#but i still do it because the pros outweigh the cons for me.

[goatmilksoda]

People online will really act as if not everything all the time is a morally grey issue.

There will be good and there will be bad to literally everything ever and life is all about weighing those. To some people one thing may be more important than another. Sometimes these views are swayed by malice or misinformation or personal experiences or even just simple personal taste, but no matter what if something exists, it is gray in one shade or another.

[grouchythefish]

Me: takes a position I know I will hate because it represents a promotion and will help me reach the place I actually want to be faster at the cost of being miserable for a few months.

Me, three weeks in: realizing I fucking hate this position and am miserable and am dreading going into work because of it.

Me: [surprised Pikachu face]

[brawltogethernow]

is it okay if i ask what the issue with ring doorbell cameras are? i was under the impression that they were helpful for stuff like potential crimes/lawsuits, safety from police misconduct, and protection from people who are there to harass/cause harm to a home owner. what downsides could they have that outweighs the potential good they can do?

(x) Sometimes the people with the cameras...are the ones harassing people. They're a tool: They don't have a moral alignment. I'm sure people with good reasons to surveil their neighborhoods exist, but I have only personally encountered people who really really want an excuse to call the cops on one of their neighbors.

That said, I didn't say it was amoral to have a ring camera. I said it was creep behavior. It's creepy. I just dislike it. I don't like that if I take my coffee out on the front stoop without a bra on at six a.m. three different wealthy older couples I have literally never spoken to are recording it. I don't like that an increasing number of people consider it acceptable behavior to introduce themselves by saying they've noticed while reviewing their RING CAMERA(tm) that you walk your dog every morning at 10:45 but stopped recently. I don't like being flagged down by strangers who are like, "Yesterday someone stole the change out of my car cupholders, and I notice you walked past my driveway yesterday evening.... Why is that?" and having to laugh charmingly and explain my schedule to them because if I don't they're going to try to send police to my house. I did not enjoy humoring the across the street neighbor as she scrubbed through one of her multiple exterior camera feeds on her phone trying to find the culprit who moved her doormat and discovering that it captured my ENTIRE deck until she landed on a frame that finally had some suspicious figures in it and started to get excited until I pointed out that they were us at the beginning of the conversation we were still having.

It just makes me uncomfortable. I have no obligation to think kindly about people who haven't been personally been weird at me yet who ~may or may not~ be deleting most of their surveillance footage without watching it. It's my opinion that recording everybody who walks down your street is a dick move; it's not neutral behavior to degrade people's privacy in shared spaces, and the cons of doing this don't go away if the pros outweigh them.

It's like watching loud videos on your phone on the bus--you don't have to be doing something evil to make some of the people around you passionately hate your guts. If I made anybody feel uncomfortable about having a ring camera that was on purpose. Really just not a fun luxury item people get their grandparents for Christmas I'm a fan of.

[mikkomacko]

could we get a blurb where one of the boys are sick and reader takes care of them? then maybe mob boss nico comes home to reader babying the sick boy and is so endeared by the interaction that he envisions what it would be like to raise a family with reader.

“Jack is sick today,” is all Luke said when he texted Nico this morning. The younger Hughes brother showed up for his shift of restocking the bar supply room for the day and then left for his turn patrolling the streets.

Nico assumed it meant Jack was at home, probably just sleeping and ordering soup and crackers to the loft. Maybe he’d see him in the morning.

But when he decided to call the day early and strolled into his house, he was stopped by the sight of an extra body lying on his couch.

“Easy day?” Timo asks him, emerging from the kitchen with a banana in hand. Nico looks at him, then back at the living room.

“Tired, wanted to come home.” He explains, nodding in confusion to the only thing visible: the pair of feet hanging over the arm rest. “Who’s that?”

He snorts. “Who do ya think?”

Moving closer into the living room, your figure comes into view. Perched on the edge of the couch, you’re looking down at whoever is lying before you with warm and comforting eyes, eyebrows pulled in concern.

Nico isn’t surprised when he gets to the edge of the couch and finds Jack wrapped in a thick blanket, hair sprawled out on the memory foam pillow from one of the guest rooms.

“Hey Schoa,” You’re stroking through Jack’s hair, fingers tender and slow as you greet him. “You’re home early.”

He hums, looking around at the tissue box and vapo-rub on the the coffee table, the red Gatorade on the floor where Jack can reach it, a humidifier bubbling in the corner, and Happy Gilmore on the tv.

“Playing doctor?” He teases, only half joking. You look up at him, fingers pausing and that concerned look you wore earlier softens.

“Pretty good at it, don’t ya think?”

Nico laughs quietly, but agrees. Smiling proudly, you peer back down at Jack, smoothing your thumb over the dark bags under his sleeping eyes and then placing the back of your hand to his forehead.

“How’s he doing?” Nico asks when you frown in disappointment.

You shrug. “Ok, he’s got a fever still but at least he’s not throwing up and crying anymore.”

Nico makes a face. “How’d that work out for you?”

You glance at him, an unamused look on your face as you do so. “Had to get over my fear of vomit eventually right?”

Accepting the answer, Nico watches you for a moment. The gentle way you touch Jack’s face and move his hair, how sweet your gaze is as you examine the sleeping boy as if looking for anything physically wrong with him.

Motherly, he realizes. You look so motherly and protective watching over him like that, and it makes something in Nico’s heart throb.

You had told him you don’t know if you’ll ever want kids, that it’s something you haven’t put a lot of thought into. And he’s fine with that because he hasn’t either.

But if you ever decide it’s something you want, Nico will give it to you a hundred times over. And those kids will be the luckiest little ones in the world to have a mother like you.

“Hey,” he says softly, and you look over at him. “C’mere.” You take the hand he holds out to you, moving around the edge of the couch and into his arms.

Nico lowers his head, capturing your lips in a sweet and soft kiss. Your hands find the back of his neck, holding him gently.

“What was that for?” You whisper when he pecks kisses to your cheeks and nose.

“I don’t need a reason to kiss you.” Nico replies, not knowing how to explain to you that he thinks you look so good in the role of a mother. The last thing he wants is to freak you out.

“No you don’t,” you giggle, playing with his hair.

Pleased, he nips playfully at your lips again.

“Come take a shower with me?”

You purse your lips like you’re thinking about it, outweighing the pros and cons, and he rolls his eyes in annoyance. Tugging on his hair, you grin.

“Let me wake Jack up for another dose of medicine and I’ll meet you up there, ok?”

Nico wants to complain, wants to whine that Timo can do it and just come up with him now please but he doesn’t. You seem to enjoy fawning over Jack, to be taking care of him and he knows the kid can use some of that.

He’s a far way from his own mother and from what Luke has told everyone, Jack is one hell of a mama’s boy.

So he agrees instead, letting you go so you can crouch back down by the couch and he heads for the stairs.

“Jack,” he hears you coo, and he pauses on the bottom step to listen to you. “Need you to get up for a sec, darling.”

That part in his heart throbs again, sending butterflies throughout his stomach and warmth to his cheeks. Continuing up the stairs, Nico tries to imagine what sweet pet names you’d use for your own babies on day.

