?)

I think the Vath are interesting as an extreme of both Ishgard and Dravania - what does it look like when a society actually is denied free will in totality? But then what they don't really do is play around much with the contrast there. You can argue that Nidhogg's brood are all but mind-controlled into doing big violence, but you'll be thanked to remember that they did not really hammer that home until *after* the base MSQ, and if you DO want to make that argument it's tantamount to "people who feel grief should be killed unless they let it go, by the source of said grief."

You can make a lot of 'sins of the father' arguments, which would make sense except that's 100% Ishgard's approach to everything down to the root (how many sidequests and stories again are about how [parent] did bad thing therefore [child] must suffer for it? Compare how many there are in Ishgard VS anywhere else in the entire game, go on, run the numbers and see how right I am) so at the end of the day I guess you could claim the argument is "if two nations are at permanent war, just kill both leaders and it'll be fine". Which

Having played Tactics Ogre: Reborn, I have lost basically any respect I ever had for the political writing of 99% of video games because this SNES-ass game managed to completely destroy everyone that came after it and like, yes TO:R is a MASTERPIECE but also how the fuck do you fail to meet the standard set by a game locked to the hardware limitations of the SNES like holy shit it's embarrassing you're the SAME COMPANY!

Heavensward falls flat for its environments until you get REALLY FAR from Ishgard itself, but honestly there's nowhere in the entire expansion that isn't either "white + grey", "ruins" or "both" and I find that exceedingly boring. Also this expansion introduced "why SHOULDN'T gathering nodes be 200+ yalms apart?" AND it codified "All dungeons MUST be hallways, including forced pauses in the middle of pulls between bosses because god forbid people play fast" (rest in hell, Sohm Al Hard) AND it was the expansion that chose to split raids in half and quite frankly Alexander is fantastic and I love Mhach but it's objectively true that they are the start of a lot of shit going bad later on in the game. Also this was the first time they level-synched prior 'late game' content and this is when they decided said dungeons/raids/etc. should be synched to the scale of 'pathetically easy' because god forbid anyone ever risk having a bad experience at all, this game would rather avoid anyone having a bad experience and have everyone have a middling, mediocre or boring one gameplay-wise.

Also Heavensward is the peak of the game doing dumb shit for shock value and little else, and their pacing is atrocious, and their overall incorporation of their (somewhat interesting) ideas is so badly done that it's completely understandable to miss the themes for the pile of garbage you have to sift through to find them.

Heavensward is a 3/10 MSQ and until the return of Alisaie has almost no merit or value at all because they can't even deliver on the concepts they themselves set up - the idea that Nanamo got assassinated (then that was retconned) for daring to want to have some measure of democracy in Ul'dah but Ishgard are totally down to just make a republic out of whole cloth because someone who rode into town on a dragon and said "I killed your pope, he was totes evil I swear, yw" said so is completely insane. Did you get that these people bake "I hate dragons" into every aspect of their culture? Did you understand that this is their art, their architecture, their CUISINE, their fashion, their societal structure (wanna be considered useful? Go kill a dragon! Can't kill dragons? Freeze to death for all I care!), and anything else except the most frivolous activities and pursuits of the most hyper-wealthy of their society?

For a thousand years? Do you understand how long that is? Do you understand what that means? Do you understand how ridiculous it is an absolute theocracy turned into a republic in what's written as less than a year because someone assassinated the pope?

Do you understand what a let down it is to play with the concept that maybe.... class structures... kind of suck, and then conveniently shove everyone who isn't nobility aside for the sake of the plot and not risk having anyone (Hilda, it's Hilda, I'm talking about Hilda) be allowed to make a difference or matter at all in the MSQ? Don't try to tell me Hilda's important because she gets a filler arc about her, she goes on to get called a, quote, "mongrel bitch" by someone she has zero impact on otherwise and let me tell you that's called "burying a character" in the pro wrestling biz (not to be confused with what they did to Ysayle btw, that's called "fridging" a character so that the man who is far more important can feel angst, but oops we wouldn't want the plot to be interesting so let's make sure we instantly follow it with a comedy side-plot with gilly the robot within 4 minutes of her dying)

Heavensward didn't have the pieces to be good - it was trying to make a feast with rotten ingredients and choosing to do so by trying to scrape the green off the steak. That's how people get food poisoning and die, dude, you gotta throw that shit out and start over.

Heavensward's MSQ is a 3/10 and if you take into account the raids etc. Heavensward becomes a 4.5/10 if only because Alexander is just that awesome.

The best parts of Heavensward are just the lead-up to Stormblood.

[sophialikesthings]

Song-No Body,No Crime-Taylor Swift

Numb. the deprivation of feelings or emotions.

That's what I was standing in that field moments after I witnessed what happened.

"Come on, We should go." JJ rubbed my back.

"We don't have a car, dumbass." Kiara insulted him.

"We can hide out in the hanger." Pope pointed

We carefully scanned the room making sure nobody else was there.

I just went to a corner and curled myself up into a ball and sat there, questioning my sanity for still loving him.

"There goes the gold!" JJ looked up at the plane that just took off.

"Fuck!" Pope yelled, throwing something he found at the wall. He grabbed anything he could carry and threw it all, things were thrown all over, shattered glass carpeting the floor.

"I need to go see him." I got up.

"What? Demi are you insane?" JJ asked.

"I am because I still love him and I don't know how to stop." I broke down again.

"I'm scared that if I leave him, That will happen to me."

===

"Demi, I don't think it's a good time right now." Rose opened the door.

"Rose, I know what happened, and you and I both know he needs me right now. So please, let me see him."

"He is in the den." She let me inside.

"What are you doing here?" Ward asked as he vigorously washed his hands trying to get her blood off of them.

"I came to see Rafe, I- I know what happened Mr.Cameron, and I promise I won't tell a soul." I put on my fake face.

"So can I see him?"

"Yes, he is in the den." He pointed at the door.

I carefully opened the door and saw a distressed Rafe contemplating on the couch.

"D-Demi." he got up.

"I saw what happened, I wanted to say goodbye to Sarah and when I got there you shot her."

"I was protecting my father, I was protecting our future!" He paced.

"Calm down!" I pulled his arm towards me. "Rafe...you have done some of the most horrendous things to me and somehow I always go back to you, I don't know why? But I do."

"Don't say that. I do what I think will protect you." He hugged me.

"Mind if I come in?" Ward asked.

"I'll go." I was about to get up.

"No, no Demi stay," Rafe asked. "Is she alive?"

Ward shook his head causing Rafe to sink into me.

"What did you tell the cops? Are they coming here?"

"I told them John B did it." Ward walked over to his desk.

"Demi, I need you to take him up to his room, get him all cleaned up." He told me " take a shower change your clothes. If anybody asked you were working all day, doin' maintenance on the druthers."

"No, Rose knows I wasn't here."

"I will talk to Rose, okay?"

"Come on." I got up and took Rafes' hand.

===

"I was protecting him." Rafe continued to tell me.

"I know, can you take your shirt off, please you need to shower." I turned the water on.

"Will you join me?" He asked.

"Rafe."

"Please, I just don't want to be left alone, because If I am, I'm scared I might do something."

"Fine."

===

"I'm gonna go check in on Wheezie, I'll be back in a minute." I got up

"Hey, wheeze."

"Hey, did you come to ignore me too?" She asked looking up from her phone

"No, but I did come to hang out with you." I got a text.

JJ

I am sorry for nagging you about staying

with Rafe, I understand you are just trying to

keep your loved ones safe

Demi

Yeah, I was trying to keep you safe.

"Who are you texting?" Wheezie asked piercing over my shoulder.

"Huh? Oh, just Topper."

"Well, I'm tired, you can stay if you'd like, or you can go bang my brother." She nonchalantly said lying down.

"Whoa! What?" She caught me off guard.

"You know what I mean, you and my brother bang, like constantly."

"You know wheeze, sometimes I wish we didn't." I lied down next to her. "I mean, I feel like it adds unneeded pressure to our relationship."

"For what it's worth, you have really nice glute muscles." She made me laugh.

"I love you wheeze." I tossed my arm over her, hugging her.

"I love you too, you are like another cool sibling."

We both drifted to sleep.

===

"Do you hear that?" I got woken up by Wheezie.

"Huh?"

I heard Rafe in the other room muttering to himself. I got up and went to check on him, Wheezie behind me.

"Hey, What are you doin'?" I walked over to him, placing a kiss on his bicep where my face stood due to our height difference of almost afoot.

"Tossin' this crap." He threw a bunched-up pile of shirts into a worn-out backpack.

"Isn't this where John B was staying?" I questioned

"Yeah, well, I don't think he's gonna be by anytime soon to pick it up, so--"

"Why?" Wheezie interrogated.

"Did you say why?" He looked at her, confused.

"Didn't Dad tell you?"

"He doesn't tell me anything, so." She sighed, propping her head up on her hands.

"Um... so, John B... Killed Sheriff Peterkin." He acted sad.

"What?"

"Yeah." He tried to get her to believe him.

"Are you smiling right now? I'm not joking. Like, this isn't a game. I don't--"

Wheezie looked away as if she was bored of the story Rafe was telling her.

He slapped the bedpost almost hitting her face, causing both of us to wince out of fear.

"Hey, calm down." I pulled him back slightly.

"I don't know why you're smiling, okay? Look at me. I saw it with my own two eyes." He lied.

It hurt me, to know that I would have to lie to Wheezie. It made me sick just how easy Rafe could lie to anyone, doubts now filling my mind with everything he's ever said to me.

"He shot her, and then you know what he did?"

I snapped back into the conversation.

"He tried to shoot dad, but you know what? I stepped in and I stopped him, I saved Dad."

"Why would John B want to kill dad?" She questioned his story.

"Because um... he thinks dad killed his father."

My eyes widened as if Rafe heard the conversation I had with John B.

"Rafe, do you want to come over to my house, Taylor, Kelce, and Top will be there?" I tried to stop the conversation.

"I can't right now, I have to help my dad with the police reports." He kissed me, walking out of the room.

"Okay, well I'm headed home Wheeze, give me a call if you need me." I hugged her goodbye.

===

That Night

===

"I hate it. I'm in a toxic cycle I can't break free from." I groaned, dumping all my life issues on Taylor as usual.

"Welcome to being a Kook, Your parents stick you into toxic relationships, ask you to make babies, then dump your ass at a mansion and the cycle repeats." She took a swig of rum.

"Taylor, I love-" I got interrupted by the boys running past my room. I heard the laundry room door shut and Topper and Kelce forcefully holding it closed.

"What's going on? Who's in there?" I walked out into the hallway.

"Please just--just let me out." I heard John B.

"Are you two insane! Let him out!" I demanded, trying to get past them.

"Word on the street bro, you are worth 25k, dead or alive." Kelce shouted.

"Kelce, stop." Taylor asked, pulling him back so I could go up to the door, next to Topper.

