#but after some extensive editing it's in a place i'm happy with :)

[thetomorrowshow]

learn to play it right

Previous

Final installment of the trust au.

There will, at a later date, be short stories set in this universe.

~

“What is going on?” Jimmy whispers.

Scott peers down, down at the massive crowd of people gathering, at the long line twisting down the mountain side and into the city.

“I have no clue,” he whispers back.

There are—there have to be hundreds of elves down there, all dressed in black robes, waiting outside the church. And not just elves—others, fae, humans, royalty. Far too many for any normal event. Far too many.

What’s more, a large portion of those actually gaining entrance into the building below are royalty, many of which are elves, but just as many . . . aren’t.

Scott and Jimmy are lying on the roof of the Church of Aeor, early on this cold morning, where they’ve been waiting for two hours—they had arrived just before sunrise, Scott’s exhausted wings barely carrying them to the church’s rooftop. There, with the vantage point it posed and the relative cover from any onlookers, they’d heard and seen the arrival of hundreds of people—including Lizzie, surrounded by a guard of twenty soldiers.

Jimmy had almost gone to her right then. Scott had felt him tense, heard the slight intake of breath, had panicked at what might happen to them if Jimmy were to shout down at her. Scott had subtly readjusted his grip on Jimmy's upper arm, ready to pull him back if need be, his other hand in the air, ready to cover the man’s mouth if he decided to do something stupid.

Jimmy didn’t do anything, thank Aeor. He just gazed down at his sister, mouth moving silently.

Scott turned his eyes back to her as well, marching up the hill to the church. Lizzie looked . . . strong. Her chin was held high, her hair braided back perfectly, her jewelry shining in the weak morning sunlight. She wasn’t dressed in greys and blacks any longer, the mourning period for Jimmy long over, but where she usually wore pastel shades of pinks and purples, her current dress was a deep blue, pinned up again and again in graceful layers, a train spilling out behind her.

Her presence was a regal one, and every person already making their way up to the church had slowed and stopped and stepped aside, allowing her to pass.

She had come straight up to the church—and Ilphas, of all people, had greeted her outside—and they had ushered her in, while the main part of her guard was redirected.

Since Lizzie, they've seen Joel, Katherine, and Pix arrive and be granted entrance, along with various other figures of elvish royalty. Other elves—and guards of arriving rulers, such as fWhip right this moment and Scott’s blood positively boils at the sight of him—wait outside, silent, looking toward the church.

Then Gem arrives, and Scott’s heart collapses into relief that she’s actually still alive. By some miracle—dear Aeor, how had she survived?

Last time he’d seen her, she had been in a heap on the ground, hair white as snow. That sight has haunted his nightmares for weeks.

She’s here, though, hair as red as ever, face solemn as she enters the church, followed shortly by Shelby (who looks exhausted in her shabby clothes, head bowed) and Joey right beside her (Scott blinks back visions of Joey pulling on his wings to wake him up), adorned with far too much gold weaved into a headdress and around his neck, the most brightly dressed of anyone there.

In fact, all of those waiting outside the chapel are dressed in black.

Scott is starting to have a sinking feeling that he knows why everyone might be showing up to Rivendell’s church on an inconspicuous weekday morning.

Pearl arrives last of all the emperors, marching right on in, and Scott knows that there won’t be anything to see from out here.

Not that Rivendell isn’t an . . . interesting sight, at the moment.

The fog of the morning obscures the nearby mountain peaks, tinged red in a way that could be the rising sun (though Scott doubts it). The landscape and city aren’t dead, but . . . muted, almost, as if some of the color and life has been slowly drained. There’s no snow on the ground, and it is summer, but usually there’s a morning frost year-round. The earth seems cracked, dry, neglected.

And, of course, red—red tentacles, he supposes, thread through the city—still, perhaps, but Scott swears they shift when he looks away. One stretching from a normally-busy intersection, curled around a lamppost. Another that wraps all the way around the library, the stones buckling inward under its grip. The flowers of the royal gardens are overrun, large and small vines choking them out of the dirt. 

The touch of his brother is clear, but to Scott, the most significant change is the eerie feeling of stale death haunts the air. Death that clings to the back of his throat, to the pads of his fingers, to his cracked lips.

He hates this. This is his land, his country, his people, and Xornoth—

No. Anger will get him nowhere but dead, and he can’t die yet. They have a purpose, here.

To think. He was so worried about Jimmy blowing everything by calling out to Lizzie, while Scott just has to look at nothing in particular to be tempted to scream out a challenge to Xornoth while his lungs still have air.

“We have to get inside,” Scott mutters to Jimmy, shamefully caring more about removing himself from his once-beautiful Rivendell as it suddenly overwhelms him and less about saving Lizzie. “There’s a window in the rafters with a broken latch—or, there used to be. I don’t see why anyone would think to repair it. We can go around to it and swing in.”

“Why do you know that?”

Scott shrugs as well as he can, belly-down on the roof, eyes still fixed on Ilphas below as the elf greets guest after guest. “Good place to hide out from my brother, growing up.”

Forgetting his anger, it might be best for them to get inside a building, anyways—every time Scott sees one of those horrid red tentacles out of the corner of his eye, he thinks it’s Xornoth come to kill him once and for all. They’re terribly exposed in their current place, and it’s a miracle they’ve not been spotted yet (though they’d had a close call with Pix glancing heavenward as he entered).

So Jimmy follows closely (close enough to touch, of course) as he shuffles down the roof, to the back of the chapel, where luckily nobody has begun to congregate.

It isn’t as easy slipping in through the round window there as it used to be—it swings out, for one thing, which almost knocks Scott off his balance entirely as his arm swings out with it. When he flips himself around and starts to slide down the edge of the roof, his feet dangle in freefall for a second (his stomach flips, though Jimmy has a tight grip on his wrist) and the windowsill is just too thin for the thick winter boots he's been wearing, his feet scraping against it for unfound purchase. With only a moment of panic, though, he manages to get both heels hooked on the inside and pulls with all the leg strength he has, slipping away from Jimmy, his back falling with another swoop in his stomach.

It’s more the flapping of his wings that helps to pull him in than it is his quad muscles, but Scott somehow manages to shimmy into the window, barely keeping himself from falling flat on his face.

He makes far too much noise, stumbling over his own feet and almost hitting his head in the cramped attic space, but once he has something of a breath in his chest he scoots over to the side (there's really only five square feet of space in there, after all) to let Jimmy in.

Jimmy goes about it in a . . . creative way, meaning that Scott’s heart almost drops out of his chest when he sees Jimmy fall past the window.

“Jimmy—” he gasps, reaching out far too late (frost brushing against the rough wood wall), just as he notices the fingers curled around the ledge.

Jimmy heaves himself up on his upper arm strength alone, and Scott knew he was betrothed to a swimmer but holy—

Jimmy falls into the room on his hands and rolls, landing hard on his backside. The entire tiny room rattles; they both freeze.

“Hopefully nobody heard that,” Scott whispers, voice pitched high.

Jimmy nods, laces his fingers between Scott’s, and scrambles to his feet (though still bent over to accommodate the low ceiling). “Yeah. Where to?”

Scott pushes past him to the only door in the room, an old, roughly-hewn door that probably hasn’t been opened in decades, lifting it just slightly to avoid scraping it along the floor.

The sound of low murmuring reaches Scott’s ears, along with the gentle strains of harp music. He takes a deep breath, then looks out.

The door leads to a dark drop, though Scott knows that in the darkness is a corner of the chapel partially walled off to hide a ladder. If he sat down here, on the sheet of wood before the door, his feet would find the first rung of the ladder on the wall below. But if he instead slides to the left, tiptoes along the wall a bit, that sheet of wood leads to the beams of the open main rafters—an access path for fixing the light fixtures.

And that is where Scott goes, carefully stepping across the beams, wings flared to keep his balance.

Jimmy is right behind him, his hand now clutched tightly around the joint where Scott’s wing meets his shoulder blade, keeping up a steady stream of whispered curses as he steps behind him. “Scott—if I fall—”

“You’ll probably land on some duke, so don’t do that,” Scott advises, glancing down at the dizzying array below. Sure enough, that looks like the Duke of Evien right under where Jimmy would land.

It’s an absolute miracle that nobody is looking up to the dark rafters, because the church is packed with people. The chapel seats close to five hundred, Scott knows, massive as it is, and yet every pew is filled, people left standing, lining the walls, crowding the entrance.

Scott tears his eyes away and creeps along, careful to test every step before putting his full weight on it, until he reaches a sheet of wood a bit more like a platform than the walkway, where he can kneel and peer down below. Jimmy joins him, slides their hands together.

“What’s going on down there? Why is Lizzie here?”

Scott scans the room, trying to spot everyone. All of the emperors are seated near the front—Lizzie behind Shelby and Joey on the left side, fWhip and Gem on the right side beside Katherine and in front of Sausage—and seated at the very front is Joel, then a priest that Scott remembers kind of liking whenever he attended chapel, then two empty seats.

And before them is the altar. Atop the altar is an unwrinkled white linen, with a very familiar crown resting on it. Scott's own crown. The one that had been hand-crafted for him when neither of his parents recovered from their horrible illness.

It’s a rather beautiful crown, if he does say so himself. A golden base, threads of gold crawling up to support and wrap around several white crystals, clear gems woven into the gold. Scott’s always been impressed by the workmanship that must have gone into such delicate materials to make them into the sturdy thing, and it’s clearly been polished recently, as the crystals catch every ray of light and absolutely sparkle.

Ilphas is walking down the aisle, he notices, and they pause right beside the altar for the briefest of moments before turning out to the crowd.

“Respected guests,” they say, voice ringing through the vaulted ceiling of the chapel. Everyone immediately hushes, turning their eyes forward. “The service will begin with a traditional elvish hymn, written thousands of years ago. The lyrics are in the Old Elvish tongue, but they envision the glory of the afterlife that awaits . . . that awaits. It will be performed by Sarelir of Arde’s Line and Cacil of the Far Forests.”

They incline their head and step back down to sit beside the priest, who shifts slightly, as the harp once again strikes up and an elf stands from the front row, rolling their shoulders.

Scott is absolutely transfixed.

“What’s going on?” Jimmy whispers again. “What is this?”

It’s so surreal, Scott’s not even sure what to say.

“This—this is my funeral,” he finally manages. “We’re watching my funeral.”

-

“This is so odd,” Scott whispers, for what’s probably the seventh time.

“It’s not fair, is what it is,” Jimmy tells him. “Did I have a funeral?”

“Yes, of course,” Scott says absently, too focused on the priest’s readings in Old Elvish to even look at Jimmy. ‘It was a lovely service.”

“I wish I'd been there,” Jimmy grumbles. “Who spoke?”

“Joel gave the sermon, but . . . several people spoke. Er, Lizzie cried during her speech.”

“Wow. Was it sad—I mean, she cried, right—but like, sad, or a good sad?”

“Why are they doing this in Old Elvish?” Scott wonders aloud. “Usually, the priest wants people to understand the blessings. My funeral ought to be entirely in Common.”

As a testament to the lack of understanding, the mourners down below are beginning to look a bit bored. Lizzie is paying rapt (if somewhat vacant) attention, and Gem seems to have some sort of idea of what’s happening (as she’s taking notes), but Joel is fidgeting with the buttons on his purple coat, and Sausage is pelting little pieces of paper at fWhip’s back.

Even the native elves seem confused, disinterested. Some are frowning, focusing hard to understand (and those must be scholars, librarians, and priests, those who have studied the language for a considerable amount of time), but most are simply gazing forward with no sign on their faces that they are even listening.

His people. . . .

His people look unwell.

Their skin appears somewhat wax, though perhaps that’s just the low lighting and the black clothing—even so, many familiar faces are certainly thinner than Scott remembers, and their eyes are dull and redrimmed and scared, and Scott can’t stand to see them so.

But how on earth is he going to make this any better? How will he do anything but fail?

There’s a quiet noise from below, almost a snort, and Scott looks away from the elves to see Joey, head slumped back and eyes shut, mouth half-open in sleep.

“I wasn’t gonna say it, but this is kind of boring,” murmurs Jimmy. “My funeral wasn’t, right?”

“Jimmy, I honestly don’t remember much of what happened at your funeral right now.”

“I wish I could’ve seen it. Then I would be able to compare.”

The priest finishes up cyr sermon with a statement that Scott recognizes despite the language barrier, one that’s spoken at every kingly event he attends—“Blessed by Aeor may our king be.” Then ce sits, and after a moment, Joel gets up and stands behind the altar.

He takes a moment to look out over the massive congregation, the scribes waiting to write down every word he says, the fellow emperors before him.

Scott sees Joel’s shoulders raise in a deep breath, then he speaks.

“When I was asked to do this bit, I was . . . kind of intimidated,” Joel says, straightening his sash. “Jimmy’s was different—there weren’t very many traditions I had to know about, but it seemed like every day I’d get a message from Rivendell informing me of whatever other thing I would have to keep in mind. I’m honestly just glad that there isn't a body—I never quite figured out which shoulder I was supposed to pour oil on.”

A couple of chuckles, mostly from royals of other empires. Some of the elves shift uncomfortably; Scott can just barely see Ilphas from this angle, but he can practically hear the elf’s disappointed sigh at Joel’s flippancy with sacred customs.

“We do the whole mourning thing a bit differently in Mezelea,” Joel says. “I know when Jimmy died, Scott had his year-long bit, and Lizzie had forty days. Mezelea has three days—and only that much if you’re close to the person who passed.

“I took those three days. I may not have known Scott too terribly well, but we were friends, I guess. We were friends, and I know what he’d want me to do.”

Joel looks out over the crowd again, massive as it is, head turning left and right.

“I’m not going to say what Lizzie did at Jimmy’s memorial,” says Joel, voice hard. “But know that I mean it. And the emotions that Lizzie incited in your souls then ought to be roaring right now. Can you feel that? Can you—”

CRACK.

A red tentacle bursts through the floor, and before anyone can do anything, before anyone can draw breath to scream or even acknowledge its existence, it smacks into Joel with enough force to send him flying into the wall to his right, where he slumps and lays limp.

“No—!” Lizzie cries out, standing, but she doesn’t rush forward as with a flash of darkness—all the candles and torches go out, flickering back as red, darkness seems to sweep the room like the death outside, and Scott swallows against the ill, sticky feeling in the back of his throat—the demon himself appears, standing before the altar.

His life as the usurping ruler of Rivendell must be treating him well. Gone are the torn robes, the grimy grey armor—he wears clean armor, matte black in the near-darkness, his robes below grey, a black cape fixed around his shoulders.

His hair is still unbrushed, long and scraggly, and the crown—or, perhaps, a physical pair of antlers—is still on his head, red glistening from the tips. Scott can’t see his face, but he’s dreamed it so many times that he doesn’t need to.

He can picture the way those horrible, bulging maroon eyes rove amongst the crowd, the too-sharp too-big smile with too many teeth as he surveys his prisoners, his prey.

Scott shudders.

He’s been (almost) killed by Xornoth once already.

Can he stand a second time? Can he walk calmly toward that horrifying visage, give him the deranged joy of his brother going to him as sacrifice, a futile attempt to save his people?

The new lighting bathes the chapel in an eerie glow and mist rolls out from Xornoth, obscuring Scott’s vision even further. Gasps and screams from the sudden appearance go silent as everyone waits, dreadfully, for the demon to speak.

Xornoth takes a long, deep breath, an inhale through his nose as he tilts his head back, taking in all the mourners in black.

“There is such power here,” he says eventually, distorted voice bouncing around the high ceiling. Jimmy squeezes Scott’s hand, silent and radiating terror.

Has Jimmy ever seen the demon? A nasty sight for the first time.

Or does he just sense the end, as awful and impending as it is for Scott?

“Such power. Godly power. And many don’t even know it,” Xornoth says, each word deliberate and dripping. “Who knew that the gods still dwell on earth?”

He stares out at—at someone, but Scott can’t tell who.

What? Gods?

There’s Aeor, of course, but Aeor isn’t physically present. Nor is Exor, despite both gods’ champions being here.

Scott knows that other gods exist, but most others aren’t terribly bothered with the elves. Different cultures have different deities, and of those of the Thirty-Three, only the two brothers had ever been documented in contact with the elves.

“And I will soon be more powerful than them. But first . . . a little victory, a personal achievement for me. Elf?”

Xornoth looks behind himself, and Ilphas, slowly, rises.

“Declare me king with my brother’s crown.”

Oh, now that is going too far.

Scott can feel his blood positively boiling. Of course, Xornoth has to have this. Not only is that his crown, it’s also entirely against every burial tradition and even ancient law! It’s nothing but a way to gloat, a move of blatant disrespect and total power.

Nobody will stand against him, though. Nobody can. All they would be met with is death.

And yet, as Ilphas carefully picks up the crown, held in their right hand, they tuck their left hand into their robe.

Scott sees it before anyone else, he thinks. Xornoth takes a knee at the altar, head bowed, setting his dripping and blackened crown of Exor (so it is a crown, not antlers—though—are those bleeding holes in the top of his brother’s head?) on the white burial sheet. The demon doesn’t see a thing. Not the way that Ilphas draws near, nor the way they hold the crown far from Xornoth’s head. Not the flash of silver that Ilphas pulls from their robe and drives into Xornoth's back—

In a fluid move that sends his dark cape swirling around him, Xornoth rises and spins on his heel and grabs Ilphas by the throat, just as he had Scott so long ago.

The hundreds of people in the chapel cry out in a cacophony of sound—Scott can’t see them, Xornoth stands and lifts Ilphas, Ilphas’s shaking hands drop both the crown and the dagger as they futilely push against Xornoth—

The elf chokes, Xornoth’s grip so tight that Scott just knows his windpipe is being crushed—

Xornoth throws Ilphas to the ground with a solid thud and raises his right hand, turned out so the audience sees all that happens. They all fall silent, waiting, dreading.

A red mist—or a flame, maybe, some kind of magic that glows and burns Scott’s eyes like smoke—begins to form in Xornoth’s hand, swirling and intensifying.

“Let this,” he growls, “be the first example of the punishment that awaits insolence.”

He closes his hand, curling the magic into his fist, and points it down at Ilphas—Ilphas stirs slightly, but not enough to move, to dodge the blast about to come, and Scott isn’t going to let another person die while he stands by and watches—

He doesn’t think. Scott throws himself down from the rafter, falling, air rushing through his ears and the ground speeding closer as his aching wings flare out at the last second to catch him, landing one knee on the ground, one hand out to steady himself (ice spreads out across the floor in a crackling radius from his fist), in front of Xornoth.

Silence.

And then the chapel bursts into noise.

Scott straightens up, dusts off his hands, even as Xornoth stumbles back, face slack with shock, the magic vanishing from his hand.

He may be about to die, but Scott feels that he ought to be acknowledged in history books for that entrance.