[eternal-evergreens]

hello! i saw the request open so i would like to request yandere azul from twst having a relationship with his darling (fem reader) but deep down his darling started to get tired of the relationship because y'know, his yandere tendencies. especially he's super clingy to her it makes her suffocated around him.

thank you,

｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+*⁠.⁠✧ "Error 30004" ｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+*⁠.⁠✧

Post type: drabble

Pairing: Yandere!Azul Ashengrotto x Fem!Reader

Word count: 744

Warnings: Angst, pretty tame for a yandere fic actually

Being Azul's girlfriend wasn't...without benefits, but the cons are slowly, steadily starting to outweigh the pros. He is far, far too dependant on you. And aside from the mental exhaustion his clinginess causes you, you're sure it can't be healthy for him, either.

Truthfully, you should have broken up with him a long, long time ago.

To be fair, you have tried. It's just...whenever you start to steer the conversation to something more somber, it's as if you can hear his heart breaking into little pieces.

The image of his face, tear-stricken and blindsided, keeps you up at night.

But enough is enough. This is the sixth time he's tried to delay your departure just tonight. It was well past midnight, and you were supposed to have been gone by five.

"Oh dear, would you look at the time? I'm afraid I simply cannot allow you to walk home at this hour. Why don't you stay the night? I've already made the preparations, just in case." Of course he has.

You take a deep breath, square your shoulders, and look him in the eyes. "Azul," you say. "This would be the eighth night in a row that you've asked me to stay over. I already told you that Grim is waiting for me back at Ramshackle. I promised him I'd come home tonight. I told you that I'd go home tonight."

"But I couldn't possibly let you walk home in the dark, even with me to walk you back it'd still be—"

"—'Improper'. I know, Azul. You've given me this spiel a hundred times before. At this point I spend more time in Octavinelle than I do in my own dorm!"

"Is that such a bad thing?" He asks. His composure is wavering. An ordinary person wouldn't be able to tell, but you know him well enough to know the difference. He shakily reaches for you hand, but you bat it away. You sigh heavily, closing your eyes and putting your hand up to your temple.

"Azul, I can't do this anymore. I need space. You aren't even giving me room to breathe."

"...You're...breaking up with me...?" His voice is cracked, and you can hear him holding back a sob. Against your better judgement, you crack an eye open. Clear grey eyes welling with tears, a wobbly lip, pinched eyebrows. It's the very same face that you'd been fearing all this time.

Your resolve cracks.

"I just—I just need a break. We don't have to break up, just—just show me that we can live without each other, okay? It's not healthy. We're not healthy."

"...o...ut...?" Azul mumbles something, but you can't make it out over his cries.

"What was that?" You ask, trying to sound as gentle as possible.

"So what?!" He says, nearly yelling. "So what if it's not healthy?! We love each other, don't we?!"

"Azul..." He begins to break down in your arms. You hesitantly hold him as he cries, rubbing soft circles into his back. After what feels like an eternity wrapped up in an hour, Azul's sobs finally calm down enough for him to speak.

"We love each other..." He says, nearly murmuring. "Isn't that enough...?" Neither of you say anything more, and eventually, his breathing evens out, indicating he's finally asleep.

Your sleeves are wet. It's been a long night

Gently laying Azul onto his pillow, you check the bedside clock. It's one in the morning. Grim is going to give you an earful...assuming he's awake enough to care, that is.

In the bathroom, a spare toothbrush, shampoo, conditioner, hair ties, face wash, makeup.

In the bedroom, an extra pillow, spare clothes, an overnight bag, a sleep mask, a weighted blanket.

In your bag, school supplies, snacks, a water bottle, a friendship bracelet with a paw charm. Your resolve strengthens.

You pack up your things, all of them, and leave. When you get back to Ramshackle, you send a quick text, and then promptly shut off your phone.

1:06AM

I went back to Ramshackle. I took all my overnight stuff with me, too. Won't be needing it anymore. Sorry, Azul, but I lied. This is the end.

Delivered.

7:46AM

You have -78- missed calls.

You have 62 new voicemails.

You sigh, quickly hitting something on your phone before shutting it off again. You knew you shouldn't have looked.

From across the campus, Azul stares at his screen.

Message failed to deliver.

[babygirl-diaz]

*Buck and Eddie sitting in front of an open fridge door in a heatwave*

Eddie: What? Why are you looking at me like that?

Buck: Can I have this dance?

Eddie: Dance? Right now?

Buck: Yeah, why not?

Eddie: Maybe because I am dying of the heat?

Buck: *standing up and sticking out his hand* Come on. We need to practice our first dance

Eddie: *sighs and stands up* Fine! Play some music. I’ll get the lights

Buck: We don’t need light. The refrigerator light is fine. We don’t need music either. It’s in our hearts

Eddie: *puts his hand on Buck’s shoulder and takes his other hand* You’re so weird

Buck: *puts his hand on Eddie’s waist* Should have thought about that before saying yes

Eddie: I did. Long and hard-

Buck:

Eddie: Do not say like my dick or I’ll step on your toes!

Buck: I wasn’t going to!

Eddie: Uh huh. Well, ultimately I decided that the pros outweigh the cons of marrying you

Buck: Like what?

Eddie: Like tax benefits and besides your loaded

Buck: Gold digger!

Eddie: You still love me though

Buck: That I do *leans in to kiss him when the lights turn on*

Chris: What are you doing?

Buck: Dancing?

Chris: But there’s no music

Eddie: The music is in our hearts

Chris: You two are so weird. Makes sense why you’re getting married

[a-very-sparkly-nerd]

and i don't even like you that much... wait, i do (fuck)

Speculative s7 fic by @sagegreenfrogs and I! Next up, Camp Counsellor AU!

Soren gave General-Queen Amaya her arm-punch much sooner than he'd thought. That was nice, but the cons outweighed the pros. The cons being that Katolis was in shambles and still burning, that after everything, Viren still managed to evade justice, and, oh yeah, Aaravos was out of his prison. That had been hard to miss.

Commander Gren had directed him to a tent near the hall where the wedding had been held, to where Ezran sat, talking in a low voice with Queen Aanya of Duren and Queen Janai.

The younger girl looked up when he entered quietly and bowed, placing a hand on Ez's back and nodding to Soren. “Why don't I go make arrangements for you to come to Duren with me?”

He reached out for her before seeming to remember himself, curling his fist around thin air. “But what about… What about my brother? What about Rayla, my people? The Crownguards, the castle staff?”

“I'll find a mage to send word to Prince Callum,” Janai promised, getting to her feet. “Your people are always more than welcome here.”

Aanya nodded in agreement. “The same will go for me. We can consolidate our powers, Duren and Katolis and New Aurea. We will find a way to defeat Aaravos, and we'll help you rebuild Katolis. There every step of the way.”

Ezran took a deep, shaky breath in, and soldiered to his own feet alongside Aanya. “Alright. Thank you two so much.”

Queen Janai squeezed his soldier gently. “Of course. We are not only allies, King Ezran, but family.”

The two queens took their leave, and Soren was left alone with a shuddery Ezran. He waved him over, wiping his hands on his bright red pants in the heat.

“Hey,” he said. “How bad is it, really?”