"I'm gonna go get the cops, don't let him out." Taylor and Kelce walked away.

"John B, It's Topper." He started.

"Hey Top, It's John B." I could hear him panic.

"You gonna try to talk your way out?" Topper chuckled.

"Let him go, He's innocent." I tried to push him out of my way.

"Just cut the bull shit. Alright?" He ignored me.

"I didn't shoot the Sheriff, All right? Rafe did. Sarah was there. She saw the whole thing, Demi saw it too."

"Oh! It was Rafe! My bad." He rolled his eyes.

"Look Man, I know you don't believe me and honestly, I probably wouldn't believe myself either, but... I-- I get it, you hate me because of Sarah." He tried to talk to him.

"You knew we were boyfriend and girlfriend, right?"

I could hear the sirens in the distance as the tension built up.

"Let him go! Please." I started crying.

"And, um, I -- I got another question." he leaned against the door that was being held shut by a chair. "Did you fuck her."

"Topper!" I hit the back of his head, my strength not enough to make him flinch.

"Yes or no John B."

"Ok-- Uh yes." He said. "We did it...once. Okay? But don't use the f-word. That's kind of gross." He spoke trying to get Topper to understand him.

Suddenly we heard the police sirens from outside.

"Alright John B! It's Sheriff Thornton out here. We got you surrounded. We don't need anymore blood shed." My dad yelled into his megaphone

"Topper, Topper please, I am begging you to let him go." At this point I was hysterical, my eyes burnt from the many tears streaming down my face.

The sound of heavy footsteps got closer as they ran up the porch stairs.

"We're back here dad!" Topper yelled.

"Please!" I whispered.

"No mercy Dad." He took me outside with him.

"Damn it!" He slipped through the vents!" I heard my dad yell, easing my worry.

"Do not put your hands on me!" I screamed as Topper held me in front of him, pushing me outside.

"Demi! He is dangerous! I am protecting you, you are my little sister and I don't want you to get hurt."

"The only thing I need protecting from is this family! You make them out to be the villains when really it's you, and everybody else on this side of the island.

As everyone was spreading out searching for him Sarah rode up to me on her bike.

"I'm having everyone meet at the church. Be there in an hour, I think the others have a plan." She quietly whispered.

===

The Church Bell went off 3 times before I ran in there.

"What are you doing!" I stopped him.

"Demi, Sarah, I warned you about these pogues!" Topper held his hands up in defence.

"He's innocent." Sarah sobbed.

"Then who did it?" Topper asked.

"Rafe! Rafe shot Sheriff Peterkin, I saw him." I finally spoke up. I could feel my eyes starting to water again.

"What are you talking about?" he didn't believe me

"Sarah, we gotta go!" John B noticed all the police starting to gather outside.

"Sarah, You realize I'm the one that loves you." Topper Repeated, telling Sarah this many times before.

"I'm sorry for what I did. I'm sorry," She apologized "But this isn't about you."

"Hey we've gotta go." John B broke up their conversation.

"You go, I'll take care of him." I took my helpless blubbering brother into my arms

"Let me make it up to you." Topper laid out his plan, Sarah and I swapped clothes. Quickly,

"Y'all smell smoke?" I asked.

"Holy shit, go." Sarah looked down the ladder to see the bright light from the fire.

Topper and I headed out of the church with our hands in the air acting as if we were John B and Sarah.

"GET DOWN." The cops were yelling at us.

"Hol-Hold shoot, those are my kids." My dad commanded the others to put the guns down.

"Demitria and Topper, What the hell were you two thinking!?" He snarled.

"I- I don't know what happened dad, I'm sorry for causing trouble." Topper apologized "They went that way." I pointed in the opposite direction.

"Are you alright? Do you need a medic?" Topper asked me.

"I'm ok, I just burned my calf, that's all." I hissed as the wind blew causing my leg to sting.

"Demi! Dem, I- I didn't mean for this to happen!" Rafe ran over to me.

"Of course you did this!" I started limping away.

"Demi, I never meant to hurt you."

"How's that turning out?"

=== Ahhhhh late post but... The final chapter of part one is tomorrow and I am actually almost done with part two!

Feedback is appreciated!

Messages are always open!

Thankful for you all

also I need someone to help me pick an ending... so If you want to help me out just message me 😊

[micheswife]

Miche as Hanji's older brother.

pic credit: me.

If you have read the trivia section of Miche from AOT wiki, then you know that there was a familial connection intended between him and Hange, atleast in the initial panels.  Ever since I read about it, I can't help but notice that they also look similar in some aspects. At the time of season 1, Hanji must have been around 29 and Miche around 40-42 (estimations). So I decided to write about an innocent and energetic 10 year old Hanji, and a 22 year old protective elder bro Miche, watching her shenanigans and keeping her from setting the world on fire. 

Warnings: None, just some sibling love. 🌻

"Oye, slow down!" Miche yelled as his cousin ran after a beetle, almost getting up from his seat. It was always something new with her, and he could never predict. 

Hanji stumbled and fell on a haystack with a soft thud, too slow to catch the insect. She watched in awe as the beetle flew away, leaving her covered in soil and hay. Miche pouted watching his little cousin fail, but he knew something else would distract her in no time. Besides, there were tons of unfinished projects and "ongoing experiments" back in her room. A majority of them would just end up as breeding places for mosquitoes, but he wouldn't be around to deal with it. 

"You are one curious soul, aren't you, glasses?" He whispered, more to himself, as he walked her back home. She needed a bath but Miche knew better than telling her to do it. That chore would be something for his aunt to handle. 

"We will go out again, I have to catch it!"

"Hanji, no! You are not supposed to get out after lunch."

"So you will not take me?"

"No." 

She fell silent for a couple of minutes before saying,

"We could sneak-"

"No!"

"You are boring…" she trailed off, pouting as she turned to face the other way. She really did not comprehend the absurdity of her actions, or demands. Following a baby bear into the forest, stealing gunpowder, trying to disassemble her father’s gun and the most outrageous of them all, asking Miche to let her see a titan. It all began when he decided to mess with her by saying that the scouts had captured a titan. It was just one of the many silly, made-up stories he would use to keep her occupied when he did not have to energy to watch over her. Bad decision, it had been two years since then, and his cousin had not let it go. 

"But you have one in that building!"

"Yes, we have two now, but you are not allowed to see them."

"You can't help me sn-"

"No!"

"Lameass…"

He would chuckle everytime she tried to insult him. Although a little odd, his cousin was the only bit of innocence in his life. He dreaded the day she would realize just how cruel the world was.

"What would you do if I went outside the walls and never returned?" Miche asked her, fastening his cloak to return to the headquarters.

"Why would you not return?" Hange inquired with a mouthful of food, showing no signs of worry.

He sighed, knowing that it was hard to get a straight answer out of her.

"Just a wonder." He shrugged.

"I would miss you then." She didn't even look away from her book as he left the house, expecting him to come home despite what he had just hinted. It barely help that Miche painted the outside world in a completely different light than the horrendous mess it really was.

She was also well aware of his capabilities, he was strong but this time was different. The expedition was going to take place in a completely untouched territory, and death rates always hit the roof whenever that happened. Doubtful about his survival, Miche left praying for her well-being and cheer. She was bright, intelligent, happy, and everyone believed she had the potential to do something great for mankind.

Hange sat back reading her novel, thinking of farfetched ways to breath life into her fantasies. She knew her cousin would come back next month, maybe he would let her check his odm gear then. And she was right, he returned, covered in injurues, but alive. He never allowed her to examine his odm gear, too scared that she would disassemble it too, which was exactly her intention. 

It was no big deal though, one day she would get her own odm gear, and she would use it catch a couple of titans too. She would see the world for what it was, but it would never be enough to extinguish her enthusiasm. She was special.

[sourwolfstories]

Hey! Do you have long fic recommendations? Can you involve some soulmate fics but AU are welcome too Long like 50k, 100k+ but really ill read anything

Soulmate fics (at least 50K)

When the Universe Comes Knocking (It’s Polite to Open the Door) by isthatbloodonhisshirt (wasterella)

It was like a door he’d nailed shut in his brain suddenly exploded open, all of his past confusion and anger and hurt and adoration flooding out at once. Stiles? Was it actually Stiles?!

Stiles, the guy he’d had a crush on for fucking years growing up. The guy who’d been an absolute dick to him their whole last year of high school.

The guy who’d told him he loved him in a dirty men’s bathroom on prom night while drunk and upset because he thought Kira was Derek’s girlfriend.

That Stiles? But it couldn’t be!

Marks and Mics by DLanaDHZ

Hale siblings Derek and Laura have been hired to run security for Stiles Stilinski's music tour. Business as usual, except someone is trying really hard to prove they're incapable and hurt Stiles. Derek finds himself curious about Stiles' bitter attitude and a strange illness that plagues the singer. And on top of that, Derek's soulmate remains elusive.

Written Can’t Be Denied by lookslikenico, winglesswarrior

Since time immemorial the story of ‘soulmates’ has persisted. In short, the idea that somewhere out there is your perfect match, the one person who can complete you and with whom you can find total happiness.

The story goes that, the first time you meet your ‘soulmate’, the universe will give you a sign in what should be the most obvious way - somewhere in your immediate vicinity the word ‘soulmate’ will appear. If reports of ‘soulmates’ are to be believed, rather than being written of as hopeful delusions, then this ‘obvious’ signal is anything but, fleeting as it is. The word seemingly only appears for a matter of moments and only when two people first meet. There is no guarantee that they will be looking in the correct direction to see it, nor that they will have any idea who their supposed ‘soulmate’ actually is.

A fact that causes havoc the day that up and coming actor, Stiles Stilinski holds up a bottle emblazoned with the word 'soulmate' in the middle of a press conference where Derek Hale is working as a photographer, in the middle of the worst day of his life...

Connected by readridinghood

After the death of his wife, Stiles finds himself left alone with their three children, struggling to keep from being sucked into a void of grief and despair that her death left him with. Knowing his children are safe in the pack's arms under Derek's watchful eyes, he struggles to regain his footing. What do you do when the world keeps tumbling over you and what you've thought of as fact no longer holds true? As the world comes back into focus, so does the love for Derek he thought he'd long since conquered and now with his eyes open, what he thought was the end of him, is only a new beginning. A decade after he fell in love with Stiles, countless days of keeping himself restrained while building a friendship with him, Derek finds out with absolute certainty that Stiles is his mate. You only mate once in your life, so how is it that Stiles was mated to Sophia, his wife and mother of his three children, the woman he is grieving the loss of at the same moment that Derek makes his discovery.

Three Marks by sanam

"And then there was pain again, but this time it was in only three places—his arm, below his clavicle, and next to his heart, all on the left side. It felt like the skin was being sliced apart, ripped open, flayed off— And suddenly it was done. Derek looked across the room and saw the boy on the floor, looking about as bad as Derek felt."