He’s about to say something cool, like “miss me?” or “I’d like my crown back, thank you” when there’s a whoosh of air right beside him—

Followed by a thud and a loud crack!—

As Jimmy lands in a heap beside him, one leg bent in a way that it surely shouldn’t be capable of.

Scott stares. Xornoth stares. Ilphas stares.

Jimmy raises his head, grabs onto Scott’s rough tunic and drags himself up, hands clinging to him, careful not to put weight on his leg.

“Did you just break your leg?” Scott hisses.

Jimmy nods, face scrunched up in pain.

“Why?”

“It’ll heal,” Jimmy gasps. “Just—just give me a second.”

“Jimmy?” a familiar voice cries, and Scott glances out to see Lizzie, vaulting over the pew between her and the front of the room. “I—what—?”

“What the f—” Sausage’s quite reasonable question is cut off by fWhip’s exclamation of “How are you both alive?”

Lizzie doesn’t get close at all before Xornoth points at her; another horrid tentacle bursts through the ground in an explosion of stone and wraps around her legs, tearing her dress. It swings her through the air over their heads and slams her into a marble pillar near the back of the chapel, which cracks and crumbles onto her motionless body.

The church goes silent again, every person who just moments ago had been rushing to get out of their seat and to the door now frozen in place.

“So,” Xornoth sneers, squaring his shoulders. “Back from the dead? And your little fish boy, too. Was losing once not enough?”

Kind of his thoughts exactly, really. Glad they're on the same page.

What on earth does Aeor expect him to do?

Why is he back?

He has to say something. He has to look like he has some sort of plan, because literally every second of this mission has been last-second decisions with nothing concrete to follow and he hates that, he can’t give Xornoth a reason to gloat atop everything else.

But Scott doesn’t even have the chance to come up with a witty comeback before literally everything explodes.

There’s a ringing sound.

A piercing ringing, drowning out every sound that might be expected, and when Scott goes down, it’s almost . . . slow.

Slow . . . slow, as if by some consideration, the air has decided to thicken to the point of near-water, taking Scott down . . . down. . . .

Scott’s sent flying forward, something hard crashing into his back, holding to Jimmy for dear life as he probably shouts but can’t hear anything but the ringing. They both crash to the floor, Scott beside Jimmy, his eyes squinted shut, one arm pulled up to cover his head.

A hand grasps the back of his coat, pulling him back, dragging him away from Jimmy; an acrid smell washes over Scott and he knows who has him even if he can’t open his eyes for all the dust and grime in his vision—

And then something else knocks Xornoth aside, and Scott stumbles to the side and rubs at his eyes enough that he can squint and see that the entire left wall of the church has been blown off entirely, right behind where he had just been standing.

Rivendell outside, not long ago looking more muted than anything, is bathed in the same red dimness as the chapel. The clouds overhead are dark, darker than a normal raincloud, the ground absolutely writhing with dozens of those massive red tentacles.

His Rivendell, his beautiful Rivendell. . . .

Xornoth is on the ground in the settling dust and splinters of the destroyed marble and spruce wood of the walls, wrestling with—with Katherine, of all people. Jimmy’s still on the ground, covered in scrapes and dust but sitting up, pouring from his waterskin onto his leg, and there are other guests everywhere, panicking and pushing—and the ringing fades, just slightly, then more and more and they’re shouting and screaming and trying to make their way out.

Scott ignores them and stumbles outside through the very large new door, tripping over chunks of marble. The air inside the church is thick with dust, and if he can get out of there maybe he’ll be able to properly see what’s going on.

Once he steps outside, however, something in the air shimmers. Then wobbles.

Then, out of literal thin air, the Grimlands army begins to emerge (clearly identifiable by their strange boxy uniforms and leather helmets), marching through the gardens between the palace grounds and the rest of the kingdom and inexorably toward the church and the masses there.

“No way,” Scott tries to say around the dust choking his throat, the words escaping as more of a cough.

He turns back around, ready to warn everyone to flee—

The guests, just moments ago a mass of chaos, are slowly forming rows behind him, each with a weapon drawn—lots of daggers, of course, but some short swords, some spears, some maces.

Where—what?

How? Why?

The mourners—all these people here to mourn Scott, not just those that were permitted into the chapel, but the hundreds outside as well—have somehow become a small army.

And Joel comes limping through the center of the crowd (they shuffle aside, clearly looking to him for guidance), covered in the dust of the rubble, a bit of blood trickling down his temple.

“Glad to see everyone’s here and ready to fight,” Joel shouts, heading up toward Scott. “We’ll be joined by more as soon as they notice.”

He turns, claps Scott on the shoulder, then points to the approaching Grimlands soldiers. “Fight!”

Their little band, so far no larger than the force of rebels that Jimmy had been leading across the prairie (so many less than the Grimlands, surely), breaks forward at a run, some yelling, some brandishing their weapons. In the middle of it, Scott and Joel stand (and Scott instinctively takes a couple of steps back, fully aware that he has zero control over his curse right now).

Joel looks exhausted—Scott had seen how hard Xornoth threw him into the wall, so he’s honestly surprised that the man is even walking. And not only walking, but apparently leading an army?

“I don't know how you’re alive,” Joel says, grinning, “but it’s good to have you, for however long it’ll be.”

Scott’s imagined this moment several times in the past weeks—reuniting with friends who thought him dead would be inconceivably emotional, perhaps even distressing (as it was with him and Jimmy). But instead of all the planned phrases he came up with for Joel, all he can manage is,

“Why does everyone have weapons?”

Joel chuckles. “We got them to everyone who needed one before the service.”

“You handed out daggers as party favors for my funeral?”

“We’re trying to take back Rivendell, we had to do something! We didn't really expect you and Xornoth to show up, honestly. Can you still do that ice thing?”

“I can’t control it without Jimmy,” says Scott, and as if to punctuate his statement, several icicles shoot up from the earth.

If Joel is confused by his mention of Jimmy, he doesn’t show it. “You don’t need to control it, you just need to not hit our people.”

Joel runs off before Scott can say that part of having a lack of control means that he can’t exactly avoid hitting their people.

There’s people running, yelling, fighting. Xornoth and Jimmy (and so many others) are somewhere in the rubble of the half-destroyed church behind him. Red tentacles are bursting out of the ground all around, lifting up their ragtag bunch of fighters. fWhip’s army is approaching, growing larger and closer by the minute.

And Scott’s here in the midst of it.

He flexes his fingers and runs, ice spreading from every pounding footstep.

-

Jimmy watches, biting his lip, as his leg mends, the bone tingling and straightening. The pain dissipates bit-by-bit, and though it isn’t fully done, Jimmy stands, shaking it out.

Joel’s on the ground, by the wall that collapsed, and Jimmy stumbles over to him. Miraculously, none of the wall fell onto him, but he’s still unconscious, blood dripping down his cheek.

Jimmy pours some water from the skin on his belt onto his fingers, lightly touches his head. Joel stirs, starts to sit up, starts to rub his eyes, as if he had never been more than stunned.

As much as Jimmy longs to stop and hug him, or talk to him, he moves on, over to the altar, beside which Katherine lies in a heap, alone on the floor, blood seeping out under her.

Where’d the demon go? Not his problem. He needs to help these people, then probably—Lizzie? Find her among the rubble? Go after Scott?

Jimmy kneels and places both hands on Katherine’s shoulders, holds her for a moment, letting the tingling feeling leave his fingers and enter her.

After a moment, Katherine moves a little, mumbles something, and Jimmy heads to the next person, just beyond Katherine.

Scott’s advisor, Ilphas, is sitting against the back wall of the chapel, massaging their throat. They look at Jimmy with something like wonder in their eyes as Jimmy kneels down before them and places a gentle hand on their throat.

Ilphas flinches back at the touch, but the appearing bruise recedes under Jimmy’s fingers, and when he draws back, they prod at their throat, apparently amazed.

“You . . . you are a god,” breathes Ilphas.

“Cod, actually,” Jimmy corrects, then heads to the other side of the room, toward a woman cradling her arm.

“Jimmy!”

Jimmy whirls to the side as someone grabs his elbow—Pix, smiling, eyes shining. He’s covered in dust, like everyone else, but he seems almost . . . happy.

“It’s time,” Pix says. He nods once, pats Jimmy’s shoulder.

“Sorry, time for what?”

“The sword.”

Right. Right! Pix had given him the sword, ancient and covered in runes, with the strict instructions to give it up when the time came. Jimmy’s been waiting, assuming that he would instinctively know the time, but apparently it’s . . . now.

He reaches over his shoulder, grasps the hilt, but Pix shakes his head.

“Not to me,” he says. “Scott. Give Scott the sword. Hurry.”

Oh. He can do that.

Which way did Scott go?

-

Lizzie is dying.

She knows she’s dying, because her vision keeps going grainy around the edges, and she can’t feel her legs, and a huge chunk of marble has pierced her stomach, blood seeping out all around it.

There’s something that she has to do, then.

She promised herself over a month ago that if she was ever dying, she would do it.

So Lizzie reaches with numb, trembling fingers into her satchel, past the cold hilt of a dagger and landing on the squishy-yet-solid mass that had been left in the pouch with the mysterious book.

-

Scott pushes a piece of hair behind his ear, rolls up his sleeves for the third time. He’s just narrowly dodged away from a soldier viciously slashing about with his sword, hidden briefly behind a tree that he had once read a history book under.

He’s in the midst of the battle, and he really doesn’t have any sort of control over all of the snow and ice, and he hadn’t carried any other weapon, so he's been trying to avoid just about everyone—

“Scott!”

He whips around—

Gem.

He’d seen her face back then, stone-like and motionless, her hair white, her body slumped in a way that clearly communicated she wouldn’t be getting up again any time soon.

He was certain he’d killed her when she wouldn’t respond to fWhip’s shaking.

But now, she’s alive. She’s alive and moving and breathing—and she’s hurrying toward him across the battlefield that used to be a very lovely park, her bag outstretched.

“You’re going to get him now, aren’t you?” she asks breathlessly, shoving her bag into Scott’s chest. It ices over as he accepts it.

“The crystal’s in there, and one of the boots—we couldn’t find the other,” she tells him with a grimace. “We’re really doing it this time, right?”

Scott just stares at her, his arms burning where her fingers had brushed them.

She’s okay.

He’s spent so many nights remembering that final moment, when the ice exploded out of him and she collapsed, when he barely had a moment to mourn before he was gone, too.

She’s here now, and there’s a bruise on her temple and her red hair is coming out its braid, and her face is smudged with dust, and she’s grinning and so very alive.

It feels good to know that he didn’t kill one of his friends.

Scott opens the bag, and sure enough, the crystal is sparkling within, a familiar, hated boot squished in next to it.

“Well?”

Scott looks back up at Gem, at the hope shining in her eyes, at the smile that he never thought he’d see again.

Does he tell her that he’s dying?

That she’ll have to go through it again in a matter of hours, at most?

Does he prepare her in some small way, or give her a couple of moments of freedom from the grief?

Scott doesn’t have time to make a decision, however, because something to the left crashes.

They both turn, toward the church, not too far away but far enough—

It happens as if in slow motion, crashing through the rubble and still-standing bricks, straightening to full height as stone cascades off it and any people nearby flee.

There’s a monster bursting through the remains of the collapsed wall.

A monster.

Hasn’t enough happened?

The monster is blue, and scaly, and twelve feet tall at least, with long pink hair that tangles down its shoulders and covers its face. It stumbles out of the church, stretches a little, and immediately grabs a Mythland soldier with both claws and chucks him as far as it can.

“What in the world—?” Gem gasps, running toward the monster.

As fun as it sounds to run directly toward the killer lizard thing, Scott decides to turn the other way, looping Gem’s bag over his other shoulder so it doesn't bang against his satchel. The monster, luckily, keeps heading down the path, towards the city itself and not toward his palace, which overlooks the entire city from its place beyond the church.

Scott heads that way, scaling the ivy trellises on the low wall between the gardens and his palace grounds, where already the battle has spread. There’s soldiers and Rivendellian rebels fighting right and left, and horrible black-and-red flags (hung in the place of Scott’s typical blue and gold) have been torn down and trampled, like rags under the feet of the battle.

Scott dodges through the fight—he isn’t sure where he’s trying to get to, just somewhere away, somewhere he can maybe pray for the strength to face his death with dignity—

There’s a storm coming. A snowstorm, judging by the dropping temperature and the little flurries that fall before Scott’s eyes. The land round about is growing even darker, the clouds above looming more and more threateningly.

Scott shoves past a falling soldier, stumbles over an uneven chunk of frozen ground, straightens and continues—

A flash of lightning, followed by a rumble of thunder—

He’s there.

Oh, no.

Xornoth is right there, up ahead maybe . . . maybe forty meters, waiting.

Staring at Scott.

His eyes are maroon pits of nothing, his skin grey and distorted. His blackened lips are stretched into a smile, his long, matted hair falling down around his shoulders. Again on his head is that horrid, dripping crown of antlers, in such opposition to the golden antlers in Scott’s satchel.

He is doom, he is death, and Scott can taste it on the frosty air.

This is the end.

Scott retrieves Aeor’s crown from the Codmade satchel at his side, sets it carefully on his head. Lightning flashes again—Xornoth is closer, red mist rolling out around his feet, spreading across the grounds.

The fighting gradually comes to a standstill—some unspoken beckon brings all eyes toward them, shifting in their formations until there's a good crowd of onlookers surrounding them, watching. Waiting.

Scott doesn’t have a weapon. With Jimmy’s hand in his, he hasn’t needed one—he’s been one.

But Jimmy isn’t here.

And Scott is going to die.

At least Jimmy won't have to see it.

He squares his shoulders, fumbles in Gem’s bag for a moment, extracting the crystal, cool and heavy in the palm of his hand. He lets her satchel fall, ignoring the boot within.

Xornoth actually laughs, the sound barely carrying to Scott over the growing wind.

“You’re going to try that again?” he calls, slowly striding toward Scott, each step deliberate, more mist clouding out with every thud of his clunky boots against the ground. “It failed, brother. Why would it work now?”

Exactly Scott’s question. But he doesn't really have a choice, at this point. It’s not like he can run from the demon.

The wind whistles in Scott’s ears, almost like the ringing of the earlier explosion.

This is it.

Xornoth draws his sword with a shiiing—black, and, like his crown, dripping. He didn’t have a sword before, back on the windswept plateau, did he?

Scott swallows back the cold fear in his throat at being run through with that sword, darkness spilling into his insides, but he puts up one hand, ready to send a burst of ice or something—

People are screaming, yelling over the wind—

There isn’t any ice—

Scott’s hair is whipped into his eyes by the wind and he can’t see much but he sees Xornoth come forward, sword ready to strike—

He can’t move, his feet are literally frozen to the ground—

He squints his eyes shut, dear Aeor please—

Something warm collides with Scott, holding him in a suddenly-warm (warm, home, his Jimmy) hug and he hears a sound kind of like a squnch followed by a gasp in his ear.

The wind dies—not calm, not dwindling, but sharply, leaving silence and the sound of Scott’s heaving breaths and thudding heart.

He opens his eyes to golden, too-long hair, and he feels just barely like he has a tenuous hold on his curse.

He feels warm.

Scott leans back just the slightest bit. Jimmy’s right here, and maybe it’s selfish, but he just wants to see his beloved once more before he dies.

Jimmy’s pale lips tremble as he gives Scott a small smile.

Blood drips from the corner of his mouth.

Jimmy is holding him, and Scott looks past his shoulder to Xornoth right there, holding. . . .

The sword in Xornoth’s hands is buried in Jimmy’s back, and Scott looks down—the point of it is sticking out of Jimmy’s gut, shining with blood. His tunic is rapidly becoming soaked with blood, and Scott realizes that Jimmy is less hugging him and more collapsing onto him.

He’s going to throw up.

He’s going to sob.

Jimmy is dying right in front of him, and Scott can do nothing but hold him.

Xornoth catches Scott’s eye, smirks, and twists the sword.

Jimmy grunts, eyes fluttering closed.

Horror wells up in Scott—horror and anger, cold and terrible, and the snow begins to fall properly as lightning flashes against the dark clouds.

His betrothed is dying in his arms—Jimmy threw himself in the way of the sword to save Scott and now he’s dying, he’s dying again, Jimmy is dying in his arms—

“Scott,” Jimmy breathes, trembling against him. “Scott . . . the sword. . . .”

“I know,” Scott says, frantic, not sure where to put his hands or what to do because everything sounds like it’s coming from underwater and he feels sick, he doesn’t know how to help, “it’s okay, I’ll get the sword out, you’ll be okay—”

“No,” Jimmy interrupts, the sharp nails of his left hand digging weakly into Scott’s shoulder. “Take the . . . the Rune Sword, Scott. . . . It’s time. . . .”

Scott’s eyes catch on the hilt of that sword that Jimmy always wears on his back, that he doesn’t unbuckle even to sleep, the one with the sparkling runes carved into the leather grip.

Xornoth notices it, too. His face goes slack with shock—and maybe a little fear—

In one fluid motion, Scott reaches around Jimmy and withdraws the sword from its sheath with a rring!

The effect is immediate.

Deep inside, the broken parts slide together perfectly with a satisfying click. A tingling spreads down Scott’s limbs, the ice around his ankles melting instantly.

His chest feels like it’s going to burst with something close to elation. Everything feels so—so right, so whole.

He feels like he can take in a full breath without fear that his soul will crack apart.

He feels like there’s a little warmth in his bones—not that the frost is melting, but that it’s a proper part of him.

He’d described it, once, as a door. A door that he had to push against with all his might to keep it shut, and he only had the strength to do so when with Jimmy.

That wasn’t quite right.

It isn’t a door. It’s a piece to a puzzle that has finally been recovered, set in place in the center of his chest.

He feels like everything is right.

He feels powerful.

Snow whirls around him, and he raises the rune sword.

Xornoth tugs his own sword out of Jimmy (who slides to the ground and lays there, crumpled) and raises it, more in a fighting stance than an execution this time.

Scott moves more on instinct than anything else—and not his own. The instinct of someone from long ago, someone who once wielded this very blade against Exor’s Champion.

He parries Conal’s—Xornoth’s attack, swinging the sword like he was born for it. He was trained with a sword, wasn’t he? Long ago—years—centuries—

He steps into Xornoth's space, keeps walking him back—Xornoth is definitely concerned, now, and it’s as if power is literally radiating down his entire body from the crown of antlers. This feels right, this is perfect, his every vein and nerve are singing in perfect harmony—

Alinar attacks relentlessly, frost curling down the sword, illuminating sparkling runes on the blade. The ground beneath them has become ice, and the demon slips with every shuffling step back and he was made for this. He swings and blocks and steps like it’s all a great dance choreographed by the gods, perfectly in time with his God on High, and the music within him swells as he spins Conal around, steps too close to him, and pushes him to the ground, kicking out his knee.

“Please,” Conal-Exor-Xornoth gasps from the ground, his sword fallen to the side, “please . . . Aeor, have mercy. . . .”