Soren averted his gaze. “It’s… bad, King Ezran. Really bad. The castle is in the ground, and so’s the town. But we got a lot of the citizens out, nearly all of them.”

He stayed quiet for a long moment, an uncomfortable one.

Soren stepped forward. “Listen, evacuating and abandoning the castle was my idea. No one else's. Get mad at me, but don't blame-”

Ezran cut him off with a tight hug. “Thank you,” he whispered. “That was a good choice. The right one. I'm so proud of you, Soren. I trust you.”

For once, it didn't feel like what Soren was being told was the right choice was an ulterior motive in disguise.

Soren held him back, wishing he didn't have to deliver the next news. But Ezran was his friend and the king, his king, and so he had to.

“Viren is dead,” he whispered, and Ez lurched back. “He used his heart for a spell to protect people, to make them fireproof.”

“The one from Lux Aurea? The Storm Spire?” Fear flashed in Ezran’s eyes, but not fear of him, fear for him. Because Ezran had known how desperately terrified of becoming a monster, especially at his father’s hands, that Soren was, and then had handed him all the tools to do it on a silver platter.

He nodded. “Yes.”

Ezran looked down. “Okay. Okay. It's not- it's not great, but we can work with it. At least he's not a threat anymore, right? Assuming he doesn't get resurrected for a third time.”

“Yeah, he doesn’t tend to stay gone,” Soren agreed, laughing in spite of everything. “But, King Ezran- it's- okay, I have one more piece of bad news for you.”

Ezran pulled away from the embrace to look up at him with apprehensively raised eyebrows. “What?”

He bit his lip.

“Soren.”

He looked away. “Aaravos is out. My sis- Claudia freed him.”

Ezran lurched away and spat out a string of words that Soren couldn't exactly say he approved of, but sure did accurately describe the situation.

He eased the younger boy down onto his chair, holding a glass of water to his lips as he struggled to breathe. “Hey, it's okay. Breathe in and out.”

Ezran shook his head, fisting his hand in the fabric over his heart and using the other to slam down on the table. “No. No, I’m fine. I have to be fine. Letters. I- I need to send letters, get help and tell Callum-”

“I already did that,” Soren assured him. Written on the ride over, handwriting wonkier than its usual wonkiness, but he’d gotten word out across the continent asking for aid.

Ezran gripped his sleeve and looked up at him gratefully. “Thanks.”

“Don’t even mention it. Now, why don’t we go get you some fresh air?” Soren offered a hand up.

Ezran ducked his head and took it, allowing him to adjust the gleaming crown around his head. Just once, Soren wished he could yank it off and let the boy be a kid. Not a king, not someone with the weight of the world on his young shoulders. Just a kid who hadn’t even gone through puberty yet.

“You’ve got this,” Soren assured him, because, well… there wasn’t much other choice, was there?

Ezran’s eyes saddened. He knew it, too.

Read more on ao3!

[dom1re]

Hi 👋🏽 I so admire your arts too!! If it’s ok, I’d love to know more about your approach to shading and rendering. I always find your use of colour so calming and complementary. 💖💖

Whereas I tend to be over saturated and why I often draw in greyscale

When I read that you liked my arts too I died. I was down on the floor. Crying tears of joy. Then I realized I have a response to draft so I got up.

So here ya go!! I hope you find something interesting here. I organized it into 3 parts for easier reading:

Rendering Overview

Picking Colors

Shading (or winging it and hoping for the best)

Also if anyone has any tips I'm all ears!! I’m always trying to optimize my process, make it quicker + cleaner

Rendering Overview

My current rendering process on Procreate (click and swipe):

1. Rough sketches

This is where I try to get the anatomy and pose right. I can get up to 3 reps in here depending on how refined I want it to be. Yep I care a lot about my lines...

2. Clean line

... coz it's my favorite part!! I get such a dopamine rush seeing the sketches come together into a clean line lol. Here I use the Selection Tool and Liquify to resize and adjust the forms (gotta move away from doing this too much tho)

3. Color

First I create a flat base layer and color over it using Clipping Mask (pretty standard I think). Then I divvy my drawing into as many layers as possible - one each for skin, hair, shirt, waistcoat, trousers, etc - as I color them all. More on this below.

4. Shade

ewww shading... my least favorite part. I use Multiply layers and gray colors, again pretty standard. I usually have 1-3 layers here, stacked on one another, depending on the desired depth. More on this below.

5. Finishing touches

This stage involves a lot of small (but important imo) things, which vary depending on the drawing:

Tinting lines (Because shading makes the colors darker, lines need to get darker too)

Highlights on hair, face, clothes, eyes, etc. I can never make up my mind between Overlay/Hard Light/Soft Light layers for this

Little wisps of hair or lighting effects 

and voila I have something to share with the world. wooo

Picking Colors

Ok about my colors… I wish I had some fancy technique to show but tbh I just eyeball them and try them out a bunch. Now if I’m using a reference I could use the color picker, but I don't like to coz the results are way off for whatever reasons (ex. lighting in the img). Anyways it doesn’t have to be the same color as the reference; as long as the colors “make sense” to me I'm happy.

But what if the colors I chose are too saturated or too dark? I use the Adjustment Tools for this. I can just select the layer (or an area using the Selection Tool) and edit its darkness and saturation. I found this way easier than painting over or color-dropping repeatedly.

This is why I leverage as many layers as possible. It allows a modular control on my rendering - I can change the color of my character’s skin, eyes, or waistcoat patterns and keep all other components unaffected and clean. Sometimes I have like 100+ layers and it drives me batshit crazy but the pros still outweigh the cons. Or so I tell myself

( + I would love to understand grayscale and use it as freely as u do. I watched bunch of vids on it but something about it just hasn’t stuck with me yet 😔)

Shading I guess

Similar to coloring, I create several Multiply layers and stack them together for depth. For example:

This is again for that modular control but honestly I wouldn't be doing this if I was good at shading... I feel so lost every time, I just don't know how it works. But one ‘hack’ I’ve come up with is shading skins and clothes differently. I use reddish gray for skin (and brown/red hair), and just gray for everything else.

The character feels more lively and natural with a bit of red undertones in their skin. I don't think this is the best way to render skins though. Just a little shortcut til I get to study the topic more.

Something else I do to get over my fear of shading is using good references. I’m always lurking on Pinterest for them but alas, I can’t always find that perfect image with perfect lighting and poses. It’s kinda sad funny how the quality of my rendering depends so much on the reference:

(it's not a 'bad' reference per se - I chose it really for the pose, not for shading)

At the end of the day tho I’m just a learning artist so I try not to be too harsh on myself. Someday I'll render shiny shoes and shirt creases without refs. I yearn for that day 

Well on that cheerful note thanks for coming to my Ted Talk your interest in my rendering approach! I’ve been wanting to document it for my own records so this was great.

I picked up digital illustration just last year and self-learning it has been a fun but lonely process. If you have any tips or more questions talk to me ANYONE PLEASE I’m dying to talk about it if you can't tell by the sheer length of this post. For which I'm sorry but hopefully it wasn’t too dense a read ok I’m really done now bye!! 