Derek and Stiles learn that bonding is probably best done with ridiculous amounts of video games and maybe a little bit of time.

Other fics (at least 50K)

Rich Man, Poor Man by TyReed

During a first date gone horribly wrong, Stiles Stilinksi realizes that the snarky guy he's been asked out by is actually Derek Hale, an heir to Hale Industries, one of the most profitable companies in the entire world. Who is, for whatever reason, interested in the son of a teacher and a cop, a loser who spends all weekend watching movies in his pajamas, and who is also possibly one of the biggest dorks on the Internet.

At the same time, after screwing up their first date horribly, Derek Hale realizes that the funny guy he's asked out is Stiles Stilinksi, the warmest and kindest individual he's ever met in his life, with a family just a loving and caring. Who is, for whatever reason, interested in a guy who screws up everything he does, lacks any semblance of a backbone, and who is possibly one of the biggest history dorks in all of the United States.

These rich and poor men will come to experience a taste of each other's lives, and learn where the real blessings in the world can be found.

Feel it like a fever, burning through the night by LunaCanisLupus_22

“That was my favourite fern,” Deaton declares and Stiles glances at Scott for clarification that such a ridiculous statement just came out of his boss’ mouth.

“You could have just told me not to touch it,” Stiles points out sensibly, squirming inside with something he refuses to believe might be guilt.

Not about the dumb plant, but the instant devastation he’s currently overwhelmingly and inescapably capable of. He can destroy with one touch now.

This is going to complicate things so much.

Or the one where Stiles tries to do the noble self-sacrificing thing: gains a new power, a spectral skin colour and basically ruins his own life. 0/10 would not recommend.

It’s (Not) a Cult by lhr111

“Well Stiles, you told me a few weeks ago that you thought Derek was leading a cult.”

At that Derek whipped his head toward Stiles in shock. “You thought I was a cult leader?”

Stiles will not be shamed. “Well, either you or Peter. Peter made more sense, but since he deferred to you that one time I was a little unsure. I mean, what else could I think with all the weird shit going on. You, hanging out with random high school seniors, doing secret things, ordering them around like you are their parent, them actually doing what you tell them. It’s really weird, okay?”

“Are you familiar with Harry Potter?” Derek asks.

Talk about a non sequitur. “What? What does that have to do with anything? And, of course I know Harry Potter!”

“Well to quote Sirius Black, ‘Once again you’ve put your keen and penetrating mind to the task and as usual come to the wrong conclusion.’"

The Sheriff starts snickering, and Stiles is both insulted and also a little in love.

Call Me (Cliché) by SomewheresSword

When the sheriff's sister ends up in a wheelchair for the duration of summer, Stiles' dreams of three months full of pack bonding, late-night video games and bro-time with Scott come crashing down. He's temporarily relocated to Redford, a three hour drive away, and he can already tell he won't be getting many visitors.

Sure the pack will forget about him while he's gone, Stiles is determined to make the most of his summer of isolation, training his body and mind - and his magic - so he can come back with a bang, and maybe catch a certain Sourwolf's eye.

Then Derek shows up at his window one night with a flimsy excuse about needing research done. Suddenly, his summer away is looking a whole lot more interesting.

There’s No Escape for the Potato Man by isthatbloodonhisshirt (wasterella)

“Who is this? Where’s Erica?”

“Wrong number, asshole!”

“Stop calling me an asshole,” the man on the other end snapped aggressively.

Stiles could understand. He’d be pretty aggressive too if he’d murdered someone and texted a wrong number to ask for help burying the body. This guy obviously failed How To Be a Serial Killer 101.

“What kind of idiot thinks I murdered someone?”

“The kind of idiot who got your text messages, you fucking dumbass!” he retorted hotly. “Maybe double check your contacts before sending a random stranger details on your nefarious plans to dispose of a freshly cut up body!”

“What?!” the guy on the other end demanded, crossed between horrendously confused and livid.

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

If you want more soulmate fics you can check that tag here

you can also find more long fics here and here

Happy Reading :)

[adrienaline-rushed-art]

Can you do Marinette for next character ask/ml sugar pls?

Why I like them: Despite being immature in many ways— I guess by that, I mean her obsessive behavior, but really guys… she *just* turned 14. You know who else is 14? 1D fanfic writers (but more on that later)— in other ways, she’s more mature than adults. First, she’s self-aware, and she’s willing to take responsibility/humble herself when the time comes. Even though a lot of this is because Tikki guides her, it means a lot that she actually listens. I know so many adults that would rather be petty. 

And when I say self-aware I mean a lot of things. For one, she understands when she’s doing something… mm… not so great. Many of these things are for comic relief/exaggeration/situational comedy/slapstick (which is pretty much the extent small children get from it), but it’s still evident that she feels guilty or hesitant. 

does that look like the face of someone who’s comfortable with her own actions? 

Kids who watch heroes look for (and need) confidence and justice. Neither of which are happening in this scene or in some others, and from the kids that I know… they’re totally aware of it. Some might blatantly shout at Marinette as they watch her do something wrong, others might not say anything but… trust me they aren’t taking notes. 

The thing is, I’m glad she’s a main female character… who screws up…. a loT. The hero isn’t supposed to be perfect, and I mean that in a general way. Flat villains are perfect in their own realm, so I don’t think imperfect characters are only better for writing, they’re better people or can become better people. A perfect individual is a comfortable and consistent one, a person needs ups and downs to improve. 

It’s a bit like kim possible, except Marinette commits more errors because she’s younger and less adventurous… so in a way she’s a bit naive to the world (Kim Possible may as well be an ambassador, so she’s cultured and still makes really cringey mistakes eyes the wheelchair episode). We grew up watching her make these mistakes so we could see them get fixed, if they never happened we wouldn’t know for better or for worse. What’s more, it’s most important coming from the main character. So… I’m proud of her. 

Another thing is that she watches her own behavior in the future. She’s learning to trust that Adrien won’t fall for Lila’s gags, she’s learning to talk to him and move away from being a fan (bluntly pointed out in Troublemaker, she actually sees herself as more of a fan than as a friend. Yes, she was lying to cover herself, but she had pictures of all of her friends up… she didn’t use friendship as an excuse? And why did the excuse come to her so naturally? It might be obvious, but she gets flustered and doesn’t come up with good lies… honestly ‘because im a fan’ is pretty fair), and she’s learning how to treat Chat Noir. 

I would almost say in Season 1 that Ladybug was pretty flippant to Chat Noir, and I know it was cute at times but people usually behave this way with someone they feel close to already… so why didn’t she ever take the time to take him seriously? Ever since Glaciator, Ladybug has learned how sensitive he is. She didn’t judge him so quickly as to assume that he felt entitled to her, or that he was throwing a simple/unimportant tantrum that could be shrugged off. She took the time to read into the situation and see what exactly was going through his head. Emotions are never a joke, especially in a city where someone like Hawkmoth is a concern. She was cool and collected like a therapist, especially because she sympathized where his feelings were coming from (not too long before she had gotten upset with some ice cream man that was just doing his everyday thing and ditched her friends because she felt hopeless and betrayed by Adrien). Granted she never said anything against him, but she didn’t get forced into a situation where she had to confront him either. 

She also knew that reacting harshly would only make things worse, and then neither of them would get off from their high-horse. Compassion is what gets a person to reflect and feel respected. She looked him sincerely in the eyes and apologized, and she expected the same from him. She set the stage, and he responded. They ended up fine, and he even reacted well to the infamous ‘friendzone’, because well… he treasures friends too, and he didn’t know Ladybug considered him to be one. Ladybug was surprised, but now that she knew he had felt abandoned not only that night but since the beginning, she took note that he has trouble reading when a person cares about him deeply (and we all know he does, his love receptors are broken both in his household and as seen in the most recent ep). 

She is much softer with him now but very explicit. She doesn’t beat around the bush, she tells him exactly what he needs to hear. 

“Chat Noir! You know you’re irreplaceable.” 

Look at that face, he knows now that you said it. 

It’s actually quite motherly… I mean this is a perfect response. She adjusts to the needs of her friends accordingly rather than treating them equally, because friends don’t always need the same thing. Equity over equality. She’s an excellent example and so much more than the “Huff… I’m a strong independent woman and I don’t care about men and if anyone ever sasses me I’ll choke them. Also I don’t paint my nails, that’s for babies” You can be strong and independent without sacrificing any of these things. It’s not about making enemies, it’s about standing up for yourself— and those you care about. 

I could look for so many examples of how she looks out for her friends and makes sure to mind their feelings and experiences before getting all defensive, but that would be… the entire show. 

She’s imperfectly perfect and perfectly imperfect. 

Favorite episode (scene if movie): Zombisou... and maybe Chameleon and Oniichan. She was angry about so many different things and had so much pressure on herself— including the fact that in each of these she had to protect/comfort/defend someone anyone else in their right mind would rather spit on. But Marinette is noble, she knows how to keep herself together when she needs to. When it comes down to it, the people she’s so angry with are human too. They have hearts with burdens of their own that she doesn’t even know about, if something were to happen to them she would care. She has the responsibility to keep them safe, but also she wants to. There’s a difference between a pain in the ass and a monster, and besides she isn’t the judge of the universe, it’s not her place to decide what someone gets and doesn’t get. Maybe they aren’t getting everything they deserve, but if every human being got what they deserved we’d all be struck dead by lightning. 

And she certainly doesn’t wish death upon them. And as we’ve all noted, whether it’s seen publically or not... what goes around comes around. 

Favorite season/movie: Season 2 wins again... for now, it aint over yet

Favorite line: Uhh... dang it this again... how about the one above? “You know you’re irreplaceable?” and every other uwu line she has. She is so soft hhuhhggn 

Favorite outfit: The cute lil maid outfit from Animaestro

OTP: Well it’s the same as what I put for Adrien, Marichat. For noncanon... mmm.. I think Kagaminette but Ninette is p damn close 

Brotp: I mean??? ALyanette duh. But you know since right now Ladynoir is technically platonic.... they’re pretty lit as bros too (marichat is too but so far fanon is the only place they’ve truly become bro bros) 

Headcanon: She wouldn’t have all of those pictures of Adrien if she felt even remotely close to him. I think those fics where she has photos up of Chat Noir should be canon, just like how she has ones of her friends, but she has soo many of Adrien which sets him apart from friendship like I said before. She’s insecure and taking advantage of the fact that he’s famous af, none of us can truly relate to having access to so many amazing photos of our crushes... and to sort of continue with the next question..