“This is mercy,” Alinar-Aeor-Scott says, and he drops the crystal onto the demon’s shoulder before plunging the sword through it, dropping to his own knees to drive it as far as possible.

The crystal ripples as the sword passes through like water, and straight into the demon’s shoulder—

Scott screams, it burns, his arm—

Conal screeches as well, writhes on the ground where the sword has him pinned, red mist is bursting out of him and slowly being absorbed by the crystal and it hurts, it’s as if a sword has cleaved through his own shoulder but Alinar holds on, he has to save his people—

And then it’s over.

The crystal lands on empty, frozen ground, now purely red.

The demon is gone.

It hurts too much to keep going.

Scott had fallen to his knees to push the sword into Xornoth, and now he falls the rest of the way.

He slumps to the ground, sword under him, and knows no more.

-

It nudges at his cheek, hairy and soft, and Scott’s eyelids flutter as his vision blurs and clears, barely focusing on the stag’s noble muzzle.

Scott lets out a breath, short and shallow. His whole body aches, from the tip of his forehead down to his toes, and he cannot even find the strength to raise his head, see his injuries.

For a moment, it seems that blood streams down from between the stag’s antlers, as it so often has.

He’s lying on the forest floor, spongy mud and soft grass under him.

It gives him a moment of vertigo—usually he looks down on the ground, no?

Then the stag speaks, its white eyes fixed on him. It doesn’t move its mouth, just stares at him as Scott hears its words echo through his head.

“Ni’iun ñe ndie Ndíoxī xi’iun, se’eii. A va’a?”

Scott’s mouth whispers the response.

“Va’a vá.”

The stag huffs, nudges again at his cheek.

“Kunda’avi iniyuu yo’o, se’eii. Kundi yu’u nu takundi’i ña’a, ra kuvi kī’viun ñe ndiviyuu xi’i kūsūnku.”

His eyes roll, just slightly, as the stag blurs in his vision.

“Va’á và,” his lips breathe. “Tixa’viniu.”

“Kūsūn, se’eii.”

-

Scott’s eyelids are almost too heavy to open.

His body aches, somewhere not quite beyond the realm of consciousness. It feels. . . .

He isn’t awake. Not really. Just drifting toward wakefulness, the pain more present with every passing moment.

There are strange, oddly-shaped words on the tip of his tongue.

The way his body is laid is beginning to be uncomfortable. He shifts a little to see if it’s a better position, and it is for a moment before becoming exponentially worse, so he shifts back to how he’d been.

Where is he?

(A forest floor?)

His first thought is Jimmy’s little tent out in the woods, but whatever he’s lying on is far more comfortable than Jimmy’s worn bedroll. And his second thought is the Rivendell infirmary, but he banishes that thought from his mind as soon as it appears. There’s no way that would be possible.

Maybe it’s just a really soft patch of ground?

Scott forces his eyes open, blinks a couple of times to adjust. It’s very . . . white, he supposes. Very clean.

Very familiar.

This . . .this is the Rivendell infirmary, isn’t it?

He tilts his head up as much as he can, looks around himself.

It’s rather dark. Only one lamp is burning on a bedside table across the room, all the curtains drawn.

And beside him, snoring in a chair, is Pix.

Of all people, Pix isn’t really the one that he expected to see here. He didn’t really expect to see anyone. Usually when he wakes up in the infirmary, he’s all alone.

Why is he in Rivendell?

It takes a moment of retracing his steps—traveling to the Ocean Kingdom, getting sidetracked, taking all night to fly to Rivendell, crashing his own funeral—to get mentally caught up.

He remembers being . . . more. More than himself. Those moments are odd in his memory, as if in slow-motion, and he doesn’t quite feel connected to them.

Did he . . . did he defeat Xornoth?

No.

Against all odds, did he do it?

Did Jimmy die?

“Pix,” Scott croaks, swallowing. His throat is so dry. “Pix.”

Pix starts, sits up properly. “What? What is it?”

He blinks several times, pushes his shaggy hair out of his face (his crown is nowhere in sight) and scans the room until his eyes fall on Scott.

“Oh,” Pix says, eyes widening with clear surprise. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”

Scott’s really not sure how he’s feeling. He feels sleepy, for the most part. Sore. Like his limbs are weighed down. “I don’t know. Jimmy? Is . . . is Jimmy okay?”

Pix smiles, just the slightest bit, absolutely still surprised. “Of course. Yes, he’s doing all right. Still healing, I believe—it takes more than a day to recover from a mortal wound, after all. Now, how are you? How is your arm?”

Jimmy’s all right.

Jimmy survived.

They both survived and Xornoth—

“Xornoth—?”

“Defeated.”

“And everyone else?”

Pix chuckles. “Everyone is fine, Scott. Well, Lizzie’s a little . . . different. But there were surprisingly few casualties from the battle, and Rivendell has been reclaimed—I believe Joel tried to claim it for his own, actually, so you may need to be reinstated relatively soon—but you needn’t worry about anything while you recover.”

While he recovers?

Recovers from what?

Why is he in the infirmary? Scott doesn’t remember getting injured. The last part he remembers is—well. . . .

He was different, wasn’t he?

It hurts his head to think about. It’s odd to try and place himself in those final moments, a sword that both was and wasn’t his dancing in his hands, the absolute rightness of the union within him, the fear on his foil’s face.

“How is your arm?” Pix asks again, and Scott looks down at himself.

Lying atop the grey blanket that covers his body, his arms look normal. They don’t feel out of the ordinary. He flexes the fingers of his right hand, then—

Pain shoots down his left arm as he tries to move it, and Scott can’t quite bite back a groan. Now that he’s aware of it, his arm just aches—his shoulder seems to pulse with angry heat, and it’s suddenly all he can do to not just lie his head back on the pillow and cry.

Dear Aeor, it hurts.

He doesn’t remember injuring his shoulder. He doesn’t remember getting hurt at all, but with his battle with Xornoth being so . . . odd (he remembers not being himself, thinking thoughts that didn’t belong to him) so it could have happened, he supposes?

There’s no wrappings on his arm, though. He's still wearing that old tunic that used to belong to Jimmy, and the tan sleeve of his long-sleeved undershirt hasn’t been cut away or rolled up. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.

“What happened to my arm?” Scott asks, doing his best not to panic, when a fresh wave of pain has mostly passed and he can speak without gritting his teeth.

Pix’s eyes are sad, old, and he takes a moment for a deep sigh. “You’re so young, Scott. Alinar was over six hundred when he defeated Conal. You’re just over a hundred.”

A strange statement to make, but not untrue. Scott waits as Pix seems to collect himself, resists the urge to demand more answers. Pix will tell in his own time.

“The sword that belongs to you,” Pix says after a long moment, “is a sword that was crafted by the God of Death for Aeor himself. He used the sword to bind Exor to the Void in the End, and when Conal found Exor and brought part of him back to this world, Alinar wielded the sword to bind him to a crystal. As you did with Xornoth this morning.”

Silence.

What?

“This is all—much information,” Scott says, head spinning a bit—Aeor? The God of Death?—as he tries to figure out what exactly Pix is and isn’t saying. Why does Pix even know these things? “But what does that have to do with my arm?”

“That sword,” continues Pix, “is a binding sword. The runes that adorn it are the magic of the God of Death—it imprints itself on one’s very soul. It bound your magic to you, instead of letting it run wild. And it now has bound Xornoth to the crystal that Gem created.”

Pix sighs, scrubs at his bearded cheek. “The sword could have been more precise, of course. But when two persons already are bound to one another, what the sword does to one will affect the other. And you and your brother have been bound together since before your birth.”

“I—how? Because we’re twins? Or—”

“I don’t wish to worry you with prophecies and the like,” Pix interrupts (which, for the record, sounds like an excuse to Scott). “But know that many have spoken of you, surrounded by the living gods as you are. And since both you and Xornoth have pieces of Alinar and Conal, and Aeor and Exor . . . even without the prophecies, you have been bound.”

That doesn’t make sense. Bindings? Gods?

Does it?

What sort of prophecies is Pix talking about?

“We’re really just lucky Jimmy never accidentally stabbed himself,” Pix mutters. “That would have been bad for you.”

“Sorry?” Pix waves him off. “Oh, nothing. We can discuss it more at another time. Just know that you and Xornoth are bound, and the sword is also binding, and in using the sword to pin Xornoth to the crystal you’ve also pinned your own arm."

He’s what?

“Does my arm still work?” he asks, trying to move his fingers again. His index finger just barely twitches.

“Not well, certainly. And it will hurt for the rest of your days. As far as I’m aware, and not due to his lack of trying, Alinar never discovered a way to regain the use of his own arm without freeing the demon.”

Right.

Um, that’s. . . .

That’s fine. That is absolutely fine. So his arm will always hurt. For the rest of his life, he’s essentially going to be one-handed.

He can process that later.

He’s curious. Terribly, terribly curious. How on earth does Pix know all this? Why has he chosen to tell Scott now, after everything, instead of saving him some time and giving him the answers before any of this happened?

Those questions pale in comparison to his most important concern, of course.

“But Jimmy—”

“Is going to be fine,” Pix finishes, smiling again. “He’ll probably be in to see you in the morning. Now, would you be all right alone? I have some other business to attend to.”

-

It’s maybe two hours later that the infirmary door creaks open again and Scott hurriedly wipes his eyes with his one working arm. He’s a king, and kings don’t cry when something bad happens. And in all honesty, something good happened. Something very good happened. He’s selfish to think of himself in this time.

“Scott.”

Scott’s head shoots up at that achingly beloved voice. “Jimmy,” he whispers desperately.

Jimmy’s standing there, in the doorway to the infirmary.

He’s a little green around the gills, and his green tunic is torn and stained coppery around his stomach, and the shadows under his eyes are deep and waxy, but he’s alive. He’s alive and right there and they made it.

It only takes a moment of staring at each other before Jimmy hurries over to his side (his stride is stilted somewhat, one arm clutched around his stomach) and kisses him.

It’s quick, and not at all deep, and just once Scott wishes they could have a kiss that isn’t urgent and aggressive with the thrill of survival, but it’s Jimmy and it’s kissing, so he supposes he doesn’t mind it too much.

Jimmy only breaks the kiss to pull Scott into a hug, and he smells like river and earth and is very damp, but Scott just hugs him back with his one arm and tries not to cry into his shoulder.

Jimmy’s alive.

They’re both alive, and Xornoth is defeated, and they can finally just be happy.

They made it.

“I can't stay,” Jimmy says, voice muffled against Scott’s shoulder. “Lizzie and I are going to go reclaim the Codlands.”

Scott gives a wet little chuckle. “By yourselves?”

“Honestly, we probably could,” Jimmy laughs. “Have you seen Lizzie yet? She’s massive.”

“Sorry, what?”

Jimmy finally pulls away, eases himself into the chair that Pix had vacated with a bit of a grimace. “Yeah. Apparently she ate this weird, squishy ball thing that she found in an old book? And—”

“No,” Scott groans. She didn’t. “I literally told her—”

“—and it turned her into this huge blue sea monster. So she’s giving me a ride to the Codlands, and we’re going to kick Mythland out once and for all!”

Scott does recall seeing a monster break out of the church during the battle, before choosing to go a different direction. And that was Lizzie? “Is—is she going to turn back?” he asks incredulously.

Jimmy shrugs. “We’ll see. She and I . . . we have a lot to talk about. And Pix said something . . . odd.”

“Did he imply that you’re a figure of legend that had been prophecied about?” asks Scott drily.

Jimmy nods.

“Well, that makes two of us.”

Jimmy grins, looks down at the floor.

It’s quiet for a moment. A comfortable quiet, not strained or awkward or anything of the sort.

Scott takes a moment just to stare at him—at Jimmy’s straw-colored hair, the glimmering scales pushing through the scar tissue on his face, the sharp cut-off of one of his ears, the delicate spindles of the other.

In the low light of the moon’s glow, he’s gorgeous. He’s always gorgeous, of course, but something about the way the light cast from the window falls over his lover’s brow leaves Scott in awe.

Jimmy is beautiful.

Scott’s sorry there was ever a time he hadn’t noticed.

“I’m sorry,” Jimmy says eventually, just as Scott’s mind has turned back to pondering his arm.

“What?”

“For—for everything. For the whole—” Jimmy waves his arms. “You know.”

Slowly, Scott shakes his head.

“Lizzie told me—well, she said it was really hard. And I know it was, but I kind of figured that—well, I’m not that important. I didn’t think anyone would be very sad about my death after a week or so had gone by.”

Jimmy shifts, one hand on the back of his neck; something in Scott’s stomach squirms uncomfortably, something that he’s been resolutely pushing down since that hug that broke his curse.

“And Lizzie—Lizzie didn’t like that. She said that I don’t know what you all felt and went through, and I don't get to decide what you feel. She’s kind of mad at me, now. And I didn’t really understand why you were upset with me at the camp, but I think I’m starting to get it now. So, I’m sorry.”

It does still hurt. Scott can’t just forget crying himself to sleep almost every night. He can’t forget looking at himself in that black veil every morning, his eyes red and heart broken.

But Jimmy’s here.

“I’m not sure I really get it, either,” Scott confesses. He doesn’t, kind of. He had been so terrible with Jimmy, and for what? For being alive? “But . . . she’s right. I—I lost you, Jimmy. I thought I would never see you again. It . . . it was difficult to leave that grief, I think. It was difficult to have it all built up inside, then have the reason taken away. You’re left with all sorts of awful feelings and . . . and no reason to have them. Does that make sense?”

Jimmy doesn’t respond.

But after a moment, he reaches out and takes Scott’s good hand in his, thumb tracing over the back of Scott’s hand.

His stomach flips, just like every time.

“You don’t have to hold my hand everywhere anymore,” Scott says, more for a lack of anything to say than to try and push Jimmy away. “Something about the sword being magic and fixing it, I’m not really sure. But I can control it now.”

Jimmy frowns. “Wait a second—the sword?”

At Scott’s nod, he continues, “Does that mean that it was the sword all along? Because I, like, always had it with me?”

Wait.

Does that actually make some sort of sense?

Scott had thought it was the power of Jimmy’s love, overcoming even the most stubborn of curses, but maybe Jimmy was just a conductor of sorts for the sword, giving Scott a temporary binding whenever they touched.

Scott’s head hurts. They’ve won, yes (and how wonderful it is to think those words), but each of his current issues feel beyond comprehension. His whole body kind of aches with the need to sleep, the need to process everything that’s happened, the need to just take a break.

“What time is it?” he asks idly. Jimmy shrugs.

“Past midnight. I’ve been asleep for a while, so I’m not really sure.”

So has he.

Well, he’s spent enough time resting. He needs to get up, organize his country, help the injured, properly send fWhip’s army packing.

Jimmy tries to push him back down when he sits up, but Scott swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, his left arm hanging limply (and hurting quite a lot) at his side.

That's going to take some getting used to.

Dear Aeor, he desperately wants to lie back down and rest until the end of time (or, at least, until Jimmy returns from the Codlands). He doesn’t give in to the longing, though, just squints his eyes shut for a very long time and eventually takes a step.

He really doesn’t want to sleep, anyways. Memories (bad, sharp, unforgiving) push from the sterilized scent of the infirmary, and now that he’s stood he just wants to leave.

He doesn’t want nightmares.

“A king never rests,” he says when Jimmy tries to convince him to lie down. “There’s a lot of work to do.”

“Let Pix and Katherine handle it, okay? Sleep—”

“But you’re going to be—”

“Lizzie and I will be fine, you can—”

“I don’t want to sleep without you,” Scott manages (which was absolutely not what he meant to say), and Jimmy goes a little pink in the cheeks.

“And I need to explain some things, and organize, and . . . there’s business that requires me. Just as there’s business that requires you.”

Jimmy shakes his head, gives him a gorgeous little smile. “Right. Just don’t overdo it, okay? I’ve got to go, but I love you.”

Jimmy leaves with another soft kiss—and Jimmy’s alive, Scott thought he’d gotten over the novelty of it weeks ago, but Jimmy’s alive and they’re back in Rivendell and they have their whole future ahead of them—

And then he leaves the palace as well, stepping outside to look over the kingdom, once again rightfully his.

Even in the dim light of the night, Scott can see the destruction. The very walls of the palace has been pulled down, rubble all over the grounds. The gardens are wartorn, the grass stained red with blood or demolished tentacles, and there are people here and there, cleaning or carrying away bodies. The full moon shines upon the destroyed church down the hill, illuminating its crumbled walls in a holy glow.

Scott limps down the stairs, down, down to the palace grounds—he picks through patches of destroyed grass, abandoned weapons and armor, exhausted people helping others. He walks down the lawn, down to that spot where the grass is so beaten down that it forms a clear circle where soldiers had paused to watch, all eyes turned toward where the final battle had taken place.

And in the grass near the center of the circle, he finds a cloudy red crystal, the size of his palm.

Scott picks it up, weighs it in his right hand.

Then he puts it in his pocket.

~

The language used to represent the language of the gods is Mixteco.

[translation:

“You have the power of god with you, my son. How do you feel?”

“Bad.”

“You are my beloved, child. Follow me in all things, and you will enter into my rest.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Rest, my child.”

End translation.]

[emmett6]

i am being attacked by antis.

this is emmett. emmettnet, emmettverse, emmettland, emmettundead, emmettlab. whichever blog you knew me from.

i am a whump creator. i've been in the whump community for a few years now. and now, i am unable to share my work with the community on here because people are mass reporting me for being a proshipper, and Tumblr keeps deleting my blogs as a result.

(if that isn't the reason why, i would be more than happy to get the explanation from @staff that i've been asking for.)

now, that is speculation on my part based on the timing of each termination (it's after i put my pinned post in the whump tags).

but here are the facts:

months ago, i became comfortable enough to share proshipping content. seeing as how every other artist would link their nsfw work on here, i thought it was acceptable for me to do the same so long as the preview image did not violate any rules.

an anon asked if i was a proshipper, and i said i didn't ascribe to that label*, but i agreed with the philosophy.