[mysteryanimator]

Myst rambles about animation longer then they should + their love for Nocturne whoops

I keep thinking about the animation industry as of late again, all the layoffs, all the animators looking for jobs. So I might just be speaking to a void right now. I have not experienced any of the drought so I just may look doe-eyed trying to break into a disaster zone but I’m just here to offer that newbie perspective, as naive as it may seem. I’m gonna try and keep this short (whoops a lie) but if you can see where this is going, this is just going to be me talking about the impact Nocturne has on me, aka rewriting the abhorrent Twitter thread/Instagram post where I free-formed without checking my grammar. 

As someone who is pursuing animation, I have watched A LOT of animated shows growing up, I swear it was the only medium I did watch growing up. I made scuffed animatics and animations of the current show I was watching, not realizing they counted as love letters to the media. Yet, the animation industry scared me. It was so elusive and mysterious. The bar seemed too high, even when I decided to choose to study it at university. It seemed so out of reach.

Until Nocturne. 

Castlevania Nocturne practically humanized the industry to me. These people were fans of their own creations. They breathe life into them. All the character sheets that popped into my timeline, the rough cuts, all the silly memes. Something that seemed impossible became possible within an instant. My skills at the time were not what they are now by any means, hell even now I could be better, but, I looked at that show and went “I can do that. If they can do it, maybe there’s a chance I could do something like that.” I think it helps I am at a stage of my life where I can consciously consume content and have the ability to break it down.

Also, let's be so honest, it's combined with the fact that I fell in love with Mizrak and Olrox's plot... you get a very insane person. Passionate but insane. Who spends their entire day going frame by frame reanalysing 10 minutes of an episode? ME. Despite this, I have learned so much more than all my years at university have given me. I have become a genuinely better animator and a better artist. My understanding of animation finally clicked. I knew I was built for animation but didn’t know how I fit into it. I’m constantly on YouTube, absorbing information from YouTube channels like Dong Chang, wandering around Discord Sakuga servers/twitter, and taking notes. I'm still worried about bothering other people in the industry/more technically skilled than me but I think I'm getting slowly better and going "Hey I love your work! How did you achieve x/y/z? OH!? Can you explain what this means?" because again, these are just people like you and me.

So every single Mizrak and Olrox animation I’ve made has not only been a love letter to the show, and crew of people who put their heart and soul into making this, but these animations have been a testament to my skills. Take it like a capsule of how I’m improving every month. I will admit I sometimes get weirded out of the fan content I make, albeit a combination of low confidence, and imposter syndrome, and now my animation style has just become very synonymous with the nocturne style. These ‘cons’ however do get outweighed by the pros of it all. Finally finding a style that I find goes hand in hand with my illustration style (and I can't wait to see how I can evolve it into my own) and the bouts of self-doubt are vast and temporary. I am super grateful that I can look at my work in times of doubt and go “Literally anything is possible, let me put on a show that explores this certain animation principle/story beat in a particular way, and let me study it!"

It's super embarrassing to admit but Nocturne has genuinely changed the trajectory of my life. I am genuinely a whole new person with such a different outlook on animation because of this show. Yes, I am creative through and through, you cannot separate that from my blood, but Nocturne solidified that “You are exactly where you need to be”. The industry is in shambles, with people now reaching a year+ jobless, and contracts are ending, yet, if Nocturne genuinely wasn’t released at the end of September, I do not think any of this would've clicked.

(Backed up by the very fact I am/was directing a short and running a genuine studio when Nocturne came out. I was very unconfident at the time and doubted myself a lot in private since it was my first time doing any of this. This show helped me solidify a new perspective on how to run things! How to be a stronger animator!)

Now again, this is such a crazy thing to say now. I'm watching people from the show I love have their contracts ending/being laid off since last year. I swear every second tweet on my tl is of an animator desperately looking for a job or on the verge of giving up. Me, Mystery, is an animator with no skin in the game, so I don't truly know what the Western animation industry looks like from the inside besides what I get from social media. Let’s be honest, for all you know, I just animate two characters kissing constantly. That is merely the surface of its impact. HEY, I MAY DELETE THIS B4 ANYONE SEES BECAUSE THIS IS KINDA EMBARASSING, the industry sucks right now. People are losing their jobs, so what I’m saying may not matter, but also I think it does maybe? I think this is just a unique perspective to where people are losing faith and hope in the animation, I re-sparked my thanks to Nocturne. Who knows, I may lose this spark as I go further into trying to break into the industry once I'm out of uni, but I’ll take what I have now and ride this new bout of inspiration and creativity. I want to tell stories. I want to bring life to still images. I know it's possible because Nocturne exists. These are real people who exist, who put their love and care into this show. Passion like that is inspiring.

I also somehow can't escape these people reading this, so if you have made it this far- thank you for making this show the way you have! Thank you to all the people both still in it and to others who have had to part with Nocturne. I will admit I have gone through the credits and made sure I could try and learn from everyone's work despite how unique/different each role is.

I hope my grammar is better than last time HAHAH, the technicality of English isn't a strong suit of mine but fingers crossed that the ideas/content are still passable.

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

Feel free to ignore if this is unwelcome, but have you ever thought about publishing traditionally to sublimate your income and draw in new readers? I know you've self published two books already and that you didn't feel like they did very well, but maybe the experience would be different if someone else was in charge of marketing and all the other business stuff?

Obviously everyone's experience is different but as an author myself who's published both trad and self, traditional publishing has been a completely different experience and has allowed me to focus more on writing because I'm not the one responsible for advertising/marketing/financing anymore.

There are a ton of literary agents nowadays that want to represent diverse and lgbtqia+ fiction, some of them even in Australia.

Websites like Reedsy, AgentQuery and Jerichowriters have extensive directories to find literary agents.

(This is lengthy folks so I'm putting the other two parts (and my response) under a read more! Also putting it under a read more so the anon can skip my response since it's very 'here's all the reasons I can't do this' and they just might not want to read that, lmao)

(continued -> )

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

Obviously most authors, unless they're really prolific, don't get a huge advance (the average is between $1000 - $5000) but getting your foot in the door or on the traditional publishing "ladder' so to speak can have a huge benefit for your serials. Because it gives you more exposure. Plus it's in the agent's best interest to find a publishing house that accepts stories that contain darker themes and negotiate the best deal for you.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses? I have no idea. But you could use this to your advantage. I think I remember you mentioning that writing novels felt quite isolating to you? But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

You already have a loyal readership and that's very attractive to trad pub houses and agents.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance. It could be just a landing page that says something about you and then has links to your tumblr and patreon where you're more active. That way you increase the chances of getting your serials found by additional readers and also come across looking more "professional". Not that you're not professional now. You are and I admire you greatly, but the unfortunate reality is a lot of people still judge by appearances and some will be more drawn to an author's website than a tumblr page, at least at first. So I think having a simple landing page would open up another door for you to benefit from.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

These are just suggestions and thoughts and like I said before, feel free to ignore. But I know you've mentioned wanting to grow your career in the past and I genuinely believe you can do so with some of these pathways.

~

Okay, my response. Posting this because firstly I think the suggestions could work very well for other authors reading this! And I hope they take the advice to note, and secondly because I haven't talked about this for a hot minute so let's talk about it again.