Unpopular opinion: These days a phone’s photobook may as well be a private wall to hang pictures on so really... Marinette is an exaggeration of exactly what people do— mostly young girls, which she happens to be— and hey get off of your crushes Instagram while you’re at it. It’s actually pretty normal, it’s not the best behavior but again, you need to have that cringey low to climb higher. And anyhow it’s all for the joke of it, no one is supposed to take these things seriously. But I’ll let you all know when my younger cousins start hanging up stalker photos of their noncelebrity crushes “because marinette did it so it must be ok” 

Honestly, not even the borderline ooc things are that bad. Like... they’re bad... but it’s a good thing to show, as in it’s not too horrendous to use as an example. It works because it’s so unrealistic, but with very real behaviors that kids need to address in themselves by watching Marinette. I would say some of her actions straddle between IC and OOC, not either-or. 

(WARNING: Do not read on if you have intensely strong feelings toward L/u/k/a to the point of sensitivity over any mild criticism as a character or as he is written. If you’re pretty chill reading anything then you’re fine, I didn’t say anything cruel I only gave an opinion as mildly as I could. The point of the honest opinion section is not to be salty but to express my point of view without insults)

Her crush on Adrien at this point in time is no more or less unhealthy than her crush with L/u/k/a— which is still unclear because for some reason In Silencer she still looked like she was on the brink of deciding she had a crush. She’s kind to L/u/k/a and he’s kind back, but she isn’t very nice. The difference is that it’s not very nice to ask someone on a date to spy on your main crush, it’s not very nice to indulge in the affection someone gives you as a chew toy while you wait for your crush and try avoiding the guy who is deeply in love with you and you sorta like him too. (He fell for her incredibly quickly and she did too despite feeling insulted by him moments before, unfortunately he’s a fallback she feels almost nothing for and she’s directing her ‘oh-no-feelings-for-someone-who-isnt-adrien’ chat noir attack to l/u/k/a because with him, she knows its easily uprooted).This goes back to the importance of not always being at your best behavior for a child audience to learn from you, but my unpopular opinion is that she and Adrien are not toxic and she and l/u/k/a are not a godsend. He’s also the equivalent of a High school sophomore dating an 8th grader? So... it’s kinda weird that he’s advancing? (I censored his name for the sake of avoiding conflict, I’m stating this for the unpopular opinion and I said it in as straight as I could because I don’t want salt to touch this. I respect L/u/k/a as a character, he’s a good boy. I’m disagreeing and agreeing to disagree by trying not to engage.) 

Wish: Please, let her find out Chat Noir’s identity first... I beg you. 

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen: Except don’t let the reveal happen right after one of them is rejected... that... that would be really bad. 

5 words to best describe them: Noble, responsible, creative, strong, kind

 My nickname for them: I like Marigold and Shortcake, I’ve used them in fics and I cry

anyway she’s one of the best protags don’t @ me when I have kids they’ll be watching her and adrien and they will be who they’re raised on

[journeysintowebcomics]

Homestuck Liveblog #186

UPDATE 186: Political Assassination

Last time John finally got that tooth off his chest, and Jake agreed to give his endorsement to Karkaroni. Now what will happen? Let’s see.

Has it been days since Jade has been sitting on that couch, levitating and with her eyes completely black? Given everything that has happened in the meantime it sure feels like it has. Roxy’s getting worried, she tried to call Rose but she didn’t respond, so instead he goes for the next option she has: Dave. Who immediately brags about working to stop Jane from screwing up everything. The words ‘neoliberal austerity measures’ are unsaid but they’re like an echo when Dave talks about the presidential campaign, I bet. He’s busy handling Jake’s endorsement speech.

ROXY: i guess in the grand scheme of things

ROXY: shes just takin a sort of nap

ROXY: but its one HELL of a nap bro

‘one hell of a nap, davey, shes been blacked out for, like, a week’

It seems the troll candidate is more popular with the trolls and the carapacians than with the humans and consorts. How don’t they have more consort supporters? Hopefully Jake’s endorsement will change that.

ROXY: lmao dirk just texted me about this

ROXY: somehow he found out about jade did u tell him

DAVE: uh no

ROXY: he just said make sure she gets lotsa daylight

ROXY: that itll help with the “exorcism she needs”.....

ROXY: and also to say hi to calliope for some fuckin reason??

DAVE: thats weird

Well that makes clear what the best course of action is: don’t open the windows nor place her anywhere in the daylight. If Dirk’s advice will help with the exorcism she needs – to get Dead Calliope out – then it’s a bad idea. I’m enjoying this epilogue much more with Dead Calliope controlling the narrative, thanks.

It’s alarming Kanaya isn’t picking up either. Could Dirk have gotten rid of her? I sure hope not! Kanaya has done nothing wrong and deserves to stay alive, what with being the professional when it’s about troll reproduction. She better still be fine and kicking!

DAVE: i gotta give karkat some emotional support

DAVE: since gettin jake on our side was a pretty huge fucking bonanza for us

DAVE: which has almost equal probability of winning us the election as it does blowing up in our faces depending on this speech he gives

DAVE: so we gotta like

DAVE: concentrate here?????

DAVE: instead of jerking each other off all god damned day for the rest of our lives

DAVE: (im just joking we dont actually do that)

ROXY: oh

They don’t do that, much to Jade’s disappointment, I bet. Either way, it’s speech time!

The struggle to take control of the narrative is a petty squabble, says Dirk, taking the high ground by offering Dead Calliope a way out. Buddy, pal, friend, you can’t take the high ground and then insinuate Calliope is ugly as sin. That is petty.

Apparently everybody thinks Dave loves Karkaroni, and although I believe that too, it’s fine if Dave never comes to terms to that. The guy marches at the beat of his own drum, he’ll be fine. This kind of thing can’t be forced on him. Speaking of things that can’t be forced, Roxy wants to know how Dave came out to everyone else as not straight. Oh dear, Roxy, I don’t think Dave ever did that. You’re asking the wrong person – unless you want the answer to be ‘deny it for like eight years now’.

He’s not really denying it right now, though. Maybe he did come out to the others and I didn’t find out until now. He’s not comfortable enough with rapping about ‘boning dudes’ in middle of a stadium where so many people can see him, but he’s not running away from the question. Way to go, Dave! I approve character growth!

Somehow Dave has this entire spiel about all the steps of admitting not being straight. On what phase are you, Dave? Inquiring minds want to know. I’d paste the entire thing here, because it’s pretty good stuff, but it’d feel like I’m applying filler for the sake of applying filler, so I won’t.

Dirk really doesn’t want a conversation about gender. Personally I have to agree because, even though this is great for development and I appreciate all of Dave’s steps, this is kind of a random place to shove this in. Pretty bad place, really. It’d have been great at a different moment.

Horrendously invasive of Roxy’s deepest personal thoughts.

...uh, Dirk, you know what else is horrendously invasive? Taking over the narration and manipulating people around. Also the assimilation plan, that’s more than horrendously invasive.

Okay, this is going for long enough.

DIRK: Do you even know where I am right now?

DIRK: Do you have the slightest idea what I’m up to?

the prince is laboring under the delusion that he has been the least bit subtle in his intentions. he currently stands beneath the carapacian bell tower, poised to climb to the top. he holds the long, red sniper rifle that once belonged to roxy, brandishing it openly and boldly. he seems mysteriously oblivious to the fact that holding a long rifle in broad daylight somewhat tips one to the fact that he soon intends to shoot someone from a great distance. he also seems unaware of the fact that i know perfectly well that the top of this tower has a clear, long-range view of the stadium, allowing any competent sniper a clear shot of whoever happens to be standing at the podium as they give a speech. as jake english is about to do.

he also doesn’t seem to realize i have anticipated his attempt to assassinate his own friend in order to advance his political goals, and that i am prepared to take measures which make this impossible.

It really sounds like Dirk’s getting ready to shoot, he’s up at the right place and has a view of the stadium where Jake will be, but...I don’t know, ever since Roxy said Dirk messaged her about keeping Jade in the sunlight for ‘an exorcism’ I have been feeling uneasy, and now that this all was said just now, well, I kind of suspect Dirk may try to shoot and kill Jade. It sure would free her of Dead Calliope’s control and possibly give him back the control of the narrative. It’s a possibility, no?

Somehow the next few paragraphs resembles a schoolyard roleplaying fight. ‘You can’t reach the top of the stairs because...your feet feel really heavy’ ‘really? Then I can fly’ ‘and then the bell came crashing down on you!’ ‘I cut that stupid bell with my sword!’ ‘not fair!’ ‘yes fair!’.  It’s endearing in its own way.

DIRK: He wonders out loud, “what is this, amateur hour”?

DIRK: The Dead Cherub then humorlessly narrates, “why, yes. yes mr. strider, it IS amateur hour. and i’m the amateur here, for throwing a huge bell at you. i would like to humbly apologize for my amateurism.”

no i don’t.

DIRK: Sure you do.

I’m having fun with this part, guys, I really am! This is great.

This is over when Dead Calliope, trying to stop the focus on Dirk and his increasingly petty narration, turns the attention back to Dave who must still be explaining to Roxy the intricacies of coming out to their friends. I see keeping a show in a standstill is a Strider family trait.

DAVE: well lets just say internalized whatevers are kind of like an onion

DAVE: theres lots of layers

DAVE: they suck on pizza

DAVE: and trolls have to get their stomach pumped if they eat them

That has got to be the most contrived simile Dave has said in recent history.

Dirk continues saying very clearly he’s about to shoot Jake, and the more he states that so bluntly the more I suspect there’s something else going on.

‘Xenophobe’ and related words are starting to stop looking like a real word. It just has been said so many times.

Everything is making Dave feel like something’s wrong – undoubtedly Dead Calliope’s influence – so he gets in the path of any potential bullets, protecting Jake with his own body.

and despite dave’s quick and well-justified action, what is also unbeknownst to him is that the sniper no longer poses a threat of pulling that trigger. because everyone knows that for all of the prince’s shortcomings, he would never expose his beloved brother and son to the risk of a heroic death.

DIRK: You’re absolutely right.

DIRK: I would never do that.

DIRK: I’d never kill Dave, no matter what I felt the stakes were. I’d never hurt him either.

I’m pretty willing to bet taking over Dave’s self doesn’t count as killing or hurting him, therefore it’s fair game. Dave would be pretty unhappy to know what Dirk’s doing, anyway. The narrative reveals what’s in the sniper rifle are not bullets, they’re tranquilizers. It’d be a non-fatal way of keeping someone out of the way for a while. The second thing Dead Calliope got wrong, though...

DIRK: Yes. You’re right about the tranquilizer.

DIRK: But there’s one more fact you’re not aware of.

DIRK: Which is that I never intended to aim for Jake at all.

Well then! Turns out I may have been right about that he intends to shoot Jade. He must feel really confident about it if he can announce it aloud after aaaall the charades he did to fool Dead Calliope. Is it Jade, Dirk? Will you tranquilize Jade and pretty much put her to sleep – non-fatally?

Dirk spins in what must be the tiniest bell tower ever, given he only has to spin to change direction and be able to aim somewhere else, and gets ready to shoot. All Dead Calliope can do is freeze Dirk’s finger on the trigger, but he thought ahead and made the rifle to be voice-operated. All he has to do is say ‘fire’. Which he does! Game over for Dead Calliope?