*i don't have any choice BUT to use it now because my posts get removed for describing what the content is

note that this anon asked multiple people in the whump community if they were proshippers. it was the same person each time, same copy-and-pasted responses.

i kept posting my proshipping content, all with links and extensive content warnings.

i started getting anon hate.

my account was terminated. after further reflection and rereading the terms of service AGAIN, i figured maybe links are not allowed and so i switched to DM only.

this time, the anon hate was consistent. every week was something new. every day felt like bracing myself to open my inbox. i kept anon on, since i have so many people who feel uncomfortable sending asks off anon and didn't want to take away their safe space.

months pass. i go on hiatus for all of July. i find out someone stole my old nsfw art and reposted their edited versions of it to rule34, a site that i never wanted my work to be on. this person waited until the exact starting day of my hiatus to do this.

i come back to more anon hate in my inbox.

suddenly, out of nowhere, my account is terminated again.

i make a new blog. more anon hate. another termination.

lather, rinse, repeat.

i stopped doing DM only stuff. i figured, if i just link my other platforms and only post safe things on Tumblr, there's nothing in the rules against that. everyone has links to their social media.

i still get terminated. and again, i keep getting terminated after i post my pinned post in the whump tags. which -- speculation again -- leads me and others to think that these antis are stalking the whump tags, waiting for me to show up so they can mass report me and get me terminated.

i have NO idea what they would report, aside from claiming i'm trying to "dodge being blocked". which, i'm not. in fact, i say every single time i come back that i WANT people to block me if they need to.

but regardless, it keeps happening.

i'm losing a place i considered home.

i'm being forced out of a community on here i love so dearly.

and you want to know something funny? for some strange reason, i'm unable to block my anons. yup. an 'error' message comes up. and i'm apparently unable to report them too -- like reporting the one who called me a 'tumblr tranny' and said i would 'always be a woman' for hate speech. oops, sorry. error message.

by now, i've been called evil. told to listen to my intrusive thoughts. told that i should be on a watch list. told that it's disgusting that someone's mutuals still interact with me. told that i have no place in the whump community.

i know that's not true.

i'm so sick and tired of being treated like this. i'm tired of being dehumanized. and i'm disgusted with this behavior.

at this point, i'm just screaming as many times as i can. i'll keep losing blogs, because i know my attackers will read this and just keep on reporting me. what do they have to lose? nothing. they don't have enough of a conscience to care. and why should they? clearly, i'm a monster. i'm a piece of shit. i don't deserve basic respect, and i apparently don't deserve to keep my 'platform'. to stay in my community and to keep my livelihood.

my discord is emmettnet. send me a DM if you don't want to lose me, because there is no point in following me repeatedly just for every blog to be terminated.

if you want to reblog this to spread the word and show your support, i would be eternally grateful. but i understand if you choose not to; i don't want anyone to be subjected to what i'm going through.

thank you for reading.

[soapisahimbo]

NSFW ABC - Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick Edition

Here we go! Mister Garrick! I thought this one would be difficult, but I'm actually quite happy with how it turned out, and I hope you are too!

Contains heavy smut elements, so minors stay away!

I will be working on a few more things for you, being some non-requested headcanons, Rodolfo Parra's NSFW ABC and jealous!Ghost NSFW headcanons, so I hope you look forward to it!

warnings: senseless smut, detailed descriptions, gaz is a horny little shit, hinted at female anatomy

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex):

He'll spend a moment or two just panting into your skin, stroking his hands over your hips and thighs while his dick is still inside you until the high has worn off, then he shifts to look at you and asks you how you're feeling. Kisses you gently, but passionately, and you'll feel him press himself closer to you once more, his tongue slipping into your mouth; unless you want this to lead into another round or two, you're going to have to redirect his attention. Break his train of thought by pecking him on the nose instead or tickling his sides and he'll get the gist. He'll chuckle out an apology before gently pulling out and leaning back to take a good look at you.

His next course of action depends on the time of day - if it's in the morning and you have plans for the day, shower it is. If no plans, whether you taking a shower or he just gets a warm towel to clean you off before you go to make breakfast together depends solely on if you can still walk. If one of you (most likely you) is out of commission, the one who can still feel their legs goes to make breakfast in bed. If it's later in the evening you'll most likely settle down in the sheets and stay wrapped around each other, kissing and touching until you fall asleep. This will probably, most definitely lead to another heated session once you wake up in the morning.

Washing each other off is almost casual and quite relaxing, and it feels like you're just hanging out with your best friend. Your very intimate best friend with wandering hands, a teasing smirk and an extensive knowledge of all your weakest spots.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s):

Having a strong and capable body is incredibly important in his line of work, and he usually doesn't give much thought to his appearance if there are more important things to keep track of. But he knows that he's an attractive man, he knows that others look at him and wish that they had either him or his body, and he definitely knows that you watch him closely when he walks around, be it fully clothed or shirtless or with just a towel around his hips. If you have your own favourite part of his body, you can bet your ass he'll use it against you. Making you blush brings him endless amusement.

But if he's going to pick something on himself, if he really had to, he'd probably say his arms, chest and back. He's leaner than for example Ghost, but he's strong, resilient and balanced and it shows. He loves flustering you with his body; he wraps his arms tightly around you, or pins you to the wall and cages you in with his arms at either side of your head, and he grabs your hands at random and places them onto his chest and slowly guides them down his torso, down his abdomen, before smirking and just turning to walk away. Likes turning around and checking the scratches you've left on him in the mirror, and he will definitely tease you about that, too - nothing you do is sacred.

On you, he loves your neck, your chest and your hips. His hands never stay in one place - he strokes and caresses and squeezes any part that he can reach, but he finds that they're drawn to these parts more than most. He likes the way you feel in his hands, and as much of a little shit-tease as he is, he simply loves the feeling of burying his face in your neck, especially in non-sexual moments. He's an absolute devil with marking you up though, and if you don't feel like wearing a turtleneck for the next week or so, you'll need to stay on your guard.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically):

He loves cumming in your mouth if you let him, specifically on your tongue. He doesn't care if you swallow it or not, but just seeing you with your tongue out, with his cum dripping either off of the tip of it or down your throat; don't be surprised if he's ready to go again. Other than that, cumming on your tummy or ass also makes him feel like he's marked his territory, in a sense. He's by no means the jealous or possessive type, but he just likes knowing that only he gets to see you like that. Especially if he gets to spread your cheeks and cum just against the rim of your hole.

Will definitely cum in you if you let him or want him to, but he honestly likes seeing it on you more, and frankly, he wants your cum on him in one way or another as well.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs):

Once, a while before the two of you started dating, when you were still just best friends, he caught you masturbating. He didn't mean to, he simply opened the door and there you were, half naked in bed and with your hand down in your underwear. He knew he should've closed the door the instant he realized what you were doing, left you to your own devices and forget he even saw anything. But he couldn't bring himself to do it.

He watched, with wide eyes, heated cheeks and clenched fists and a new sudden hardness below the belt as you brought yourself to climax, never noticing he was there. He couldn't help but take note of how you shivered, how your legs clamped together, how your hips bucked up and how your back arched when you came and he just knew instantly that that image would be burned into his brain forever. He quietly stepped back, closed the door and rushed away as he tried his absolute best to ignore what he just saw and how he felt about it, but he was helpless.

For the following couple of weeks, he could barely look at you, which was an insane challenge considering that you were one of his closest friends. But that image would pop back into his head every time you came into view, and he had brought himself to climax to it far more times than he would have liked to admit. Any time you spoke, he'd remember the sounds you made and he couldn't stop his mind from wandering, imagining what it would be like if he could make you shiver like that; if he could ever have you make those noises for him and him alone.

You could tell something was up, but he kept his mouth shut. When you thought that maybe you had done something wrong, he didn't confess, but he assured you that that was most certainly not the case and gave himself a mental slap for letting his fantasies get the better of him. There was definitely a change in your friendship, you could tell, but he refused to let you believe it was your fault. It was during a party, when you bumped his hip with yours and made a dirty joke that the floodgates opened, and he pulled you close and kissed you. He confessed, not what he had seen, but what he felt for you and how much he wanted you.

The first time he finally got to put his thoughts to reality, he was transfixed and eager, demanding that you show and tell him everything that makes you tick.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?):

It's safe to say that he's got a fair amount of experience - fooled around a bit during college and had a partner when he first joined the military, but it didn't quite work out. Once he joined SAS, he put all of his mind into his training and his missions. Considering that he's the youngest in 141, it hasn't been quite as long for him as it may have been for some of the others, and he's no stranger to one-night-stands, but he eventually found that it wasn't worth his time and energy.

Once he met you, he completely ignored any offers from other people; he'd much rather hang out with you, even if it was just platonically at first, and now that he has you in every way imaginable he doesn't need anyone else.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying):

Go on, baby, get on top. He likes watching you, likes it when you take charge, loves when you ride the absolute life out of him. He'll hold himself off to the best of his abilities, wanting you to cum on his cock if you can, but if he cums before you he'll tell you to either get up on his face or lay down so he can give you "the good stuff". He's also more than happy - almost too happy - to take over if it's starting to become more and more of a challenge for you to keep the pace. Says it's to reward you as he switches the two of you around and wraps your legs around him; "you did so good, baby, you're so good."

He's probably the biggest advocate of cuddle-sex; #1 cuddle-fucker if you will. Laying on your sides, either facing each other so he can hold your leg over his hip, or spooning is a huge thing for him. He'll keep his lips and tongue on you as much as he physically can, moaning into your skin. Getting out of his grip will be a challenge, both because of his strength and because he begs you not to. Either let him give it to you, or give it to him.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.):

The two of you were best friends way before you became a couple and you still are, so inside jokes, snarky comments, bickering and general sass is par for the course. Pinching, poking, teasing, tickling, you name it. There will most likely be lots of laughter between the two of you and there's not really a limit to what sets you off. If one of you goes, the other follows. Weird noises, dumb faces, an out-of-the-blue joke, an unexpected interruption, bumping heads, tripping and stumbling, getting stuck, pulling a muscle - you have had to stop fucking just because you can't stop laughing far too many times to count. This never kills the mood though. Once the laughter has died down, it's almost like the residual giggles turn you on even more and the sex just gets that much better.

That of course doesn't mean he doesn't have his serious moments. He's happy to have you in his life and he wants you to know this. He seeks you out when he's had a rough day or a mission has taken a bit more out of him than usual, only wanting to be held by you, and he will insist on doing the same for you if you're going through something as well.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.):

Much like the hair on his head, but shorter. Black, semi-thick and tightly curled. It's spread out just above his pubic mound - not quite a happy trail but almost - and down the upper part of his inner thighs, sticking close to the skin. He usually does a full trim before deployment because it grows kind of slow, and then once more when he comes back home, but he doesn't do much with it during the time in between other than keeping it clean.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect):

Remember, #1 cuddle-fucker. He lives fully and wholly for cuddles that turn into sex that turn back into cuddles and then back into sex. Of course he doesn't expect it every time, nor does he try to initiate it every time you cuddle, but it's for sure one of his favourite things. He's in no way awkward with affection and will look deep into your eyes when he tells you that he loves you.

He sighs into your ear as he holds you close and slowly ruts into you, he whispers all his love into your skin even if you can't hear him, he writes tiny little messages with the tips of his fingers even if you can't see them. You're not always aware of his professions of love, but he feels a need to get them out there anyway. He just wants to make sure you know how he feels about you.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon):

It depends on the situation. If he's out on the field, he'll hold off without a problem. He has a steely determination and solid focus and if he thinks about you, it's mostly in the light of him just missing you and wanting to be back home. If he's in the safety of his own room back at base though, he jerks off nearly every night. It's a good way to get rid of tension, and it's a way for him to indulge in his fantasies about you after having to stay sharp for a longer period of time. He has some pictures and videos of you tucked away somewhere safe that he only takes out if he's 100% sure the coast is clear (Soap almost stumbled upon a photo of you in Gaz's wallet once and Gaz nearly snapped his neck for it). If he can, he might send you a video or a picture of his own, letting you know that he's thinking of you, as well as giving you an idea of what's to come once he returns.

If he's jerking off at home, it's mostly to tease you or because you're not there and he's impatient. You usually catch him in the act, and depending on how long he's been going, he'll either give you a smirk and ask if you're going to "lend him a hand" (pun fully intended) or he'll beg you to help him out and let him fuck you. It is highly recommended you use this against him.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks):

Not the kinkiest of the bunch, but is surprisingly into getting tied up and used by you. He'll grin at you and say things like, "you think you can take me, baby?" and while he might never ever openly confess this, there's a part of him that greatly enjoys when you put him in his place, so to speak; when you remind him that you can make just as much a mess of him as he can of you. Mark him up as much as you can, maybe in places that will be difficult for him to cover - if he whines, just tell him it's payback for all the times he's done it to you.

Matter of fact, he likes it when the two of you challenge each other. Who can hold off the longest? Who can make the other cum first or the hardest? Who will give in to the other first, who will touch the other first, who will beg first? Both of you will use the dirtiest tricks that you have to your advantage and each time is a real coin toss of who wins. But it makes it that much more fun and to be honest, losing isn't really all that bad either.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do):

He's a fiend, and there's not really any limit to where he'll turn on his devilish charm and try to seduce his way into your pants. He does prefer the coziness of the bed overall, but he's not above sneaking you into a bathroom or a broom closet if he gets the chance. Is actually a pretty big fan of outdoor sex and wants to go hiking with you just to whisk you away into the woods somewhere where the wilderness will be your only witness. Also likes going out on shorter roadtrips just so you can pull over in some secluded spot and have some good old-fashioned car sex.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going):

He is incredibly domestic. He likes cooking and cleaning with you, likes curling up on the couch to watch a movie with you and just likes spending time with you in general. He doesn't always have mischievous intents when he starts touching you, sometimes it's just the safety and the feeling of being close with his friend and lover that warms him up in the best of ways. Any competitions between you two more often than not have some flirty or sexual undertones and you spend most of your times just pushing each other's buttons. Tease him, flirt with him, throw dirty jokes and innuendos his way and it'll have him more hot and bothered than he'd care to admit.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs):

Absolutely no humiliation or degradation. To him, sex is a moment to indulge in each other, to feel good and to connect. If he heard anyone else call you something degrading, he would already have ripped their face off before they'd gotten the last syllable out, so the idea of willingly and deliberately doing something like that in any situation, even with your consent, is nowhere near his comfort zone. Things like choking are also a bit of a no-go, because the last thing he wants his to hurt you.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.):

He's not really the type to spend ages and ages with his face between your legs (he prefers to do that with his fingers), but he does do it often, usually when you least expect it. He asks if he can go down on you at any random moment, like in the middle of a movie or while you're making something to eat, or before you're heading out. He gets you off once or twice in rather quick succession and will give you a wolfish grin as you're recovering from the sudden onslaught of his tongue. He'll crawl up to your face to kiss you deeply and depending on how you decide to take it further, he will either pull his pants down to fuck you, or he'll just spread your legs and go back down once more to get a couple more quick orgasms out of you. Wants you to look at him while he does it though, or he'll use some of the dirtiest tricks he knows to get your attention (as if he doesn't already have it). He definitely doesn't mind getting you off a few more times before he even unbuckles his belt.

He also doesn't expect you to spend any exorbitant amount of time sucking him off, but he surely isn't going to turn the offer down. Grabs you firmly, but carefully by the hair and watches intently as you move your mouth up and down. He kinda wishes he could see it go down your throat if you can take him that deep. He sighs and coos and praises you with whatever words he can form, but mostly he'll just stare with his mouth hanging open, not even bothering to try and hold back any moans that escape him. He'll get a bit whiny once he starts nearing his climax, but leaves himself entirely in your hands (and mouth) and throws his head back once you work him over that edge. He'll shake and quiver once he cums and he'll hold your head in place until he's calmed down, and then wants to see his cum in your mouth before you swallow it.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.):

Honestly, you're in charge. He himself usually goes for a rather quick pace, one that will have both of you panting in sweating in a matter of moments, but he loves the way you do it. He'll only tell you to slow down if he's trying to hold out a little longer and needs to catch his breath, but a part of him truly relishes in the moment if you keep it up. If he himself slows down, it's more often than not to tease you. However fast or slow, hard or soft you want him to fuck you, he's got it. One thing that you can always count on is that he likes to grind his whole length into you, no matter the pace of it.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.):

It's a pretty regular occurrence in your sex life. He loves the longer sessions, but every now and then he claims that the two of you might need "something to hold you off" for a little while. If he wasn't so goddamn good at it, you'd smack that smirk off of his face every time he came up with a new euphemism for it (so far, he's used ones like "an appetizer before the big meal", "a little preview", "dipping the toes", "sampling the goods" and "a sneak peek"). The type to tug at you and say "give me a taste before we head out, yeah?"

Getting pushed up against the wall with his hand slipping past your underwear or suddenly having his face press itself in between your thighs or having him press himself up against you to whisper all sorts of filth into you ears - it's to be expected at this point. With your consent, of course.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.):

While he likes to push it, he'd never actually put the two of you in any direct danger or unsafe situation, and he trusts that you wouldn't either. For example, the risk of getting caught when he fingers you while stuck in a traffic jam is certainly there, but the windows are tinted and he's making sure no one's actually paying attention. He's not the kinkiest or the roughest, but he'd still want to establish some safewords, just for that extra layer of safety.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?):

Give him a moment, he'll make it last a lifetime. If he wants it to last, it'll be 1, maybe 2 long rounds where he'll go slow and steady, no rushing, just good vibes. If he's feeling more heated and horny, it'll be about 4 shorter rounds, give or take, that will have you inclined to ask him how he's still going. He doesn't necessarily stop there though - there can be several rounds spread out over an entire day if you have the time for it. He never expects anything though - if you're not up for it, he'll hold himself off. He might jerk off, but most of the time if you're not feeling it, neither is he.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?):

Oh, he's definitely up for it. Wants you to give him a show first, especially if you've gotten something new. It's not like he's just going to sit there and watch though - he has to touch you, lay next to you and talk you through it, asking you how it feels and if you like it. "Is it good, baby? Does it feel as good as me?"

Definitely likes cock rings, just because it can make him last that much longer, and that ache is a sweet one. Unless you're in a mood for torture and get him one that vibrates - he won't know whether to love you or absolutely hate you for it.

He'll never turn down new ways to have some fun with you, and toys are a great way to really liven things up. If you use them while he's away you, he wants you to send him pictures and videos if you can. If not, you need to at least tell him about it. Or don't. Or do. He can't really decide on whether or not that's a good idea, because if he can't see or hear you while he knows for a fact that you're getting off without him, it'll have his mind running like a highspeed train.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease):

It's practically his middle name at this point. Switch "Gaz" out for "Unfair" and there you have it. He loves driving you up the wall when he knows you can't act out on your desires and there will be a ear-splitting grin deserving of a slap plastered on his face if you get even the slightest bit flustered. He's the type to act all seductive and heated and lean in to kiss you, but then turn at the last second and walk away as if nothing happened. Because of this, you have every right in the world to give him a taste of his own medicine.

He likes it when you turn things around on him, but that doesn't mean you should show him any mercy, nor does it mean it doesn't drive him insane.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.):

Moans, sighs, whimpers, swears - he's not holding back. He can just about stay quiet if you're fooling around where someone else might hear you, but he likes letting you know that he's enjoying this. But he wants to know you're enjoying this too. If you're trying to hold back on those sweet, sweet noises without any actual reason, it'll almost offend him. Unless it's some sort of challenge, in which case, bring it on.