So the TL;DR is yes I have considered traditional publishing. I have actually been traditionally published in short stories, poetry, and also had my art published on covers and re: interior illustrations. But my Fae Tales works got soundly rejected when I sent them to publishing houses that were doing open calls for that sort of material. I've never heard back from an agent and I never expect to, heh.

~

Now for a bit more detail

I have been traditionally published before (it's how I got my writing out there long before I ever wrote serials), and yes, I have approached publishers with my writing since then. In fact Tradewinds was written for the traditional publishing market, and it got soundly rejected, and then shelved. The reasons it was rejected ran the gamut from 'I don't like that these fae eat humans no one is going to relate to these people' (while the editor then went on to publish vampire books idk) to 'There's too much worldbuilding you can't expect readers to keep up with this' to 'Your stories are too long, no one wants to read characters talking all the time.'

Meanwhile in my online serials I was getting feedback like 'my favourite chapters are the ones where the characters just sit in a room and talk' lol.

The traditional publishing world is also not quite as utopian for most authors as you make it seem. I'm friends with a lot of authors who are traditionally published because that's the world I came from, and unless they're solely in KU and doing generic rapid release formula romances, none of them are making that much money. Certainly not enough to live off. It may have been that you were very fortunate, anon, but I know hundreds more traditionally published authors that left trad pub to make money, and I know about 5 in trad pub personally who are making enough to live off of.

Only one of those is really writing what she truly loves to write, and even then, publishing houses have refused to commit to her entire fantasy series (and she's regularly in 'Top 10/20 Women Fantasy Authors in the World' lists) and forced her to finish the series prematurely. Something I never ever have to worry about in self pub.

The reality is that in trad pub these days, you're still in charge of most of your marketing unless you're one of the big earners for the publishing house. In fact I'd be expected to keep even more of a social media and marketing presence than I do now. I don't do almost any of the things you're supposed to do as an author in marketing to be appealing. I don't have a Facebook author account. I don't have an Instagram author account. I don't maintain or regularly send out newsletters (which automatically puts me in the like 0.05% of authors who make money doing this lmao).

I don't know if you ever have looked that closely into what m/m publishing houses expect from most of their authors, but the newsletter swaps, cover releases, review circuits, interview circuits and more are fucking grueling. We're expected to be responsible for our advertising and our marketing to a fairly massive degree. Some traditionally published in m/m still have to pay for their release blitzes out of pocket. These publishing houses, by and large, do not offer advances. You say most authors don't get large advances. I don't think most authors in this arena get offered advances at all unless they're somehow miraculously acquired by a Big 4.

We're expected to have an already established social media presence because of that (that's why it's so appealing to publishers that we have social media presences already, anon, so we can market, they can save money, and we still see only a minimal cut from the royalties).

And you still have to focus on your finances, because publishing houses like Dreamspinner straight up didn't pay a whole bunch of authors for so long they destroyed careers. They still haven't paid some of their authors. And they're still running a business and people still buy their books.

Trad publishing houses have better resources for marketing and helping authors get more attention than any self publishing website could.

This is true if a) they're a big publishing house and not an indie publisher of which most LGBTQIA+ publishing houses are and b) they're willing to use them on you.

The authors that make the most money get the most resources. If they believe you're going to earn back your advance and move thousands or tens of thousands of units per book, then yes, you will get those resources.

I have been told so many times now - even from friends who run publishing houses, including one who works at HarperCollins - that my work will never be mainstream enough to have broad appeal. They literally told me not to keep trying re: trad pub, because that was my dream for a long time. These folks have given me rock solid advice in the past, it's one of the reasons I'm doing so well now via Patreon + Ream. But they were like (paraphrasing) 'you don't write 60-80k romances and you don't want to and that's not your strength anyway, you're multi-genre which makes you hard to market, you write psychological and literary trauma recovery which is hard to market, you write character studies which are hard to market, publishing houses often don't commit to series anymore if the first two don't move units and if they pulled the plug you'd be contractually obliged to never finish that series until your contract was up.' I could go on, but it was like yeah...actually. Fair.

For some reason places like Amazon and the like accept and keep up more "dark" books that are traditionally published than they do with self pub ones. Maybe because they have more respect or leniency for publishing houses?

They do, but most publishing houses want very formulaic dark romance which is not what I write.

I have a 300k omegaverse slowburn that still hasn't had any penetrative sex in it, anon. Publishing houses don't want that. They don't expect anyone will wait 4 full length novels to get to literally a single penetrative sex scene.

But you already have 2 completed novels (3 if you count the fae one) that you could potentially revisit or rewrite to your liking and get them represented by agents.

If I rewrote them to my liking, trad pub wouldn't want them. They'd be too long! I think agents etc. take one look at me and go 'oh god, no thank you!' I'm not an easy sell, by any means.

Plus I'm very e.e about all of that with the knowledge that they then give me only about 10-15% of the royalties on the sales, vs. self-pub where I get around 70%, or subscription where I around 80% of it. When someone subscribes to me, they don't have to worry about 85-90% of their subscription fee going to a publishing house. I don't have to think about how many thousands and thousands of books I'd have to sell to make the same amount that I do now via subscription.

As well as trad publishing, you could also make s simple website that doesn't require much maintenance.

If it was that simple, I'd be doing it. I don't mean this in a facetious way, I mean it in a: I've made a lot of websites, in fact I run one at the moment not connected to my writing (I've been running it for so long it's now in its 20s and can probably has a driver's license). I find it so tedious that I barely remember to check in on it. But forgetting about it means there's always maintenance to keep up with when I get back to it.

Running websites is simpler than it used to be, but it's still not simple. There's hosting and hosting costs, there's server changes, there's back-end maintenance etc. I'm considering it for down the track, but there's a reason I decided to go the route of Patreon over my own site. There are authors (like Christopher Hopper) who actually do subscription through their own domain, but it's a lot of work.

Even placeholder sites are still work. They need updating, details change, story titles changing etc. Maintaining my Patreon + Ream About pages is enough, they're always both a little out of date, lol.

Not that you're not professional now.

Oh no, I mean from a 'traditional publisher looking at me to see what kind of candidate I am' I'm really not though. Like I said, I don't have the newsletter (100 subscribers who get one newsletter a year is not really a newsletter), I don't have the Facebook/Tiktok/Insta/Twitter/Bluesky/Threads accounts, etc. I write multi-genre across multiple steam levels, and I'm allergic to writing serials shorter than 150k. One of my best performing original serials was an 800k contemporary story with no sex in it but a lot of BDSM. It can't be marketed as clean or sweet, it's not high steam, an entire chapter is 'boy saves snail from rain.' Also he was cruel to animals, so not exactly what I'd call a sympathetic main.

And yet that story did so well for me via Patreon + Ream, because people want the kinds of stories that publishing houses generally don't want and I happen to be writing them.

Trad publishing is work but definitely not as much as self publishing, and you can continue on with your serials. Getting an agent can be time consuming but I personally believe the pros outweigh the cons and I also believe that your stories would be a huge treasure to the growing lgbtqia+ market. Seriously there needs to be more!