Pretty good aim, hitting a vein from all this distance. Jade indeed has gotten tranquilized, and I’m pretty sure given this isn’t the first time Dirk uses tranquilizers – he uses them in TV – it shouldn’t be too hard for anyone to realize this is Dirk’s orangey shady hand making the moves.

The insult against Jade is uncalled for, Dirk. But yeah, the result of all this is that Dirk is once again back in control of the narrative, which makes me sigh with exasperation. I really liked Dead Calliope’s narration more than Dirk’s, so I’m not looking forward to this change.

Roxy drops to her knees by the couch, pulls the dart out of Jade’s neck, and tries to shake her awake. But it’s no use. That’s a heavy dose I gave her. Could be out for weeks. Maybe months? Can’t have any cherubs messing with my business on this planet. At least not until I’ve taken my leave. But Jade’s gonna be fine. Don’t worry about that.

So...she’s pretty much in a coma. Could be worse, could be worse. She could be dead. This is barely better.

Cherubs are fuckin’ weird, I’ll totally concede. Still not sure what makes them tick. What they idealize, what they really want. It all comes across to me as a little cloying. Perfection to them is a sweetness beyond comprehension. Sugar so potent it’s poison to us. To our bodies, to our souls. Like the place she was operating from was a realm of self-construction. A bubble of pure, phantasmal confection.

Well, I for one have had enough of that goddamn toothache. I’m back in the protein saddle, motherfuckers. I’m clacking my tongs, and the charcoal is hot.

Now who’s hungry for meat?

Does that mean the candy epilogue is all Dead Calliope’s influence seeping through instead of Dirk’s? It could be interesting to see what kind of thing she does to the world. Although...given the effects of the trickster lollipop and how ‘sweetness beyond comprehension’ is perfection to them, it’s bound to be nightmarish. I’m actually looking forward to that!

Speaking of meat, holy shit. You just look more fucked up every time we come back to you, don’t you, John?

You’re a disgraceful mess right now. Covered in blood, mysteriously sticky, bruised all over your arms, legs, and neck. Terezi practically raked rows into your back. You catch sight of yourself in the rearview mirror. You’re kind of embarrassed by what a postcoital train wreck you look like when all she’s got is mussed hair. And you should be embarrassed. Seriously, it’s like you were mauled by a wild animal. Jesus, don’t either of you have any shame?

Ah. Okay then, good for them, although I’m pretty concerned. Such a physically intensive activity can’t be good for the guy with a gaping hole in the chest and the troll who still must be half-starved. I won’t be surprised if these two just pass out and die anytime soon. I’m not entirely sure, but it seems things are awkward now between these two. Maybe it was all a spur-of-the-moment move.

You sit together on the hatch, like when you first met up days ago. Terezi crawls into your arms, and nuzzles right up against your chest so you have no choice but to hold on to her. You would have done it anyway if she asked, because you’re a total sap. The kind of guy who no doubt thinks banging a girl in a car is some deep, soul-shattering experience that bonds you for life. Yeah, John, you do think that. You think that you and Terezi are basically married now.

I can’t tell if he really thinks that or if Dirk’s funneling those thoughts into him. The line between what the character feels and what Dirk wants them to feel is pretty blurry by now.

After all this, Terezi gives up on looking for Vriska, so this is a prime moment for her to fly by and find them. She doesn’t, though, and John proposes Terezi to go home with him. Can they even go home? John is so tired it’s possible they can’t – which he really should have thought about before doing said physically intensive activity. Nobody to blame but yourself, John. Seriously, you have an open wound and bled like four liters of blood. You’re as good as dead.

He feels the urge to lie down and sleep, which is a pretty bad idea given the situation. Terezi rouses him up, so instead he decides to give this a try and zap back home. Hmmmm...if he’s so tired right now, it’s possible the act of zapping home will drain whatever energy he has left, so I’m not...very optimistic about John’s chances of survival. Would this count as a heroic death? Can you die from a heroic death if you die like two weeks after the offending injury is made? If he dies from exertion after having sex with Terezi that doesn’t count as a death because having sex with Terezi is neither heroic nor just, no? Oh well.

Back in the stadium, the inexistent assassination attempt may have given Karkaroni a push in the polls, and Dirk spends quite a while brandishing Jake like a piece of meat. Really, can he be treated as more than a flat character whose only non-flat trait is his posterior? Jake’s nervous and fidgets around, so much Dave and Karkaroni show concern and offer to cancel the speech and/or the campaign. It seems our favorite presidential troll still doesn’t like the idea of having leadership, he’s ready to throw the towel anytime. Jake insists he can do it, so he starts!

I don’t remember Dirk being so outright antagonistic in Homestuck. It’s making me pretty uncomfortable, I have to admit. It feels kind of out of nowhere, just like Jane’s sudden xenophobic inclinations are. What was Hussie thinking when he wrote all this? What was his intention?

Jake’s getting pretty nervous and I can’t tell if he’s getting stage fright or if Dirk’s influencing him to be nervous. The latter is a possibility, no? Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what’s going on.

Why don’t you have a good, long think about that, Jake.

Is this really the time for a good, long think? Jake muses to himself, actually putting a finger to his chin like some public domain clip art picture of a befuddled guy. If the crowd is confused by his rapid-cycle mood changes, they don’t show it. Jake’s got a bit of a day-drinking problem, which has been slavishly documented in the global tabloids. That’s how you avoid responsibility, isn’t it, Jake? You can fool your fans, but not yourself. The truth is that there’s a canniness to the act. It’s partially cultivated. You’re stupid, but you’re not nearly as stupid as you pretend to be.

JAKE: What in the devil was i thinking coming here?

JAKE: Why did I...?

JAKE: I came here to...

... slide the biggest knife any motherfucker ever wielded directly into your friend Jane Crocker’s back?

She loves you, Jake, more than anything, and you toyed with her heart. And you would have guiltlessly toyed with her “kettle drums” too had it not been for a bit of divine intervention, let’s decide to call it.

Sigh. That’s...that’s all I can do with all this. Sigh and keep reading. Third time I’m scrolling through the epilogue a tad faster than I should. It’s pretty much an entire page of gaslighting. Nothing really worth delving into, mainly because it’s pretty uncomfortable to read such a thing. Dirk’s being the abusive ex, pretty much. Nothing really worthwhile.

JAKE: I love dirk!

JAKE: IM IN *LOVE* WITH DIRK!!!

 And to love Dirk is to obey him.

You know, there are a few reasons why I’m thinking of liveblogging these epilogues. I’ll explain them later, but right now I may as well say a word of two: the epilogue is competently written. The events in it are interesting, and the interactions are raw and full of emotion. It’s all pretty unpleasant to read, which makes it a bit novel, like swallowing bitter medicine. It’s pretty good, in a technical way.

But it simply doesn’t work with Homestuck characters. It just doesn’t.

Anyway, let’s continue scrolling down to the end of the page and go to the next.

I was right in that zapping back to Earth C would take what was left of John’s energy. He barely can give three steps before he falls down, so it’s all up to Terezi now. She wants to bring John to Jane, so she can revive him. I don’t think she has revived him before, so it should be a good idea. It’d be better to bring Jane to John, though.

It doesn’t matter. This isn’t a wound you can recover from. It’s Game Over this time: no healing, no afterlife, no cosmic clock proclaiming your sacrifice as Heroic. The poison needling through you is antithetical to narrative relevance. You’re not dying, John. You’re being erased. Cherubs don’t fuck around. We’ve both been learning that the hard way.

Oh, nevermind, it’s something not even Jane with her life powers can fix. I wonder if, once John is erased, nobody will remember him. That’s what happens when there’s no place for you in a narrative, no? Hmmm...

John already know he’s irreversibly going to die, and tells Terezi not to waste her time, that he was dead the moment Lord English bit him. Which is true, given this poison. Then he says he was dead the moment he woke up that morning, which...I suppose is the depression talking.

You died the moment you made the decision to go meet your destiny. You would have lived if you made the other decision, under a certain definition of the word “living.” You might have even lived until the end of your immortal life span, as shitty as that sounds.

So he’d have lived for the rest of his life if he had decided to do nothing. Makes sense. This may have been for the better, given Lord English needed to be defeated, so it’s time well-spent. It’s rather unfortunate it involves John’s death, but...in a way I saw this coming. Pretty tragic outcome, and given this epilogue has been chock-filled with a lot of tragedy and pessimistic scenarios, it only made sense this would happen.

It’s dying words time! Terezi is really affected because she really cares for John, and also they had a ‘emotionally significant sexual encounter’, so she’s even willing to listen to all the sappy stuff John will say in his deathbed. This is bound to be rather emotional! And the fact he can’t even think of something appropriate to say in his final moments is what makes it emotional because this isn’t how he imagined this would go. He can’t even think of quotes from his movies. Terezi offers to tell everyone John Egbert said some cool stuff in his final moments and make everybody believe it somehow, so instead John goes straight towards the sappy and tragic. There he goes!

JOHN: i think... i really lo—

TEREZI: DONT YOU D4R3

JOHN: i... r-really lov—

TEREZI: DONT YOU D4R3 FUCK1NG D13 ON M3 1N TH3 M1DDL3 OF 4 LOV3 CONF3SS1ON!

TEREZI: 1 FORB1D 1T!!!

JOHN: but... i...

JOHN: i...

Then John dies in the middle of a love confession.

Love confession on the deathbed! It’s like this truly came from a movie, haha. Terezi is devastated, so much she can’t even bring herself to cry properly. Once she confirms he’s dead, she ponders what she should do now, alone in the world John wanted to bring her to. She doesn’t have anything else to do, so after a moment – and at Dirk’s behest – she takes John’s corpse in Dad Egbert’s wallet and starts walking.

It has been a month already. Jane won the election after what I figure was Jake’s endorsement speech for her, so that’s that. Terezi has been rather lost this whole month, and nobody has seen John Egbert – instead of saying he’s dead -- so I suppose she hasn’t told anyone he’s dead. Rose has been missing the entire time and Kanaya has been pushed around by Dirk’s machinations to keep him distracted while he keeps Rose locked away somewhere, both mentally and physically, I figure. All in all, it’s a pretty grim outlook for everybody in Homestuck. Also, Jade is still in coma. Terezi goes to visit her, perhaps to tell her what happened to John?

Dirk continues being so salty Roxy’s experimenting with her gender, apparently. Aren’t there a million other things to deal with, pal?

Roxy is very glad to see Terezi, and she takes Terezi thinking she’s Dave as a compliment. She also compliments Terezi, giving her some heartache because it makes her remember the time she spent with John. It may have been a few hours, apparently. Time works in mysterious ways up there in paradox space!