He's talkative, and he speaks in ways that would make even the boldest and most dirty-minded people fluster. He can have you weak in the knees from just his words alone, and he's sent you over edge several times through the things he moans into your ear while he fucks you, and you might need to gag him if you want to render him unable to use that against you.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character):

You were sitting in the couch, chatting with a friend on the phone about unimportant happenings and plans to meet up when Kyle took a seat next to you. He mumbled out a "tell them I said hi", but didn't say much else. As the conversation with your friend dragged on, he started to get restless. You felt his hand on your thigh and you didn't think much of it at first, until it started to slide further up. You threw a playful glare his way, but he acted clueless. When he carefully cupped his hand between your legs, you covered the phone and whispered, "What are you doing?!"

He simply grinned and slid his hand into your pants. "Don't mind me, baby. Just act like I'm not here." Luckily your friend was too engrossed in their own story to notice your sudden lack of words as Kyle rubbed at your warmth between your legs. Before long, he slid off the couch and onto his knees, down between your legs, and dragged your pants down along with him. He lifted your knees up and placed teasing kisses along the seam of your underwear as you tried to pay attention to your friend. You tried to speak - or rather whisper - some sense into him when he dragged your underwear down as well and licked teasingly where your inner thighs met with your pubic mound, but to no avail. You were trying to think of excuses to give your friend to hang up when he looked up to you and said, "Like I'm not even here," and then gave a long, slow, wide-tongued lick and you prayed that your friend would never realize that something was amiss.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes):

Somewhere between 5.5-6 inches and nearly perfectly proportionate to the rest of him. Curves upward a bit and to the right, but it honestly just helps him hit the good spots. Is a little bit thicker at the base, but other than that it's pretty even across the rest of his length.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?):

He wants you one way or another practically all the time and he'll have you as much as you'll let him. You can usually tell by his kisses and touches what he wants, and the two of you often get each other in the mood almost automatically. He'll step back in an instant if you tell him that you're not feeling it, but he's nearly always up for it if you approach him with any sort of sexual intent. Rest assured, you will never feel unwanted.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards):

Likes to fall asleep with you wrapped up in his arms. He doesn't fall asleep right away, but usually keeps mumbling about various nothings while stroking your arms or your face. The two of you will usually doze off while talking, your voices and the warmth of your bodies lulling both of you to sleep.

[not-a-perfect-metaphor]

Hi, I've been a fan of J2 for some time now but I've never come across the tin hat fandom (do I call it correctly?) before (i always adored their interactions but never actually considered that they could have an actual romantic relationship that's not just in my mind haha) and I'm intrigued now. Could you please point me in the direction of some masterposts about them? Would love to read more about it! & also about their wives and kids bc I don't quite understand how it would be possible for them to maintain a beard-marriage for so long and also to have kids (??)

Sorry if this was really messy but it's 1am and English is my 2nd language so I'm not exactly capable of forming grammatically correct sentences🙈

Hi, there! 😊❤️

And welcome!

You’re about to start a wild ride into the heart of this decade point five romance between Jared and Jensen that will absolutely have you supergluing your tinhat onto your head just like the rest of us (as is always the case when anyone decides to really delve deeply enough into what’s been going on between the Js ever since their paths merged so many years ago).

A great starting place is going to be Speak the Truth, the site I’ve linked above, which pretty extensively covers 2005-2013, although there’s a lot of reading involved in that, so for some more condensed summaries, I’ll include links to a few of my past posts outlining a lot of my own observations on key elements of the Js’ relationship.

But first, I’ve also added timelines for a couple of additional years (2016 and 2017) on my page:

I’ll be adding 2018 fairly soon, and 2019-2023 (plus 2014 and 2015, very important years) will all be here as well as soon as I can finish them.

Here’s a post where I go over quite a bit of my own tinhat journey:

And here’s another summary-type post with some good examples to look into:

I could probably turn this post into a nightmare of far too many links lol, so I’ll cut myself off here, but I’m so glad that you reached out, and I’m ALWAYS happy to chat (in excruciating detail 😜) about anything you may wonder about or want to clarify or have questions about…anything at all.

So message me whenever you like, or send asks, either way.

And I wish you all the best, my friend!

———

Edit: here’s one last link focusing more heavily on the kids/parenting stuff!

[missmaywemeetagain]

Moonlight, A Pink Scarf Universe Story

A/N: So, I was challenged to do a prompt game, and since I'm desperately trying to fight my perfectionism and become more consistent with my writing, I took on the challenge and wrote this dramatic little heartbreaker this afternoon just under the wire like crazy person. I hope you enjoy this short, barely edited extension of Pink Scarf. It takes place a few months after the Christmas 1960 flashback in Part 16. (Please go easy on me because it is literally the least revised/edited thing I've ever put out and I desperately hope you like it 💗)

Thanks to @thatbanditqueen @whositmcwhatsit @ellie-24 @from-memphis-with-love @be-my-ally and @vintageshanny for challenging me to do this even when I wanted to convince myself I couldn't do it.

Prompt: “Do you mind? I came here to get away from other people.”

Rating: PG-13 || Word Count: 2k

TW: Miscarriage, medical trauma, angst, depression, intrusive thoughts

Moonlight

Hawaii, March 1961

The room is pressing in on you with all these jovial faces, celebrating in paradise after Elvis’ successful benefit concert for the Pearl Harbor Arizona Memorial. You should be celebrating with them.

You wish you could.

Instead, you are fighting back tears, praying that no one notices your frantic need to escape the otherwise wonderful atmosphere.

Elvis decided to bring you all along for a month-long vacation of sorts as he films his newest picture, Blue Hawaii, and performs the benefit concert to raise money for the Memorial. Y’all need some rest and recreation, he’d said joyfully, his eyes falling on you in particular, and how could you possibly refuse? It genuinely seemed like a great idea, even though he’d technically be working, and so would Jack by extension, but a change of scenery would do you some good after everything that's happened. Maybe you and Jack could reconnect on the tropical getaway, you’d thought.

But so much had happened since you agreed to this trip.

No one knew, of course. Not Jack. Not your family. Certainly not Elvis. You had made sure of it because you couldn’t stand the hopeful looks that would have come with the news, and the inevitable pity that would’ve come after.

The humid Hawaiian air coupled with the room full of people makes you feel as though you can’t draw a full breath. Lightheaded, you push your way through the throng of people filling the lavish home that had been rented for the express purpose of Elvis being able to stay comfortable and private during his shooting schedule. It’s an incredible relief once you burst out onto the patio, then stumble down the sandy path to the breathtaking beach.

Surprisingly, there’s not a soul on the moonlit sand, and for that you are eternally grateful because you cannot hold back your choked sobs any longer. The ebb and flow of the surf crashes over your crying, and you very much wish you could drown your sorrows in the vastness of the ocean in front of you.

Getting pregnant again was not even something you thought was possible. It was cruel, you thought, that you’d nearly made it 12 weeks this time before your body decided that it would reject the baby. You had just started to really, truly think it would be different this time. You were getting ready to tell Jack. You were almost, almost happy.

Even more cruel was that it was almost a year to the day of you bleeding out on the floor of the Rollerdome.

In some ways you’d been thankful that everyone had been so busy preparing for the trip that no one paid much mind to the fact that you locked yourself in the bathroom for hours, silently sobbing through the cramping and the bleeding and the clotting. You’d known then it was too late.

Tears stream down your cheeks as you hug your knees and begin to rock in the soft sand. At least it’s beautiful here, you think absently, trying to soothe yourself.

You’d taken to bed, claiming a bout of food poisoning, and no one was the wiser, being as excited and busy as they were. Not one of them seemed to bat an eye or think it was strange that no one else had any symptoms. A small part of you breaks a little at that, feeling more alone in the world than you ever have. But another part figures it’s just as well. Perhaps it is a blessing that no one knew of your latest failure. Honestly, you so were disappointed in yourself over it all you didn’t think could handle that disappointment from others, especially Jack.

Two days after losing your second child, you’d gotten on the plane to come here, spending hours upon hours with a false smile spread across your features. Maybe if you smiled enough you’d start to believe it. After all, you were in paradise with Elvis Presley. Millions would kill to be where you are.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Be grateful for what you have, you berate yourself, as you have more than once on the trip. Not even the stunning beauty of the island has been able to push your thoughts away from your loss, your seemingly unending sorrow permeating even the most beautiful of sunsets.

The only moment when you’d felt truly free of it had been watching Elvis’ concert earlier. He was so mesmerizing that it was impossible not to be caught up in his performance. You’d been happy for the momentary distraction, for the way your heart had flip flopped a little at the sight of him in his element, sweaty and feeding off the crowd effortlessly. It was easy to get swept away amongst all the screaming fans, to understand why the man you’d called a friend was the sensation that he was, and to forget everything but him for just a little while.

But by the time this stupid afterparty rolled around, the dark cloud that followed you this past year found you once more, and you were honestly too tired to push it away any longer.

You can’t help thinking how you should have an infant with you now, that in a kinder world you’d have your baby and perhaps another on the way. But the world is not always kind. Instead you are empty and alone.

So you find yourself sobbing on a gorgeous beach in Hawaii in the middle of the night, finally allowing yourself to sit in the grief of your misfortune.

You’re not sure how long you’ve been out here before his tall, lanky frame towers over you, interrupting your grief so suddenly that you find yourself livid.

You furiously swipe the tears from your cheeks, knowing your makeup is smearing but not having the energy or wherewithal to care. “Do you mind? I came here to get away from other people,” you snap.

Even in the darkness, you see how taken aback he is by your anger, his pretty face shifting from surprise to annoyance.

“Is that any way to talk to the guy who brought you to this beautiful place?” Elvis says lightly, but you can hear the edge in his tone. He’s not used to people speaking like that to him, least of all you.

Honestly, you’re not really sure when you last spoke to him at all. Since your strange little embrace on Christmas, he’d taken to avoiding you most of the time, yet again. Coupled with how empty you felt from your miscarriages, the fact that your friend had been so obviously (and seemingly purposefully) absent from your life in the past year was heartbreaking in its own right. It was like a slap in the face on top of your other failures, so far from the unbridled excitement he’d shown when he’d discovered your first pregnancy before anyone else had. So far from the love and care and attention he’d given you before.

You’re not sure you really understood how much it bothered you until this very moment. His sudden entitlement for attention and gratefulness makes your blood boil.

You pop up off the sand, pushing your windblown hair out of your face. “Oh, yes, how sorry I am that not every one of my thoughts is about your stunning generosity, your majesty,” you say sarcastically, viciously, before turning to stomp down the beach away from him. You’ve never, ever spoken to him this way, to anyone this way, but the darkness of your sorrow has flared into something else entirely, this blistering anger threatening to swallow you whole and take Elvis with you.

“Excuse me?” he says indignantly, grasping your arm and whipping you back to face him. His eyes flash in the darkness, both in confusion and with warning.

“Don’t touch me!” you spit, ripping your arm out of his grasp.

“What has gotten into you? What the hell did I do?” he shouts, his voice raising over the surf.

“Not everything is about you, Elvis!” you scream back at him.

For a second, it looks as if you’ve slapped him across the face, with the way his eyes widen in surprise.

You pause for a moment, breath heaving, before continuing. “And since when do you even care what’s going on with me?”

 “W-What are ya talkin’ about? O-Of course I care! I-I-I brought ya on this trip, d-d-didn’t I?” The emotions fly over his features so quickly it makes it too hard to discern what he’s thinking, but his stutter belies his frustration.

“You’ve barely talked to me in a year, Elvis. Can’t imagine why I’d think you care,” you scoff.

His eyes go dark, then blank, that Hollywood mask of his sliding over his features. “You’re nuts! You’re just bein’ crazy…” he starts, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I must be. I must be crazy thinkin’ my friend might give me the time of day after…everything that’s happened,” you hiss back.

Elvis blinks, his long lashes fanning over his cheekbones. You don’t know if he’s finally done the math in his head, figuring out that you nearly died and lost your baby almost exactly a year ago. Or maybe, like he’d somehow known you were pregnant the first time, he gleans some supernatural understanding of what might be happening with you now. Either way, his gaze softens dramatically.

“Oh, honey,” he says, “I didn’t—”

Yeah, you didn’t, you think bitterly. He didn’t do a lot of things. He wasn’t even there after you almost died. But you suppose being a star of his caliber didn’t leave him much time to slum it with you, not anymore. And why would he want to? Not when you’ve been depressed and have already failed at the one thing you felt you were created to do as a woman.

“Just leave me alone, E. You’ve gotten good at that,” you mutter, angry tears filling your eyes, turning away from him to stare out into the churning waves.

You can’t look at him. But you feel the heat of his eyes, nonetheless.

“Don’t do that, y/n,” he says quietly.

“Don’t do what? Speak the truth?”

“You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he growls.

He doesn’t get to be angry. Not about this.

“No, you don’t know, Elvis. You have no idea what it’s been like, you couldn’t. And you haven’t even tried…” you trail off, shaking your head.

You know that’s a lie. Whatever had happened between you on Christmas had been something, as much as you’d tried to deny it and forget his strange behavior. Perhaps that had been him trying.

Suddenly, more than anything, you want him to pull you into his arms like he did that night three months ago. You want him to comfort you and let you sob against his chest, to inhale the distinct scent of him as the heat of his lean body presses into yours. You want the desperate tension that is climbing between you to shatter you and make you forget that the past year had ever happened.

But instead of drawing you close, you watch him put distance between you. You feel as he fortifies that invisible wall he’s built between you this past year. It’s only in the depths of his churning cobalt eyes that you see something akin to apology, along with something deeper that neither of you truly wants to unpack.

Then, Elvis shutters that churning away, his fist clenching and unclenching in time with his jaw. “Yeah, I guess not. I’ll leave ya alone, then.” And he turns and walks away.

Oh god. You feel as though you’ve been hit in the chest, pain radiating inexplicably through your torso, the claws of his dismissal ripping through your insides. You don’t know why. You wanted him to go, and he went.

You sink down into the sand, fresh tears pooling in your eyes, and you wish more than anything that the ocean would just swallow you whole.

Taglist:

@atombombbibunny @yesimwriting @uselessbutinteresting @mirandastuckinthe80s @dark-as-love

@domaniquessidehoe @im-lame-irl @allybrooke05 @hangmanswhore

@jazmin2211  @kvcssghbjbcd @coldonexx @dudinhahoff @whatstruthgottodowithit @tiredbuthappy  @amiets2  @saintmagx

@kvcssghbjbcd @butlersluvbot @babydollie43 @vainbimbo @meladollsims @wstelandbaby @dre6ming @normatural @ash-omalley @xcallmetaniax @galvz-42 @thejezebel @fullmetal-falcon @robinismywife @dre6ming @seaweedbrain00 @amiets2 @mslizziesblog @heisatroubleinapinksuit @calusussss @dont-feel-so-good-peter @rainydayz101 @pizzaisrelationshipgoals  

@liaaacantwrite @kittenlittle24 @kaitaesupremacy @butler-trouble @eliseinmemphis @russian-soft-bitch  @tattywood 

@sassanoe @re3kin @thella @suspiciousmidge @hiddlepiddlediddlewiddle @carolinesbookworld @juggernort @aesthetic-lyss @stitchattacks @donnamarie23 @ab4eva 

@fic-over-cannon @lacyluver @littlebitofgreen @paigevis @godlypresley @bugg06 @xhannahbananax03 @artlover8992

@18lkpeters @frozenhuntress67 @girlblogger2002 @kendralavon7 @elvisgf @misspresley @ohjustpeachyachy1 @whositmcwhatsit @be-my-ally @precious-little-scoundrellittle-scoundrel @vintageshannygeshanny @from-memphis-with-lovephis-with-love @prompted-wordsmithmith @ellie-2424 @thatbanditqueennditqueen @stylespresleyhearted  @elv1s-is-pretty @crash-and-cure

[storiesbyjes2g]

3.60 Updates

I hated waking up super early and wondered how Sophia did it for so long. But I felt so slothful, sleeping soundly while she dragged herself out of bed every morning. True, I had nowhere to go and no reason to stay awake, yet I felt terrible. Despite our late night shenanigans, I was determined to get up and see her off for once. It was challenging, and I hesitated to commit to a 5:30 wake up time, but I pushed through and was glad that I did.

I wish I could spend one day in her head and see what went on in there. She was ridiculously funny. Like, what was there to laugh at that early in the morning? I didn't think mornings were funny time, but somehow she got us laughing. If this was a preview of what the rest of our life together would be like, I'd die a very happy man.

It was much too early in the morning to think about food, at least for me, but I offered to cook a fresh meal while she showered. To my surprise, she declined in favor of the leftover sauteed potatoes and mushrooms from last night.

"Really?" I said.

"I had a dream about it!"

I didn't think it was that good, but I'm glad she enjoyed it. And at least she had food to eat for breakfast now, seeing as she usually skipped it. How she could do her job on an empty stomach was beyond me.

I eventually showered and ate breakfast myself, then headed outside for yoga, grumbling at the sight of my dirty mats. So far, the only nice thing about desert living was the weather. Oasis Springs was my home for the moment, and I'd do whatever I could to make the best of it. But I sincerely hoped Sophia wasn't in love with this city because I couldn't bear living there forever.

As I dusted off the mats and prepared to begin my session, I remembered I bought a drone to record myself and set it up. I wasn't sure if I'd like being a content creator, but I committed to at least giving it a shot.

Afterward, I called my sister to update her on what had transpired over the last 24 hours. As soon as her shriek hit my ear, I regretted sharing my news, only because I knew she would tell Mama. Less would also have a thousand questions for me, just like Mama, but at least she wouldn't ask me about weddings and babies; I could deal with her shenanigans way better than Mama's. Still, I begged her not to say anything. She said she wouldn't, and I really hoped she was telling the truth.

As for her, she's looking for her own place. Mama gave her money too, so she wasn't concerned about finding a place, especially because Mt. Komorebi is full of shoebox homes. Paying the bills was another story, so she was also looking for a permanent job. Working full time meant she would have to spend less time on the slopes, which threatened her pursuit of happiness. But she'd give it a shot and see how she managed.

I mistakenly asked if she was dating anyone. She raved incessantly about the joy of being unattached, boasting proudly about her extensive roster. [sigh] Don't get me wrong. I absolutely loved how much braver she was than me, diving headfirst into this wild dating world and having the time of her life. But that was not something a brother wanted to hear about from his little sister, so I told her I had some work to do and got out of that conversation as quickly as I could.

I sat at the computer to record an introduction video for my SimTube channel. I had set it up a while ago, right after Sophia suggested it, but it's been dormant this whole time, waiting for me to decide making videos was a good move.

I introduced myself, stated I loved yoga and wanted to show everyone how it could help them live a better life. Without a plan, I messed up a lot and had re-record many times. Eventually, however, I did a take I liked and edited the video. Media production was new to me, and I struggled with it a lot. But even though I wasn't having a good time sitting there all that time not being active, I somehow found enjoyment. Maybe I liked the challenge of learning something completely new and foreign? Whatever the case, maybe I could do this SimTube thing after all. Still, I had to get up and stretch because editing videos required way too much sitting for my tastes. Just as I was about to sit back down, Sophia pounced on me from behind with the tightest hug. I didn't realize it was 3:00, and she startled me in the best way.