Anon I just literally do not believe an agent would want to represent me. I have 0% belief in that. Not from a self-deprecating angle but from a 'I am not a good bet for the trad market' perspective. From a 'I have so many friends who are trad pubbed authors who stare at me like I'm insane for writing serials as long as I do' perspective. From a 'professionals in the industry have told me it's amazing I'm doing so well in serials because there's no way they'd take a risk on what I'm doing' perspective. From a 'just because it's queer and diverse doesn't mean it hits literally any other thing a trad pub is looking for' perspective. I've been doing this for 10 years. There are agents who represent work similar to mine who know what I'm doing and wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. They're not missing out on a trick, they know I'm not broad appeal, and they're right.

Also the only way I'd have the energy to manage trad pub is by quitting serials. And honestly, I never found trad pub all that much fun while I was doing it for non-novel stuff. It was fine, and it is nice to have my stuff out there, but it was a ton of admin and a lot of going back and forth between people who really only care about marketing a product, and that's great and what they excel at! But I'm too disabled to turn this job into something crushing just to potentially make more money, I'd rather just quit and go back onto a full Disability Pension. I can't see any way I still get to write the stories I want to write, in the way that I write them, and be remotely appealing to a single reputable trad pub or agent.

Also *gestures to everything in this article*

[artist-issues]

*peeks in* hiiii, I know I've sent you like 10 asks or something crazy in like twenty minutes but I have one more whoops

what do you think about The Chosen? I know I have very strong grievances against it (y'know, the fact that they are adding things to the Bible is really sus), but also recognize that unbelievers are watching it (especially with their families) and learning about Jesus and Christianity when they would not be otherwise. I still think that the cons outweigh the pros though.

what do you think of it?

Full disclosure. I have only seen maybe the first three or four episodes of the Chosen. I also attended church with and have met and had conversations with Dallas Jenkins. I supported it.

And I hate The Chosen.

If all of reality is a story that God is telling—the timeline is His, we, the characters, are His, the Main Point/Theme is His—and it is—then that means, that when telling His Story, God chose how to tell it.

When a storyteller creates their world and their characters, they know everything about that story and those characters. But they chose not to tell everything. They choose to cut out some details that are irrelevant to how they want their audience to get to know their characters, for the purpose of perfectly communicating their Main Point. Deleting scenes and hand-picking which details get screentime is part of storytelling.

So God saw and ordered the moments where Jesus was probably laughing with His disciples, or playing with children, and God/Jesus chose the tone of voice that He preached in. Those moments, those things, happened.

But He didn’t choose to tell us about all of them.

He, the Original Storyteller, the Perfect storyteller, told the most important story of all time. And He told it perfectly. And He chose to omit some scenes that actually happened and some details about what Jesus and the disciples were like, walking around together.

And those choices were right. They were the best way to tell the story.

But then Dallas Jenkins comes along and says, “No, God, you cut some of the best scenes. People need to see how like us Jesus was. Yeah, I know You told them how much He was like us—but I think they need to see more. You won’t let me see the deleted scenes? That’s okay, I’ll make them up. And then I’ll re-tell Your story—it wasn’t relatable enough the first time when You told it.”

The more someone thinks Dallas Jenkins was trying to reach people by presuming to tell Jesus’ life story better than God Himself has, the worse the implications are. He thinks he can tell the most important story of all time better than God did?

No wonder he makes so many freakin mistakes. No wonder the Jesus-character in Jenkins’ show goes “maybe”—He uses the word “MAYBE?!”—when He, who is supposed to be TRUTH ITSELF, is PREACHING.

That doesn’t make sense, Jenkins. And not only does it not make sense, but you just contradicted the literal Bible, which mentions over and over the authority and exact words Jesus preached with. And you know what else you did? You got the most important living thing in all of existence, the most important man who ever walked this earth, completely wrong. And that’s what you’re “reaching people” with.

It’s awful. So then when the little interviews where he’s partnering up with cults and people of different faiths that believe vastly unbiblical things about the real Jesus to make this show, or when members of the cast are all “sin is awesome,” or when Dallas Jenkins says something outrageously disrespectful to people who are mad at him for mischaracterizing their God on social media…this is my surprised face.

Because I saw what he was doing and it didn’t sit right with me three episodes in. The most important question any human being can genuinely answer in their lifetime is “Who is Jesus?” The most important story you can ever be exposed to is Jesus’ story.

And The Chosen gets both those things so horrifyingly wrong—but the whole time it’s dressed up like this earnest, God-honoring attempt at evangelism and love. When really it’s a cash-grab, a heartstrings-tangler, and a vanity project for Dallas Jenkins.

Thanks for asking.

[baenyth]

Miraculous Ladybug Headcanon Thing: Ranking the Girlsquad's houses by how good they are to sleep over

6th: The Liberty. Looking at it, it's bigger than I remember, the size of a small house I'd say, but it's still pretty small and I don't see much extra sleeping room. Alongside that, I don't see any air conditioning or heating, and the fact that it's a boat means it can rock and get unstable and wavy when you're trying to sleep. Sure, Luka may be there, but the cons heavily outweigh the pros.

5th: Alya's apartment. As an apartment, it's pretty small, could be crowded for six people. Just Marinette and Alya it's fine, but the whole girlsquad? No. Also you're probably stuck babysitting Alya's little gremlin sisters as well. It has good decor, though.

4th: Rose's house. We're entering headcanon territory at this point. Since I headcanon Rose to be in a big family with five other kids (also the oldest sibling of the bunch,) her house is pretty big and there's definitely a guest room for some of the girlies to sleep in, alongside Rose's enormous plushie collection I know at least Alix would sleep on. So why is it so low? Because I also headcanon Rose's family to be a lot. Her parents are nice individually but together they start fighting. Her younger sister is basically a 12-year-old Chloe except with far less of a tragic backstory. And then there's the identical gremlin triplet brothers and a bonus younger gremlin brother. Marinette babysat the four brothers once. Never again. Maybe if one of the parents goes on a vacation with most of the other kids. Or just do a Kitty Section sleepover because I think Luka, Ivan, and Mylene could help babysit the kids alongside Rose and her girlfriend. Maybe even bring Ivan's little sister along. But that's not the girlsquad, and we're talking about the girlsquad.

3rd: Mylene's apartment. Mylene only has one parent and I don't see her having any siblings, so I think they live in a pretty small place. I imagine it'd basically be like Alya's place, nice-looking but small, but without any gremlin kids, which I think is a major plus.

2nd: Alix's house. Alim strikes me to be the kind of guy to have a house, not necessarily a big one like Rose's, but big enough to hold three people and a guest room. And a bunch of priceless artifacts that aren't interesting enough to be in the museum that he doesn't want people touching. But if you can look past that you have a house the six girlies can sleep in and no arguing parents or gremlin babies! Also Jalil is there. I'm not sure if that's a plus or a minus.

1st: The Dupain-Chengs' Bakery and Residence. Not only is it a decently-sized house, probably with a guest room and definitely no weird siblings or priceless artifacts you have to watch out for, (or at the very least, a lot less priceless artifacts,) and you also have Tom and Sabine. They're bakers that are happy to bake a bunch of food for her friends staying over if the Gamer episode is of any indication. Also I headcanon a good chunk of Marinette's class finds one or both of them hot, to her dismay.