The reason Terezi is here is because she feels John would come here, and she’s right, I bet. John would want to check on Jade as much as he can, so now that she’s carrying John’s cadaver around, she feels she should handle this all herself. It’s also confirmed she hasn’t told anyone John is dead.

ROXY: back when jade first got all effed up callie saw somethin and it made them freak out

ROXY: it took me weeks to convince them that it was safe to come home

ROXY: but now we got the opposite problem and they arent leavin the house at all

ROXY: they stay home all day with the blinds drawn paintin some weird ass shit on the walls

TEREZI: WH4T?

ROXY: its not as bad as it sounds i promise

ROXY: some of it is like

ROXY: weird and violent??

ROXY: like lotsa nasty purple blood and um

ROXY: nudity????

TEREZI: >:?

ROXY: yeah yikes

ROXY: but MOST of it is cute stuff like... various combos of all of us being happy and gettin married and shit

ROXY: anyway thats kept callie kinda busy

ROXY: so it was hard as hell to convince them to let me come see jade at all

ROXY: its like theyre traumatized

ROXY: and they think ill drag whatever possessed jade back into our home with me

So the end result for Calliope is that she’s traumatized. Seeing a dead version of herself possessing Jade must have really rattled her. As I said, this is all pretty grim for everyone in Homestuck, goodness. Although...part of me wonders if her current state is partly because of Dirk’s influence. He’s petty enough to mess with the living Calliope’s head as a ‘take that’ for Dead Calliope.

Someone tries to contact Terezi through her phone, she’s not sure who it’d be. Perhaps Dirk? He did show a preference to sending messages to his former friends and acquaintances. As if things weren’t awkward enough for Terezi, she’s asked if she knows what happened to John. Terezi, you can’t keep this under wraps forever. Sooner or later you have to tell everyone John died because of injuries in Lord English’s fight.

It seems Terezi can hear Dirk perfectly even when he’s talking in the narration, I suppose it’s because of her aspect. Oh, be careful with the stuff you say, Dirk! She’s also willing to whisper stuff to address Dirk, even if it gets odd looks from other people. On the other hand, this kind of leaves her more vulnerable to Dirk’s machinations, no? Part of manipulating people is responding to what they say, so with some luck this won’t go belly-up.

Once the conversation is over Roxy leaves and Dirk exposits Terezi still feels guilty about hiding John’s death from everyone, and she can’t even confide in Dave because of mistakes she did as a teenager in another timeline. It’s the curse of having the Mind aspect, isn’t it? Knowing what the choices cause. All of Dirk’s exposition bothers Terezi enough for her to tell him to scram, and he refuses to do so.

Come on, Terezi. You don’t belong here. You know you don’t belong here.

Do you feel threatened by Terezi, Dirk? Is that why you’re trying to push her away? I don’t think Terezi has anything that could be particularly useful against Dirk’s plans, so I’m not sure why he’s bothering to mess with her like this. She even points out they barely have crossed words.

Okay, I believe he feels threatened by her in some manner because he tries to convince her to join him in...some place. More like he wants her out of Earth C. He even offers to let her take John with her, which is why I’m sure he made her pick up the corpse, so he could manipulate her by using John. He finally leaves her alone with her thoughts, sure he managed to convince her enough. We’ll see.

Stopping for now!

Next time: next update

[xaz-fr]

Woah man remember this story? About how a bunch of asshole bandits somehow found a piece of the Windsinger's soul and decided TO TOUCH IT??? Because that was a good idea

The Story So Far

@deadpool-scar-bro​ @hikayelastoria​ @cornsnoot-fr​ @redlion-fr​ @mushroomdraggo​ @murdoch-fr​ @tales-around-sornieth​ @frxemriss​ @rainhearts-hatchery​ @rexcaliburr-fr​ @starry-ampelope​ @plainstriderbard​ @reanimatedfr​ @voltaic-ambassador @sirensage-fr​ @ally-fr​ @golden-lionsnake​​ @rookfern​ @fr-dew​ (let me know if you’d like to be added to the lore pinglist)

The Bamboo Snakes: 4

The Windsinger’s Heart was the biggest, gaudiest, ugliest thing Bonten had ever seen seen. And that was saying something since a lot of the ship's in the flotella were absolutely horrendous. But they finally got to the damn ship and Jos was very happy to drop the sack. The hatchling sprawled out wing over claw leaving a trail of green feathers. He immediately looked for Bonten who knew better than to land at all.

Jos landed and went to find someone to talk to. The runt tried to bat at Bonten’s tail curling in the air but he kept it out of reach. He checked to make sure the other Bamboo Snakes weren't looking before teasing the little brat with the space of his tail. The hatchling jumped happily trying to teach his tail, making cute hatchling squeaking noises. As soon as the thought came to him he stopped doing that. Don't get attached. Rule number fucking one! As it was they'd all had to stop Jeddie from naming the little bastard. She'd whined about it a good day and a half but had relented.

Jos finally came back with no less than twelve guards and a very regal skydancer who looked like wind in the sky. Bonten didn't like them very much. They approached the group and Bonten hovered at eye level to the skydancer.

“Bonten, this is Patriarch Vizzi,” Jos said.

“Right. So, Vizzi, we brought you your stolen goods,” he pointed at the hatchling. “The reward is substantial your bounty said.”

Vizzi moved past Bonten to the hatchling and looked them over with gentle claws. “What happened?” he asked in Sihngari, directing the question to Jos.

“We found it in a raptorik village. When we went to retrieve it it damn exploded in my face and did this to me!” Bonten cried. He was really tired of being overlooked by these damn Cloudsong dragons just because the clan he'd been born in hadn't been in the Cloudsong and his nest had been in a hollow of earth between two logs his parents had dug.

“You speak Sihngari?” Vizzi seemed genuinely shocked.

“You not see the eyes bird brain?” he pointed at his sharp green eyes which had been getting more and more intensely green the past few weeks since the little runt’s feathers had been coming in in full. “Wind born. Course I know the Sky Tongue, don't fucking insult me.”

Vizzi was hatefully unruffled by his outburst. “I see,” he said. “Well… it seems there is nothing for it.”

“What? What does that mean?” Bonten demanded.

“Do you even know what you have?”

“The egg you wanted hatched. That's all I care about. Now pay up,” Bonten held his claw out.

“I think as you have well stolen from my clan you have already received your payment,” he said calmly.

Bonten squinted at him and looked at the rest of the Bamboo Snakes who were equally confused, even Jos. “Come again?” he asked.

“What the bounty for was for an egg that had formed around a Shard of the Windsinger.”

“Well we did you one better. I don't see the problem.”

Vizzi was not amused. “Tell me, bandit, did you always look like this?” he motioned to his new plumage and the fucking weird new opalesque growth growing between his horns and eyes.

“Well… no,” he admitted.

“Why do you think that is?” Vizzi sounded… bitter and his antenna kept bouncing. Oh that was delicious. “The Shard of the Windsinger bonded with you-

“WhaT?!” Bonten shouted. “Oh no. I did not sign up for this ordered and foolish nonsense. Rather take the wind from my wings,” he hated talking in Sihngari. It was nearly impossible to swear in it. “This is your bounty. I expect us to get paid.”

Vizzi sighed. “No.”

“What?” Bonten shrieked, furious. “We came a long today to bring you this little runt'! The least you could do is pay us for the trouble,” he seethed. Around them the wind was starting to whip harder. The low singing of the Cloudsong raising in fever pitch to a harsh, grating, wail. “Do not fuck with me, Vizzi,” he growled.

If Vizzi was worried he didn't show it. Instead he was snatched out of the air by a guard with him and thrown into an airlock. But still the air shrieked. “The Shard of the Windsinger’s imprinting was to go to someone worthy,” Vizzi said. “Certainly not some lowly spiral with lucky breeding,” he looked Bonten up and down disdainfully.  Bonten bared his teeth at him in a snarl. He looked around at his fellow Snakes and saw they'd also been thrown into airlocks. “But there are no take backs. So while I do not agree with the Shard’s decision it is theirs all the same. Pay you for your bounty I will certainly not do as you have not completely your bounty. You did not bring me my missing egg. You failed in this: you get no payment.” He sighed and paced in front of Bonten’s airlock. “But I cannot allow the Shard to be left alone in the world without help.”

“Let me out!” Bonten cried.

“Perhaps once you've learned some manners, bandit,” Vizzi said, not stopping his thoughtful pacing. The wind began to scream and he finally took notice as clouds started to grow. He looked at the hatchling who was in an aggressive stance towards him, eyes glowing. “Cute,” he said without humor. He went over to the hatchling and gently pet his head. “It is alright little one. I don't intend to hurt your bonded,” he said gently. “He is just acting silly.” Hatchlings could understand Sihngari, any hatchling, double so a Wind one. Comprehension maybe some difficulty but they could understand. “I would never hurt him, or you. And this is the promise of the one who protected you for decades before you decided to join us,” he said in such a soothing tone.

The hatchling squeaked at him, unsure, and his eyes dimmed. The wind calmed to wailing. “That’s it. Don't worry about your bandit. He will be fine. Despite his temper making him a menace to deal with.” The hatchling sneezed like he agreed.

Bonten ground his teeth, “Get away from him. If you aren't paying them fuck you.”

Vizzi got to his proper heigh again and strode back over to him. “Listen well, Bonten, the bandit,” he said scornfully. “I will not pay a single gold of that bounty. But,” he said when Bonten snarled. “I cannot allow you to just galavant across the Plateau with the Shard as a. Pitiful. Hoard-less. Bandit,” he specifically enunciated each word and as he did Bonten growled louder and louder. “So you are free to go. And with you will be one of my Wind-guardians. They will accompany you with the seal of the Windsinger’s Heart. With it you will be able to purchase, with credit, whatever you desire within most trade camps, with the receipt sent to us.”

Bonten was so shocked he stopped growling. “You’re giving us something like that?”

He laughed in that ugly dry way pretentious wind dragons did. “Of course not. It will be with my Wind-guardian, who will accompany you, but more importantly, the Shard, wherever you go. They will be able to buy things with the credit: you, will not.”

Bonten growled. “So you're leaving me with the runt and leaving me with a prissy guardian? Seems like a short stick,” Bonten growled.

“Well. It is that or we could kill you and hope the Shard bonds with someone more willing. But we're a Wind clan of the Windsong; we aren't barbarians. And there's no telling if such a thing will even work. So you are free to go with your Shard and the Wind-guardian.”

“I don't want the damn hatchling, I want money!”

“Too bad. It is that, or death, or nothing. Take your pick, bandit.”

Bonten snarled in hate and looked away from Vizzi. The hatchling wasn't that big of a deal. They could handle keeping an eye on it. In exchange for being able to buy stuff when they wanted it whenever they wanted it? “Fine,” he spat out. “We’ll take the hatchling.”

“A wise decision. I'm surprised you could be so,” Vizzi said.

“Fuck you too Fizzy,” Bonten snarled.