"I missed you sooooooo much," she said.

"Hey! I missed you too. I didn't even hear you come in. Did you have a good day?"

"Not really. But I have a list of things that will make me feel better," she said with a gorgeously mischievous look.

"A whole list, huh? Bet. What's first?"

"Last one under the sheets takes out the trash."

Need to catch up? See what you missed or start reading here!

[arokel]

10 questions for 10 writers

thank you so much for the tag @strangethings-everywhere ! secretly I've always wanted to do one of these

1. Is writing a hobby or a way of life?

Way of life for sure; I'm basically never not thinking about it. I start to feel awful and purposeless if I go too long without writing at least something.

2. A journal full of notes or a clean completed manuscript?

Clean completed manuscript, unfortunately. I wish I could be less persnickety about my first drafts but so far that hasn't happened. I do sometimes make extensive outlines though and those are always by hand, but they're usually pretty clean too :/ no scribbly scribbly for me

3. Who or what inspired your writing?

I've been writing since I was five years old and telling stories since I could talk, so I guess I'll say that when I was first reading chapter books I asked my parents why books always have a few blank pages at the end and they said it was so you had space to continue the story yourself if you wanted. They made it up on the spot and they don't remember saying it at all, but it's always stuck with me.

4. Which is worse: Someone you ‘idolize’ reading your first draft or listening to you sing?

Listening to me sing, 100%. I post my barely-edited first drafts on ao3 all the time lmao. But I also feel like with a first draft it's easy to say hey this is a first draft, if there's stuff you don't like I'm happy to hear criticism! Whereas with singing, that's just your voice. You can practice the song but at some point whether they like it or not just comes down to something about you that you can't change. (Although I am a hashtag classically trained singer so my feelings of needing to live up to that might not be universal.) (Don't ask me to sing opera for you because I don't actually like opera.)

5. Has writing from someone else’s POV changed your perspective?

I think most of the perspective changes that have come out of stories have been from reading for me? Like the first time I was really exposed to the idea of transness was a Harry Potter fic (suck on that, JKR) and that obviously really stuck with me. But I think the desire to write from queer povs really helped me come to terms with my own sexuality, maybe more than actually doing it. I guess writing narrative essays, which I do less frequently than straight up fiction, is usually a way for me to explore things I feel about myself and about the world.

6. Tumblr, AO3, LiveJournal, or FFN?

AO3 foreverrrrrrr. I was on ffn in my misspent youth and Very briefly on lj, but ao3 has been my home since 2014 and it would take a lot to get me to move.

7. AO3 word count? And are you satisfied with it?

646,046, and soon enough it'll jump another 100,000. Honestly not sure how I feel about that.

8. What movie/book gripped you irrevocably?

I will never not love Tamora Pierce's Tortall series. I know they're kind of dated and don't hold up in some places, but they've been in my bloodstream so long that they're basically a part of my understanding of the world. They shaped so much of my ideas on literature - how to create compelling characters and relationships, what makes a world believable, what fantasy even is - and honestly I think they're responsible for about 50% of my sense of humor and at least a quarter of my relationship to gender. They were my first fandom and in the end I'll always come back to them.

9. What’s the highest compliment you could ever be given, and have you been given it?

One of my plays deals with a very difficult emotional subject and is quite frankly pretty depressing the whole way through, and after the premiere a friend of mine came up to me and said "it was so so funny; I was laughing the entire time." That's what I always want my writing to do, not so much in fic but out in the world - I want to give people catharsis, and I hope they leave the reading or viewing experience feeling a little better than they did going in. And also I want people to laugh at my jokes.

10. What defines your writing style?

Can I say inconsistency? No but really it's definitely dialogue. I struggle with descriptive prose sometimes, but I never have to work at dialogue. I think it's my strongest area and people always tell me it's snappy (thank you Tamora Pierce). Other than that uhh... too many commas probably.

tagging @violasmirabiles @fregata-magnificens @kjxlll @borealopelta @uwu-dowoon @teaforarteza @icegreyrose @shadowquill17 @ris-d-deridex and using my 10th tag for anyone else who wants to participate!

[octopuscityblues]

Kafkaryan, The Wrath Of Cod

June 2024 Progress Report

TLDR: Unfortunately we had to push back our planned release date again. We don't have a new date yet, but we're trying our best to bring you Octopus City Blues as soon as humanly possible. We're very sorry about that. The rest of the update will go over some of the things we've been working on and provide additional context for the delay.

Progress

Starting in April, Marina (benevolent tentacle artist) and I (Firas, malevolent snail) significantly changed the way we work. Previously, art and development were mostly done independently and we communicated on a weekly or biweekly basis. We switched to a virtual office kind of setup where we dedicate fixed hours to working together every day. It's been going great so far and we feel much more motivated and productive.

Our current target is the Robot Graveyard, the lawless wasteland at the base of Gold Tower. We're mainly working on the remaining interior locations such as the Conman's shop or the cyborg club.

By the way, we recently released yet another demo update, based on all the quality-of-life and interaction improvements made since the previous one. These include:

🦔 Kaf the Hedgehog is now 33% faster and has 100% more walking frames! 

🖼️ Intuitive top-of-the-line settings menu to crank up your sim's colors to 11. 

🎨 New text background colors to make your eyes bleed. From the grimy "Jungle" to the ominous "Caput Mortuum". 

💬 Switch between the gossip and item menu modes like a pro using Q/E keys or the gamepad's shoulder buttons. 

🎮 Say goodbye to gamepad confusion! The simulation will reliably remember the most recently used controller. 

🍄 Beetles crave mushrooms. Drop the right item in the plaza and watch the little critters go! 

😷 You no longer have to "touch" dirty objects or people to interact with them. Standing close by is sufficient. 

🤖 Sacrificing Mom to science will pay off sooner.

🪲 And numerous other fixes, copy editing changes, and a host of new potential bugs for you to discover!

I'm also happy to present one of several music tracks that the newest addition to our team, Shannon (omnibenevolent troubadour), has been working on:

There's a lot more happening behind the scenes. For example, Julia (unambivalent wordsmith) went over and helped improve large portions of the script, while Karl (ambivalent doodler) is practicing card tricks.

The Delay

Octopus City Blues has had a long and rocky journey over the years, so I apologize if the following is too long and boring. Nevertheless, you all deserve an honest explanation for the delays. Back in late 2021 when I was pitching the project to the Midgame Fund, the plan looked something like this:

Early 2022: Demo play testing

Late 2022: Release of Act 1 in Early Access.

Mid 2023: Steam Next Fest demo

Late 2023 / Early 2024: Release of Act 2

Later in 2024: KS reward fulfillment, possible localization and console ports

After getting funded, the helpful investors at Midgame Fund advised against Early Access and recommended releasing both acts together. Much of 2022 was spent on discussions, planning, and extensive play testing that took place in two main rounds. The testing feedback showed us that we still had much to do, particularly when it came to guiding the players.

By early 2023 we were struggling to follow the original plan as we addressed all the testing feedback. That's why I decided to cut a lot of planned content and rewrite the story so that it no longer had two acts. The original acts were separated by a 10-year gap, which would've required a lot of art editing and writing completely new responses for every character.

The next play testing round coincided with the Indigo event. Even after all the changes made, some players were still struggling with certain parts or running into bugs. That's why we decided to participate in the October Steam Next Fest edition instead of the June one. The release date was pushed back to Q1 2024.

The Next Fest event itself was a great success. After years of neglecting marketing, we used 2023 to promote the project and make it more viable financially. On the other hand, the event left us with even more feedback, some of which we were still addressing in January (2024). The release date was pushed back to Q2.

In early 2024 the Q2 release plan was still feasible. However, things temporarily took a turn for the worse after our last update. The first roadblock was due to real life developments and personal circumstances that impacted the availability of key team members. Thankfully, everything is back to normal now.

A more general problem is that the more we get done, the more work we end up creating for ourselves. The complex branching quest design means that the amount of testing needed can grow exponentially. Automated testing and play testing rounds can only take us so far.

The next obstacle had to do with the 2023 rewrite. Taking a story with many characters and intertwined elements and completely rewriting major parts of it turned out to be much trickier than expected. Some major plot elements simply didn't work in the new framework, and I had to make additional changes to improve the story's overall pacing and consistency.

At first I thought we could still release the main parts, and then slowly restore some content after release.  That would've meant early adopters and our biggest supporters wouldn't get the complete intended experience. There are also many more things we'd like to tackle after release (Kickstarter rewards, localization, porting) instead of adding more content.

To be clear, there are some things that we still plan to add after release (as free DLC). In particular, there are the arcade games and the quests related to them. While not part of the main story, they were in our original pitch (and much of the art is already done).

All of this brings us to our current plan. The story is still in one act, but some previously cut areas and quests will be restored. As mentioned in the previous section, we've adopted a new way of working since April and have been slowly adding the remaining areas and characters to the simulation. While things look promising, it's hard to tell what will happen tomorrow or if additional play testing will require even more changes.

OCB is something that particularly benefits from these play testing rounds, because the more we can anticipate the player's actions (e.g. trying to combine the knife and baby items), the more fun and immersive the experience feels. Obviously, we can never get rid of every bug or address all feedback before release.  That's why we'll just have to find the right balance.

We still have to finish the following parts: Graveyard (in-progress), Big Beef, Turkeys, and the ending. Of those, Big Beef is the most involved one. I changed the planned release date on Steam to simply 2024 because that's our goal, but please keep in mind that it's not a release date either. We'll only announce a concrete release date once all of these areas are done and work primarily shifts to testing and polishing.

If you've made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read all of that! We remain as committed to this project as we were on day one, and we're genuinely trying our best as flawed and naively optimistic humanoids. We owe it all to your continued support and understanding.

[jerzwriter]

No Cure...

Book: Open Heart (Book 2 "Reset" timeline)

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x F!MC (Kaycee)

Rating: Teen

Words: 1037

Summary: Ethan leaves work early one day and runs into Kaycee at an unexpected place. He's impressed with a project she's undertaken, but when he walks away he realizes, there is no cure.

A/N: Thank you to @kyra75 and ananon for these two prompt requests (one two). I combined them and was SO happy to get out of my Ethan/Kaycee slump! So appreciated guys!

Yeah, I sort of mixed in my TLOU obsession lol it doesn't fit the timeline, but I only mention the fungus outbreak, not the show, so I'm going with it. lol I hope you enjoy it! I did not have a chance to edit extensively - so be kind :)

@choicesmonthlychallenge Prompt: Slow Burn, Holding Hands

Stepping out onto the busy Boston street, Ethan Ramsey took a deep breath. A self-professed workaholic, he would never admit how refreshing it felt to leave work a little early today. Not that he was truly leaving. Heading home to pack for an early flight, he knew his evening would be spent preparing for a keynote address he’d be making tomorrow at Perelman. Still, seeing the sunshine without the benefit of the thick glass windows between them was a pleasure he knew he didn’t enjoy frequently enough.

It was a lovely day, and he was delighted to live close enough that his commute home relied solely on his two feet. The crowds didn’t seem to bother him today. In fact, he may have nodded and smiled at a passer-by or two. Catching himself, he decided to reel that in. It could be a co-worker or, heaven forbid, an intern with whom he wasn’t well acquainted. He couldn’t have news of him being pleasant getting back to the hospital. He did have a reputation to uphold.

He turned down a familiar street and opened a rackety old door, the sound of the bells on the hinge announcing his arrival didn’t turn a single head inside Donahue’s, but it all but said welcome home to Ethan. His eyes blinked to adjust to the dark bar; mid-day stops here while the sun still shone brightly in the sky weren’t all that common, but this was the time he was leaving today. There was no way he was skilling his ritual that divided his work and personal lives.

Sitting on his regular stool at the nearly empty bar, he lamented that he couldn’t get here at this time more frequently. The familiar scent of stale beer was almost enjoyable when partnered with the low hum of soft jazz emitting from the speakers in the nearly empty room. A pleasant departure from the raucous crowds and their heinous jukebox selections that were present on a typical night. Maybe he should make leaving work a bit early a more common event?

“Hey, hey, hey!” A familiar baritone sang as Ethan’s regular drink was placed before him. “Not used to seeing you here so early. Don’t tell me you got fired?”

Ethan chuckled at his old friend, an only partially facetious smirk on his lips. “As if they could survive without me, Reggie.”

“You never know,” his friend snickered as he wiped down the mahogany bar. His neck stretched toward the back of the room, where a lone figure sat hunched over a pile of books in a corner booth. “I think some of these young ones may just be able to replace you one day, Dr. Ramsey.”

Ethan’s eyes followed Reggie’s motions, and his face went pale when he saw a tuft of blonde hair buried in books, her hands feverishly taking notes as the glass of ginger-ale at her side sat woefully neglected. 

“It’s her day off….” Ethan said, not realizing he was talking out loud. “What is she doing here alone at this hour?”

“Got me,” Reggie shrugged with a shit-eating grin. “You know her much better than I do, after all.”

Uncomfortably clearing his throat, Ethan returned to his drink, ignoring the bartender’s comment. He already knew he was lying when he told himself he wouldn’t interrupt or acknowledge her at all. She was clearly busy, and he was there for one drink before he went home to prepare. He wouldn’t so much as make eye contact, he swore. Which only made him feel more like a fool five minutes later when he appeared at her table, fresh ginger ale in his hand.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” he smiled sheepishly, “but the ice in your drink looks like it melted an hour ago, and it’s barely touched. So, I thought you could use a fresh one.”

Kayce knew his voice at the first syllable he spoke, but she still couldn't contain her delight when she looked up from her book, and her eyes confirmed what she already knew. Her eyes were bright, cheeks rosy… she looked like a child who was just offered their favorite treat before dinner. As lovely a sight as she was, Ethan diverted his eyes. Partly because seeing her this way warmed his heart more than he cared to admit, partly because he didn’t feel he warranted that reaction… not from Kaycee… not after all that had transpired between them. 

But where Ethan felt troubled, Kaycee felt none of that at all. She happily accepted the fresh drink, pushing the now stale earlier version to the side.

“Thank you, Dr. Ramsey. What a pleasant surprise! I wouldn’t expect to see you here at this hour of the day.”

She gestured for him to sit on the bench across from her, and even though he swore to himself he wouldn’t, one motion of her hand had him succumbing to her will without thought.

“I’m leaving a bit early today… I have the speech at Perelman tomorrow….”

“Ah! My alma mater!” Kaycee beamed. “I almost wish I could go.”

“That’s right, you graduated from there,” he pretended that was news to him as if he didn’t have every bit of her history he was blessed to know committed to his mind. For all the engagements he had turned down this year, deep down, he wondered if Kaycee’s connection to Perelman hadn’t subconsciously led him to accept this invitation. “Perhaps if I go again….”

He started, but Kaycee smiled and cut him off.  “Perhaps.”

She knew it wasn’t true. He wouldn’t be extending an offer for her to join him, not after the last time he had and how disastrously that had gone. Miami alone might not have precluded it, but everything that followed did. This whole reset was his idea and his alone. He knew how she felt about him… at least, she assumed he did. He was the best diagnostician in the world, after all, he had to be able to read her like a book. She was nowhere near as astute as he, and she could tell how much he was fighting his feelings anytime he looked her way. What Kaycee didn’t know is Ethan still had the edge on her for all things medical, though she’d catch up to him in time. But regarding matters of the heart, Dr. MacClennan was light years ahead of her medical idol.

“Why are you here? Buried in books, no less.  It’s your day off, and I would have expected you to be doing something more pleasant.”

“What’s not pleasant about this?”  She asked.  “I wanted to continue a project I’m working on, but the apartment is a little noisy, and I didn’t want to be in the hospital.  Donahues… it almost feels like home… and when it’s quiet like this, and I have Reggie here to watch over me, it’s a delightful place to spend my afternoon off.”

Ethan tried to contain a slight, approving grin.  He understood exactly what she had meant, and Reggie had looked over him many a day when he was a resident.  Sometimes it amazed him how much they…. No…. he pushed the thought from his head. 

“Ehrm, so what is it you’re working on? Something for the team?”

“Not exactly,” she corrected.  “Remember that group of kids that came in from the McKinley School the other day?”

“Yes, the ones who left gum wrappers all over my desk?”

Kaycee rolled her eyes.  “It was one gum wrapper Ethan, left by one child.  And tell me you wouldn’t have done that in third grade.”

The sheepish grin on his face was all the confirmation she needed, and now she diverted her eyes, uncomfortable with the warmth rising in her chest.  

“Continue,” Ethan encouraged.

“Well, a couple of the kids were talking about that zombie movie that’s all the rage right now.  They were terrified, thinking it could happen.  I told them science fiction is always more fiction than science, but they weren’t convinced, and a few were genuinely scared.  So, I’m putting something together that their teacher could incorporate into a science lesson showing cordyceps cannot transfer to humans.”

Ethan was impressed; he stared at her in awe of her innovation, her desire to keep children grounded in science, and mostly, her compassion at wanting to put their minds at ease.  But when words escaped him, Kacyee assumed he thought it was a foolish idea.  Swirling her pen nervously in her hair, she returned to her work.

“Anyway, I guess you could say it’s silly, but….”

“It’s not silly at all,” he insisted. “Honestly, I’m impressed.”

“You are?”

“Yes! You’re increasing your understanding of the topic. It’s helping improve our woefully underperforming science educational programs… you’re showing how science can be applied and maybe inspiring some bright young minds to pursue a future in the field in the process.  That’s not even considering how kind it is of you to want to alleviate their fears.  Kids today have enough to worry about and don’t need silly stuff to add to the plate.”

“Aww, Dr. Ramsey! You do care!” She teased.

“About you? Always… er, eh.. your medical career and innovation… that is.. of course.”

“Of course,” Kaycee said, hiding a smile.

“We have a budget to assist with local school programs.  Perhaps you could work with Baz and create a lab project  – something the kids could do hands-on.  I’d happily approve time off for the two of you to oversee that.”

“We could! That would be incredible! I’d love that!”

He nodded, smiling brightly at her enthusiastic response.  “Then consider it done. We’ll make it happen.”

“That’s such a great idea! I’m really impressed,” Kaycee joked. “You know, you’re smarter than you look, Ramsey!”

“Oh, really,” he laughed. “This is what’s convinced you of that?”

She raised her eyes to his bashfully with a little shrug. 

“Now, was that a compliment for my intelligence, or an insult for my looks?”

Kaycee lifted the ginger ale Ethan had brought to her lips, taking a long gulp.  You would have thought it was much more potent as it gave her the confidence to answer his question.

“Honestly, I think it’s abundantly clear that I’m highly impressed by both.”

Ethan’s eyes flickered over to hers, the air charged between him, and he felt his inhibitions slipping.

“Careful, MacClennan, it sounds like you’re flirting with me.”

Kaycee bit her lip, then smiled… what’s the worst that could happen?