[laineystein]

If I may? You seem to have an incredibly rosy view of Israel and live comfortably there. And I am happy you do! I just also have seen Israelis on tumblr speak of the struggle with the rising cost of living.

This includes having to be self conscious about the price of brands to pick, and the rent of apts. (Which are pretty common things to deal with anywhere lately). I’ve also seen an Israeli blogger say that if you don’t have a background in engineering and tech, there’s not much of a future for you in Israel-or at least not one where you can live well.

On a personal level, I struggle to comprehend the idea of bomb shelters being a conscious part of every day life in so many parts of Israel. I don’t know how you guys do it, I really don’t.

I’ve been passive-aggressively criticized for having what some would deem a rosy view of life in general so I don’t know if I’m the best person to be giving you my feedback. What I can say confidently is that I have lived elsewhere and I will forever choose to live in Israel because it is the place I truly feel is home. Yes, things are expensive but they’re expensive where I lived in the diaspora as well. Homes here are not any more expensive than they were where I lived in the diaspora. Our economy is certainly curtailed to specific professions but so is every economy. Being an engineer and being in tech is also currently the most lucrative profession in the diaspora. I’m not saying that Israel doesn’t have its issues. It does and I reference them often. I’d probably talk about them more if I wasn't so used to a lot of it; I’m used to sirens and bomb shelters and tzahal and I don’t know how to explain that to someone who isn’t. It’s just always been apart of my life and it’s not going to change anytime soon so it is what it is. I also have no problem acknowledging that I grew up very privileged and still live a very privileged life so that may have something to do with my viewpoint. But here’s the thing - I just can’t live in a non-Jewish world. I can’t live my life comfortably in a non-Jewish world. And that’s not solely because of antisemitism. I keep kosher. I keep Shabbos. And nearly everyone I love (in the diaspora) is visibly Jewish. The men wear kippot and tzitzis. The women dress tznius and cover their hair. When you are this religiously observant it’s difficult to exist in a non-Jewish world. Our holidays are different and it’s not a default to have them off and not every company you work for will be fine with you taking them off - even if it’s illegal for them not to. In the US, you can’t make friends with coworkers because you can’t see them on the weekends or eat at their restaurants or in their homes. Sending your children to a Jewish school like the one I attended is like paying college tuition per child, per year; my parents paid over 100K every year sending me and my three brothers to school - the same school would be much more affordable in Israel. We’re nothing but pawns to the political system there - the right and the left both hate us. We are politically homeless and we’re too much of a minority for it to matter. So there’s a million reasons *not* to live in the diaspora as a Jew. For me, there is also a million reasons to live in Israel. The proximity to our holy sites. The weather. The fact that we have beaches and deserts and mountains and forests and rain and snow and sunshine. The diet and the healthier lifestyle. The joy. There’s so much joy here and I feel sorry for anyone that disagrees. I can be openly Jewish here. My Jewishness is not an inconvenience here. I do not have to apologize for it or hide it. And yes, I will forever feel safer here than I ever have in the US. Is Israel also an absolute dumpster fire sometimes? Of course it is. I’m not saying it’s for everyone. Living here will be a huge shock for many Jews. But for some of us, it makes sense and the pros will forever outweigh the cons.

[uncanny-tranny]

I'm trans nonbinary and I really kind of hate myself for it and feel like such a fucking freak and I don't even know why because I didn't even grow up around a lot of homophobia or anything. I let everyone assume I'm a (trans) man because in my head if someone found out I was nonbinary they would just think I'm so fucking wierd, even when I'm in spaces or with people I know for a fact wouldn't actually think any of that. I don't feel this way about anyone else, just me. I'm really sorry if this is too much of a vent kind of thing I totally get you deleting it or whatever, but any advice you have would be really great.

I want to preface this by emphatically saying: Nobody here (least of all myself!) are judging you. I am sure many trans people who are following this blog know how you feel intimately. It's a consequence of the world we live in, not an intrinsic failure of character. I want to make this clear because you were incredibly vulnerable and I don't want you to worry that your vulnerability is a bad thing. It takes a lot to open up like this, no matter if you're on anon or not.

I've talked about this before, but this is a process that takes... a long time to work through, if I'm honest. I've been out since I was a young teenager, and now as an adult I still fall into the trappings of feeling similarly to you. What helped for me is to generally avoid judging myself for when I do feel like this. I think trying to outright ignore how you feel is very inefficient - I have tended to be a person who needs to feel those awful feelings so that I can look back and notice exactly what went wrong. I wouldn't specifically recommend that you do this - I have had many years of combating internalized transphobia to feel this is effective for myself. But, regardless of where you are in your journey of internal acceptance, I will advise this: don't judge yourself for these feelings. It is easy to do, but you don't deserve to have even more feelings of shame, isolation, or overall feelings of hopelessness or helplessness.

Often, we won't know exactly "why" we feel these feelings of internalized transphobia. For me, I also didn't grow up with outright homophobia, but I did grow up with the idea that I would only be loved if I was cishet, so when I discovered I was neither, it was jarring. I thought I would never be loved. And years later, I became open to the idea that I might have been wrong because there were people along the way - friends, certain family, strangers, even - who showed the love I felt I surrendered when I realized who and what I was.

It has helped me to expose myself to other trans people, as well. It's a delicate balance, at times, because there are moments where I find myself growing envious of another trans person for the way I perceive their own transition. It's a natural response, I guess, a natural human response that is amplified when you are part of a group that is often maligned. But I have found that the pros outweigh the cons: I see trans people of all identities now, trans people who look like me, who have incredibly similar experiences, who taught me so much about what it actually means to love and be loved. It's funny, because I'm largely a trans man (with caveats), yet some of the people who have deeply impacted me forever weren't always the same as I am (in fact, one of the first true "I look up to this person" experiences was from a trans woman who I still to this day admire and look up to).

I'm not going to lie, this (how you're feeling) is an incredibly common, but sometimes devastating result of so many factors. While we all go about these feelings in different ways, it can be hard. Therefore, it's important that we support each other. I want to offer my support to you, and let you know that you aren't going to be looked at by others in the way you might fear. It's hard to even conceptualize, honestly, but I am being honest. I understand that some of what I might have said won't resonate with you now, or ever, and that's okay. When we have a community to talk about ideas as a way of support, we can start to have more resources that we might be able to utilize effectively.

Your vulnerability right now isn't going unnoticed. It took a lot to express this, and I hope you might read this and feel even slightly better. I wish nothing but good things for you, nothing but bountiful joy and understanding that you deserve so much from this world.

[passivenovember]

“You know how I used to have a crush on you?”

Steve looks up from his math homework, sort of. Stuck in that space between awake and swimming. 

Billy won’t look at him. The end of his pencil has been chewed to shit, his rough draft for Erickson’s American History seminar laying blank and discarded on the lush green carpet of Steve’s bedroom floor.

“I guess so,” Steve tells him. Only, he doesn’t know. 

They’ve never talked about it. But, with Billy, it’s best to go along with what he says, most of the time. Unless Steve’s looking to get his head chewed off, and. 