“Release these Bamboo Snakes,” Vizzi said and started to walk away. “See them to proper accomodations and food while I select a Wind-guardian to accompany them.”

“Of course, Patriarch,” and the guard bowed a bit. Bonten was dropped out of his airlock and splattered on the floor. The hatchling romped over to him, the wind dying down to normal, to make sure he was okay.

“Get off,” Bonten shoved his worried head away. The hatchling just squeaked,

“Come with us,” the guards said.

The rest of the Bamboo Snakes came over to him. “Does this mean we can name him now?” Jeddie asked excitedly. Bonten did his best not to glare at her.

[shecouldntbetamed]

Why are you a narcissist?

Why couldn’t you just be a normal person? Why pretend to be someone you’re not? You lied to me about your true feelings for me but you showed Tumblr how you really feel. If I was the person you lie and say I am on your Tumblr, then why the fuck would you string me along? How can you demand that I respect your boundaries but you completely disregarded mine?

If you aren’t happy with me then stop sharing your notes and location and time with me. You literally just promised to take me to Don Darios soon. You call me a narcissist and pretend I do all the things you’re doing to me and we both know it. Not sure what all the cheating talk is about but you’ve mentioned it several times with some dumb half ass attempt to lie and say you’ve never cheated on me.

I’m not a fucking idiot.

There’s someone online or maybe a lot of someone’s online.

They could be anywhere, any age, sex, anything. You could be having an emotional affair but hell it’s physical when you have camera sex with someone and that’s the most pathetic and shitty thing I can even imagine taking place, but you’ll show me that you’re at home- yet have no response to me. You’ll ghost me out of nowhere, when I thought things were just fine between us. Well, as fine as they can be, considering.

I’ve put entirely too much time into this to let it go without calling your bullshit.

You fucking lie so much about you and your life on Tumblr. You’re a victim of a Narcissist and that’s supposed to be me?!?

Bro, you can rewrite your life story to the online world, but I call BULLSHIT!!!

In fact, it is YOU who is the abuser. It is YOU who used ME.

You really love knowing that I spend all of my days thinking of you, wondering what you’re doing, wondering who is making you laugh and rubbing your back for you and snuggling and talking about nothing and falling asleep in your arms.

I don’t think there’s another woman in the physical sense, but I think there’s been multiple girls you’ve definitely tried to hook up with. You can’t tell me you never talked to anyone on Tinder, Instagram, Tumblr, etc behind my back. You made yourself single whenever you felt the need to I guess. That’s how your cycle went. It was going to happen when you say so. And if I don’t fall back in line when you fake being normal again (aka: cordial) then you hit me with the complete and utterly abusive insults. The ones that make me want to crawl into a hole and die. The things you would absolutely have to know will make me hate you, resent you, and regret you, yet you come up with ways to depict me that are horrendous to say the least. Like, how dare you??? Who on this planet would not only think up these things, let alone TELL someone - not just someone- their partner, “best friend” that you kept recycling over and over again???? You then turn around and play the victim… You use my situation to your advantage and it’s allowed you many many hours of time to put together a plan of action. You’re already in hate with me, but it’s easier to have me being sweet to you, so you use me as a crutch.

I’m that dumb bitch cheating cunt liar narcissist, right? Really? You’re not abusive?

You’ve been doing it now for way too long. I won’t stand here and let my reputation be tainted by a man who turns around and is fake as fuck to the one person he promised to love.

You were faking your kindness

You played games every day

You manipulate and mind fuck me and your snake charming ways

Fucking almost destroyed me

I’m not going out like that.

I am not a cheater. I didn’t cheat on you. That was one of my first real attempts to leave you… I didn’t think I would ever talk to you again… I hadn’t realized your tactics yet.

But I figured them out pretty quickly and I gathered enough evidence to prove my case.

You didn’t have my best interest at heart, that’s why you devalued me so much. You didn’t feel what I felt. You tried really hard to control me and what I spent my money on. You threatened me with the police. That was a criminal violation on 7 May 2020 that you committed against me. That was so traumatizing for me you have NO IDEA.

I can’t navigate my way home in a frantic panic attack omg I cannot believe I made it through that night all alone.

I was absolutely devastated and horrified that you had just put me through all of that. You seriously should’ve gone to jail for that. You became a complete monster. And that’s why people like you end up in jail. Woman like me will finally stand up for themselves and report abuse when it happens. YOU have never been held accountable for attacking me that night and destroying my phone, recording me, mocking me… You threw all of my Sam’s club groceries all out in the yard and you banged my purse and smashed it like 10 times in a rage against the dash

You turned into a monster and I truly saw who you are.

THAT is who I know you are. That is what you turned me into after I saw that side of you. Because I knew that if I was to forgive that man, I’d have to put up my defenses and I did.

You don’t like that I’m not going to let you say those things to me and I stop putting up with you and I shut you out. Then you always come back and pretend some more like we are able to be friends at least and maybe friends with benefits. And we do sometimes have a few good days and then wam! You find some reason to fucking torture me about something and you begin getting annoyed with me and it’s like dude….

Dude. You’re a grown ass man now. Remember that? Take accountability for your actions! Stop bullying me when I’m not the enemy!!!

You had no right to block me Thursday night. You doing that was so blatantly abrupt and you knew exactly how I would react…

Didn’t stop you… you needed my attention. So you got cruel to be sure to ruin my weekend…

Sounds so familiar…

And I get ridiculed for staying in and being one with my mind

Because the conversation between this online version between you and me

Is so much deeper than whatever we see in real life.

I don’t think you get it. I’m so much more intelligent than you’d ever give me credit for… but if I was anyone else, you’d be attracted to their mind…

You are really good at your game. I feel so sorry for Vanessa. She was one hell of a fighter and I do wish her well. She was a cool chick when I met her. But what do I know? I was a drunk back then.

I was way too open and honest with you about my whole world and all of my feelings and thoughts but you were obviously so caught up in yourself to pay attention to me.

It wouldn’t matter what I said, whatever you said had to be the opposite. You’re a ‘one-upper’ for some reason. It makes me feel invalidated. It makes me feel insecure. And small.

But I know you like that.

[chiseki]

Figured I’d make this an intro post, since I’m pretty much using this alternate url as an “out” url compared to my usual vagueness.

I’m Joshua. Yes, that matches the sidebar, so it’s not really surprising here.

And that would surprise an entire two people following my main blog that know me irl because the rest were previously informed. Maybe three people, I forget if the last one is on tumblr or not.

Which is, by the way, ““““““““fun”““““““““

Yup, having like three local friend circles that had relations to each other outside of myself, and only one of them being in the know is fun.

You can basically stop reading at this point, because from here on out is just gonna be a massive time rewind to.....jeez, fuck if I know when, my childhood? I promise there will be time skips, we don’t need that mess played at normal tempo. (Also some funny stories after the giant gap in the text, if you want to scroll for that).

Most of this story is actually located in college, but the only real indicator (aside from having a general dislike of dresses) was way back when I was in all of second grade--apparently I was so damn insulted I burned all these facts into my memory--and an older kid was brought into the classroom, gave us this cool sales pitch about do we want to learn to shoot a bow, go camping, build campfires, etc

and then was like “OH YEAH THIS IS THE BOY SCOUTS IT’S BOYS ONLY”

I was so hyped lol.

Wound up being in a mediocre girl scout troop later, and my brother obviously got directed into boy scouts. At which point I got to find out that their camping trips were mostly getting rained on and finding black windows and getting taught woodworking by a dude missing a chunk of finger.

So more suffering than child me would have expected, but they still got to build fires and go REAL camping and shoot bows and rifles and shit.

Meanwhile, in girl scouts, we went to this one set of cabins every year. We never stayed in the damn cabins, because someone would find A Bug in there, or a spider, and then someone ELSE would have the same issue, and no one wanted to be in a cabin alone let alone be the only one in the cabins at all, and we always wound up sleeping in the air conditioned lodge that was visible from the damn cabins.

Except the one year where we went to a different camp, stayed in the legendary caboose, and there was a bat sleeping on the outside of the window so no one wanted to sleep there except me.

My scout group was weak.

I miss the cookies, though.

Anyway, due to not being forced into gender-targeted toys and getting to play with whatever the fuck I wanted, I also have jack shit for anything resembling an early warning sign aside from the above.

Actually, scratch that, I was not really a fan of dresses. I mean, this was fair in general, since they were usually scratchy, didn’t fit my arms/shoulders right, were designs I had no say in, and everyone would get on my case if the dress might get even a LITTLE dirty. Had some skirts I liked in middle school, but even that was a mess of having to wear tights because my genes have never resulted in anything resembling a thigh gap.

And I was like, constantly trying to play with the guys in grade school. And they’d periodically get that “NYEHHHHHHH GUYS ONLYYYYYY” shit going on. That was never not infuriating tbh.

Flash forward to high school, still basically left to my own devices. Only indicator here was that I was just tickled fucking pink whenever I heard that I either passed at cons or was at least tossed in the “maybe.......?” zone.

Flash forward to college. I honestly don’t remember what set me off on thinking about it, but started eyeballing my gender with a microscope. Unfortunately I couldn’t apply a litmus test like sexuality, so there was a lot of “uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhfuck” going on.

Actually, I think part of it was that on the forum I hung out on, a lot of the old regulars had assumed I was a dude until a childhood friend had dropped a pronoun several times in succession & asserted its correctness, which then led to a discussion along the lines of “whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat”.

But yeah, started testing the waters.

Also tried going to a LGBT+ club like, once. With the gal I was either dating at the time or was about to be dating, my memory is shit tbh. “HEY SO HOW ABOUT WE ALL JUST COME OUT TO EACH OTHER, A BUNCH OF STRANGERS <33333333″ still freaks me out, honestly. I get why it’s generally done, but like, no thanks. But I was horrendously obvious in ducking about the gender question and she totally called me out on it later in private lol. Also got me my first binder, but I digress.

Anyway, basically spilled on “I’m.....probably..............? a dude...........? jsyk??????” to my immediate friends, which was met with a lot of “.....YEAH ACTUALLY THAT MAKES SENSE” and a “hang on I need a dictionary........ok I get it”

I think I was the least smooth part of anything resembling a coming-out just due to like, me not wanting to have to tell people to do things for me? It’s something I find extremely awkward, like I know it’s that horribly stereotypical dating thing of “what’s wrong, bby, what do I have to do” “I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO” but.

And that’s an entire digression about how my relationship with my mother often included me saying a lot of shit I had to say convincingly, but didn’t mean at all, and probably led to me having fuckall faith in what people say, most especially when under a forced prompt. I could do an essay on that, but not here.

Which, admittedly, I’m gonna rewind here because I think it’s funny in hindsight, but it means the dictionary reaction went like “SO...........I’M.............TRANS?” “What?” [thinking this is pushback on the idea] [PANIC MODE] “UH” “Like, literally, what does that word mean, I've never heard it in my life.” “OH. WELL. Heh. Uh. That internal reaction I had was embarrassing then, oops.”