“Well… I have been trying to do that for a while now,” she said, reaching over the table and placing her hand on his.  “I’m happy to see you’re noticing.”

Ethan opened his mouth, but words failed him as Kaycee's eyes refused to look away from his.  She smiled softly. He may have been silent, but he didn’t retrieve his hand, allowing them both to sit and basque in the overwhelming pleasure that simple gesture brought them both.

“I… I just think that….” Ethan fumbled, but Kaycee did not.

“What I wouldn’t do to have you on that FMRI now,” she purred, satisfied with the bashful grin he offered.  “In fact, maybe that can be our next lesson… for the kids?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” he cleared his throat loudly.  He looked around the bar, and when he was confident Reggie was the only other person there, he consciously decided to let his hand remain. Emboldened, Kaycee squeezed his hand tighter, hoping that small gesture would convey all the emotion she carried for him in her heart.

“It’s OK, and I wouldn’t want to subject the children to… us. Med school students, perhaps, elementary school, nah.  Let them keep their innocence.”  

The look of longing on Ethan’s face was palpable, and Kaycee knew precisely what would come next if he just would say the word… then, he pulled his hand away.

“Anyway… I should head home and begin to pack.”

 “Of course,” she sighed, finding it impossible to hide the disappointment on her face.  “But when you’re back… maybe you can help me with the project… for the kids… it could be… fun?”

“I’m sure it will be,” he said, standing up from the booth.  “But you should work on it with Baz.  Why don’t you reach out to him about it tomorrow?”

“I will,” she swallowed, lifting her glass once again.  “Safe travels tomorrow, Ethan, and thank you for… for everything.”

She watched Ethan until he walked out the front door, never once catching Reggie shaking his head with disappointment.  It took some time before she could gather her thoughts and return to her work, only one thought on her mind as she did.

No, fungus won’t take over your brain, kids.  You don’t have to worry about that. Fungus won’t take over your heart or your mind, but love… I make no promises about what love might do to you… and it seems once you’re infected, there is no cure.

Permatags: @a-crepusculo @animesuck3r @annoyingmillenialnewbie @crazy-loca-blog @doriopenheart @differenttyphoonwerewolf @fayeswiftie @gryffindordaughterofathena @genevievemd @inlocusmads @jamespotterthefirst @jennieausten @kingliam2019 @liaromancewriter @lucy-268 @onikalover @openheartforeverinmyheart @potionsprefect @quixoticdreamer16 @rookiemartin @socalwriterbee @secretaryunpaid @tessa-liam @trappedinfanfiction @jerzwriter-reblogs-asks @choicesficwriterscreations @openheartfanfics

Additional Tags in reblog

[dyingporcupine42]

I can has ozempic?

Yeah so you need to go to this website called https://churchofshrek.yolasite.com/

I know the URL seems weird it's just so the Authorities don't catch us

Anyway it's gonna ask you for some personal info (age, gender, weight, a quick essay about feminism, mothers maiden name, social security, credit card info, list of previous addresses, list of organs donated, etc. etc.) and then we can get you some ozempie girlypop

Once you receive it in the mail we're also gonna need you to complete a lil survey but there's a coupon attached for a free curderburger at Culver's once you finish it it's just customer satisfaction shit we gotta do. Haha gotta give the people what they want amirite

Anyway typically costs are a little odd because we operate on a trade and barter/odd favors system and it really depends on what shalesman we pair you with like if you get paired with me I typically ask for either my chemical romance tickets and some cash for travel expenses or a set of Turkish flutes but my buddy Shreven tends to go the first born child route. Some people just wanna be written into your will or to go out for drinks or like go on an ice fishing excursion it is all over the place my guy

But yeah that's pretty much everything I think um it's kinda an off brand ozempic we like to call it bozempic around these parts mostly because Shreven has a hard time like making the "o" sound and he has to put a b in front of it so he'll say like bovary instead of ovary like madame bovary which actually gets pretty confusing for his customers because he has ovaries on his barter list but when you speak to him on the phone he'll ask for a bovary and customers will send him copies of madame bovary so he's actually got quite an extensive collection of copies I think he's gotten every edition published

Anyway we are knock off so we have a couple odd side effects nothing too major though LOL like sometimes people grow wings but they only work about half the time and typically were talking like moth wings but they still are fairly large whether or not you can actually fly has more to do with your bone structure than anything. Another thing is um like there's been a couple instances where customers report seeing like little house elves or brownies around their place after purchase but we're not sure if that's related or not. One guy actually has a leprechaun which was weird cause he was Portuguese but who knows. Anyway I'm most people don't really mind their little visitors but if you want them gone just contact customer service and they'll give you some spells to rid your house if their presence.

Ok so I think that should be about it please eme time know if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer any questions if you have any questions and if you have any questions I'll be happy to answer them if you have any questions! Stay safe out there! I hear lots of porcupines been dying lately 😬

[telomeke]

5 Songs Tag - QL Shows Edition

I was tagged by @recentadultburnout and am excited to play along; thanks for tagging me! 🥰

Before going further, I should clarify that @colourme-feral also tagged me on a different musical tag game, and I was just about to respond to that when this one came in. So am combining my responses for that one with this one as well; hope y'all don't mind! 😚💖

Credit to @troubled-mind for starting this off with their post linked here. 😍

Here are the rules:

When you get this, list 5 songs from the Asian QL shows that you actually listen to. 🎶They do not have to be custom-made for the series. 🎶Non-western tracks only. Let's support Asian music and languages! 🎶Feel free to tag anyone who may be interested in participating. 🎶Add #5qls tag to your post for others to find the new favourites!

But I'm going to bend the rules a bit because I can't stick with just five. Here are my choices (extra details for the top five, and the more unusual ones listed after):

1. 遠い国/Tooi kuni sung by Ueno Daiki (上野大樹) – the closing theme to Bokura no Shokutaku (Our Dining Table)

This gently lilting song perfectly captures the essence of the hesitant, winsome waltz between Yutaka and Minoru as they orbit ever-closer to each other around radiant little Tane-kun in this heartwarming gem of a series. I can't listen to it without the tears welling up, sentimental fool that I am. The laidback time-signature (a somewhat unusual choice) and hauntingly plaintive key changes really set this one apart. If you'd like a glimpse into the meaning of the lyrics, @isaksbestpillow has a post linked here that translates them into English – the lines are poetically indirect and yet still find some way to pluck at your heartstrings in new and unexpected ways, just like the show itself.

Although the tempo is different, I find this song reminds me so much of the theme to the 70s family series The Waltons, with its old-timey 3-4 (or is it 6-8?) vibes of nostalgia and home truths being shared over steaming bowls of homecooked goodness (also calling to mind Yutaka and Minoru's meaningful exchanges during their many simple but oh-so-delicious meals together).

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2. เพลงที่เพิ่งเขียนจบ (Our Song) sung by Nanon Korapat – PatPran's theme in Bad Buddy Series

Nanon isn't one I would call a gifted singer, but his schoolboy tenor and unembellished vocal delivery suit the simple message of this piece really well. It's an unassuming little love song that sweetly encapsulates Bad Buddy's Episode 11 storyline and the theme of living the truth of your love (and by extension that of your identity too) without any need for great flourishes or grandiosity to glamorize the picture; you and your truth are enough, no matter what you may think or what others may tell you. (More write-up linked here.) 💖

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3. พรุ่งนี้ (Tomorrow) sung by Ford Arun – the closing theme for Moonlight Chicken

A quiet, hope-filled ballad that softly reminds us (as Moonlight Chicken did) how life will always be fraught with struggle, disappointment, sadness, bereavement and mistakes – and despite it all, the dawning of each new day is also an opportunity to cast off the burdens placed on us yesterday and reshape the present and the future in any way that we wish. We are more than just the sum of our past missteps, and we can find our way to a life of fulfilment when we move forward beyond the shadows of our immediate despair. Ford's rendition, set against an end-of-year Christmas backdrop, tenderly nudges us with the message that whatever it is (within reason) that we seek – happiness, purpose, love – the promise of it is wrapped up in the days to come, and is always ours to take and make real.

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4. รักติดไซเรน (Love Siren) sung by Ice Paris and Pearwah Nichaphat – from My Ambulance

My Ambulance isn't strictly a QL but it has a BL side couple played by Billkin and PP Krit, so I'm counting this one in (also because it's a relentlessly feel-good and catchy confection, everything you want in a breezy pop song). Everyone's really pretty, and you can spot some familiar faces dancing back-up. I've watched this so many times I immediately recognized the filming location when it popped up in Our Skyy 2 x A Tale of Thousand Stars and Be My Favorite. (Don't understand the unnecessary toilet break at timestamp 3.27 though. 🤷‍♂️)

Almost forgot to add the multilingual version – if you've not seen this before, get ready to have your mind boggled at the different languages they sing in, and maybe watch out for your own to make an appearance: 👀😍

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5. ไหล่เธอ (You’ve Got Ma Back) sung by Fourth Nattawat, Ford Arun, Satang Kittiphop and Winny Thanawin – from My School President

A cheery teen anthem to togetherness and the support of friendships, very much like My School President itself. You can't help smiling and singing along because you know it's all about positivity and living worry-free when those around you care and protect you too.

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And for the also-rans – these are not in any way inferior (some are even arguably superior musically), but they're not up above simply because they don't have as heavy a rotation on my playlist (and I'm listing them here to spread awareness): 🤩

ไม่ยอม (Be Mine) from TharnType, the Kaownah version (very strong melodically, and this performance converted me into a fan of Kaownah who's excellent here; the song, singer and actor deserve to be associated with a better series).

รักคุณยิ่งกว่าใคร (I Love You More Than Anyone), from Cutie Pie 2 You, sung by NuNew Chawarin (hopelessly, somewhat ironically and unapologetically cheesy, this paean to the pageantry of Thai country music or luk thung is so joyful I can't help loving every jangly, bedazzled melisma; I love it as much as the Build Jakapan cover and the Got Jakrapun original – all so addictive, like too‑sweet candy).

คนที่เสียใจคงไม่ใช่เธอ (The One Who Will Be Sorry Is Probably Not You) – theme from Bad Romance The Series (amazingly this works either as the hard-driving original replete with wailing guitars and screamy rock-god vocals by Pete Pitipong, or the soft ballad cover by Tul Pakorn – both have a grip on my heart).

The theme to KinnPorsche by Slot Machine – this is like the theme to Bad Romance but with no brakes at all, racing to the cliff edge and you don't care; with soaring, almost operatic vocals and a relentlessly pounding rhythm that shifts unsettlingly offbeat midway, the Thai original (เพียงไว้ใจ/Just Trust) is already so many kinds of amazing, but the English version (appropriately titled Freefall) is surprisingly not only more than credible, it also screams primally with lyrics that embody the full-blooded, breathless, all-stakes-committed rush of KinnPorsche's action sequences and darker dramatic moments (when the series wasn't unfortunately tripping over its own shoelaces or galumphing about in a clown car).

นิทานพันดาว (Theme to A Tale of Thousand Stars) – but it's the Torfun version sung by Aye Sarunchana that's won me over. 💖

ฟัง (Listen) from My School President, sung by Lookwa Pijika, Fourth Nattawat, Ford Arun, Satang Kittiphop and Winny Thanawin – you can give this treatise on love so many readings, but my favorite is when it incarnates the love that Mrs. Ratchanee has for her little Gun of a son; the original by Sin Tosaporn Achawanuntakul (featuring โอม Cocktail) isn't half bad either, with the music video also dallying with LGBTQ+ themes, but Winny absolutely does a better job of the bridge in the MSP cover.

คิด(แต่ไม่)ถึง [Same Page?] by Tilly Birds – not too sure this counts as a song from the world of QL because it was only in the original, not-quite-canon Bad Buddy trailer but not in the series itself (except for the one line Pat sings on the terrace of his apartment during his Ep.12 drinking game with Pran); still I'm including it because it's an aural experience like no other, starting out hollow, off-kilter and dissonant before its various polyphonies interweave into a delightfully solid pop song.

Inwza by Panpan Yeeyee – once again, not sure this counts as a song from QL but the made-up word Inwza (not so much the song itself) was mentioned as part of Pat's chat ID in Bad Buddy Ep.1 (significance explained here); nonetheless looking up the word got me connected to this wistful little synth-heavy indie pop number that makes for a refreshingly quirky listen.

เพื่อนเล่น ไม่เล่นเพื่อน (Just Being Friendly) – the My School President version by Fourth Nattawat, Ford Arun and Satang Kittiphop is just as good as (and maybe even slightly better than?) the original by Tilly Birds featuring Milli, but this flawless mashup of the MSP version with NuNew's is also amazing and I rotate between all three. No favorites here; all so boppy and guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. 😍

เลี้ยงส่ง (Farewell Party) by So Cool – this is what Pran references during Bad Buddy's Ep.12 drinking game as the first song he learnt the chords to; totally old-school (dates from 2005) and makes me think of a pre-teen Pran struggling to learn guitar, practising the chords on a song that was already a Thai rock classic at the time.

Stand by หล่อ by New Country – this wasn't in any QL as far as I can tell but the MSP boys performed it in their Prom Night concert and Bas Asavapatr also confirmed having danced to it during one of the Be On Cloud games, so I'm including it because it's so infernally catchy, has roots in Thai luk thung, and the dance video is really SHINee-slick.

Tagging @pandasmagorica, @isaksbestpillow, @colourme-feral, @dudeyuri, @ranchthoughts...

...@chickenstrangers, @lurkingteapot, @airenyah, @dribs-and-drabbles and anyone else who wants to play along. Apologies if you've already been tagged!

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[wildflowerteas]

Hiiii!! I am just one of the many people absolutely enamoured if not downright obsessed with your work!Just the authenticity of the storyline in 'when I awake', and how it completely altered my perspective on so many thematic concepts.and to also discover you were someone in the same age range really really made me admire you soooo much.I wish you luck in your life and whatever you do in general cuz you're a real gem 😊

I'll be honest, I don't make it a habit to interact with others online, preferring to just be a bystander, but I thought I'll just take the risk.If it's not too much of a bother I wanted to ask you: How do you find yourself able to write with consistency? To further elaborate my point, how do you write so much and keep that flow of words to continue on until the end?I wish to start writing as well, fanfic,personal writings etc., and I just can't seem to make progress after writing only one page,I feel like even with extensive planning and carefully organised notes I never seem to be able to produce a large body of work that encapsulates all my ideas.It's always just...one paragraph and then the initial meaning just loses itself.

Oh goodness,I wrote too much! I'll stop here I just thought maybe I can ask someone with first hand experience instead of just figuring out somehow.Hope you have great day and thank you so much once again!!!❤❤❤❤

Hii!!! Oh my gosh thank you so so much! I'm so glad to hear that my writing resonated with you, and that it was able to make your life a little bit brighter ( hopefully ) as a result. Thank you so much <3 This really made my day. First of all: This is absolutely not a bother, and I'm really really excited that you reached out! I love talking/interacting with people hehe and I'm more than happy to help!

This is a super good question. I don't really notice it in the moment ( when I'm writing ), but getting chapters out every week--with most being well into the 8-10k range--IS actually kind of insane. Not to mention WIA was 23 chapters, which is nearly six months of just writing and writing. I think a lot of that consistency had to do with my unhealthy obsession with the pairing, but also the fact that the writing became sort of . . . routine? I was always happy to do it, and very excited to sit down at my desk, crack my knuckles, and get started. It never really felt like I was slogging through it ( even though I would spend the better half of my Fridays-through-Sundays doing nothing but writing ). I think writing something you love will just be like that--exciting, and energizing--even if the writer's block hitting and editing can be very painful. That sounds a bit masochistic, but I really did enjoy the struggle at times. And ultimately, I came out of it a better writer than I was before. But something that really helped me write consistently was my desire to read the work when it was finished. Writing something you want to read means the only one you can blame when you have no ending is, well, yourself. And especially when it comes to fiction ( fanfic and personal works ), these stories are to be shared but ultimately they're for us. To satisfy a desire to tell, or to capture some part of our imagination, or to reason our way through feelings or thoughts. Now onto the next part of your question. Truthfully, when it comes to planning, notes, outlines--I'm one of the worst people to ask. However, I do have one thing that might be useful to you: I always, always, write with the ending in mind. I think even with little scenes, I'm looking ahead and asking myself "How does this get me to the place I want to go?" or "How does this shape the character into the kind of person I want them to be when the story is over?" That's not to say I don't write filler ( which I do--I love writing slow, nothing-really-happens scenes ), but when it comes to writing something full-length, the idea of having a set destination really makes the struggle of the journey ( in WIA's case, a journey of 230 thousand words ) feel a lot easier.

I also struggle with getting past the first page and even find outlines a little claustrophobic. Sometimes inspiration strikes randomly while I'm writing, and I'll betray my notes, go with the flow, and suddenly things like character relationships and even major plot-related scenes will be uprooted ( a lot of the well-loved and interesting scenes in WIA were 100% improv). I think falling into a committed relationship with your outline/notes can be a bit suffocating for creativity ( maybe for people like you and me ), while for others, it's a scaffold that helps them tell the story they want without wandering too far. It's about finding what works for you, rather than subscribing to a formula. It might be helpful to dip your toes into just writing and letting the story flow from your imagination first, and then when you have more than one page, creating an outline that is guided by the trajectory of what you've already written, rather than vice versa. Phew. You were apologizing for writing too much ( which you shouldn't, btw ) but I might be the one who has to say sorry! This was a lot, and I hope that at the very least, a tiny bit of it was helpful. Again, thank you so much for enjoying my writing, and for having the courage to reach out and ask. It sounds like you stepped a bit out of your comfort zone, and I really applaud you for that <3 I hope you're having a lovely day.

niko <3

[annwrites]

I know I'm about to disappoint a number of people with this, but I'd rather just put it out there, instead of leaving my readers waiting for something I've now decided isn't going to happen.

I will not be doing the Aemond x SG (reader) happily-ever-after AU.

Reasons why under the cut:

I want to preface by saying I have started a draft of it, which I will be keeping saved on my Google Drive, incase I ever change my mind one day and/or find a way to edit it that will please me.

Now, for the reasons why I've chosen to abandon the one-shot:

There is no feasible way for me to write it which will keep canon events in-place, or keep SG & Aemond both in-character.

I initially wanted the HEA myself, but, at this point, I feel like if I published it, it would be solely for fan-service. Something I myself detest. I hated when GoT did it, & I've hated when HotD has done it.

SG would never be happy in any of the Free Cities, due to slavery. The only one she would ever find a modicum of contentment in would be Braavos—a place most unfit for a dragon to reside, due to most of it being under water.

And please don't suggest I send them to Sothoryos or Yi-To or Leng or something. Bc, just... No.

Aemond is not going to abandon Vhagar so they can go live on a floating island somewhere. Which leaves them with little other possibilities of where to relocate.