Consequently, Steve needs his head for midterms.

There’s a powder-pink flush across Billy’s cheeks. An edge to his voice when he says, “I made a list,” 

Like Steve’s supposed to know what that means.

"You did?” Steve asks. Because he doesn’t know. He leans back against the footboard of his window seat, legs stretching like a bridge between them. “Is it a good list?”

Billy shrugs. His cheeks get redder, somehow.

He’s pretty. Like a sugared lollipop.

Steve leans forward, “It’s a pros and cons list?” 

Steve’s cocky. knows from dating Nancy that his pros outweigh his cons by a couple lines. Mentions of his cock and chest hair. 

He’s nervous, all of a sudden.

Doesn’t admit that even though there’s no way he’s getting into college, he hopes that someone as bright and magnetic as Billy will still want to neck at the drive in. 

Billy crosses his arms. Frowns. Says, “It’s a list of Icks,” all pissy, like Steve has control over that stuff.

And it makes sense Steve would find out that all his dreams are coming true when they can’t take a minute to celebrate. He feels like a shooting star, anyway. His head takes a break from swimming in equations and backstrokes through insurmountable joy.

He grins. “What’s an ‘ick’?”

“It’s something you do that makes my stomach turn,” Billy rumbles, so low Steve imagines rocks and pebbles jumping like popped corn on the ground outside. 

He sticks his legs out in front of him, leaning back a little so Billy’s faced with the long, lean line of him. 

One of Nancy’s pro’s. Tall.

“Tell me about ‘em,” Steve says. 

There’s every possibility that Billy hates him for stuff he can’t change. Like the way he smiles or how he laughs, but. Nobody’s perfect, right? 

"Fuck you, Harrington,” Billy says, baby blues tracing the bulge of Steve’s thighs, “I’m not--”

“You brought it up.”

“You’ll get your feelings hurt. Run crying to mama so I won’t be invited over anymore, and then who’s gonna help you get into college?”

Steve snorts. “I’m not getting in, anyway,” He uses his toe to poke at Billy’s knee cap, smiling when he rocks a little with the force. “C’mon. I wanna know what’s wrong with me so I can change and be perfect.”

Billy mumbles under his breath but he reaches around to his backpack, shirt riding up around his belly so Steve gets a peek at his stomach muscles. 

When he turns back around he’s got a piece of crisp, quartered notebook paper in hand. In the light from the window, Steve can see that it’s full, which.

Isn’t great for his esteem. 

Billy clears his throat. “Number one--”

“You numbered them?”

“From least disgusting to most,” Billy snaps. Like, duh. “Number one. When you do your Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation and you dribble spit on your chin.”

“I gotta use my full range of motion to get the vowels right.”

“It’s gross,” Billy says, but he smiles. And giggles, happy like the Gerber baby and he’s so fucking cute Steve’s gonna die. “Can I keep going, or--”

“Be my guest.”

Billy smooths his list, mouthing the next line before reading aloud. 

Steve wants to add that to his own list, just to be spiteful.

“Number two,” Billy reads, “That time you went to the barber and he had to pump the chair a little to get--”

Steve laughs, bright and sudden.

He shuts right the fuck up when Billy glares.

“Number three,” Billy tells him, the paper shaking a little in his grasp. “The sound you make when you eat something spicy. Number four, any time you open an umbrella and the wind makes it pop inside out. Number five, when you tie your shoes too efficiently and the bow is really big--”

“I’m a present. The bow is essential,” Steve sits up straight, suddenly worried. “Let me see that fucking--”

Billy blocks him with a strong arm to the chest. “C’mon, let me get through it,” He says. Like it matters. 

Like it’s important to him. Billy’s continued survival hinges on this moment, so.

Steve settles down and listens to Billy read, all the way down to number twelve: when we play crack the egg with the kids on Dustin’s trampoline and you’re the egg.

And Steve has to ask, “How long have you kept this list, man?” Because that was last summer. 

And Steve remembers his stomach tying itself into knots when Billy dropped Max off and stayed until the sun set. He remembers going home after the kids fell asleep, Billy tagging along. Smoking pot and blowing clouds into the twinkling night sky. He remembers Billy laughing at his jokes staying up all night to catch fireflies with him. 

Steve remembers the sunrise, its first lavender rays bringing with it a sunburn across Billy’s freckles. He remembers falling in love. Or realizing it.

Billy shrugs, “I wrote the first one to help me get over you.”

Steve frowns. Hopes it didn’t work and says, “What’s the first one?”

Because if he knows, maybe he can change it. Maybe he can cheat the system and get Billy’s love focused on him again, burning hot and heady.

Billy stares at him for a long, breathless moment. “You dress up for Halloween,” He admits. “The way your nose supports the weight of sunglasses wigs me out.”

And.

Steve’s belly swoops low, like he’s been at the peak of the highest hill on a rollercoaster. Now he’s plummeting down to Earth. Right now, he’s a crash dummy colliding with the realization that--

“That was love, the first night we met,” Steve says bluntly. Billy’s cheeks look like apples, fresh and embarrassed. “That night, at Tina’s Halloween party--”

“I didn’t say I was in love with you--”

“I know, I’m saying I’m in love with you,” Steve admits, like. Leap.

A lot of things happen at once. 

Billy’s whole face cracks open. His eyes look like swimming pools overflowing with emotion until they turn into lakes and rivers and oceans, pulling Steve under with all their sincerity.

Outside Steve’s window, the sun shines.

It casts a halo of golden love around Billy’s head. He looks like an angel.

Steve’s never going to let him go. 

He leans forward, “Keep reading,” Steve asks softly. “C’mon, I wanna hear.”

Billy jerks into motion, tearing his eyes away to scan the page in front of him. “Number thirteen,” He tries, swallowing until his throat clicks, “When we’re swimming in the pool and you’re trunks inflate so it looks like you’re wearing a diaper.”

Steve chuckles, allowing his fingers to wrap playfully around the ends of Billy’s hair.

Now that the truth is out, he’s going to touch. 

Billy shivers. “Number fourteen, when you put on Chapstick and you’ve sharpened the applicator so it looks like a sword or a baby finger.”

Steve cups the back of Billy’s neck. 

Pulls himself forward.

When they kiss, Billy’s notebook paper glides to the floor. 

[aikuma]

I am unsure how to explain that I do not feel guilt, nor empathy, nor care for morality, yet still do not choose to do "bad" things.

I am nice to my friends. It just makes sense, right? If I am nice to them, they will like me, and thus be more inclined to spend time with me. I like spending time with them because it is entertaining. So I want to do whatever I can to give them incentive to stay around.

I do not commit crimes, or start fights, because it is a waste of energy. I have no reason to do these things. I gain nothing from them. The cons heavily outweigh the pros. It is either too much energy spent, time spent, or some punishment. So keeping to myself is best.

It is easier to just agree and go along with inconsequential things. I do not want to debate someone, so I pretend I agree to make them shut up. It is less energy to get somebody a napkin they asked for then to get into a fight for denying them. The less energy I spend, the better.

After all, people are more inclined to treat you well if you treat them good first.