Anyway.

Then the collective action was, “well, have you picked a name what do you MEAN you haven’t picked a name, we can’t just run about calling you by your deadname after all that”

And I tossed some names out, that I’m not going to list, because they were just fucking awful. So I got interventioned and the method became throwing names at me until they stuck.

Adam? Nah I knew an Adam and I can’t unassociate with that

Noah? Violin teacher’s third kid was named Noah. Same issue with Gabriel and Caleb.

Benjamin? I fucking grew up with a Benjamin he would kill me.

you get the idea.

And those were like, actual reasonable rejections. At least half the time I was just like “I DON’T LIKE HOW IT SOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNDS.” Take, for example, Josh. I 1) knew one in high school and he was a piece of work and 2) I just, inexplicably, don’t like how the word sounds.

Which is part irony and part masochism that JoshUA stuck.

I mean, that name had pre-existing connotations for me. I had played..........a game.........in high school. And given that my options were pretty shafted to Stereotypical White Boy Names if I didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb, some positive(?) pre-existing connotations were going to be needed.

Incidentally, I had a v. sweet trans girl offer me her deadname, which was a cool name, but just, like, didn’t fit me in particular so. She also picked her name by RNG tournament, with the top 10 baby names for her year being the competitors. Which was neat and worked well for her, but I know I would have just re-run the fucking tourney if I didn’t like the winner lol.

But anyway, continuing on to a less flowery story. I’ll add some blank lines so it’s skippable. No need to set off every other person with gender issues here.

Decided to come out to my family. Apparently time fuzzed down my memories of being devoured by mosquitos outside while my parents were trying to decipher that their kid was holding hands with a girl in the back of the van and that girl had been planned to sleep over that night, and despite the fact that booth teens wouldn’t be jumping to sex that fast nor had the equipment to make a kid between them....it was Reason For Concern like a straight couple sharing a bed.

I mean, my mom was convinced that anything touching the nether regions was SEX and PREMARITAL SEX was EVIL. But I digress.....again.

So. I tell them. And the reaction ranged from “well ok I mean you’ve always been weird” (thanks, bro) to “uh I guess my last name’s odds of getting inherited just doubled........?” to “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME”

Yeah. That last one was word for word. Some stuff was thrown, lots of crying (”I CAN’T EVEN DO MY MAKEUP AND IT’S YOUR FAULT”)--both of which were not my doing, though I got shocked(?) into my own set of tears iirc.

I think I set a speed record for climbing back into the closet. Like, a week later, everyone was pretending it never happened. I sorta emotionally cut ties with my mom at that point--kept it civil, but Did Not Want to discuss my life or friends at all with her or in any way that would get back to her.

So obviously, no one in my family knows I go by Joshua. If they asked, I would tell them, but lo and behold, zero questions, they never brought it up again, etc. And I’ve been very careful about not letting that knowledge spread, not putting it on the internet in a way that connects back to my legal name, being primed at any point to pretend “Joshua” is a mutual friend and to not respond to that name if someone accidentally calls me by it.

Incidentally, during Yet Another Family Counseling that was at least performed at an individual level this time, my mom apparently told the counselor that she thought she handled that well. Last I checked, making the situation about yourself and doing the whole “woe is me, the mother, with a child like this” shpeal was not “well”.

And I mean the WHOLE shpeal. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to see the posts by parents of trans kids that wax soliloquy about losing their child and mourning their “death” (especially the ones that aren’t all “but I got a new kid!”) like, the ones especially cut from the same cloth that would be like “my child is autistic but ~I~ am the inspiration for waking up in the morning” like no, your kid is the inspiration for dealing with you.

And if anyone is wondering, this is basically the Midwest Stereotype for....LGBT, interracial dating, etc rejection imo. Seemingly ok with it, but NO WAIT HANG ON, NOT MY CHILD. Like, I legit had trans kids explained to me (albeit without terms for it) at a relatively young age by my mother and yet. “X exists but not in our good christian neighborhood” attitude. Ugh.

So where was I? Hmm, yes, funny Joshua stories. Ok I have like ONE story. One of my friends that was in the know finally got me to play Trails in the Sky. Now, this sucker has a chunk of text lead-in with a ~mysterious~ boy that young Estelle’s father has brought home, and the whole discussion skips his name, ending on “my name is....”. Then it time-skips to present day, finally casually dropping this dude’s name, which, obviously, is Joshua.

My friend did not tell me this.

No warning, nada. Only Estelle had really come up in conversation.

And then we collectively dragged another friend into the abyss with us, except he wasn’t in the know. We also had him streaming his playing sessions when our schedules coincided, which led to--because of a shitty accuracy stat--him yelling (as we did) “JOSHUA!” frequently in combat.

I debated on just responding “Yes?” randomly one day in the most casual closet-exit possible. Then procrastinated by deciding to just be out with it at the end of the first game since he’d also played twewy.

Some of you have probably started to eye my avatars with judgement in your hearts. That’s fair.

Anyway, we had forgotten about another character that practically had his name, so at least I had someone to share my weird feelings with.

And then, he started the second game, and I didn’t hold back on responding “yes?” every time “Joshua” was used as an interjection.

Also because of that one post about biblical names, I will respond to any use of “Jesus”.

[book-o-scams]

How did you come up with Bro Show? How long have your been drawing/animating for? What is your favorite piece that you have drawn?

SORRY ABOUT THIS LONG ANSWER, I guess asking me three questions at once is a good way to get 6 paragraphs from me, haha.

Before BPS came out, the release date kept getting pushed back due to the production difficulties, and this made me very anxious about whether or not the show would be able to end properly.  ‘Take This Ed and Shove It’ had been a depressing series finale to the show’s original depressing final season, while ‘A Fistful of Ed’ closed out the final episodes with an interesting arc that made me worried the movie would undo the good news.  Most stressful of all was that Bro would be added to the cast, and since I had already deduced that he was violent with baby Eddy, I was worried they would disprove my understanding of the character, and that would surely ruin the whole movie for me. I caught wind of which fans had already managed to get spoilers out of AKA, and got Bro’s design and personality spoiled for myself months ahead of time, and was relieved that my predictions were coming true.  With that monkey off my back, I began realizing how perfect Bro’s position is for being key to the kids’ backstories!  Bro represents the previous generation of Peach Creek kids, and the toxicity he injected into the neighborhood is important because it trickled down through the people outside the Eds’ perspective, until it led to the hyper-aggressive children of the present-day cul-de-sac.

With how little information there was beyond the basic timeline of who seems to have already met Bro before BPS, my first Bro-centric origin story ideas were focused on Ed and Sarah, Nazz, and Jonny.  Then, getting dressed one morning near the end of high school, suddenly a bunch of thoughts clicked into place and formed the headcanon that would become the Bro Show pilot.  Most of it was just from thinking a LOT about ‘A Town Called Ed’, I realized that it can’t JUST be Bro, there’s also got to be some toxic influence from the Eddy family in general, as well as the Kanker family, so I started thinking about it as a show about the families that made Eddy and Lee.  I had also been trying to think of another unseen character as important to any of the characters as Bro and realized Mama Kanker plays a similar role to the Kankers as Bro does to the Eds.  And then Edd’s line about Eddy being a pedigree seeped in and I realized what an amazingly horrible twist it would be for Bro to be one of the Kankers’ fathers and then I couldn’t ignore the similarity between Bro and Lee’s chins.  It’s a lot more risqué than my usual ideas, but I ultimately couldn’t let that idea pass because the Kankers’ fathers are also the only parents with first names, and while I don’t necessarily think his name is Butch, Bubba or Rod, I would still get a hoot out of having a secret hint to his real name like that.

Once the movie came out, I used the new info to hone a better sense of the timeline of the characters’ lives, but my Bro Show ideas mostly focused on what Bro’s old crew would be like and how his relationships could be MORE corrupt than Eddy’s, leading to the creation of my only real OCs, Bone and Dickie (Dickie doesn’t appear in the pilot, he would have been the Edd of the group only in that they leave him out as much as possible because he butts heads with Bro more than Bone does).   I continued to bounce around some ideas for the other characters meeting Bro, scraping ideas out of my college courses (like the Kevin origin story was going to be based on ‘The Bicycle Thief’ which I saw in a film class), but most of the ideas for origin story episodes didn’t come into fruition until I was chatting daily with a friend in 2010 who also was obsessed with Bro and enjoyed the foundation my headcanons had laid out.  Together we came up with a lot of episode ideas that will never see the light of day!

At some point, I came up with enough designs to post concept art of the idea on deviantART (see below) without the intention of really making it.  But I got a lot of messages from fans who really loved the idea, so with a bunch of encouragement, I dove into it and worked on it on-and-off for two years.  It got a lot of negative feedback and it’s honestly a pretty tainted memory for me now… In retrospect, I agree with a lot of the negative criticism, it’s a very different cartoon than I would normally make, but I’m still proud of the show concept even if the pilot wasn’t perfect. I just really wanted to make fun of people who are as manipulative and self-centered as Bro, but its main Youtube fanbase seems to be people who actually are like him, so… my bad, haha.  I get rude messages CONSTANTLY from Bro Show fans, insulting me for not giving them more episodes and for daring to animate anything other EEnE and for posting on websites other than Youtube, which are a lot of strict expectations to place on me, a total stranger.  Oh well, at least my followers here seemed to get it.  C’est la vie!

https://animated.deviantart.com/art/Eddy-s-Family-145866561

I’ve been drawing as long as I can remember!  It started with doodles of my old schnauzer Charlie and I remember making a concentrated effort to memorize Daffy Duck’s beak shape. I started drawing the Eds around when I got CN for my 10th birthday (about 2 years into the show’s run) and my parents would see and actually be impressed how close I’d get to the style.  I remember it used to switch off whether I was worse at Edd or Eddy but I found Ed comparatively easy—now it’s the opposite and I struggle to draw Ed but can more or less draw Edd and Eddy blindfolded, lmao.  My early Eddys looked like Dexter from Dexter’s Lab.  When I was 11, I found out my toy digital camcorder could do stop motion, so I dabbled in Claymation for a while and started familiarizing myself with the concept of timing motion to a framerate. I got Flash as a gift when I was 12 and have used that same horrendously outdated version of the program ever since!  At this point I’ve been animating approximately 14 years, I think.

I am very proud of my EEnE art over the past few years, I think my younger self would be quite pleased!  My favorite thing I ever did for the fandom is the Superbad parody I never finished or released, hahaha, but I think my EEnE animated music videos will always be very nostalgic for me too.  My favorite animation I’ve done, truthfully, would probably be one of my Steven Universe animations, that’s the point where I really started feeling confident that I know how to animate even though I have little professional experience.  I hope someday I make it out there to the industry, I want to flood the world with cartoons as well-animated as EEnE!