And, say I went with my one anon's idea of having them make a pact with the Price of Pentos like Daemon did (he gives them refuge in exchange for Vhagar's protection against the Triarchy). SG would be forced to make slaves answer to her & Aemond would live out his days doing naught. Riding Vhagar, taking long walks on the beach, etc. He'd feel, effectively, useless.

And once the Dance broke out? He'd be chomping at the fucking bit to return to Westeros to go to war. And for him to fight against SG's half of the family? It'd rip them apart.

If he stayed just to make her happy, he'd come to resent her, bc he would feel gelded. Having his dragon, his knowledge of battle-planning, skills with a sword all for nothing.

Say I make it so the Dance never happens. I'm just abandoning canon in such a major way that I don't feel comfortable with. Like. Aemond exists in ASoIaF bc of the Dance—not the other way around.

And I don't see their families not coming after them in some form. Whether that's Jace flying to Essos to try & retrieve his twin, or Aegon or Otto sending men after Aemond, they'd never live in peace. Not for the first few years there, at least.

And Aemond is just... Not a healthy match for her. I'm sorry. I myself have tried to change a toxic male partner & the shit cannot be done. He is obsessed with his niece. If she put a toe too far out of line, he would come to show his true colors & she would permanently live in fear of him for the rest of her days.

And that fear would only further embolden his efforts to keep her. He would see it as her not loving him as she's "meant" to, which, must, by extension, mean she may leave him. Time to batten down the hatches & ensure she has no place left to run.

The phrase "if I can't have you, no one can" comes to mind.

So, that brings me to what I may still eventually write: the tragic ending fic for the two of them.

The events of Sons & Daughters chapters 1-8 would be canon, as well as all of the outtakes, minus perhaps the Cregan pregnant sex one—I'd have to figure that one out. But it would start immediately after the Harrenhal outtake ended. It's why that chapter ended so abruptly: I was setting up for this potential fic.

Make NO mistake: this AU would NOT be canon. Chapter 9 is what is canon.

This fic would simply exist to explore a terribly dark "what if" version of my story. And it will include many triggering scenes. Posts will be tagged accordingly when/if the time comes.

Well, that's all I really had to say about this lol. Feel free to still send me your thoughts/commentary. I'd be surprised if a couple people didn't try to talk me back into the happy fic & out of the dark one, but I think my mind is pretty-well made up about it. Sorry!

[pqrachel]

Art Fight 2024 Final Thoughts

I'm working on probably my last Art Fight attack for the season. If I get an attack during the extension period I'll still try to revenge but if not I want to be done with Art Fight by the end of the month.

Overall I'm currently at 12 attacks given and only 3 defenses received. Which is an 80% attack rate.

EDIT: Since this post I've done another two attacks and gotten 2 more back so my rate is around 75% now, which is awesome. Late attacks weren't something I was expecting but they mean so much to me.

I definitely still had fun despite the attack ratio, lots of great art came out of this month thanks to the event. I'm pretty sure the lower number of attacks received is because I don't have any specific references for any of my characters (only art that I've done of them in other contexts) and the characters that I want attacks for the most (that are at the top of my profile page) aren't the same as the ones others want to draw so they skip my page after looking at my first row. The attacks I did receive were amazing don't get me wrong but they were all from characters on my 3rd row or below so they had to actually go into my characters page and find something, so I know there's a bit of a mismatch there and maybe I could have gotten more attacks if I put my more unique characters up front for more people to see.

And yeah I wanted to compile all my attacks in one place too so here goes.

My favs are probably these 3, the poses were fun and the non-human elements let me leave me comfort zone but like just barely, they're still very much my style.

This year I did a couple sketchy attacks too which was nice. Some started out sketchy but I colored them and did some minor changes after and they still looked good. Definitely gonna start with a sketch and just go from there more often after this Art Fight. I barely did any separate sketch and line layers at all and it was so nice not having to do that step.

And yeah overall I really enjoyed this year's Art Fight. Definitely made me think about my style a bit. Even though I didn't experiment outside of my style too much this year other than trying some animals and a couple unique BGs which I don't usually do, I kind of got into the flow of it and just kept going. I got to a dozen or so attacks done that I'm super happy with overall.

Here's my attack page if you want to check out any of the people who made the characters or anything like that.

[ilykazashi]

crown of thorns: chapter one

desc: fantasy story featuring my own ocs. 2.1k words.

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a/n: this is the first chapter in a new series of mine, crown of thorns!! i'm very happy to have this finished and i pray to find a constant rhythm to continue writing and posting!! i might edit this post a few times, since this isn't beta read :') hope you all enjoy!

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tw: descriptions of blood and injury, cussing, and physical violence

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The rain fell heavily that night, soaking everything in Huosea City: skyscrapers, city-goers, plants, and one unfortunate young woman— me, Tanaka Ayaka, a newcomer to the city. The night was stormy, yet the air smelled like the familiar rain of the countryside far away. The urban cityscape was colder and wetter than it usually was, even in the rainy season of the year. Skyscrapers stood tall against the busy people of the city, people who traveled from one place to another with the utmost urgency.

I sigh, opening up a simple black umbrella. Rain pitter-patters on the umbrella, a sound that would usually be comforting to me if my apartment wasn’t another ten minutes from here. The bright lights of billboards shine down on the puddles of the wet streets. I had studied at the library later than I usually did to prepare for the upcoming finals that my school seemed determined to pile onto every student there. Wiping the fat raindrops off of it, I check the time. 11:38. Great— it was almost midnight and I wasn’t even close to feeling ready for tomorrow. 

A feeling of hopelessness settles within me. I had spent all this time and money trying to get into this university which made my mental health feel like it was slipping more and more every week I attended. Was this really what my family had helped me to do? If I didn’t pass these tests, these finals, I would be done for. Everything I had worked so hard for would be gone and I would be forced to go back home, to face my shame knowing that I had used all my family could give me and couldn’t even repay it. I should have been able to help them— no, I should be able to help them. This feeling, this shame, is not something so easily escapable. 

The looks I imagine would cross my parents’s faces are things I never want to see. To think that I had wasted the little money that they had is an extremely disconcerting thought for me. I attempt a few deep breaths, but the anxiety resides within me. Cold rain slides down my cheeks. I look up and reposition my umbrella even though I’m already dripping wet. I’m stewing in my thoughts and shame until I feel a light tap on my shoulder. I turn around and my gaze meets that of a guy around my age. He has the familiar dark hair, wide eyes, and spattering of freckles of the student I sit next to. It takes me an embarrassing moment until I realize that he is in fact, my classmate. 

“Don’t you sit next to me in Historical Studies? You’re Ryou, right?” I looked at him and realized that he was about to say something to me before I cut him off. “Oh, I’m sorry. Were you about to say something?”

He smiled sheepishly. “Yeah. I noticed you were walking back to the dorms. It’s so dark out here, I figured you could use some company.”

I nod and thank him. We walk and talk together, lost in conversation. I got to know him better, so eventually I mindlessly placed my trust in him to lead me in the right direction.

What a mistake that was.

I somehow came to my senses after an extensive debate with Ryou over which of our classes is easier. Looking around my surroundings, I realize that the dorm building is nowhere in sight. Where am I?

“Are we lost?” The question falls out of my mouth, sounding scared and timid. Ryou shakes his head. 

He turns to face me. “You’re right where I need you.” A sharp glint of steel cuts through the darkness of the alley. My understanding of the situation finally came. I’ve been tricked.

Ryou thrusts the knife at my head and I dodge, somehow, but my umbrella suffers a gash through the top. I step backward, almost falling into a rotten dumpster. The stench is awful, coming from a heap of black trash bags. I gag a bit at the sight. A second knife is pulled from the pocket of his rainjacket. Ryou extends his arm towards my neck, gripping the knife in his hand. I’m so done for. What a terrible way to go out, killed and maybe thrown into a stinky dumpster full of who-knows-what. I close my eyes and prepare for a slash in the next, but it never comes. I open my eyes to see Ryou holding the blade to my throat, his eyes full of what looks like… desperation. He speaks, trying to hide his cracking voice.

“Ayaka, I’m sorry— you don’t understand how badly I need this.” His voice shakes. “How badly I need you.” 

My eyes widen at the statement. I’m of average looks, pretty to some, but no stunner. There are hundreds of other girls at my university, hell, in the class Ryou and I have together.

“Why me?” My voice shakes at the threat of a polished blade against it.

“I can tell there’s something… special about you. Not in how you look, but deep down.” His hand moves to my face, cupping my cheek. When Ryou speaks, his voice isn’t like anything I’ve heard from him. It’s quiet yet crazed, talking to me like I’m some sort of lab experiment. “Have you ever heard of abilities?” 

“Abilities? Like what a person can accomplish?”

“No. Not like that. Like a magical power. People who can wield it are very rare… very rare indeed. And I suspect that you have an ability yourself.”

I look at him, not hiding my expression of confusion. “And you think I’m one of them? Why does that matter?”

Ryou speaks in a voice that is somehow more hushed. “Do you not know what I am, Ayaka? I am first and foremost a scientist. Assuming you are an ability user, you have a bodily system superior to mine and every other average human’s. And people like me are very interested in that sort of thing. Your organs, your body parts would sell. How about that, hm?”

My response comes without much of a thought. Not that it ever needed one. “No. No, I am not selling my organs or my body parts for research, no matter how much it helps.”

Ryou’s gaze does not falter. “Please. Please reconsider.”

“No. I will not.”

His eyes narrow, a cold gaze crossing his face. “Then I suppose I’ll make do with your dead body.” He swipes at me and I dodge, dropping my umbrella. A fight in the rain, great. Ryou attempts a punch to my gut. I step back, missing by a hair as his fist grazes my stomach. He tries to knock me down by swiping at my feet. I retaliate with what I believe to be a weak punch to the face, but it sends him crashing into the wall. His face is bruised and covered in blood, his nose shattered and arm broken from the impact. Surely I didn’t hit him that hard. I look at my fist which feels like it's coursing with energy. I doubt that I’ve ever hit anything quite as hard as I did then. Was that what an ability felt like? My attention flips back to Ryou. He grimaces, shakily standing up and clutching his shoulder. His once-clean face is ruined by bruises, blood, and a disgusting look of contempt.

“You bitch. I’ll get you for that. I’ll get you now!” Ryou screams hoarsely at me. Rage fills his eyes as his hand flies towards a small pistol in a murderous rage. He points the weapon at me and I hear the familiar click! as it’s aimed right at my forehead. Ryou’s finger rests on the trigger, ready to shoot, until something stops him— the clicking of heels against the street of the alley. It comes from the shadows, a corner that no one bothered to look. A strange sound ensues, the unsheathing of a blade; but it wasn’t the sound of any familiar edge. It was long and drawn out, like a sword unsheathed. Before I had time to uselessly contemplate it any further, the sword, or more specifically a katana, lit the dark alley. The metal glowed a warning shade of red, electricity crackling up to the hilt like some sort of taser-sword combo. Who the hell would use that, and how did it light up like that? Was this woman an ability user?

My answer becomes clear as the wielder’s face is lit in red, revealing to be a dangerous-looking woman. The lightning illuminates her lanky silhouette and strange attire that resembles the armor of the House of Cobra where the Emperor lives. The woman looks older and definitely taller than me, maybe in her thirties, and battle-hardened. A faded yet visible scar runs from the bottom of her left eye down to the collar of her long coat. What a strange person, I think to myself before my thoughts dissipate when she thrusts the sparking sword at Ryou’s head. His eyes widen and he yelps, barely dodging the blade as it passes by his shoulder. The woman’s dark eyes narrow, clearly unhappy with his survival. 

“Leave her be,” Her voice is harsher and raspier than I expected, but the urgency is clearly there despite her haughty and cold expression. Ryou foolishly lunges towards the woman, hoping to land a punch, but is met with failure as she dodges easily. A look of annoyance yet confusion crosses his face.

“How did you—” His query is interrupted by the woman’s swift grab of his dirtied shirt. With a strange amount of ease, she throws him back to the wall. I watch from the other side with a mix of fascination and fear that I’ve never felt before. This woman was handling Ryou like a sack of potatoes. A few punches and dodges ensue until Ryou takes advantage of the woman’s position, using an opening to grab and unsheath her sword, slashing her face. The woman’s face does not lose its grace as she takes him by the arm, throwing him down to the hard, concrete ground and most likely breaking a fair amount of his bones. Ryou’s eyes roll to the back of his head as he spits out a mouthful of blood from the impact, cursing under his breath as the same sword he attempted to steal was pointed right at his throat. 

“Ryou Watanabe. You have committed multiple crimes worthy of imprisonment and possibly even death, which include but are not limited to multiple counts of murder, fraud, assault, breaking and entering, embezzlement, and theft. Do you accept these charges?” She spoke as if she was justice herself. “If you accept, you will be taken to trial in front of the House of Viper. If you deny, you will be taken there forcibly after questioning with my colleagues and I of the Red Moon Syndicate.” Ryou’s face paled at that last statement, one that I don’t understand. 

“Fuck. You’re from the Syndicate? I thought you were just some try-hard police officer!” Ryou sounded more scared than ever. “Just who the hell are you?”

“Aikawa Kazashi. Future leader of the Syndicate, noblewoman, and if you slip up, your executioner as well. So, do you accept or deny your charges?”

“I deny.”

One swift kick to the head and Ryou was out cold, leaving me with whoever this Kazashi woman was. My legs shake as I try to stand up and step away from the situation, but not before she speaks to me. Chains and metal clink as she walks closer to where I stand.

“And who are you?” Kazashi looks down at me with her arms crossed, practically oozing hostility. Despite her fight with Ryou, she barely has a scratch or bruise on her. This woman was unreal. I don’t wish to be executed, so I maintain an air of dignity in my response.

“Tanaka Ayaka. I’m a university student.” My gaze flits to her sword, which is sheathed and not electrified anymore. I bring up the question that had been burning in my mind since I saw her. “Who are you?”

Her voice does not falter in her next words. “I am a killer.”

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any notes are appreaciated!! copyright: floptr3eaa 2024

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

how do you find or decide what piece of art to use for an edit? what are your sources for finding artworks to use for your edits?

hello my dear!

what a lovely question! my answer is incredibly long, so I apologize in advance for that, but I tried to make it as organized as possible. I'm also going to put it under a cut, since I rambled on for quite a while 😅 but this was such a rich question - so thank you again!! ☺️☺️

if you have other questions lingering after this, please feel free to reach out again! 🥰🥰

how do I decide which artwork to use for an edit?

for the most part, when deciding what artwork to use, I look for some kind of visual or thematic resonance with the lyrics I plan to use

for example, in this edit, I used the lyrics "I don't like that falling feels like flying til the bone crush" with lament for icarus by herbert james draper. there were a number of parallels I wanted to draw here:

visual parallels: those lyrics come from "gold rush" by taylor swift, and the painting itself is suffused in gold tones. I also used a golden glow on some of the words to emphasize this connection

thematic parallels: icarus is famously known for his fall from the sky, and the lyrics I chose literally discuss falling, so that was another resonance I wanted to pull out

random parallels that perhaps exist only in my mind: I wanted to emphasize the ending of a story with both the lyrics and the painting. in the painting, we see icarus after he has fallen, but for those familiar with the myth, his prior flight and fall are implied. the lyrics discuss the metaphorical joy of flight until it turns into a freefall, but what we are actually seeing here is the "bone crush." in this way, I liked that we're looking at the end of a story that in some ways tells the whole story. the lyrics and art both imply the existence of a previous moment of rapturous flight which turned into a tragic fall, even though they only actually show the aftermath of both. idk if that makes any sense so just ignore this one if this is absolutely incompressible 😅

basically, these are the kinds of resonances I like to seek out. sometimes the lyrics come first and I look for a painting that fits well with them, and sometimes it's the other way around. other times I see an artwork and immediately lyrics will pop into my head, or vice versa, where I'll hear lyrics and instantly think of a painting that would fit them so well

not all of my edits have every level of parallels, but I do like to make sure that they at least have some sort of thematic resonance that ties them together!

I hope that explains my process at least a little! ☺️☺️

where do I find artworks for my edits?

there are four big resources/approaches that I use, so I'll go through each one here ☺️

general art history knowledge: since I'm doing an art history phd, I just happen to have a lot of exposure to a lot of different kinds of art. between the hours I spent in class, doing readings, and doing my own research, I just end up absorbing a lot of potential artists and artworks to use. I actually have a page in my notes app devoted to things I see that I may want to use for edits in the future 😅. however, I completely understand that this is not an experience that a lot of people have. but I am more than happy to offer myself as a resource!! if you ever have a question or a vision in mind but don't know where to start looking for art, feel free to reach out and ask! I am by no means in expert in every facet of art history, but I would be absolutely delighted to use what knowledge I do have to help you in any way I can! 🥰🥰

image collections: there are a number of fantastic digital resources available for browsing historical art! museum websites and their digital collections are always a great place to start. many libraries also have extensive digitized collections which often include prints, drawings, photos, and illustrations, even if they don't have paintings or other larger artworks. a couple that I've used in the past are the library of congress and the bibliotheque nationale de france, but there are so many more out there. if you're affiliated with a university, you may have access to resources like artstor, which has a huge repository of images. depending on the databases to which your local library subscribes (which are often a lot!! libraries are so cool and I highly recommend checking out the resources they have!!), you may have access to a number of other databases like artstor. wikimedia commons is also a fantastic resource, since they have categories you can browse like "women with skulls in art" or "red textiles in portrait paintings." obviously not every artwork that fits those parameters are included, but the amount of images they have is incredible. my one caution here is that the search function doesn't allow for a lot of specificity unless you already know the name of a category you're looking for. finally, google arts & culture/google art project tends to have really high quality images of artworks, but is also not the easiest to search unless you already know the name of an artist or artwork that you're looking for. whew okay that's a lot, but please let me know if I can answer any more specific questions about any of these amazing resources!

art accounts: I truly discover so much fantastic art by following other accounts that post art historical content! I follow a number both on here and on instagram, and it's always amazing to see what other people discover 🥰. some are more specific, like posting art just from a specific era/period, or curating different color themes, while others just post anything that they find compelling. I end up finding so many artworks this way, and it's also a fantastic way to connect with other people who like art historical stuff!

following rabbit holes: this is more of an approach than a specific resource, but I highly encourage everyone to explore things they like!! if you see an artwork that really resonates with you, look up the artist and see what other kind of work they've done. find out if they are identified with a particular period or movement and then look up other artists from that movement. see if you like any of the art produced by those artists and then keep going! I have found so much incredible art just by being curious about a single artwork, and it's also a great way to expand your art historical knowledge in general ☺️

yikes okay now that I've written you a whole novel, I hope that at least some of this info was helpful!!

thank you again for the wonderful question! (and thank you so much for reading this all if you got this far! 🥰)

as I said above, I would be genuinely delighted to help with anything that I can! the reason that I want to be a professor is to let people get excited about art, so anything I can do to facilitate that is pretty much my dream 🥰

thank you again dearest anon and I hope you have a lovely, art-filled day!! 💖💕💖💕